Show, Don't Tell
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SHOW, DON’T TELL A Reflection on Korean Popular Music Videos MA THESIS FILM STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Author: Eva Heijne Student no.: 11774592 Date of completion: June 20, 2018 Supervisor: Dr. Gerwin van der Pol Second Reader: Dr. Erik Laeven Heijne 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter 1: K-pop: Between a Rock and a Hard Place? .................................................................................. 5 1.1 TRAGEDY STRIKES: THE SEWOL FERRY DISASTER, LADIES’ CODE AND JONGHYUN ............................................. 5 1.2 SOUTH KOREA AND K-POP: THE INDUSTRY AND ITS POPULARITY ...................................................................... 7 1.3 SEX, DRUGS AND K-POP: SCANDAL AND SOUTH KOREAN SOCIETY ................................................................ 10 1.4 THE CURRENT STATE OF K-POP AND HALLYU .................................................................................................... 11 1.5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................................. 14 Chapter 2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: the K-pop cultural industry ....................................... 15 2.1 HOLLYWOOD AND KOREA: CENSORSHIP AND AUTHORSHIP ............................................................................. 16 2.2 CONTENT VERSUS CONTEXT: K-POP AS A VICTIM OF ITS OWN DEBATE ......................................................... 20 2.3 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................................. 22 Chapter 3: The Poetics of K-pop ........................................................................................................................... 23 3.1 K-POP VIDEO PRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 23 3.2 PAST AND PRESENT .................................................................................................................................................... 25 3.3 MISE-EN-SCENE AND BEYOND ................................................................................................................................ 25 3.4 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................................. 33 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................................................................... 38 FILMOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................................................... 40 IMAGES ................................................................................................................................................................................ 41 Notes ................................................................................................................................................................................... 41 Heijne 3 INTRODUCTION In 2017 and early 2018, Korean artists became an almost unavoidable staple in the global music scene. Boy group BTS was featured on prominent US late nights shows, co-ed group KARD had sold out shows in Australia, Mexico and Europe and girl group TWICE sold over a million copies of their Japanese language- singles in just over a year. K-pop as a phenomenon has grown in popularity in a global context, and a multitude of explanations has been offered for this popularity – the impact of PSY is deemed undeniable by most, but other theories range from the desire for a regional Asian identity to the lack of a Korean identity of the music. However, there remains one question that is largely unaddressed in an academic context. The academic discourse surrounding the genre has only paid particular attention to the musical, political and commercial aspects of the genre, while not considering the inherent artistic merits of K-pop videos. I will explore the claim that the boundaries between art, commercialism and politics are being blurred in the K- pop industry, with the main focus being on K-pop video. Music videos might be considered to belong to the realm of television studies, so an explanation for placing the discussion of K-pop videos in the context of film studies is in order. In recent years, academics specializing in the study of film still make a distinction between “high” and “low” art, even if it is done less explicitly and less frequently than in previous decades. On the contrary, television studies tried to shy away from incorporating this distinction – it was seen as a mass medium ever since its inception and the medium had to fight to be taken seriously in academic circles in the first place. However, in recent years, with an ample amount of discussions concerning concepts like “quality television,” a potential introduction of this separation of “high” and “low” art in the medium has reared its head – and so, a problem plaguing academic discussions of film has now taken hold in television studies. In this debate, music video assumes an interesting position. Does it belong to film art as short films? Does it belong to television, in the tradition of video art? Or is it something else altogether, an example of the continuities between both media? Music video could be considered one of the few cases of video art that the medium of television has produced, as Daniel Dieters states in his discussion on the video art of Nam June Paik and other video artists in the second half of the 20th century (Television—Art or Anti-art?, 2). How coincidental, then, that Paik’s home country has, in recent decades, produced a genre that is controlled by major corporations, and yet still manages to be visually engaging and innovative (as I will hopefully illustrate in this thesis). In other words, the aims of this research can be summarised in two ways: first and foremost, the aim is to no longer reduce K-pop to a genre of dancing bodies and blatant commercialism, hopefully starting a more nuanced discussion when it comes to the artistic aspects of K-pop. Secondly, other than showing the aesthetic merits of K-pop, I’d like to use the genre as an example of an art form where artistry, agency and discourse can be possible even if the medium is used as political capital or is riddled with blatant commercialism and exploitation of its consumers and artists. This does not mean, however, that I will try and excuse the K-pop system’s ethical transgressions and questionable treatment of its artists. Nevertheless, I will argue that recent developments have shown that K-pop’s potential is no longer in its infancy, and therefore necessitates a discourse that foregoes an easy dismissal of the genre purely because of its appeal to a mass audience and utilization by the Korean government. Heijne 4 In chapter 1, I will describe the current landscape of K-pop as a genre and as an industry. The treatment of K-pop artists by record companies has changed dramatically, as well as the way the genre is viewed and utilised in South Korea and beyond. Most academic work on K-pop is concerned with these two factors, and thus this chapter will consider the different viewpoints formulated, nuancing the positions and including recent developments that have not yet been discussed in depth (at least, at the time of writing). Chapter 2 deals with the questions of authorship and censorship within the K-pop industry, since these two themes are vital to the delicate balance of commercialism and artistry within the genre. This includes a comparison between the K-pop industry and the Hollywood studio system. This chapter also questions how the academic discourse on K-pop is exemplary for film studies as a whole, and how shifting our focus from context and ideology to content and aesthetics might serve us well in certain cases. Finally, the first two chapters are a motivation for the necessity for the third chapter, where I will propose a poetics of K-pop. Are there certain characteristics that can be classified as defining ‘K-pop’? How are K-pop videos produced? To formulate this poetics of contemporary K-pop, the videos I will be discussing in this thesis will be limited to videos from 2011 onwards. This places my corpus right before the rise of PSY’s Gangnam Style in 2012 up until present day, since the questions posed in this thesis mostly concern the contemporary K-pop scene. This thesis, of course, has some limitations. The aspect of gender has thus far been an important factor in the study of K-pop. Even though I believe this has yielded some interesting points of discussion and I will not disregard the issue altogether, I will not pay particular attention to this angle in this thesis - I believe there are more important aspects of K-pop to explore at the moment that have not received the attention that the gender angle has had. Another limitation to my research that needs to be addressed is the lack of Korean sources.