The paper analyzes videos released in the past year, with a focus on these:
Cosmpolitan Strivings visible in a search for Authenticity:
Taeyang, Ringa Linga dance video
Park Jiyoon, Beep
Cosmopolitan Strivings visible in creating an international atmosphere:
TVXQ, Something
Taeyang, Ringa Linga MV
Rain, La Song
Cosmopolitan Strivings in sex/love:
CN Blue, Can't Stop
Gary, Shower Later
2NE1, Come Back Home
Jay Park, Metronome
Here is a snippet from the end of the introduction:
Korean popular music videos have
stories to tell about Korean culture. These videos, increasingly created with
one ear tuned to the reactions of international audiences, and increasingly
employing video directors and choreographers from abroad, "play a crucial
role in Korea's increasing dialogue with the outside world" (Epstein 2014:
317). Part of that dialogue is the visual internationalization of the videos. It has
become common to catch glimpses or even see featured foreign
dancing bodies in Korean popular music videos. The visual internationalization
of K-pop follows the less visible, but
well known, internationalization of the stars themselves—many of whom now hail
from diasporic Korean communities or other parts of Asia (although so far there
is only one non-Asian performer).[1] What role do these foreign dancing
bodies play in these popular music videos? An expert dancer, often black or Latino, may lend an
aura of authenticity to a group of back-up dancers, projecting a message of the
star wattage of the Korean performer who is able to hire "the best"
back-up dancers from anywhere in the world. Or the presence of non-Koreans partying together with the Korean stars may
situate the foreign fan within the K-pop narrative. Other foreign dancing
bodies bring exoticized, sexualized spice to what would otherwise be a
conventional hetero-normative narrative.
Any observer of these
K-pop videos will notice the foreign dancing bodies. They are highly visible,
standing out to the eye, in their obvious non-Koreanness. Are the foreign
bodies in the music videos for the foreign eye, or for the Korean eye? How are
these foreign dancing bodies received? How has the portrayal of foreign dancing
bodies changed as K-pop has grown into a more international phenomenon? In this paper I seek to use dance, or at least
appearance in the dance context, to examine the role of the foreign dancing
body. After a brief survey of foreign dancing bodies in K-pop's past, and
discussion of racialization in the Korean context, I outline, with examples,
the ways that I see K-pop videos released between summer 2013 and summer 2014
displaying cosmpolitan strivings through the foreign dancing body. Finally I
conclude by returning to wrap up the inter-related topics that arose in the
course of the chapter.
[1]
Here I refer to Brady Moore, a member of
the group Busker, Busker. However this group is not K-pop, but rather strongly
self-identified as an "indie" group. In addition non-Koreans appeared
in years past performing with artists who began rehearsing with them while
outside Korea, such as Seo Taiji. A K-pop group including a white French woman,
The Gloss, debuted in mid 2013, as discussed on the blog Seoul Beats (available
at http://seoulbeats.com/2013/06/the-gloss/, accessed on 7/9/2014), but the
group has not managed to release their own original song or a video that is not
a cover, more than a year after their first upload to Youtube—at this point it
is likely that their fifteen minutes of, if not fame at least buzz, has already
come and gone. To learn more about Brady Moore and read a discussion of
foreigners as actual K-pop stars, see http://askakorean.blogspot.kr/2013/06/can-non-asian-foreigner-succeed-in-k.html.
Accessed on 4/20/2014.
Some visuals that may be used in the paper:
