Seohyun is one of us
By which I mean she's a wall-of-text-er! \m/
Detailed travelogue of her time in ParisNot only is it an account of her activities, she also included her perceptions and feelings about it all in true wall-of-text-er fashion. The thing really reads like an essay, with context and explanations for possibly unknown terms to the reader, and she even ( Read more... )
Detailed travelogue of her time in ParisNot only is it an account of her activities, she also included her perceptions and feelings about it all in true wall-of-text-er fashion. The thing really reads like an essay, with context and explanations for possibly unknown terms to the reader, and she even ( Read more... )
I love that she's interested in her own country's history and culture, and that she enjoys thinking about values by which to live her life. That she is serious about self-improvement, her future, music, saving the world in her own humble way, I don't doubt. That's maturity of a sort. Plus, patriotism in itself isn't bad at all.
But her very vocal insistence on her Korean-ness (or if Victoria was vocally obsessed with Being Chinese or Fany with Being American--etc) worries me, because it might limit her vision, and personally, a cosmopolitan worldview that questions assumptions about one's country would be a true sign of her step towards maturity.
On the one hand, the fact that she's making the most of a chance to go abroad and that she's thinking about Korea's place in the world; those are signs of a serious mind directed towards issues that go beyond the self. But the fact that she's abroad and still publicly expressing her Korean-ness makes me wonder if she'll ever make that leap to transgress binaries of Korean versus Abroad/Outsiders/Everyone else.
Of course, the usual caveats apply: a. what she publishes might not be a 100% representation of what she feels. b.
SNSD's status as a Korean icon is as much thrust upon them by a company which profits from their all-Korean goodness as much as internalized, and perhaps in some cases, struggled with, by the girls themselves, based on their education and life experiences.
(I feel that this wall of text that I'm writing demands a conclusion, alas. So here it is.)
Arguing (or even worse, stating!) in terms of black-and-white, that "SNSD is this" or "SNSD is that", won't give us the answers, of course. To let alone Seohyun's Paris diary and her public expression of her identity as a /representative/ of Korea would be to ignore its problematics, but to deny that she has a right to write the way she does would be again to impose my world-view on her. (It'd kind of be like the simplistic arguments people make for "cutesy concepts" in K-pop ["So different from what I hear, ahhh! This is the best stuff evarrr!"] and against them ["Only sexy fierce women are real women!".] I'm not sure if the parallel is that visible though.)
To sum up:
Is Seohyun really someone like me? No.
Is Seohyun thus unlovable or unattractive? No.
Do I hope that one day, she might be able to understand where I'm coming from, when I hope that she's able to go beyond the Korea/rest-of-the-world binary? Yes.
And if she thinks, "No, I've understood that POV, but it's not really my cup of tea, I'll go back to my previous way of looking at the world"-- then that's totally fine by me. I'll love her all the more for having made the effort.
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If I could name the number of times someone asked me on my travels where I was from and then tried to categorize the reactions I got . . . Being somewhere else can really make you feel like you are (insert nationality here). And if you are somewhere not very touristy or cosmopolitan, you may very well find yourself The Representative of that country. And, you know, I'd like to make someone think well of Americans. (Although, admittedly, we were the Very Loud Americans on the Hong Kong buses. XD)
Now take that Otherness and compound it with being a cultural ambassador, and, well, it may make you very possessive of your cultural identity. It's hard for me to know since I myself have grown up with some ethnicity/nationality questions that I think kids of immigrants inherit, but if you are a native of a country wherein you do not necessarily have an immigrant background . . . is it normal, necessarily, to question your nationality? That is, you may question your nation, society, laws, social structures and hierarchies, but once presented with outside pressure and/or questioning, isn't it likely that you will defend the values of the culture you grew up in? Plenty of Americans will rail against this or that but have someone in another country question America and you may find these people to be the staunchest defenders of America you've ever met. (That is to say, since they are Americans, they feel fine criticizing America, but have an Outsider do it and that ain't gonna fly.)
Add to that what you said here, which I like a lot: "So, perhaps I'm troubled because K-media comes off as over-compensating for personal insecurity over their national image, which seems to be what a developing country would do, and not a developed country." This is a country trying very hard to export an image--but what image? What is the Hallyu Wave? If we're having a helluva time defining "K-pop," then what exactly is the Hallyu Wave exporting? Is it really culture? Is it a form of entertainment? Or is it the actual faces that these things are attached to--SNSD, Yonsama, etc? I wonder if you asked K-media what the Hallyu Wave is if they could answer these questions. XD
But I like what you bring up about the dual nationality kids and the not-even-native idols. I wonder if they are comfortable pushing a South Korean agenda when they themselves may not necessarily feel South Korean. I think of Jaebum and the trouble that rained down on his head due to youthful comments about not fitting in in South Korea. How is this Otherness compounded when you are promoting what may be adopted-values-by-job-proxy in yet other countries. What if they're not your values?
And just how much is spreading South Korean values a part of the agenda for the Hallyu Wave stars themselves? I wonder. I mean, if that article about spending more time abroad making more money means anything . . .
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My second thoughts are similar to grey's in that sometimes I do "otherize" myself depending on the people I'm with. I compare and contrast everything, which includes with myself, and more often than not contrast is the majority.
The media insistence that SNSD's fanbase is mostly male and older
To regurgitate how I addressed this earlier:
"Why are they characterized as the idol groups for wotas?
- Because they are. Regardless of their fanbase demographics, SNSD's appeal styles are very much in line with Jpop girlgroup selling strategies, albeit less crude and upfront about their targetting. They wave lollipops. They show off their legs. They prove their good-little-korean-housewife aesthetics. They're the fucking Korean Aesthetics Jackpot, except for the two least popular members. :( And so because they have wotabait appeal, and many korean/kpop fans would know what that usually entails(from Jpop being a large part of their music market before this recent idol group influx for the former and being a jpop migrant for the latter), so they assume the same kind of results.
-Even if they still have a large female fanbase, they might still have the largest older-male fanbase compared to other groups, and that's still notable. SNSD and WG made it cool again for older males to publically proclaim allegiance to a young girlgroup, so they get the credit. A group is always known for its most visible members, and the uncle fans are the most unusual idol fan demographic so they're the most visible. Well, them and the crazy netizen types."
Also consider this from here (applied to AKB, but the logic is the same):
"After all, Vee brings up one point which I feel could set off a whole series of essays and explorations: “Look at AKB’s body of work and you’ll see some signs of genuine ‘we love women, and not just for their boobies’ leanings. This is because AKB48 has embraced its young female fanbase in a different way than just ‘pretty costumes and love songs desu desu desu’.” That embrace of the young female fanbase is something so important and - given how female idol groups catered exclusively to wota in the mid-2000s - practically innovative.
And yet, Morning Musume must have done the same during their Golden Era, right? And what about Speed in their prime? The superstar idol groups had to have a huge female fan base to go along with their male fan base - so does popularity lead to a feminist aspect to these groups, or is there an inherent feminism that leads to the wide popularity? I think this has to be on a case-by-case basis, but there’s a great deal to mull about here.
(And for that matter, does appealing to a female fan base necessarily make an idol group feminist? Or is it just good capitalism? Or is good capitalism itself a feminist ethos? It never ends, if you think about it long enough…)"
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I never thought Seo was "the most mature maknae" or whatnot. She only wipes her portion of the table, after all. :P
The other is that in my initial reading of Seo's diary entries, concerns like yours never came to mind, because that's how I would have written about such a trip. My (unfinished) account of my trip to Taiwan was all about pointing out the things that I don't experience at home, from food to Apop exposure, pretty much otherizing Taiwan in contrast to myself and my normal environment, i.e., insistence of my American-ness. And while Hallyu Jihad rhetoric does annoy me, I didn't get Hallyu shilling tones from Seo's writing. She has grown up as a Korean idol, so it is an integral part of her. Of course she would relate some of her reactions to that, especially her surprise at being recognized abroad, but it's not necessarily promoting an agenda to do so.
Furthermore, I don't know that it is wrong to "push such agendas." I do want America to stay at the forefront of technology and science. (And yes, military advantage is a part of that) I do selfishly wish for America to be on the beneficial end of brain drain. Korea doesn't have the resources or clout to have people come to them for cultural indoctrination, so they have to push it out instead, and that ambitious drive is what has led to their rise in the technology sector. And exporting pop culture is important, as the flooding of American pop culture into Japan after the end of WWII has had an immeasurable impact on them.
Hallyu is working to a degree -- just look at how they so firmly dictate fan behavior as per Korean attitudes.
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