Martha Thomases Goes Gangnam Style
My Twitter feed informed me today that my current obsession, the music video to “Gangnam Style” by Korean pop singer Psy, has passed 100 million hits on YouTube. The cool kids love it. The masses love it.
Even Batman loves it.
So I was taken aback when a friend of mine went on a Facebook rant complaining about it. He’s Korean-American, and he not only hated the video, but everyone who liked it. If I’m understanding him correctly, he thought it was over-produced, hook-heavy, and reflected badly on the Korean music scene.
I felt as if I was being inadvertently racist. The things he slammed were the things I loved. Too many cuts? Impossible. Ridiculous imagery? That’s my favorite part. I have no idea what they’re saying, but I love the way they’re saying it.
Also, I love the guy in the yellow suit.
Is my affection for this video a sign of racism? In my experience, the easiest way to spot a racist is to listen for the phrase “I am not a racist.” I’m not going to fall into that trap. And I’ve had an interest in Asian culture at least since college, when a class in Chinese Literature in translation introduced me to a new way of thinking and a new way to see the world.
I’ve loved Japanese comics since before they were cool (or at least, the beginning of when they were cool). They displayed a depth and breadth of subject matter and passion that was missing from American comics at the time, whether focusing on politics, adventure or cats.
Still, I’m not very knowledgeable about Korea. And it’s certainly racist to lump together all Asian societies as if they are the same.
I’ve struggled with this conundrum before. In the 1990s, the film Bamboozled made me question whether my love of tap dancing was racist. I remember talking to Dwayne McDuffie about it, and he said, “I think Spike Lee likes tap dancing, too.”
Does that let me off the hook?
If you think I’m being too politically correct, consider how it must feel to be on the receiving end. I had that experience when I saw the fantastic French animated film, The Triplets of Belleville. There is a part of the film when the main characters get to the United States, and everyone here is incredibly obese. I wanted to raise my hand and say “We’re not all like that.”
I imagine that my friend feels the same way when he watches Psy. I wouldn’t enjoy it if all of American pop music was judged by Taylor Swift. And I don’t even hate Taylor Swift.
It would help if there was, generally, more diversity in our popular culture. If straight white male was not the default assumption, the exceptions to straight white male wouldn’t be startling. And the people who make these assumptions know they have a problem.
Those of us in comics are among the worst offenders. It’s still front-page news when a flagship character is African-American.
Let’s work together to fix this. But first, I have to work on my pony moves.
SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman Returns!
I think the little kid at the beginning is adorable.
Watching, reading, or listening to something, and blindly assuming it’s representative of the culture of said people at the time is not automatically knee-jerk racist. It’s likely short-sighted, simplistic, and untrue, but it doesn’t make you a bad person.
I am fairly sure, for example, that screaming at the hindquarters of a woman doing Pilates is not common practice in Korea, in or outside of the Gangam district.
But here’s something interesting – it doesn’t seem like he ever mentioned racism. He discussed the editing of the video, its production, and discussed that it wasn’t representative of K-pop in general. And that may be so. Quite often the songs that break through (or “crossover” to use the marketing term) from a genre to the mainstream are not often most representative of the genre. Most early rap songs needed a lot of the sharp edges filed off before it could be made acceptable for network television. It’s usually the silliest stuff that gets widely popular, and fans of the genre are left rending their garments as they rail and moan that there’s so many BETTER songs that deserve the exposure. (Let me tell you stories about the Zappa fans who can’t even LISTEN to Dancin’ Fool or Valley Girl anymore)
The fact that you turned that INTO the sensation of being racist is, I think, telling of the culture today. We’re taught to second-guess everything we do and say. That you enjoy a goofy pop song with a wry sense of humor, and not take a moment to think or mention that there are certainly more varied examples of Korean culture out there, does not make you a racist; borderline, inadvertent or otherwise.
If you go to Korea and ask where the nearest Pilates class is, we may have a problem…
Vinnie, I don’t disagree. At the same time, I think it’s healthy to question one’s relative racism on a regular basis. That shit is insidious.
Well, you know what the gang from Avenue Q say…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM