K-pop: Full of aesthetic but devoid of art

Courtesy of Dr Case

By David A. Tizzard

With religion having largely receded from day-to-day life, particularly among the youth, a vacuum is created. Our extra-rational cravings and innate desires leave us yearning for something more than a simple physical existence. We become masterless dogs. Desperate to chase a ball but no one to throw it for us.

This is where supreme art has the power to move the human soul. Art moves backwards into eternity. Aesthetics and an appreciation for beauty take us beyond rationality and science and towards something more profound and moving. Yet at the same time, art can be futile. Meaningless. Marcel Duchamp showed long ago that art can be a fountain of urine, Warhol evidenced it can be a can of soup. Modernists and Dadaists have made art out of everything around us. John Cage demonstrated the opposite: that music can be made of nothing.

This is both an economic and cultural problem. Just as art has transformed from the majestic and awe-inspiring to the secular and mundane, our modern society has also now come to create false idols out of relatively unimpressive people. Some are famous for being famous. Countries are headed by politicians who would fail to shine at high-school level. Social media is driven by those with the hottest takes rather than the most insightful. And rather than watch debates on television featuring experts and artists on social issues, we are treated to c-list celebrities eating noodles in a camping ground.

Current pop culture in Korea feels this burden. The musicians who get the most coverage and have their names plastered all over our media are not the most talented. They are those most capable of listening to what others tell them to do. They are malleable commodities, asked to sing what others write, dance to what others teach, and wear what others say. Their names, clothes, images, and personality are constructed in such a way so as to be as appealing as possible to the desires, often sexual, of the least discerning audience.

Music analysis of these K-pop artists does not feature any conversation about time signatures, modes, key changes, or arrangement. Instead it revolves around how many YouTube hits and Tweets it received. Numbers, it should be added, that are often manipulated through fake accounts, bots, and purchased streams. This paper will regularly post an article about what latest threshold a two-year-old BLACKPINK song has passed. Why? Because of the number of clicks. Promotion. Keep them in the zeitgeist.

Capitalism has created this environment and need for things to be profitable. Society now means every voice is equal, but those that shout the loudest and most vociferously will be given amplification. Nuance is deemed boring. Is there any escape or room for improvement? Do we get another Ella Fitzgerald or Kim Gwang-seok this century? Or are we left with mainstream music being the playground of the simulacra?

Analyzing the nature and effect of K-pop idols is a very painful one, particularly for those that worship such creations. Cold rational analysis seems utterly reprehensible to what is for them a source of light and truth. The devoted faithful find such approaches to their gods completely objectionable. And thus most coverage of K-pop is all 5-star praise and admiration with little in the way of critical thought. Some lackadaisical approaches liken K-pop and its fandom to football. However, each week you'll read scathing reviews of performances and results in football and most other fields. K-pop however is largely fans talking to fans about things of which they are fans. Genuine analysis simply becomes spitting in the wind and shouting at the clouds.

To suggest that the new BTS song with Snoop Dog and Benny Blanco is a bland derivative piece of music is heretical. To say it seems little more than a boring pastiche of the K-pop group's previously most unimaginative 'creations' like Permission to Dance and Dynamite will have you cast aside as a renegade dissenter. But my god that's what Bad Decisions sounds like. Sonically and thematically, it's identical. Even Snoop sounds bored on it. As music and art, it's utterly forgettable.

One of the more common arguments labeled against those who suggest the song is run-of-the-mill, apart from obviously the very essence of their identity which is weaponized against them, will be that normal viewers are simply unable to grasp the resplendent whole of what BTS entails. If you have not watched every v-log, bought all 28 remixes of Butter, purchased purple Happy Meals on four continents, and spent more than five years of your life streaming their music videos, you simply don't get it. All of these disparate products complement and explain each other. The true meaning is missed as soon as we try to understand any single part of it by itself. DNA excuses and justifies Permission to Dance. Similar arguments were given by Jordan Peterson fanboys whenever one tried to criticize his latest hot takes and academic tourism into fields of which he clearly knew very little or by Star Wars people who didn't take kindly to being told the last six movies in the series have been straight garbage.

Despite my cynicism, there has been a load of great music created recently. Humans certainly haven't gotten worse. It's just our systems of information and control won't let it access the mainstream. We'll get the tiresome noise of corporate products devoid of emotion thrust in our faces while artists who challenge ideas of taste and form will be deemed beyond the algorithm.

There's a lot of creative people out there capable of beautiful things. However, if we continue to wrap them up in corporate packaging and design them according to the whims of teenagers, we will miss the opportunity to move hearts and minds, to upset people, to challenge ideas, to confront stereotypes, to break traditions, and to upset the status quo rather than simply reinforce it.

The environment is being destroyed by corporations and boardroom profits who guilt us into using paper straws. They are taking our bodies and the homes of our children. They are also taking our souls through the media they give us. Adorno knew this long ago. Both should be addressed.

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.