What is clear from the readings this week is that music and culture is not created in a vacuum; it is inextricably tied to the relationship between nations and the market and how they reflect changes throughout history. As Doobo Shim and Minh-Ha Pham point out, the reduction of censorship and the opening of the cultural industry allowed for creative experimentation and the exposure of black musical aesthetics.
When Pham refers to the politics of hair and its erasure in the Marc Jacobs show, it reminded of two incidents of racial plagiarism and stereotyping through hair color in recent history. When Keziah Daum, a non-Asian teenager posted on Twitter her qipao dress for prom, Twitter went ablaze. Daum’s wearing of the dress is another form of racial plagiarism as it reduces the dress to a cultural commodity free to be interpreted an “appreciated.” She wrote in a response on Twitter:
“I mean no harm. I am in no way being discriminative or racist. I’m tired of all the backlash and hate when my only intent was to show my love.”
This falls on the same binary that Pham writes –– that the argument of cultural appreciation gives too much weight to the “intention” of the appropriator and reduces the critics as “snowflakes” or too sensitive to issue. What bothered me more in context to the Daum’s dress was the angle that NYTimes writer, Amy Qin, decided to write about it. I understand as journalists unless it’s an op-ed, it’s important to get both sides of an issue. However, as a reader, I felt that Qin emphasized the mainland Chinese opinions on Daum’s dress in her article.
Many of the quotes used in her article emphasized that mainland Chinese see no problem with Daum’s dress and have a sense of cultural pride in her wearing of it. More weight was given to the overseas opinions about the Daum’s dress rather than contextualizing Daum’s dress within racial politics of the U.S. The article read as a reaffirmation that mainland Asians gets to have the final say on what is appropriation and appreciation because of the underlying notion that they are “purely Asian.”
Another point of contention of Daum’s dress was the group photo of her and her non-black peers in a “squad” pose that is rooted in black aesthetics. Some Twitter users felt more enraged by the squad pose than the dress because it clearly appropriated the “squad” pose that was created in black culture through social media –– Daum and her peers wanted to capitalize and create a sense of “coolness”, “being real”, and the tight bond among friends that the aesthetics portray. The entire fiasco can be seen as a double-edged crime. Not only did Daum racially plagiarize a qipao dress to “appreciate it” but also her posing of black culture further the cultural deafness of her and her peers.
This leads me to the concept of hybridity and authenticity that Crystal S. Anderson argues. When I read her piece, I thought about other rappers who have been put into the hot seat for using black aesthetics. Eminem is a prime example of this. Many consumers and critics if Eminem is imitating black musical traditions and if he is allowed access to hip-hop and rap as a white man. What from I know of the general progression of Eminem, consumers respect him because his personal narrative seems authentic and derives from a sense of “being real” that Anderson mentions; however, there is criticism that must be taken into account about white rappers.
In the same light, K-pop is not exempt from criticism about the appropriation of black culture. At times, the overuse and pervasiveness of the required rap verse in K-pop are overused and formulaic and falls into the notion that rap automatically gives a “cool” factor” to a song and can be seen a musical commodity rather than a verse with intention.
At the same time, Anderson’s argument hybridity allows for the K-pop to exist without the binary of what is authentic and what is not based on U.S. racial politics. K-pop use of black aesthetics, especially with Big Mama, show the transnational capabilities of music. As Anderson argues, the music is created in context to its absorption of outside material and create new material. Therefore this allows for K-pop to have an authenticity without being strictly defined by the U.S.A.
Still, the importance to recognize K-pop’s hybridization and use of black culture and musical tradition must be a narrative that is recognized and understood when consuming K-pop.
The Politics of K-Pop 