101 East - South Korea’s Pop Wave (2012)
Okay, okay, okay, it IS scary that all parties interviewed speak as though they work on Wall Street, not in music, but that is sort of the point of Kpop, is it not? Does the thrust of this report really have to be that it has no soul because of this? Do we really need to end up with the message that indie rock will save Kpop? Sigh.
Of course, by “save” they mean make it legitimately — commercially — popular in the U.S. (rather than a cult fetish), but…
But it is as if they missed the point of Kpop’s appeal: it is mass-popular music without shame. It is the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Crass and contrived and honest about it. Focus-grouped. Nose-jobbed. Folk songs for market forces. Amphetamine Motown. We know.
It is scary, but sometimes we like to be scared. Sometimes we need to be. If Kpop wants its own identity, it shouldn’t retreat into the readymade archetypes of “indie” credibility, but push forward, purifying even more its neoliberal post-human oonce oonce.
