For the past month or two, the world has experienced ‘Gangnam Style’, an immensely popular song with a horse whipping-like dance from Korean rapper PSY, and his career’s just skyrocketed since.
Explaining that info may be pointless as I’m sure you have heard this song and seen the dance on YouTube, TV, Facebook, nightclubs or even the freakin’ news (if you didn’t, how’s that rock you’ve been living under going?).
However, all that needed to be said for what I discovered: Koreans consider both PSY and ‘Gangnam Style’ to be national jokes! To put this into an Australian context, try to remember the general public reaction of groans and laughter that Aussie “artists” such as Nicki Webster or Kasey Chambers got. Well, that’s what Koreans think of PSY, and we all think he’s cool! You just shuddered, didn’t you? With all the “serious” Korean artists trying to break into the western market, Koreans are absolutely baffled at how much westerners love PSY.
PSY has been releasing music in Korea for over a decade now (he’s 34, ancient by music industry standards), so Korea’s been kinda dismissive of him for a while now. His music belongs to the sub genre “gwang-dae”, which consists of musicians making funny songs (both intentionally and unintentionally funny). ‘Gangnam Style’ is taking the piss out of how the wealthy and powerful people of Korea who control the country seem to be from the upscale area called Gangnam. It’s almost like a stand up comedy routine; perhaps you could say he’s Korea’s answer to Weird Al Yankovic, but without parodying other peoples songs for laughs.
Koreans are also worried that the joke is lost on westerners. Besides the fact westerners won’t understand what PSY’s rhymes mean or that they won’t understand the implications of making fun of Gangnam, westerners will enjoy it because it’s a chubby Asian guy rapping in a comical style, making PSY funny for all the wrong reasons. Essentially, these Koreans think we’re enjoying this novelty song because westerners view PSY as a racist stereotype. Though perhaps there’s a laugh to be had at this guy acting goofy, the Koreans obviously didn’t consider that westerners like it because the beat is ridiculously catchy!
So if you go out clubbing and everyone’s doing dancing to ‘Gangnam Style’ and you see some Korean tourists either looking confused or laughing, you now know why.
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