By Andrew Lam
New America Media
Anthropologists and linguists are no doubt having a field day trying to chronicle and dissect how, in the early autumn of 2012, “Gangnam Style” became an American idiomatic expression. It stands for something along the lines of a brash, flamboyant way of doing things, clownishness, or an act of in-your-face spoofing that is both original and entertaining.
A recently setup Wikipedia page showcases “Gangnam Style” as the most watched YouTube video of all time. It has over 800 million hits and counting since July, and has spun off countless other videos. Among them is North Korea’s own version to spoof a South Korean presidential candidate, and the “Mitt Romney Style” spoof video. Rob McKenna, the failed Republican candidate for Governor, even did the dance at an election event.
Who’s the genius behind the dance that mimics riding an invisible horse? Jae-Sang Park, erstwhile Psy (short for psycho), a rapper whose career galloped into global super stardom with the distinction of topping the iTunes charts in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and 28 other countries. Psy’s video is also the most “liked” video on YouTube, as well as the most-watched video in Korean entertainment history.
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.
A crossover, as far as the world of arts and entertainment is concerned, is to go from the margin to the center, from one set of culture to another, trying to succeed in the latter. But, as a rule, it demands the betrayal of the original, and it requires reinvention — something nearly impossible for those who are entrenched in their own language and cultural sensibilities.
Take the case of Hong Kong actors Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan, and South Korean singer Bi Rain. Bi Rain, 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 quickly failed. Chow Yun Fat, voted by LA Times as “the coolest actor” in the world in the mid-90s, too, 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 stilted in the West. In addition to bombing at the box office with his action movies, Chow also played a stereotypical hideous character in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. His role was deemed so offensive that it was cut in the version shown in China.
Jackie Chan, the most successful of them all, is worthy of note for his repeated attempts over three decades as an action star in Hollywood. When he finally made it big, he was, alas, already steeped in middleage.
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 take note of is the speed with which a cultural event can transmit in these more globalized days. Psy bursts like a supernova from regional to world stage in a matter of weeks — and he didn’t even need to leave Seoul. The second thing to take note of 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.
Psy, mindful of this, told NPR recently, “If I have a chance, I want my music lyric[s] 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, so that I can use Korean if possible? It’s really huge history for my country.”
In other words, since he didn’t try to crossover, 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.
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 Beyoncé to Lady Gaga, Western stars are idolized all over the world, 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 of the world.
Such is the shape of the powers and unwritten rule taught subliminally long ago — going from West to East, as well as elsewhere, has always been a passage of relative ease since the European conquest of the known world 500 years ago. It does not demand transformation or self-reinvention from a Westerner. It is catered to.
The reverse, however, has always been a difficult path and an enormous undertaking. An American moving to Vietnam to work and live, for instance, doesn’t need to learn Vietnamese to thrive. His language is coveted, his status assumed superior. On the other hand, a Vietnamese who hopes to make it big in the United States needs to master the English language, at the very least.
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.
Yet, its rise to universality is no fluke. Its success occurs when the world is shifting in radical ways, at a time when individuals, empowered by the information technology, can change world history.
The Oppa Gangnam Style video also 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 replaced aerobics, acupuncture and herbal treatment are alternative choices for treating chronic diseases, and the world’s children are enthralled by Japanese anime and manga, and kung-fu becomes a norm for action films.
That a South Korean video gained global stardom is also no fluke. South Korea, after all, actively supports its artists and totes 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 ascendancy. It even built a Hallyu — Korean Wave — museum at the Incheon Airport to celebrate its global stars and their achievements.
Indeed, in Asia, there is an old dream of resistance. It was first a dream of 19th century Japan after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese war. It imagined the continent as one, a continuous land, its people interconnected. That idea was resuscitated by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore a century later, during the rise of Asian economic powers in the post Cold War era. While Lee spurred the phrase “Asian Values,” nearby Malaysia’s leader, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, came up with a similar “Look East Policy.”
But those ideas had been more or less top down, militaristic, and largely ideological — a regional chauvinistic reaction to its colonial past, and a need to assert its newfound prowess against Western influences. What is happening now, a couple of generations later, however, is much more organic, more solidly on the cultural ground, and hardly anti-West.
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. It would seem that in a world where cultural integration and hybridization are the norm, all forms of art can become at once both 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 leveled.
So if America could make a movie called “Kung Fu Panda” and turn it into a number one hit in China, then it follows that a Korean artist, too, can rise to the top of the music chart in America, riding an invisible horse and rapping in his own language — Gangnam Style, of course. (end)