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Literature Application

Bi Rain embodies the perfect male celebrity, A strong representation of the “global and powerful Korea” that Epstein and Joo talk about. However, this ideal perfection that Rain represents may be negatively affecting Korea’s standards of beauty. As new physical ideals are being shaped for the Korean male through celebrities like Rain, we see people come to Korea for “Korean-style procedures, frequently in imitation of popular celebrity looks”(Epstein and Joo, p.9). Bodily perfection and ideal celebrity aesthetics have led men in Korea to plastic surgery just “to gain advantage in a competitive job market” (Epstein and Joo p.2). Furthermore, since Rain pushes the standards of physical beauty, “we see widely acknowledged levels of social competitiveness to produce growing  demands for  physical  perfection”(Epstein and Joo, 1). Rain’s representation of the male physique increases body ideal pressures to become more like the “global and powerful Korea” that Korean men should be represented as. Essentially, Rain has played a role in the corrupted beauty standards of Korea, creating the unattainable male perfection, where men continually pursue the perfect aesthetic image, yet fail due to their skewed perception of the male body, and resort to the only option they have with plastic surgery.

The regular Korean male may have troubles in the competitive job market for the sole reason that the individual may not fit the beauty standard in Korea. Which then leads these men to perform plastic surgery whom may negatively impact their physical well beings. Bi Rain’s powerful and strong representation of the perfect male celebrity changes the Korean beauty standards, where males in Korea are expected to have a physique like Rain if they wish to compete in the job market or live their life to the fullest.

References:

Epstein, Stephen, and Rachel M. Joo. Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the TransnationalImagina, 1st ser., 10, no. 33 (August 13, 2012).

In Rain’s hip Song live performance music video, we see the display of sexual objectification of his body to channel his fame to stardom. In K-pop, the body is portrayed as a means to develop significant traction in the music industry, and Rain’s live performance of Hip Song is no different.

Rain’s choreography purposefully emphasizes the male torso to sexually attract fans. For example, during the dance breakdown of the song, Rain’s choreography displays a significant movement of his pelvis, an obvious hint to the sexual objectification of his own body. Rain’s reason behind his body exposure can be seen as as “The naked torso and exposed legs thus operate as consumer  fetish,  encouraging  desires  to  both gaze at and possess the “perfect” body.” (Epstein and Joo, P.8).

Rain is able to use the objectification of his own body to transcend other kpop idols, becoming a significant presence all around the world. Sexual objectification is often seen as negative and inappropriate, however, Rain uses sexual objectification to his own advantage, by developing his image through the exposure of his own body and therefore his stardom. For instance,  “stardom is a characteristic of the person”(Auslander, 18), where Rain has used his body as a characteristic to promote himself to stardom, shaping his image through the sexual objectification of his own body.

Rain’s sexual objectification of his body works because he has manipulated it to his advantage by creating a image where fans look specifically for his masculine exposure and physique. Rain

“Satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking… likeness and recognition: the human face, the human body, the relationship between the human form”(Muvey, P.9). His fans desire to observe the peak human physique, hence the “relationship between the human form. In this case. Rain wants to be used by his fans for pleasurable looking, although objectifying himself, enables an accelerated increase of his star identity and power, separating himself from any other celebrities in Korea.

Additionally, Rain’s performance is hosted on a live TV music show broadcast, and in South Korea, television is a major contributor to success of K-Pop idols. Because television “Distinguishes from mobile media platforms” (Kim,P.1137), Rain is able to expand his exposure to different audiences, making it much easier to find fans that are attracted to his tendency for sexual exposure. From watching Rain’s hip song live performance, we can see how he utilizes

the advantages of live broadcast TV to develop his image, and propel his stardom through the sexual objectification within his performances.

In conclusion, Rain’s Hip song performance presents his body in a sexually objectified manner that actually works to his advantage. Rain uses his body as a tool to exemplify his stardom, creating an identity where he is seen as a sexual but strong and masculine image, emphasizing “pleasurable looking” in order to attract fans and further this image. As we see Hip song through the eyes of a live broadcast performance, we are able to get a glimpse of how he is able to expand his audience, and develop his fame through his sexually objectified mannerisms on the stage.

References:

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminisms, 1975, 438-48.

Epstein, Stephen, and Rachel M. Joo. Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the TransnationalImagina, 1st ser., 10, no. 33 (August 13, 2012).

Auslander, Philip. “Everybodys in Show Biz: Performing Star Identity in Popular Music.” The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music: 317-31.

Kim, Suk-Young. K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance.

Stanford, CA:    Stanford   University Press, 2018. (1137,1209)

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.

The reading i choose is “The good, the bad, and the forgiven: The media spectacle of South Korean male celebrities’ compulsory military service” by Yezi Yeo. The article’s main idea is that how media impacts the South Korean male celebrities’ compulsory military service. The article writes three examples on how military service can act as scandal, redemption, and promotion. Similarly, Rain also has scandal when he serves in military.
Every Korean male between 18 to 35 years old must serve in military for two years. Korean people view the military service as a holy baptism. It will make a boy a man. It will wash away one’s mistakes. Basically, it will make a bad guy into a good person. Steve Yoo used to be a role model for teenagers in Korea. Media reports that he abandoned his Korea citizenship in order to avoid going to the military. And because of that, the whole South Korea criticizes him. He is banned to enter Korea since then. From the previous example, we understand that Korea treat the military service seriously. Psy went to military twice due to his undutiful service performance at military. Although, he spend four years in military , he won trust and love of his fans and other people in Korea again. Actor Hyunbin was reported that he apply for navy service when he was shooting a TV Drama by media. The media and government compliment him because of his patriotic behaviour. Similarly, Rain has also been criticized by the media because of his behaviour in military. The media criticizes him that he goes on a date with female actor while on a military duty. He also takes about thirty more days off than non-celebrity soldiers. There are even few politicians thinks Rain should redo the military services. Luckily, Rain’s inappropriate behaviour in military did not cause too much negative impact on his career.
The media has differents effects on Steve Yoo, Psy, Hyunbin and Rain. However, Rain, Psy and Steve Yoo, they all have scandals at the time they serve in military.

As K-pop becomes recognized worldwide, it is no longer unusual to see provocative and sexual materials in Kpop music videos. In some extent, we can also say that Korean popular music is known for its sexual music videos. The youth, especially collage students, are the majority consumers of these Kpop music videos. Therefore, discussion has raised that does the exposer to sexual Kpop music videos affects the sexual attitudes of collage student? In my opinion, set Rain as an example, his music videos do have some negative influence on collage students attitude towards sex.
In the article, the author states that ‘humans have the capability to learn through symbolic environments, such as through media portrayals’ (Bandura 2002). Especially for young adults, when they are just starting to from their view towards the world, their attitude can be easily influenced by the content they are exposed to. For example, in Rain’s music video for “La Song”, Rain kissed an African girl and her boobs and butt suddenly got bigger. This scene has a sexual meaning and is also considered as female objectification. As the study shows in the article, collage boys who were exposed to highly sexual hip-pop videos shows the higher levels of objectification of female, stereotypes of gender attitudes and acceptance of rape myths.
However, the sexual scene in Kpop music video also have some positive influence. In Rain’s other music video “In My Bed”, for most of the time he’s shirtless and water’s dripping from his muscular body. Those scenes have sexual meaning but Rain’s masculine figure sets a good example for collage students as most of his male fans say they want to ‘be like him’.
In conclusion, there’s negative influence of sexual Kpop music videos on collage students, but there good influence as well.
Reference

Kistler, Michelle E., and Moon J. Lee. “Does exposure to sexual hip-hop music videos influence the sexual attitudes of college students?.” Mass Communication and Society 13, no. 1 (2009): 67-86.

Cultural Appropriation in “La Song”

Rain steps on the top of Hallyu in 2000’s with his albums and Hollywood movie before he did the military services. His ambition towards the global platform and preparing a new album Rain Effect when coming back in 2014. However, the music video of “LA Song” in this album has been complained by some audiences. Withe the increasing development of K-pop worldwide, the issue of stereotypes in music video is exposed. Incorrect perception of different cultures and cultural appropriation are shown in this video which promote negative values to audiences.

At the beginning of video, Rain appeared in a crowded, damp street delivering pork to a shop. His appearance attracted everyone’s attention. In this background, there are a group of black people gambling.It might tend to show the chaotic environment because there are full of dust, goods, and black people dancing. Rain might want to show the Hip-hop and American pop by utilizing color people who “represents” those images. In this situation, appropriation seems to be limited to a certain context while culture is more flex and complex (Tendai 2018: 2). Rain and his video producer failed to exhibit the background of hip-hop and send a inflexible image to people who hardly get into hip-hop culture. Jason suggests “a denial of the salience of race in their own lives, the strong majority of concertgoers use color-blind ideology to justify their participation in a local hip-hop scene” (2006: 646).

The most controversial example spread among audiences at 1.49: Rain kisses a black woman and her shadow shows her breast and butt enlarged suddenly. From his lyrics, what Rain represents in this video is a successful man who can lead anyone around him and his leadership in this case is activating the exaggerated sexuality of the woman. Richard pointed that tension exists between the culture of colonization and capitalism (Richard 2006: 474). According to the colonial history of Africa, it might contain the power of controlling and debasing black woman’s body shape. This action might encourage children watching this video to discriminating and bullying other people. Meanwhile, fans around the world will be disappointed about this video and ordinary people might have negative attitude towards K-pop.

In the rest of the video, there is a traditional Brazilian woman with face paint doing crazy dancing. With head twisting quickly, this Brazilian dancer’s movement tend to do a sacrifice. And people around Rain seems to become his courtiers. With black people dancing around, Rain stared to showing his hip-hop. He uses black people to build an atmosphere of Black culture in order to make this video more credible. “Korean rappers believe ‘If I use English or I say the N word, if I imitate this aspect of black music, or black culture, people are going to like me more’. However, people ‘lose respect’ for this ‘pure ignorance’”(Here 2017: 7). Brock finds that people value and comment on black people through media who should be responsible for the correct aesthetic arguments about their appearance and worth (Brock 2010:1058).

In conclusion, cultural appropriation and incorrect cognition about black culture shown in La Song reflects a series concern about the way of culture mixing and borrowing in K-pop.

References:

Mangena, Tendai. “Cultural appropriation and (mis) translation in Petina Gappah’s ‘Washington’s wife decides enough is enough’.” African Identities (2018): 1-13

Rogers, Richard A. “From cultural exchange to transculturation: A review and reconceptualization of cultural appropriation.” Communication Theory 16, no. 4 (2006): 474-503.

Rodriquez, Jason. “Color-blind ideology and the cultural appropriation of hip-hop.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 6 (2006): 645-668.

Hare, Sarah, and Andrea Baker. “Keepin’It Real: Authenticity, Commercialization, and the Media in Korean Hip Hop.” SAGE Open 7, no. 2 (2017): 2158244017710294.

Brock, André, Lynette Kvasny, and Kayla Hales. “Cultural appropriations of technical capital: Black women, weblogs, and the digital divide.” Information, Communication & Society13, no. 7 (2010): 1040-1059.

Celebrities have certain role in society and mostly fixed in the certain frame. Sometimes, the demand from audiences requires stars to become what they are expected to be. Thus, Korean produces huge amount of stars to fit this demand. In this essay, I will discuss how K-pop star–Rain’s identity changes while the social manipulation is needed with his increasing fame.

Many scholars argued that the performance identity of stars can be situated in their musical persona and “a set of behaviors through which a person enact an identity ”(Auslander 2015: 329). Auslander emphasizes that the star identity can also be “an interaction between musicians and their audience with certain social distance” (2015: 329). Rain is a typical example of transforming his identity from a singer to an image representation of Korean with his increasing exposure and massive influence.

While stars performing their roles, they must consider the relationship between their current image and how their fans expected (Auslander 2015: 319). Rain debuted with his first song and attracted tons of audiences around Asia. With the promotion of social media, Rain made a transition to an actor in Korean drama Full House which played a critical role in his future popularity around the world. As the increase in popularity, Rain was mentioned in Time magazine listed “100 Influential People Who Shape Our World ” and his social identity changed to representing Korea in front of the world.

Rain’s success in 2000’s is a legend of K-pop and star identity of musician remains after he finished military services with the new album Rain Effect. Through the most illustrious period of his life, Rain remains true to his original intention.

Reference:

Auslander, Philip. “Everybody’s in Show Biz: Performing Star Identity in Popular Music.” The SAGE

Handbook of Popular Music (2015): 317.

Video Analysis of “30 Sexy”

Rain showed his transformation to a 30-year-old sexy mature man image in the music video of song “30 sexy” through his music, choreographed dance and differences between two groups of background dancers. This song is title song from his album Rain Effect, which is his first studio album in 6 years, also first album after military service. The time of the song release was also about the time of his thirtieth birthday, which indicated by the name “30 sexy”. I consider this song as a milestone of his transformation from a boy to a man, which was embodied by visual expression of this music video.

First of all, the music style of “30 sexy” is quiet different from Rain’s earlier dance music or ballad songs. This one tends to contain some hip-hop and slow electronic elements with use of trendy synthesizer and simple hip-hop drum beat. This change in music style encouraged the audience to relate it to his image change. Another thing that I noticed was Rain used English lyrics “Party-ya-yi-ya oh baby” “Cause I’m 30 baby, come over here” as chorus. Benson in ‘English and identity in popular music’ argued that “Their use of English is likely to involve the projection of new identities” (2013: 26) and “their music videos projected more sexually assertive identities than those found in their earlier Thai and Japanese work” (2013: 31). His use of English in this song projected his new identity of a 30-year-old sexy man, which contributed to his image transformation.

“The global popularity of Rain and his shirtless torso contributed to generating a new standard for K-pop’s male performers, transforming the body itself into the primary stage prop” (Epstein et al. 2012: 7). Rain’s performance is known to be powerful and popular. He used it as a tool to promote his new musical identity in “30 sexy”. Since this music video is performance-based, the choreography stands out and became a very important element. The whole choreography holds on to a smooth and slow dance style. Following the concept of being “sexy and mature”, he tends to show his sexiness by adding a lot of body twisting with intimate facial expression.

This video utilized 3D light and visual effect to illustrate black and white background of choreography done by Rain and his background dancers. The background dancers in this music video are two groups of people, mature men and sexy women with mask and red short hair. It is noticeable that the mature men’s looking were not unified like in other mv, they have their own hairstyle and hair color, and some with mustache some with hat. These dancers emphasized the idea of mature male population that represented by Bi Rain. On the contrary, the female background dancers (referred as “sexy lady” in lyrics) can be easily identified as the same person with same red hair, same mask covering their faces, and same costume. All of them were wearing a black high slit dress, frequently doing dance moves that show their bare legs. “Just as the hard male body conveys ideas of a ‘global and powerful Korea,’ so too then have ‘interminable’ bare female legs become a marketing tool and branding technique for an enticingly toned and ‘impeccably executed’ Korea.” (Epstein et al. 2012: 14). The music video emphasized male glamour in this contrast, objectified women to highlight men power.

“K-pop is driven by the visual” (Epstein with Turnbull 2014: 316). Artists usually express themselves not only through music, but also more often, through their music videos. Rain utilized different elements in this mv to convey an idea of: a man growing up and reach age of 30, which is an important age of becoming sexier and being able to attract more “sexy ladies”.

References:

Benson, Phil. “English and identity in East Asian popular music.” Popular music 32, no. 1 (2013): 23-33.

Epstein, Stephen, and James Turnbull. “Girls’ generation? Gender,(dis) empowerment, and K-pop.” The Korean popular culture reader (2014): 314-336.

Epstein, Stephen, and Rachael M. Joo. “Multiple exposures: Korean bodies and the transnational imagination.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10, no. 33.1 (2012): 1-17.

Korean popular music is not only known for its catchy lyrics and danceable rhythm, but also well-known for the excellent music videos. The extraordinary visual impact of music videos is also one of the reasons why Kpop has a worldwide success. Other than the choreography, most of the music videos usually have a story line running through the whole video. In addition, the use of English lyrics is also common in Kpop to help with the rhyming and promote globalization. Rain’s “I Do” music video is a perfect hybridization of choreography, English lyrics and romantic love story. It is the combination of those elements that leads to the success of this song.

Since the name of this song “I Do” is in English other than Korean, we can tell that the English mixing in lyrics in Korean popular music is really common and is a positive way to promote cultural hybridization. As Dal Yong Jin and Woongjae Ryoo stated in their article, the success of Korean music industry is primarily due to the fully utilize of the hybridization of English and global resource (Jin and Ryoo 122). Rain’s song “I Do” was the Korean singer’s second big hit in Asia. This huge success was more or less benefit from the English mixing in lyrics in this song. The lyrics such as the repeatedly “I do. I do” and “I do wanna spend my life with you” perfectly rhyme with the Korean lyrics. Therefore created a romantic atmosphere throughout the whole music video.

As for the story line in this music video, it starts from a boy (Rain) shooting a love song video for his girlfriend in his messy room, and then he moves to the street and passes by many loving couples and finally meets his girlfriend in the restaurant. It’s not hard to find that, the whole music video, especially the beginning part, the story setting, box sets and relationship between two main characters, are quite similar the the settings of Korean drama. As Yukie Hirata mentioned in her article, it is the big boom of the Korean drama ‘Winter Sonata’ that brought the cultural and social phenomenon called the Korean wave, or Hallyu, to Japan in 2004 (Chua 2008). We can see from this case that Korean dramas are popular amount women not even in Korean. Therefore, no wonder the Korean drama-like settings of the ‘I Do’ music video took advantage of this and became a hit.

Another aspect that makes this song such a big success is the dramatic change of persona and clothing of Rain in this music video. Before this music video, Rain’s image is a tough guy with muscles, and he is always shirtless or wears a little in his previous music videos. However, in the “I Do” music video, he is wearing white, which is a tamer and non-provocative color. And his hair is down, he’s always smiling and there’s no suggestive shots taken by the camera. These suggest that in this music video, Rain has transformed form his previous image, tough muscular guy to the more traditional Korean aesthetics, the soft masculinity. The author Sun Jung says in his book that there is increasing acceptance and preference for the gender blending images shown by the Kpop boy bands(Sun 2011). Therefore, the soft masculinity side of Rain in the “I Do” music video must be an eye-popper and refresh for the visual audience and this transformation definitely contributes to the success of this song.

In conclusion, it is the combination of choreography, hybridization of English lyrics and romantic love story line in the music video that discussed above that makes Rain’s song “I Do” a great hit.

References:

Beng Huat Chua and Koichi Iwabuchi. East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave. Hong Kong University Press, 2008.

Dal Yong Jin & Woongjae Ryoo (2014) Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics, Popular Music and Society, 37:2, 113-131, DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2012.731721

Sun Jung. Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-pop idols. Hong Kong University Press, 2011.

A. If K-pop is the face of Korea, and related to nationalism, how does cultural appropriation fit into the picture?

As we learned in the past section, early Korean music was influenced by Japan during the colonization period before the influences from American military at World War II. Based on the development of globalization, K-pop has enjoyed a huge success around the world by mixing West and East cultural music, which sometimes causes cultural appropriation, like appropriating English lyrics and group names, while globalization also has a profound impact on a country’s cultural identity. In order to keep balance between nationalism and hybridization of culture,which is the main feature of K-pop, the first step is emphasizing the importance of originality. Since the social media has become the main agent of communicating culture, K-pop blends the diverse culture through social media and it changes to a structure with centering on the culture creativity (Jin and Ryoo 2014, 122). In this process, Korean government took a series of actions to encourage the local culture in different areas, for instance, protection of traditional cultural heritage, increasing the fundamental cultural facilities and cultivating specialized artists. However, the progress of originality and creativity is hindered to some extent by commercialization due to the major impetus of K-pop–the local entertainments and producers. ‘While contemporary K-Pop has advanced hybrid culture, it is less likely that the Korean music industry is developing a creative form of hybridization which works towards maintaining local identities in the global context’ (Jin and Ryoo 2014, 126). Therefore, it is crucial that focusing on Korean own creation to develop the unique culture of K-pop.

Secondly, cultural appropriation inevitably occurs during the mixing diverse cultures by generalizing incorrectly and one-sidedly. For example, CL has been accused of cultural appropriation of American street hip-hop representing with color people smoking and drinking in ‘Lifted’ music video and being regarded offensive to Muslim in her ‘MTBD’ album. Consequently, specific, strict and detailed audit and inspection are required in K-pop to avoid unsuitable cultural appropriation. Furthermore, it is the time for K-pop producers and entertainments to reexamine what K-pop want to show in their music video and correctly represent the other culture value they borrowed. In particular, producers can concentrate more on case-study research through national or local media about different culture based on the historical and unique local environment and analyze the best way to transfer them into a new form in K-pop (Jin and Ryoo 2014, 116).

To sum up, cultural appropriation in K-pop is inevitable under globalization. What Korean could do is not only keeping K-pop’s traditional and global cultural features but also correct cognition and representation of other cultures.

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.

Keer Feng (33305160)