Sick of K-pop cult
by: Adeline Chia
In David Mitchell's 2004 novel Cloud
Atlas, there is a futuristic segment set in Korea where a corpocracy
rules the land. Advances in bioengineering have allowed human creatures
called fabricants to be bred as workers. Physically, they are perfect
specimens - with identical, beautiful faces but without any higher
consciousness. When they run out the course of their productive lives,
they are destroyed.
I found this section of the book
particularly disturbing. It is a chilling study of how a capitalist
totalitarian society exploits the weak and turns humans into robots for
money. Everything looks happy on the surface but beneath, it's maggots
and rotten meat.
Recently, I got a taste of Mitchell's dystopian view - at a K-pop fan meet of superband TVXQ.
What's a fan meet? It is a shrunken
version of a concert, with only a handful of live performances.
Interspersed with the song-and-dance numbers are screenings of music
videos and sanitised Q&A sessions.
To any disinterested observer, it was a
blatant rip-off. To the fans, it was like communing with the gods. It
was a uniquely depressing experience but during the show, I could not
put my finger on the reason.
Could it have been the dead-eyed way the
pop princes answered questions from stuttering fans about their
favourite Singaporean food? Or the well-choreographed dance moves they
executed, without a glitch, to songs scientifically engineered to stick
onto your brain like a leech?
Then, it dawned on me. They are fabricants. Singing, dancing fabricants.
But I am being unfair on TVXQ. They are
not the only K-pop group to have infiltrated the consciousness and
fantasies of teenagers in Asia and beyond.
A lot has been made about the Hallyu
Wave, the unstoppable South Korean pop culture tsunami that has washed
up on the shores of the world, conquering music charts, television
ratings and the wall space of adolescents' rooms.
I am heartily sick of it. Every bit of
it. The manufactured sounds, the ersatz emotions, the clone-like stars,
the cult- like, weepy fandom.
My more moderate friends point out that
teen idols from the East and the West were never the vanguard of musical
experimentation. Neither did they inspire devotion from level-headed
people.
Before your Super Juniors or 2AMs, there
were cheesy boybands such as Backstreet Boys in the noughties and The
Partridge Family from the 1970s.
But of all the decades of cashing in on
teenagers' hormonal urges, the K-pop phenomenon seems the most coldly
cynical and formulaic. Compared to the uniformity of the Korean stars,
Backstreet Boys seem like veritable bastions of individuality.
Part of the reason is because the Korean record labels have gotten their star-making formula down to a T.
This seems to be the drill: Train some
nice-looking kids in a star factory. Assemble a group of them. Give them
a name that is an abbreviation for something or just a random
collection of letters and numbers.
The girls must have stick-thin arms and
legs and the boys must look a bit like girls. Next, produce a song that
is the demon child of Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas. Throw in Autotune,
hip-hop beats and strong synth lines. Make a video that is a mini movie,
featuring the stars doing synchronised dance moves while the back-up
dancers gurn at the sides.
Voila! You have a viral hit.
For the record, I have nothing against
pre-packaged happy, shiny music. In fact, I think there is something
heroic and wonderful about the wilfully plasticky and fake.
But my quarrel with K-pop is not only
with the aesthetic aridity of its products but with how nasty it can
get. For one thing, the Mafia-like way the record companies exploit
their stars and audience is chilling.
The industry has long been stalked by
controversy around "slave" contracts that tie trainee stars to long
exclusive deals with poor pay and little control.
Incidentally, three of TVXQ's five
members took their record label to court because their 13-year contract
was too long, restrictive and gave them little profit. The boys won and
left to form their own group, JYJ.
Admittedly, it is hard to feel sorry for
pop stars ("It's sad to hear that being adored by millions prevents you
from taking public transport"), but in my rare maternal moments, I worry
about these starlets who are worked to the bone and whose careers last
as long as their good looks. Then they are discarded like rag dolls.
Then there is K-pop's effects on listeners. It turns functional people into crazed addicts, acting in robotic idolatry.
Recently, watching a sea of red
lightsticks keeping beat to a song made me and my companion grab on to
each other. Eyes wide in terror, we communicated wordlessly for fear of
persecution. Our faces said this: "Are we at a cult gathering?"
K-pop is also unique in inspiring extreme
behaviour from fans and generating psychosis. Cyber-bullying and online
smear campaigns are common practices by anti-fans who target a certain
entertainer they hate.
Sometimes, anti-fans turn into stalkers
or criminals. Yun Ho from TVXQ famously had an anti-fan spike his drink
with super glue and had to have his stomach pumped.
Those are just the haters. There are
those who profess love by cutting themselves and writing letters in
blood, before sending their bloody epistolary packages to their idols.
Admittedly, these are the extreme cases.
But I also wonder if anti-fan behaviour is encouraged by the record
labels to generate more publicity for their artists.
Who knows? Still, it is undeniable that
K-pop exerts a hypnotic pull. It is unstoppable. It is a virus that
spreads like fire over the radio, on television and in ringtones.
I know this because I had to do research
for this article and listen to a lot of fabricants perform their music.
Before I know it, the melodies have wormed their way into the folds of
my grey matter, made my synapses misfire, caused me to lose control of
my wrist on my computer mouse - till I am clicking on the same video in
YouTube again and again, staring glassy-eyed at my screen, alone, at
four in the morning.
"Resist!" the sentient part of my brain cried softly. To which Super Junior cheerily replied: "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry..."
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[Filipino-English Language Alert]
Is it really more fun in the Philippines? by this things? I don't know what to say but I Have to admit K-Pop is somewhat killing our own culture!
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