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[messiaen]

Article must be read to be discussed as a great deal of the observations are made through deconstructing pictures and videos.
Article has some NSFW images!!
https://medium.com/@metropolitician/k-pop-is-neo-confucian-pornography-81acf43db4f9#.h7dgqp7c2

She had a nuanced argument that the values were Confucian in a general sense of how ideology and belief is generally utilized as a means of social control, but this is usually never applied to something like K-pop since most people seem to equate Confucian with “conservative” in terms of “the girls are dressed too sexy for the average Confucian gentleman.” But this forgets the greater role of Confucian ideology, which is to keep women in a lower class/power position in relation to men.

The trend nowadays is to reduce the apparent obvious, in-your-facedness of the videos’ sexuality, since these videos can only continue escalating the “arms race” of lewdness in the Korean context so far.

The case of the Korean K-pop idol photographer Rotta is both the most exemplary, explanative case-in-point and also smoking gun of the exact crossover point between what is generally considered “pornography” and what is considered art. K-pop functions and finds protection within the latter category.But is occasionally dips into and borrows the semiotic grammar and even vocabulary of the former, which is pornography.So is this “pornography?” My contention is that it is, in the strict sense of the word (and the formal, David Edward Rose definition that will come below). But then again, 1) as I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, so is a lot of K-pop itself, by that very definition I will present in the next paragraph, so I really fail to understand where all the fan outrage is actually from, besides the fact that most of the critics seem to be pretty fucking stupid. If you’re not into the pornographic aspect of Rotta, then you must not be into half the videos in the K-pop genre, because, as I said, pornography and many K-pop videos actually speak the same semiotic grammar and vocabulary.

Confucianism is a frame of thinking — or a filter — that focuses cultural formation into Confucian-shaped directions, but make no mistake, Confucianism-as-frame-and-filter is also a useful ideological disciplining tool that allows the dominant class (upper class socially and politically connected men) to use women as both the excuse and means to keep everyone in society in line and in place.

Neo-Confucian techniques of self-cultivation of the mind and body applied only to men. Women in the Neo-Confucian view were incapable of achieving sagehood and therefore had neither the need nor the ability to strive for transcendence of the self and body. While men produced their selves through the mind (study of the classics) and body (maintenance of the family body through ancestor worship), women were occupied with maintaining and reproducing the family body through the corporeal bodies of the family. The triumvirate of bodymind- ki was a Neo-Confucian concept of the male body. Neo-Confucianism emphasized the corporeal for the female body, the very aspect men were supposed to transcend.

Women in the mainstream K-pop imagination are actually, if you think about it, meta-arguments for the subjugation of women in their hypersexualization and their representation as merely possessing power or social agency through their bodies. Women only have value in terms of being possessed of sexual currency and the power to atrract men. I won’t even go into the extreme heteronormativity of K-pop cultural texts. I don’t have the time or the space. Let’s just agree that the deeply “Confucian” values of women’s place in society vis a vis innocence-as-a-function-of-women’s-virtue (as reproductive vessels) or their social utility-and-place (as inferior sex objects) may appear to be liberal or empowering in the video and songs in which they appear and may even buck short-lived social conventions, but these are not really arguments of liberation, equality, or even the notion that women have any value at all besides as objects to be fucked when they are young and clean, virtuous vessels of reproduction after their fuck-utility has ended. These videos celebrate putting women back in their places, and these are places that were long ago decided by Korean, neo-Confucian ideology to be merely vessels to receive their penises and house their sperm. Whether Virtuous or Vixen-like, whether it is argued through fantasies of Innocence or pornographic pleasures, the subject-position of women, whether represented as virtuous mothers or slutty entertainers of men, is the same, actually, since the result is the same — as a passive cum receptacle is a cum receptacle.

Neo-Confucian values related to the use-value of women as “subjectless bodies” (Kim, 100–101) in Korean society are simply being presented in the updated-yet-repressive, Neo-Confucian sense that women’s bodies are still mere semen receptacles for men, with the update being that their utility as cum receptacles is no longer merely as vessels of reproduction (because this isn’t the year 1500 anymore), but of sexual gratification as well.

The points or variations of this article's points could be made for a great deal of Japanese exports as well. Just something to think about on your next trip to a thread that critiques your beloved misogynistic country's entertainment...

 

[Geedorah]

Wh...wrong side of the house I think...

 

[Slayven]

When being woke goes wrong.

No one should be giving this much thought to kpop

I think you can talk about exploitation without the word salad

 

[RamzaIsCool]

Wrong side of the forum bro or is this about that new Paragon character?

 

[Acquiescence]

Ewwwww, K-pop in the gaming section.

 

[Firemind]

Kpop isn't real OP

 

[messiaen]

Wh...wrong side of the house I think...

Whoops... You're right. Sorry mods. Please move!

 

[Elephant]

K-Pop - A robot dog that turns into a karaoke machine.

 

[hichanbis]

These thread misplacements actually remind me why I only attend the gaming section of gaf.

 

[potatohead]

When being woke goes wrong.

No one should be giving this much thought to kpop

I think you can talk about exploitation without the word salad

Is this anti-intellectualism I see?

There's nothing wrong with analyzing this. I think it should be reviewed a lot. K-pop is being actively pursued as a cultural export by the Korean government and has been so for the last few decades.

Doesn't seem at all wrong to analyze or even over-analyze something so culturally significant.

Definitely in the wrong section of the forum though.

 

[Numb]

 

[Kinyou]

I don't know about neo confucian stuff, but I have no doubt that K-pop is partly a pornography replacement for Koreans.

 

[jediyoshi]

I didn’t design this essay to be too hard for anyone but academics to get, but didn’t aim so low that it has to be shoehorned into a form that is conducive to a “one-read, one kill”, digestible in a single subway ride form. I hope that this essay can educate (in an academic way), provoke critical thought, as well as (intellectually) entertain. So this might require a bit more effort than many readers are used to in this age of Facebooking, tittering-through-Twitter, and Insta-gratification. I admit that it’s longer than I wanted to be, but it’s designed to cover certain points as a reading for my university lectures, so please understand that this will have to be digested in multiple reads.​

Is Medium where Tumblr posts go when they're done with college.

 

[Funyarinpa]

Kpop objectifies idols? I thought that was fucking obvious from the get go, and seeing as the article readily equates "Neo-Confucian" with "objectifying and sexist towards women", I don't see what new thing it brings to the table.

 

[Tom Nook]

What kind of game is this?

j/k.

 

[Azoor]

I read it, I think the author is putting way too much thought into this. Also, a lot of the horrible things mentioned aren't exclusive to Confuciusim.

 

[McStickenstein]

No doubt in my mind that there is a certain "pornographic" appeal to K-Pop. Not sure about the Neo-Confucian...

Also, KPOP GOTY 2017.

 

[BlackBuzzard]

K-Porn? I know J-porn(censored bs)

 

[Fantastapotamus]

I already knew that. Huge fan of neo-confuzianism

 

[jokkir]

I didn't read through it but just browsed through the photo examples.

A lot of his photos are from _rotta_ who does pretty erotic photography featuring Korean females. I mean, it's a bad example since a lot of it, I would assume without reading the article, is about how kpop is pornography.

EDIT - Oh, he mentions rotta. But he's not exactly kpop from what I understand.

 

[Izuna]

Would be porn stars infiltrating the pop scene.

Is that the tl;dr?

 

[Verelios]

No, I perfectly understood the paper and I was just casually reading. I've never really listened to K-pop aside from rhythm games so I'll have to find a few examples before I comment.

 

[Firemind]

K-Porn? I know J-porn(censored bs)

Porn is better than no porn. I'm pretty sure porn is the greatest import product in China.

 

[chefbags]

Hmm nah. The captions for the images he put is literally read as a tumblr post lol.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

So.

Right away the tone of this article is all over the place.

Clinical detachment from the subject of commercial use of virgin worship and school-age symbolism as a proxy for the sexualization of very, very young women:

Thus far in the evolution of the K-pop music video genre, overt signs and symbols denoting explicit sexuality or sex acts tended to be part of the sheep’s clothing of plausible, polysemic deniability desiring young girl performers, with the representation of actual sexual activity with minors, e.g. “schoolgirls”, being quite rare, since semiotic representations and codings of innocence maintained an off-limits area for the sexualising gaze of both the actors within the text and the viewer.

"cum receptacles"

...Neo-Confucian sense that women’s bodies are still mere semen receptacles for men, with the update being that their utility as cum receptacles is no longer merely as vessels of reproduction, but of sexual gratification as well.

Yeah this is gonna be a hard read with the author being this overtly cheeky.

 

[Stinkles]

I'd be very surprised to discover that Confucianism was designed to oppress and subjugate women specifically rather than just being a continuation and extension of behaviors that were tragically universal throughout history, the region and world. But that's how it's phrased. I can't imagine the alternatives to Confucianism were much better.

Of course I'm also talking out my butt more or less.

 

[shintoki]

This is like the most try-hard thing I've read in years.

 

[Akuun]

That devolved into a lot of overly wordy bullshit, but I think I agree with the main idea of kpop has pretty much become porn.

I actually feel a little uncomfortable watching kpop videos these days, and not in a good way. A lot of kpop dancing just looks like stripper routines at this point, and IMO it crosses the line between sexy dancing and just looking tasteless.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

So this might require a bit more effort than many readers are used to in this age of Facebooking, tittering-through-Twitter, and Insta-gratification. I admit that it's longer than I wanted to be, but it's designed to cover certain points as a reading for my university lectures, so please understand that this will have to be digested in multiple reads.

Oh christ I hate this guy's self-important posturing already...god save me.

If you are the kind of student who dislikes the kind of teachers and professors who don't pass out the Powerpoints of their lectures so you can memorize them for the tests more easily if you missed classes, this ain't for you. But if you're the kind of person who likes to feed your brain, be exposed to new ideas, and like actually using Internet resources to look up new words and phrases, read up on concepts you've hadn't heard of, and like to deconstruct and analyze things, this probably is for you.You won't like this article. You've been warned.

-25 points from Gryffindor, did not properly edit this paragraph to put related ideas together, fucked up your punctuation, and sandwiching a juxtaposition "you won't like this. unless you're this. But you won't like this" Is a fun way to insult your audience but muddies the point.

 

[Aiii]

I think what the article gets wrong is singling out K-Pop. Singling out women's groups and completely ignoring that there's both boy and girl pop-groups in western music as well.

Yes, they're groups that are build solely on selling sexy people to a mostly teen audience. This is not new to K-Pop, nor to Asia as a whole. It's literally something that has been done since the 50s or 60s around the world.

It's not porn, but yes, it is a commercial way of selling sexy people to an impressionable audience. I doubt anyone was in denial about this, so the article isn't exactly breaking any new ground or supplying us with great insight.

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

Its long and an unnecessarily complicated, so it must be smart.

 

[Dabanton]

OP you probably want to mark that article as NSFW. Pictures of black cocks. Pictures of come hither Korean girls. pictures of very young girls some nude.

The article itself is pretty interesting stuff took some left turns into strange areas. Homeboy seems a bit too deep in the game over this stuff.

 

[Slayven]

Is this anti-intellectualism I see?

There's nothing wrong with analyzing this. I think it should be reviewed a lot. K-pop is being actively pursued as a cultural export by the Korean government and has been so for the last few decades.

Doesn't seem at all wrong to analyze or even over-analyze something so culturally significant.

Definitely in the wrong section of the forum though.

No, just you can serve your point better if you don't spend so much time showing off how many words you can throw at the audience

 

[Erevador]

All frivolous and pleasurable things are an evil conspiracy, as cultural criticism regularly reminds us.

Consider the costs of your workout playlist. THE TERRIBLE COSTS.

Or you could just enjoy your life and save the analysis for things that are actually important.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Is there social differences in the way the korean pop scene works compared to the pop industry in America and Europe?

 

[messiaen]

I read it, I think the author is putting way too much thought into this. Also, a lot of the horrible things mentioned aren't exclusive to Confuciusim.

I'm not a fan of his writing style, but I still think some points brought up are worth the read.

Would have preferred if he did write in a more academic style. His Mapplethorpe reference was pretty bad as well, I don't think he understands Mapplethorpe's photography?

Edit:

OP you probably want to mark that article as NSFW. Pictures of black cocks. Pictures of come hither Korean girls. pictures of very young girls some nude.

The article itself is pretty interesting stuff took some left turns into strange areas. Homeboy seems a bit too deep in the game over this stuff.

Fixed, thanks for the heads up.

 

[EVOL 100%]

I agree with the observation that K-Pop is soft porn. There are some songs here and there that I like (or at least, find inoffensive), but I despise the culture surrounding K-Pop. I'm sure a lot of the pop music of other countries are vapid and have a very disturbing undercurrent to it all, and blatantly steal from other countries, but K-Pop really takes it to a whole new level.

A few acquaintances of mine worked in the K-Pop industry, one even briefly working as an idol, and whoo boy the stories I was told.

I'm not sure if I've ever caught anything about K-Pop that was explicitly or implicitly Confucian in nature though (yes, I've read the article). Then again, I avoid the shit like the plague.

 

[BocoDragon]

I don't think you have to go that local to explain sexualization in Kpop when it was inherent to the pop medium when they imported it from the west.

Did kpop come reflect the particular quirks of gender identity in Korean culture ...? I mean, sure.

I sympathize though... I might have had to write this essay in a first year media studies class too ..

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Not even 25% through the article and he delves for the fourth time into this coy self-aware/not really self-aware BS about his credentials

OK. This is a lot to swallow as you thumb through this article on the bus. I get it. I really do. A big reason Cultural Studies stuff is often so dense and irritating to read, besides ego-driven intellectuals trying to be showy and fancy with words, is because this is an effort to describe something complex and intricate that is actually simple to just get without any explanation.

This is after he writes 'ok now I start my argument lol.'

I could probably edit down his argument to 250 words if I was collecting a paycheck to be this guy's academic advisor.

 

[John Kowalski]

I like Sally Mann

 

[SecretMoblin]

I don't disagree with the premise

 

[Human Trashcan]

I read the whole thing and feel like I could've just read the conclusion, watched that last video, and gotten the same thing out of it. But I'm an English major, not social studies, so all the confucianism was new to me (I just inferred from the text). It's weird that the author goes to such lengths to couch his (fairly obvious, it must be said) observations in established theory while at the same time eschewing academic convention, and the tone was all over the place.

Boy though, that last video. Jeeeesus. The thing that creeps me out about kpop is that they do still try to cover the pornographic elements with "semiotics" (as the author puts it). Just like... own that shit. I understand now that it is the way it is because of Korean culture, but it just makes it more uncomfortable.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I'm not sure if I disagree, but this is probably the most poorly-written article I've ever read.

 

[radios shipping overview]

I've only skimmed the above quotes, but this guy seems to be down a weird rabbit hole intellectually, and I don't want to follow him there.

When chan culture and wanky academicism collide, you get him.

 

[Cymbal Head]

This article would be a lot shorter and easier to read if the author didn't keep making asides explaining that it's going to be longish and moderately dense.

 

[AlexMogil]

Is Medium where Tumblr posts go when they're done with college.

Prrrretty much.

 

[eggandI]

You just need to look at the fanbase to know kpop is basically porn

I don't know anything about any neo confucius though

 

[I H8 Memes]

Good luck in 2020.

 

[Kurita]

People like to look at hot people

 

[Pulka]

I didn't read any of it, but I agree.