BTS a New Visual Style? the Maturing of K-Pop

BTS a new visual style? The maturing of K-pop

In this paper I would like to take a look at three videos from K-pop’s newest sensation, BTS. By analyzing these videos I hope to uncover the emergence of a new visual style. One that is typically Korean, and that is able to positively distinct itself from their western counterparts. In the globalized pop industry, there is still a dominant rol for big American record companies and musicians, but it would be foolish to so say that they are the only power on the global playing field. Recently the biggest YouTube channel in subscriber count is the Indian Bollywood music channel T series, and Gangnam style was the first video to break the magic boundary of one billion views. BTS is currently doing a world tour in which they play 42 venues in roughly 8 months, accumulating to around a million visitors. On YouTube it’s rather difficult to find a BTS video that’s been watched less than a few hundred million times.

Karaoke Americanism

In the article Karaoke Americanism en Psy’s Gangnam style, a rather grim picture is paint about the future of K-pop. The article states that it might not be possible to acquire a sustained global audience: “However, at the end of the day, the new sounds of K-pop, these original copies, these absolute fabrications, are not likely to become popular beyond their cultural comfort zone” (de Kloet et al 125). Of course it’s a bit mean to attack an older article knowing these current stellar numbers, and that’s not the point of my article. I would in fact like to take a look at their concept of karaoke americanism. De Kloet uses the theoretical concept of karaoke Americanism to make sure that we don’t get into a normative judgment whether the copy is doing a good job. Instead it’s supposed to: “shift the focus to how the copy transforms the original in the new context; second, karaoke openly and consciously uses the generic character of the original, thereby recognizing rather than mystifying its construction” (de Kloet et al 118). For my analysis I want to test if this conceptional framework is holding up.

!1 For starters it’s not so clear that BTS uses and transforms American pop culture. Even in the three videos that I will use for this analysis there is an incredible amount of cultural quotations that far exceed the American sphere of inﬂuence. We can recognize clear inspiration or direct use of art works like. James Turrell, Bill Viola, Araki, Tracey Emin, Lucio Fontana, Benvenuto Cellini, Pieter Bruegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pietà by Michelangelo, Statue of Livia Drusilla, Pergamon Altar, Winged Victory of Samothrace, dances that resemble Jabbawockeez, organ compositions of Bach (and the list could probably go on and on). In that sense it feels more like a world jukebox.

Maybe it helps to look at a more underlying construction like narrative or continuity. Generally American video’s tell a story in some shape or form. For instance, take the best viewed videos by Super-Bowl performers and all-out American entertainment juggernauts Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé. Their videos Mirror and Formation are completely different in tone, but still they tell a story of old people remembering their life or about a black community being oppressed. Hollywood continuity is not always used, but nevertheless the shot progressions have a spatial continuity. Justin Timberlake’s video shows a notable change in setting and tone, but it synchronizes with a musical change. So it’s something that I still consider to be continuous.

!2 In the BTS video Blood Sweat & Tears there’s clearly a different way to how continuity is established. A quick look at the lyrics confirms the hunch that it is in fact a love song. So one might expect, given the fact that not a lot of people speak Korean fluently, there would be a clear narrative of two lovers who do, or do not get each other. There is however absolutely nothing of that. It would also be too simple to state that there is no narrative. The number of match cuts, the brilliant maintaining of movement between shots and the multitude of themes such as smoke, drops of liquid and certain gestures give the impression that they want the viewer to feel some sort of progression or continuity. Since this video is so chuck-full of shots averaging about 50 per minute, with Justin and Beyoncé averaging only 20, I would like to take a closer look at a rather small part from 01:28 to 01:50. It starts with the beginning of the verse and the introduction of a new set. A blue room with one of the members sitting on a chair. We start rather close with a push-in to a close-up. In the second shot, we jump back but continue the movement of pushing in. There’s also green smoke in the room now. Then we see a quick shot of another member in a French baroque interior. With the next shot we’re back with the first member and still continuing the push in. Now we see this same member in the French baroque interior. A quick shot of a candle being lit. And we’re back to the push-in. He moves his hand up and let’s it fall into his lap. This collides with a drumroll in the music. With the direction of the hand, the frame slides down and the member that was already intercut slides up. He’s now going to continue the verse. We see the lighting of another candle and a drop of green liquid falling in a glass of water. Next we see him drinking the glass with the same green hue and the candle suspended over his cup. In between these shots the mixture of the drop is also expressed with smoke mixing in colors. In this verse there is no intercutting with an other member. We do however see shots of the same member in the set we’re about to go to after this segment for the verse.

With this editing, there is a constant intertwining of these little narrative events. The ﬁrst candle we see, lit in the segment I discussed, is later used to produce yet another green

!3 drop. This time it is melted from the candle and dropped on a finger. Then a few shots later we see a member licking the drop of his finger. There is also small arc with a member sitting on a throne with bow and arrow. We see him tensioning and later shooting the arrow. Again these shots are intertwined to bind sets and member to each other. All of this is done mostly with continuity of movement and use of themes. The arrow is being shot from left to right producing a splatter of drops from left to right in the next shot. I think it is clear that BTS is not just removing a standard narrative and giving us nothing in return. With an enormous amount of visual artistry they manage to tie in a visual narrative that flows undeniably.

By constructing continuity in such a unique way, and with combining so many elements it doe not ﬁt the framework of karaoke Americanism. There is also no clear favor for quoting American pop culture. BTS has made a style out of compiling a staggering amount of shots and cultural quotations into a cohesive visual product, without using a standard narrative structure. In doing so they have outgrown the comparison with any other popact in my opinion, and come into their own as a distinct style of K-pop. As Nietzsche puts it: “you need chaos to give birth to a dancing star”.

!4 Navigating South Korean masculinities

To say anything remotely sensible about the construction of gender in the videos of BTS, it is necessary to layout some ground principles. First of all, I do consider the media to play a considerable role in the formation of gender and that gender is a construction instead of having any basis in biology or sex: “rather than there being a pre-existing reality to the meaning of the categories masculine and feminine, the media were involved in actively producing gender” (Ross 374). This is described in The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media as a result of work that spanned multiple decades and involved many scholars (Ross 374). Furthermore I align myself with the view that: “masculinities are marked by international power and hierarchical battles that do not allow for a single hegemonic masculinity to be established” (Ross 518). With these principles, we can conclude two things. Firstly: we can consider the videos of BTS to play a role in the construction of masculinity, and not just to be a representation of existing or predetermined meanings. Secondly: the masculinity that is constructed should ﬁrst be understood in a local context, before we can look at the implications in our western context. If we talk about South Korean masculinity it is important to note there is still a compulsory military service. It’s also deemed a deeply patriarchal society originating from the rapid postcolonial/postwar industrialization (Suh 322). There is however an important difference to the American masculinity: “South Korean masculinity, beyond its emphasis on softness or aesthetic perfection, was very much deﬁned in a neoliberal manner, where one’s manhood was highly contingent upon one’s access or claims to capital” (Suh 332). This lead to a situation where being heterosexual or macho was much less important in the formation of masculinity. This is even visible in the South Korean military where there is no such thing as the don’t ask don’t tell attitude of the American army (Suh 332). This aesthetic of perfection and softness lies at the basis of the Korean Wave that began roughly with the big TV hit Winter Sonata. This was especially important because it showed that the perception of South Korean men changed rapidly among Japanese fans (Jung 44-45). According to Zheng images of these aesthetically perfect boys with soft skin and feminine manners started to replace the more macho types in South Korean advertisement as early as the 1990s (164). He also states that anime-culture has had a profound effect on this change. Something minor as the bright hair colors is a clear inspiration on manga aesthetics (Zheng 615). The Shojo or Yaoi Manga

!5 genres are produced for girls and serve a gloriﬁed fantasy of these soft and pretty boys in either heterosexual or homosexual relationships.

If we take this knowledge it’s not hard to identify these attributes of soft masculinity in BTS. Let’s start with the hair colors in the video Blood Sweat & Tears: pink, blonde, orange, white and all in varying saturations are displayed. Members even change hair color between shots. In the BTS video for FAKE LOVE we see a big focus on clothing. The members of BTS are shown in at least five different outfits each. On 03:32 we see a member looking at a reflection in the mirror of himself with an other outfit. In the roughly 20seconds sequence after this shot we see him and another member in three different outfits each. It’s clear that these boys are shown to have style and the money to look good. Even American rapper Travis Scot, who is considered to be a fashion icon wears on average two outfits in a video. The softness of South Korean masculinity is particularly prominent in all of the BTS videos. Almost without exception there is a break in the videos with no music. This is filled with some dramatically lit closeups. The expression on their faces is a kind of implicit sexiness and it feels a bit voyeuristic. The members usually look away to avoid confrontation with the viewer, or they very deliberately look at the viewer in a cheeky way. In these close-ups it’s also very clear that the members are wearing makeup and earrings. Although one of the members wears a BDSM-insp. leather harness in the opening of FAKE LOVE there is no explicit gayness. There are however no girls in a BTS videos ever. It’s all very much left brewing under the surface for fans to fantasize about.

!6 It’s clear that BTS is navigating this Korean wave of South Korean masculinity quite perfectly. Therefore it is safe to say that they no longer abide by the shackles of the Western perception of Asian masculinities. Rain tried to construct a macho image to ﬁt in, and Psy conﬁrmed to an asexual image to conform to our views of Asian masculinity (de Kloet et al 117). Although it can be misunderstood as gay or overly feminine, it should be understood as a uniquely South Korean construction. Even though the culture, and the presence of soft masculinity in advertisement is much less ubiquitous in the West, the same target audience of young girls show up in large numbers. Apparently this softer form of masculinity does translate well among worldwide audiences. Is that because Western communities want to negotiate a new masculinity without the immediate implication of gay or feminine connotations? Or is the soft masculinity seen more as a vehicle of acceptance of the LGBT community? This is something that would be really interesting for future research.

References Jung, Sun. Korean masculinities and transcultural consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop idols. Vol. 1. Hong Kong University Press, 2010. de Kloet, J., et al. "Karaoke Americanism Gangnam Style: K-pop, Wonder Girls, and the Asian Unpopular." Televisual culture (2016). Ross, Karen, ed. The handbook of gender, sex, and media. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Suh, Stephen Cho. "Negotiating Masculinity across Borders: A Transnational Examination of Korean American Masculinities." Men and Masculinities 20.3 (2017): 317-344. Zheng, Xiaowei. "Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power, and East Asia. Edited by Black Daniel, Epstein Stephen and Tokita Alison. Victoria, Australia: Monash University Press, 2010.

Media YongSeok Choi. “BTS (방탄소년단) '피 땀 눈물 (Blood Sweat & Tears)' Ofﬁcial MV”. Youtube. YongSeok Choi. “BTS (방탄소년단) 'FAKE LOVE' Ofﬁcial MV”. Youtube.

YongSeok Choi. “BTS (방탄소년단) LOVE YOURSELF 轉 Tear 'Singularity' Comeback Trailer”. Youtube.