Literature application of “Just beautiful people holding a bottle”
This literature discussed that South Korea has their own style of making advertisements, which involves celebrity endorsement greatly, the driving force behind it was also discussed. With such mechanism, Korean female stars were highly objectified and sexualised in commercials. In specific case of Rain, I’d like to further argue that female sexualisation not only appears when female stars act as leading roles in advertisements, but also when women act as background dancers or supporting roles.
Evidence showed Korean early high participation in fan/star engagement through media. As KOBACO started offering 15-second advertising slot, it rapidly became industry norm, and thus celebrities took the job of “grabbing attention and make the ad memorable” (Turnbull 2017: 129). Japanese advertising industry’s success with similar high-rate celebrity endorsements commercial pattern set good example for Korea.
Under this mechanism, celebrities with large fan population like Rain became competitive choice of endorsers. Article by Turnbull (2017: 133) argued that Korean advertisements industry tends to sexualize female, which indicated by data showing that “Korean women have 57 times more likely than men to not be fully dressed”. This observation was embodied in Rain’s cf videos. Within same video, he usually dresses more than the actresses do, and the actresses always wear short skirts. Rain as a top star, with no doubt took the leading role in these videos, and his face was used as name card and key element for advertising use. However, the female characters as co-stars or supporting roles, such as saleswoman, background dancer, random girl… (some do not even have their face showed) even dressed in short skirts and have their legs showed.
I am confident to say this situation not only exists in terms of Rain, but widely exists in all kinds of advertisements. Further speaking, the phenomenon may not limit to Korean commercial industry, but the whole K-pop world.
Bibliography
Turnbull, James. “Just beautiful people holding a bottle: the driving forces behind South Korea’s love of celebrity endorsement.” Celebrity Studies 8, no. 1 (2017): 128-135.