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The Hidden Subversive Message in Gangnam Style
- wluu 14y agoThere's a pretty good explanation of it I saw posted on Facebook here: http://www.kpop24.com/Article/ViewArticle.aspx?p=2&aid=135 http://www.kpop24.com/Article/ViewArticle.aspx?p=2&aid=1...
- morsch 14y agoCut out of the cultural discourse again: "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights." Even if some may argue that it's not an important public discourse, it's still annoying in principle. (You can still find the video if you look around.)
- maayank 14y agoReally, what's the deal with this? Why is Germany the most problematic in this aspect? Every country have such organizations but somehow it's always my German contacts to which showing a video becomes an epic poem.
- sek 14y agoThey have rights for "every music", a reversal of the burden of proof and demand ridiculously high royalties from Youtube.
- zyb09 14y agoHow is someone like Psy even represented by the GEMA?
- sek 14y agoAll this stuff reminds me of music from German speaking areas, only without a hidden message. We have also really stupid culture, if you are interested you can look that stuff up ;-) Weird middle class youth culture from Austria: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krocha http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krocha You never know if it is a parody or not. Most of it is from Kontor records. Really popular band: http://www.youtube.com/user/atzenmusiktv http://www.youtube.com/user/atzenmusiktv Another example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNUUCHsgRu8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNUUCHsgRu8 We say "Ballermann" music to really trashy party crap: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ballermann+hits http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ballermann+hits The texts are disposable. Mostly sex, money, party, drugs and sexy women (and parts of their body).
- paulsutter 14y agoHidden message? It's as plain as day. There's nothing subtle about it. My Korean friends know instantly what it's about and why it's hilarious.
- ceol 14y agoHow I read it, the author's point was that it's surprising to see this at the top of K-pop charts, and Western folks watching it really aren't getting the true message; they're just laughing at him acting wacky.
- CountHackulus 14y agoI'm fairly western, and my friends and I got the subtext pretty immediately. All you really needed to know was that it's his 6th album, everything else falls out from that given the absurdity and callbacks in the video. The song/video is fairly similar in concept to Spela Mig På Radio in that it directly confronts westernization issues using absurdity and cleverness.
- eikaterine 14y agoI assume when he says "Western," he means people who had no idea who Psy was before this video, much less which album of his this was, and don't know "Spela Mig På Radio" from Adam. While I'm sure you're fairly Western, it sounds like you have much more background in the Korean culture than the average person who can barely find it on a map.
- icegreentea 14y agoYeah. I think it's fair to say that a good deal of the previously K-Pop naive audience is going to miss out of a lot of things. After all, it's certainly difficult to pick out everything if you've NEVER seen another K-Pop music video in your life That said, anyone who has seen a Weird-Al or Slim Shady (not Eminem...) video can probably get the vibe that he's making fun of something. And that something probably has to do with beautiful women, nice cars, and other -money- things. Edit: Forgot to add Lonely Island to that list.
- klbarry 14y agoIt's not exactly a hidden meaning... if you know what Gangnam is, then the meaning is quite obvious and blatant. Also, it says that, "He writes his own songs and choreographs his own videos, which is unheard of in K-Pop.". This is however pretty much the norm for YG, the record studio he belongs to. Big Bang's leader, G-Dragon, writes much of the music and lyrics for the group, along with T.O.P. Examples: 1) 38,354,253 views, "Fantastic Baby" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbokV76tkU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbokV76tkU 2) 20,106,612 views, "Bad Boy" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qnV55LUFVM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qnV55LUFVM 3) 27, 084, 596 views, "Blue" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GRP1rkE4O0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GRP1rkE4O0 Also, they don't write their own songs, but YG band 2NE1 has a video with over 50,000,000 views, but it took a few years to get there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lSP8Vc3o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lSP8Vc3o
- Mr24601 14y agoIt's not exactly a hidden meaning... if you know what Gangnam is, then the meaning is ridiculously blatant. Also, it says that, "He writes his own songs and choreographs his own videos, which is unheard of in K-Pop.". This is however pretty much the norm for YG, the record studio he belongs to. Big Bang's leader, G-Dragon, writes much of the music and lyrics for the group, along with T.O.P. Examples: 1) 38,354,253 views, "Fantastic Baby" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbokV76tkU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbokV76tkU 2) 20,106,612 views, "Bad Boy" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qnV55LUFVM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qnV55LUFVM 3) 27, 084, 596 views, "Blue" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GRP1rkE4O0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GRP1rkE4O0 Also, they don't write their own songs, but YG band 2NE1 has a video with over 50,000,000 views, but it took a few years to get there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lSP8Vc3o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lSP8Vc3o
- batgaijin 14y agoKind of like how Moby Dick is obvious to anyone familiar with the maritime whale oil industry and New England politics in the 19th century?
- blhack 14y agoAre we serious with this on, HN? Commentary on pop culture?
- SCdF 14y ago"anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." is the guideline. You could argue it's intellectually interesting to see the artefacts generated out of a cultural shift in a nation. Personally I think a deep dive into the meaning of some piece of ostensibly trivial pop-culture and what that means for the country it was produced in is pretty interesting. Then again, I'm not exactly a 'hacker', so ymmv.
- koglerjs 14y agoI've been moving away from HN recently and this is the first article in a while to really spark my interest. Lots more is involved here than just pop culture; comparative culture, the divide between pop and 'high art,' and the cultural effects of economic success.
- pvnick 14y agoNot another startup story? Cue the content police!
- steve8918 14y agoI've been traveling in Asia, and was in Korea this last week when Gangnam style really took off, at least on my Facebook feed. I asked one of my tour guides about this, not knowing anything about the relevance of the video, and she basically echoed a lot of the comments about how it was poking fun at Korean materialism and superficialism. She said that Korean culture has really shifted in the last few decades. Her grandparents' and her parents' generation, she said, were very hard-working, and transformed their country from a post-war, 3rd world country into one of the powerhouse economies in the world. But her generation (she said she was 27) wasn't nearly as hardworking, and is enjoying the fruits of her parents labor without putting as much in. She said that the Korean culture had turned very materialistic and superficial as well. Korean males have started to use a lot of the same makeup that females traditionally wear, like foundation, etc. Many girls will have cosmetic surgery done right after high school so that their college graduation pictures will look good, which she said was very important to females. She said her sister practices smiling in the mirror for 15 mins every day, in order to get a certain crease in her mouth, which apparently is the sign of wealth and good luck. She said "double-eyelid surgery" (I guess a type of surgery to add a crease in the eyelids which many Koreans do not have) is so common, that girls don't even consider it surgery anymore. Most eyelid surgeries come with a 2-for-1 deal where they throw in a nosejob as well, and new techniques are constantly being developed, like a form of injection that will lift the nose up temporarily, like a nose job. I found this absolutely incredible, and I said to the tour guide that it must be very hard growing up as a female, with all this pressure. She said that it was only 30% of the female population that engaged in all this materialism/superficialism, and that left 70% of the females that didn't care about it. It was a good attitude, but still 30% seemed awful high to me. My guess is that this is just a phase that developed (or developing) nations go through, and social commentary like this Gangnam style are the first steps in seeing a "reversion to the mean", where things become a lot less extreme.
- D_Alex 14y agoWow, I love this - I lived in Korea for about 18 months and can pick up a fair bit of the culture specific messages. For some reason, none of the translations I've seen cover the term "Oppa", which is translatable and kind of important to get the song's meaning. "Oppa" (as I understand it, and I might not be 100% correct) is used by girls to refer to an older male friend, and so "Oppa (nun?) Gangnam style" would mean something like "Daddy's got Gangnam Style", with "daddy" used in the sense of "sugar daddy". At least that is my interpretation and I'd like to see any native Korean speakers comment on this.
- jasonshell 14y agoIn the comment section of the kpop Gangnam Style lyrics[0], it is explained pretty well by Hye jin. [0] http://www.kpoplyrics.net/psy-gangnam-style-lyrics-english-romanized.html http://www.kpoplyrics.net/psy-gangnam-style-lyrics-english-r...
- Tossrock 14y agoOppa actually means 'elder brother', but is sometimes used for respected elder male friends as well
- w1ntermute 14y ago> "Oppa (nun?) Gangnam style" Between "Oppa" and "Gangnam" is the Korean topic particle[0], "는" ("neun"). Your translation is basically correct. "Oppa" is the word traditionally used by women to refer to their elder brothers, but younger Korean women have started using it to refer to their boyfriends/love interests as well[1], although it can also be used between non-blood relatives in a totally platonic manner (which can lead to plenty of ambiguity about romantic intentions, which a lot of people of course thrive on). 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_particles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_particles 1: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2009/06/ask-korean-wiki-oppa-oppa-oppa.html http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2009/06/ask-korean-wiki-oppa-...