I’m still in the very beginning stage of this research project, but I found some K-pop video reaction clips on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekJ-ldOD0TQ.
Most of the Western audiences do not understand why some scenes of the music videos are filmed in certain ways. This is mainly because they don’t understand the language, hence the lyrics, and because they relatively don’t share cultural proximity (Straubhaar, 1991) than Korea’s neighboring countries. I consider some of the main reasons behind this lack of contextual understanding as the inability of understanding the language of the lyrics and not being familiar with the culture. In fact, scenes where these audiences consider “weird” or “what’s that” kind of reactions are filmed in ways that match with the lyrics.
One example can be found at 2:34 of the above link when a white guy thinks the female singer is singing “I got a boy on my chin” when actually she’s saying “I got a boy mutjin (meaning handsome or cool).”
As
of 2011 (far before Psy’s “Gangnam Style” came out), K-pop videos already
surpassed a collective of over 1 billion views on YouTube. However, Western
audiences’ misunderstanding
and misinterpreting of K-pop videos can be found in many YouTube reaction
clips. For example, two British girls are in a complete shock mainly because
they don’t understand the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtfEXglUvw0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XQfKT-qXT4. Three
American audiences are completely puzzled at some of the scenes because they
don’t know that, in fact, those scenes are actually based on the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5_l7d2CkG8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcGj6S_G-uQ
Some
scholars declare the end of the Information Society and the emergent of the
Dream Society of icon and aesthetic experience. Whereas letters (alphabets)
were a main medium for the former one, images (photos, visual content) are the
main medium in the latter one (Dator & Seo, 2004). What they both have in
common, however, is that both mediums are media cultural texts. I’m curious to
see in the era of the so-called globalization filled with the hybridity of
transnational media culture, how informed audiences can be when it comes to
consuming and interpreting foreign media content.
References:
Dator,
J & Seo, Y. (2004). Korea as the wave of a future: The emerging dream
society of icon and aesthetic experience. Journal
of Future Studies, 9, 31-44.
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