Cosmopolitan Strivings and Racialization: The Foreign Dancing Body in Korean Popular Music Videos

I'm almost done with the rough draft of this paper-- if it passes review it will be part of a book. If I can figure out how to divide it up into two papers, it will also be part of something else. ㅋㅋㅋ.

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.               

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[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:

Equal Opportunity Sexual Objectification in K-Pop

After all my fevered research and writing, as you know, I presented my paper on K-Pop last weekend in Austin. I actually feel pretty good about it, and I'm further editing to share with a couple friends and then submit it for publication. Since I talked about it so much on here, I thought you'd like to see at least how the introduction looks today... 

Introduction

Since the late 1990s Korean popular music has achieved an audience beyond Korea, becoming a leading part of the growing phenomenon of inter-Asian popular music (Shin 2009: 472). Musically indebted to hip-hop and Western pop, Korean popular music is generally performed by groups of a single gender. Although scholars have discussed the global rise in "girl power" in the field of popular music using examples such as Madonna, the Spice Girls, and Faye Wong (Fung and Curtin 2002, Dibben 1999, Lloyd 1994, McClary 2002), there are few that can argue for "girl power" in Korean popular music (hereafter K-Pop). One reason is that K-Pop is almost entirely a manufactured commodity; the stars, called "idols," are scouted, trained, and assigned to a group with a specific image under the tutelage of K-Pop's major entertainment companies, such as SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, Cube Entertainment, and Starship Entertainment. At the helm of each company CEOs oversee the production of K-Pop idols in a way strikingly similar to preparing other commodities for the market.[1]

            In K-pop with few exceptions the songs, choreography and costumes of the performers are chosen by the management agency. The agencies control their lives, including housing them in dormitories, choosing their diet, and doling out cell phone privileges as a reward for hard work. Analyzing the lyrics, choreography, and costume choices of the artists reveals less about the performers and more about the agencies, their understanding of the market, and the particular persona that they have assigned to the members of each group. However, a comprehensive performance analysis of popular music,[2] including a specific focus on presentation and framing of gendered lyrics, choreography, and costumes in live performance provides a new window on the construction of femininity through K-Pop. 

            For my research I chose to analyze live music performances on the TV shows Music Core (MBC) and Inkigayo (SBS). Consequently my attention focuses on choices made by the television stations and their emcees, stage and video production crews. In this paper I begin by sketching the connections drawn between music and morality, and discuss the Republic of Korea's cultural laws and statutes that relate to popular culture. Finally, through an analysis of specific live performance videos I analyze how the music shows treat gendered behavior to construct Korean femininity.

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[1] The fans of K-Pop also have affective power both vis a vis the artists and their management companies (c.f. Gitzen 2013) although the degree of fan influence is difficult to quantify.

[2] Such a performance analysis is needed—scholars such as Philip Auslander have remarked on the emphasis on the "reception of popular music much more than the performance behavior of musicians" (2004: 3).

p.s. the title of the post is part of the title of the article. Pretty cool, huh? Anyone would stop to check out an article on Equal Opportunity Sexual Objectification!