What Gangnam Style success says about our connected world
- By Andrew Lam
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, October 16, 2012
Anthropologists and linguists no doubt are having a field day trying to chronicle and dissect how, in the early autumn of 2012 "Gangnam Style" became an American idiomatic expression.
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[By Zhou Tao/Shanghai Daily] |
A Wikipedia page hastily set up showcases "Gangnam Style," as the most watched YouTube video of the year. The video has garnered 415 million hits since July and counting.
And the genius behind the dance that mimics riding an invisible horse - Jae-Son Park, erstwhile Psy (short for Psycho), a rapper whose career galloped into global superstardom with the distinction of topping the iTune chart in the US, the UK, and Australia and 28 other countries. Psy's video is also the most "liked" on Youtube as well as the most-watched video in Korean entertainment history.
History of crossover
But something beyond Korean history has clearly occurred with the global sanctification of Psy. It's the history of crossover itself, the phenomenon that has traditionally been treacherous and cruel, with so many talented entertainers from the Far East, or elsewhere at the margins of the Commonwealth, falling off the tightrope on the way to global stardom.
To cross over, as far as the world of arts and entertainment is concerned, is to go from the margin to the center, and to go from one set of culture to the next, trying to succeed in the latter. But, as a rule, it demands the betrayal of the original, and it requires reinvention: something of a bane to poetry, and nearly impossible for those who are entrenched in their own language, cultural sensibilities and references.
Take the case of Hong Kong actors Chow Yun Fat and Jacky Chan, and the South Korean singer BiRain as primary examples. BiRain, with his extraordinary dancing skills and his teenage heartthrob status, is known all over Asia as its own Michael Jackson. But Rain met with drought in North America where he starred in two movies that flopped, and his bid for global stardom was quickly ended.
Chow Yun Fat, voted by the LA Times as "the coolest actor" in the world in the mid-90s, also failed in Hollywood, in part because that very Hong Kong coolness turned lukewarm in Hollywood movies, and the hard-boiled image that made him famous in the East came off a stilted in the West. Bombing at the box office with his action movies, Chow ended up playing a stereotypical, hideous character in "Pirates of Caribbean: At World's End" (2007) and his role was deemed so offensive that it was cut from the version shown in China.
Jacky Chan, the most successful of them all, is worthy of note for his repeated attempts over three decades as an action star in Hollywood, and when he finally made it big he was, alas, already steeped in middle age.
Then came Psy, whose crossover moment seems to suggest a major shift in the history of the entertainment world itself. For one thing, it turns the old rules upside down: that crossing over requires giving up the original way of doing things, that the odds are stacked against those who try, and that it takes years of toiling and perseverance, even for the super sexy, cool and talented. Or, at the very least, you have to leave your home country to do so.
Well, not anymore, not if you do it Gangnam Style. The first thing for cultural critics to note is the speed with which a cultural event can be transmitted these global days: Psy bursts like a supernova from the regional to world stage within a few weeks' time. And he didn't even need to leave Seoul.
The second thing to note is equally important, if not more so: His video, performed in Korean, is downloaded largely by people who don't understand one word of the language.
Music: popular language
Psy, quite aware of this significance, told NPR (US National Public Radio) recently, "If I have a chance I want my music lyrics to be Korean. The world's most famous and popular language is music. So if we have some sort of solution with these kinds of dance moves and this kind of music video, can I use Korean if possible? It's really huge history for my country."
In other words, since he didn't try to cross over but the phenomenon nevertheless crossed him, Why not continue to do what he does best? It is the kind of thinking that may very well revolutionize the margin in its relationship to the center.
From Beetles to Beyonce
Let's look at it another way: All major recording stars from England and North America do not worry about crossovers to the rest of the known world.
There's an undeniable centrality to the West; from The Beetles to Beyonce to Lady Gaga, Western stars are to be idolized the world over, their songs memorized, even if their adoring fans don't understand English. Broadcasting from the center one has no need for translation. Whatever is good for the West is deemed good enough for the rest.
Such is the shape of the powers and unwritten rule taught subliminally long ago. Going from West to East, as well as elsewhere, since the European conquest of the known world 500 years ago has always been a passage of relative ease. It does not demand transformation or self-reinvention from a Westerner .It is catered to.
The reverse, however, has always been a difficult path, an enormous undertaking. An American moving to Vietnam to work and live, for instance, needs not speak Vietnamese to thrive; his language is coveted; his status assumed superior. A Vietnamese who hopes to make it big in the US needs to master the English language at the very least, or else he is condemned to smallness - ethnic enclave, menial labor, an outsider, a minority, and irrelevant.
The significance of Gangnam Style video is extraordinary in that it refutes that assumption: it assumes a centrality all on its own. It sets its own terms, has its own rhythm, and it dwells in its own particularities.
The Oppa Gangnam Style video arrived at a moment when the East is integrating with the West at full speed, reiterating the idea that globalization is no longer a one-way love affair.
It arrived at a time when yoga replaces aerobics, acupuncture and herbal treatment are alternative choices in treating chronic diseases, the world's children are enthralled by Japanese anime and manga, and kung fu has become the norm for action films.
That a South Korean took the prize is no fluke. South Korea, after all, actively supports its artists and touts its pop culture abroad as part of its foreign policy. It takes as much pride in its economic rise as it does in its cultural ascendency. It is a country that insists on its own centrality and its own growing contribution to the cultural matrix that defines modern Asia.
Gangnam Style, after all, is a rap song. And its rise occurs at a time when ours has become a world in which traditions exist side by side for the borrowing and taking, and ultimately, the mixing. And it would seem that in a world where cultural integration and hybridization are the norm, all forms of art could become both at once intensely global and local.
Indeed, from religion to cuisine, from medicine to music, from dance to literature, from agricultural practices to filmmaking, all are available to the contemporary alchemists to reshape and re-imagine. The playing field is slowly being equalized.
So if America can make a movie called "Kung Fu Panda" and sell it to the Chinese and it becomes a No. 1 hit in China, then it follows that a Korean artist, too, can rise to the top of the music charts in America, riding an invisible horse and rapping in his own language -Gangnam Style, of course.
Andrew Lam is New America editor and the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His book of short stories, "Birds of Paradise Lost," is due out in 2013.
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