Author: shiruo zhang

Posted on

Literature Appliaction- Shiruo Zhang

There is no doubt that English phrases are commonly use in East Asian music. They tend to mix English lyrics as a transitional flow into their songs, especially in hip hop music. As author Phil Benson in “English and identity in East Asian popular music” (2013) mentions, it is could be a challenge of using a English transition flows, because they are “uneven, multidirectional and unstable, with no strong overall pattern emerging” (Benson, 2013). In this situation, evenly use English transnational flow in songs could be an obstacle for most East Asian singer, however, Psy as a native Korean male singer, has achieved commercial success of mixing Korean and English in his music and vast spreading worldwide.

By evaluating the numbers view and subscribes in comments section on the YouTube, Psy made a huge influence. For example, Gangnam Style has achieved over 30 billion views on YouTube, and the most unforgettable part within is this English phrase “Oppa Gangnam style” and followed by a transitional flow “Eh, sexy lady”. The repeated patterns of rhythm make this song impressive for audience worldwide. In addition, the success of this song is not just evaluating by the numbers of views, but also investigate how audiences are connected to this song with English transitional flows, by looking the comments sections. Benson believes the comments sections “create spaces in which the identity implications of language use can be negotiated across a virtual region” (2013). Subscribers define their identity by making comments using English, which implies the interactions between Psy as a native Korean and global audience, are accomplished.

In conclusion, Psy is successfully using the strategy of mixing the English transitional flow into his music, which reflects on the YouTube by great number of view and comments section.

Benson, Phil. “English and Identify in East Asia Popular Music.” Popular Music 32, no. 1 (2013):  23-33

Posted on

Video Analisys: Psy “Daddy” —-Shiruo Zhang

Signature theme form MV and memorable lyrics are two essential factors that makes a song circulate widely. In the music video Daddy by Psy, he creates an amusing theme that the son, the father and the grandfather are all having the same face of Psy, and the lyrics also are catchy. The style of this song is lively, music video is pleasant and the choreograph maintains the style of Psy, which always containing a sense of hummer. In general, this music video is creative, which implication a real-life phenomenon, using impressive English flows and all of these create the unique identify for Psy.

For the theme of Daddy, Psy role plays 3 generations of the son, the father and the grandfather with one unified purpose, is to become and maintain physical attractiveness to every female in the music video. By using photoshop, a just born baby has the identical face with Psy, in the three stages of Psy, female is attracted by his appearance, such as all of the little girl, include the teacher, in the kindergarten in Psy as a boy, the female dancer in Psy as young adult and the all the old ladies in Psy’s old ages. This implicates that it is a lifegoal of being physical attractiveness for male in our society, which the theme is clear established.

Furthermore, the lyrics of this song is unforgettable, because he uses the repeated rhetorical question in English. As an English transitional flow, “hey, where’d you get that body from?”, then followed by the refrain of “I got it from my daddy”. The purpose of using English flows is that “artists record in the languages of their overseas market and in some cases relocate to them (Benson 2013, 24)”. Also, using English lyrics in Daddy as the hook of the song which “includes a musical idea, often a short riff, passage or phrase, intended to catch the ear of listener” (Jin and Ryoo 2014, 124). This circulation allows English speaker audience to understand Psy’s music in certain context, also allows then to sing along with it.

The style of using English flows creates an identity for Psy. Like Gangnam style, hangover and daddy, they all share the common of using English phrase in the refrain parts and the same style of video. In his video, there are always exaggerated dance and colorful senses. The similarities are the factors to create the unique style of Psy. However, as. A native Korean singer, recording songs in Korea as a representative of Korean artist, also using English make him identified as an international star who spend years studying in United States.

In conclusion, the themes of Daddy are creative and having realist implications and the mixing lyrics of English in his songs could also makes him commercially success in certain extent. All of the factors contribute to Psy’s uniqueness as Korean singer.

Reference

Jin, Dal Yong and Woongjae Ryoo. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The  Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics.” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 2 (2014):113-131.

Benson, Phil. “English and Identify in East Asia Popular Music.” Popular Music 32, no. 1 (2013):  23-33

Posted on

Discussion 5 (regrade)

What complications would ensue if pop stars were granted exemption from mandatory military service? Should they be exempted? On what grounds? 

In order to maintain the national defense army in South Korea, as we know, there is a male conscription since around 70 years ago. Male at ages of 18-35 is expected to serve the military force or other supplemental services mandatorily, from at least 21 months to 55 months. However, there is always people trying to “shirk” from this crucial legal liability, which causes a social criticism that is magnified on the male Korean celebrities. In severe situations that “can easily end even the most prominent celebrity career overnight”, just like Psy did before (Yeo 2017, p.294). Standing in front of mass media and social norms, I personally think that mandatory military service should not be exempted for pop stars.

Nowadays, mass media is a powerful instrument that regulates pop stars’ behaviors. Although, only a few Korean stars were criticized for the mandatory military service in history, people still take it very seriously. In the case of Psy, mass media like newspaper and online articles, was repeatedly using his example to encourage and promote celebrity conscription, which also “function as a watchdog” to “keep the citizenry informed of abuses and misconduct” (Yeo 2017, p.298). Therefore, it would not be hard to image that if one pop star is exempted from mandatory military service for any kind of excuses, would start an enormous debate on mass media and mainly contains criticism.

In addition, social norms would not allow the exemption for pop star, as if equality and democracy is the goal which Korean citizen pursue in their society. The mandatory conscription has been developed into a form of social norms and considered as a “normal” process in a young male adult’s life. The consequences for populations that exposure to inequality, these pop stars could “create a distorted focus for public attention” (Yeo 2017, p.299). In another words, the attitudes of pop stars towards conscription can reflect the social norms that held by themselves, which will be criticized if it against the social values held by the majority who are seeking equality.

In conclusion, I think in order to maintaining the equality between pop stars and rest of Korean citizen, and also to avoid the undutiful behaviour of pop stars exposure to the public through mass media, mandatory military service should not be exempted for pop stars.

 

Reference

Yeo, Yezi. “The good, the bad, and the forgiven: The media, spectacle of South Korean male celebrities’ compulsory military service.” Media, War & Conflict, 10, no.3, (2017): 293-313.doi: 10.1177/1750635217694122

Posted on

Cover Video Reflection

In the processing of making this cover video, I found that there is much more work than I thought. First, if we want to construct a narrative music video, we have to build a story line and create a basic frame of this video, and connecting footages with the key scenes during editing. Then, I believe the communication between the camera operator and actors is important, since we do not have a director, and that requires the imagination of the camera operator who decides the shooting angles, length of each scenes and the expectation of the performance of actors. After finish shooing footages, editing is an essential step, which is the spirt of the video making process. Those discontinued, meaningless footages would be transformed into a completely different shape in a video.

When I was editing, I learned that storyline must be well-established, and then focused on details. At first, I missed picking footages that should be in the video, which made my partial video nonsense and confused. Then I tried different footages combinations, played them over and over again, and choosing the most appropriate and making-sense ones to put in my video. Because we are doing the music cover video, the switches between sense to sense and music beats have to be matched in some extent, which makes audience more comfortable to watch it. This beat matching cost me lots of time to make adjustments.

Those are the most difficult situations I have encountered when I was editing, but luckily, I resolved these problems eventually, and I had a very great experience with my group of doing this cover video.

 

Shiruo zhang

Posted on

Discussion #3 – 2b)

We all understand that without fans, there would be no stars, but how much power do fans really have? Discuss the power of a fan/consumer and what this could entail (how much impact do we have)?

Obviously, there would be no stars if they don’t have fans. Fans are groups of people from worldwide, gathering together with same interests, goals and having the same particular idol they follow. There is no doubt that fans would always support and protect their idols from many dimensions, such as buying CDs, photo albums and do things they believe are supportive to their idols, etc. As the fan groups becoming bigger and bigger, their influences widen globally. In my opinion, power of fans is unaccountable, which can be both positive in transnational cultural and negative in the producing of anti-fans.

Positively speaking, it is a good thing that fans from worldwide are producing transnational culture fandom while sharing their culture with fans from different countries. The influence of fans is creating this transnational cultural fandom which becomes a product of Korean fans and non-Korean fans consist different culture and media (Thussu 2007). It allows fans interacting their socio-cultural background with other fans, which studies have found that “fans are enjoying textual and intertextual play with cultural products” (Lee 2016). In addition, fans can be valuable in creating their own fan culture, which also is the product of transnational cultural fandom. In the fan culture, there are norms are created, such as fans have to buying certain supporting items to identify themselves from the rest of non-fan group, especially in young teenage girl and it is defaulting to purchase the unique light stick to hold in their idol’s concert.

However, the dark side of the fan culture which is the product of the anti-fans. Anti-fan is originated in Korea, which form by a group of people who dislike a particular artist and making threat to the artist directly or indirectly. They could do things that are totally unethical, emotionally and sometimes physically harmful to the artists and to their real fans. The reason why people turn into some anti-fans can be as simple as the little unsatisfactory of the performance by the artists. In 2006, Jung Yunho from super junior drunk a drink contains super glue which send by anti-fans, and was send to the emergence room for surgery and got safe eventually; in the same year, because the performance by SJ in Korea MCB was not gone well as expected, anti-fan smashed their car window of on their way out while SJ members, Kim Ki-bum and Lee Dong-hae, were sitting in the car and they got injured by the broken glasses. However, SJ still apologize for their performance after this incident, anti-fans were not showing any sympathy and even become more malicious. This damage of anti-fans is tragical to every artist and unforgettable to every fan who deeply love their idols.

 

References

Lee, Hye Kyung. 2016. Ashgate research companion to Fan Cultures: Transnational Cultural Fandom, 2016.

Thussu, D.K. (ed.) 2007. Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow. London: Routledge. Tsai, E. 2007. Caught in the terrains: An inter-referential inquiry of trans-border stardom and fandom. Inter-Asian Cultural Studies, 8(1), 135–54.

Posted on

Discussion #3 2b) -draft

We all understand that without fans, there would be no stars, but how much power do fans really have? Discuss the power of a fan/consumer and what this could entail (how much impact do we have)?

First of all, I think there are different types of fans which make different influence on our society, and their fandom behavior depends on the level of obsession to their idols. The more obsession and the larger number of fans, the stronger power they could contain. According to the fan culture, the most obvious benefit from being a fan of someone, is the power to connecting people from the worldwide, which share the same interests and goals. It suddenly allows them to form an alliance, and makes them representable as one of the group member. This coherence within fan culture can make strong influence on economics and public opinions to idols and to society. Fans are not only supporting their idols mentally, fans are also consumers supporting idols financially, such as buying CDs, photo albums, posters, going to their concerts, and sending gifts. Those would be a great deal of money for general fans, if encountered a wealthy hysterical individual, buying a house in the same neighborhood of their idol is possible. In addition, entertainment companies also making money from fans indirectly by selling popularities of artists. As consumers, fans have huge impacts on society economically.

However, there could be conflicts between one fan group to another. Fans grasp every piece of information of their idols from everywhere at any time, even the underlying message of their idol’s interaction with another artist on the internet. Not just they want to be “closer” to their idols, but also willing to do everything to protect their idols. Conflicts happen when this process of decoding information from idols’ behavior to fan’s thoughts. For example, when an unfamiliar artist making a bad joke with their idol, these fans can be really sensitive to this information then perceiving it negatively. In the worse scenario, both fans of these two artists would “flight” each other on social media, and then entertainment journalists could catch this opportunity to find any other related evidence, then create public opinions. When ordinary people reading the news reports, they would have the first image of these two artists are not getting alone with each other, however, the truth is opposite. This would contribute negative relationship between both the artists and their fans. In general, the power of fans is unlimited.

 

Reference

Kim, A.(2017). Korean Popular Music (K-Pop), Youth Fan Culture, And Art Education Curriculum. (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4368

 

 

Spam prevention powered by Akismet