Author |Ding Qianwen Editor|Fan Zhihui
idols deconstruct women's stories, and they can't do without the slogan "god-making".
Recently, the popular K-pop girl group (G) i-DLE released a new ** "Super Lady", and the "feminist universe" built by continuing the previous style has once again caused great controversy, and entries such as "Gidle plagiarism controversy" and "Gidle's new song MV crashed many European and American singers" have been at the forefront of hot searches for many days.
And in South Korea itself, the same controversy has intensified.
From the word-of-mouth collapse caused by the accusation of vulgarity in the first song "Wife", to the release of "Allergy" and "Queencard" just last year, I have been immersed in the audience backlash caused by the fact that I was questioned for plagiarism, using the concept of female topics to cover up the saliva of song production, and shouting anti-appearance anxiety but still serving beauty with exquisite makeup.
The data shows that the title song "Super Lady" of this return also only landed 30th on the Melon Daily Chart on the day of release (January 29), and about 20,000 listeners in the first hour landed 22nd in the real-time Melon Top 100, which is far worse than the real-time 12th place of "Queencard" last year. As of February 2, "Super Lady", which has been released for four days, has also continued to decline in the ranking of the Melon Daily Chart, once falling to 67th, even if it has risen after February 4 with the help of stage singing effects and fan charts, it is also the worst sound source in the previous title songs of (G)i-Dle.
It is not difficult to see that (G)i-Dle, which has been popular in the past two years by telling about women's issues, is now also encountering a certain traffic dilemma. So, why did the tried-and-true "feminist universe" fail? How to tell women's ** stories?
In fact, women's narratives and feminist themes are not uncommon in today's K-pop girl group concept.
Among them, (G)i-DLE has become popular at home and abroad with "Tomboy", "NXDE" and "QueenCard". However, although (G)i-dle, wrapped in the coat of a refined girl group, takes feminism and women's topics as concepts, the internal logic of many works as a whole is still only superficially conveying to the public that issues such as appearance and body are the main contradictions that affect women's survival. Although this also reaps a certain consumer market, it is also regarded by a large number of listeners, especially feminists, as a traffic business that "just feminist rice".
In particular, the release of "Super Lady" this time was also dubbed as a "backstab" of same-sex criticism. The music video of the song is accused of borrowing a lot from European and American digital DIVA works, including Crash Beyonce's "Renaissance", Cardi B and Megan's "WAP", Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do", etcFrom the scene, element application, lens language, etc., there are copies or similarities.
As early as last year, (G)i-Dle's "Allergy" was also pointed out to copy Olivia Rodrigo's "Brutal", Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" and Ariana Grande's "Side to Side" and other MVs.
On the other hand, in addition to the high popularity of "plagiarizing" the works of female ** people, (g)i-dle, as a member of K-pop artists and performers produced by agencies and production teams through concepts, is far from sincere and thorough. As a result, feminism has become a concept of K-pop creation, which to some extent speaks for "women", but the strong commerciality and self-objectification make the so-called "feminist" content more like a "fashion item" for gimmick marketing.
The most typical is the MV of "Super Lady", which largely relies on the secondary interpretation of fans to get closer to "feminism", but in the MV, the female idol's chest, legs, buttocks and other body parts are detached from the whole, and are highlighted for separate consumption under the lens of a certain male perspective, and the non-traditional female images such as Cleopatra and Medusa borrowed also contain perspectives that are difficult to desexualize.
The deep-seated reason is that since the popularity of "Tomboy" in South Korea and China, the works since then have been "slogan-based feminism" that has changed the soup but not the medicine. The most typical is a large number of sentences with a certain high meaning. For example, "Super Lady" is just repeating "call me Super Lady" and "follow Super Ladies" frequently, and the lack of interpretation of examples does not support the core of why "Super Lady" should be followed.
It can be said that it is precisely the barrenness of the content of the lyrics that makes it criticized by a large number of listeners as a slogan.
At the same time, (g)i-dle's "repeated descriptions of top, super, and queencard with a high posture in many works have not been completely dematerialized." To put it bluntly, some K-pop girl groups led by (G)i-Dle, even though they hold high the banner of feminism and feminism, are essentially girl group products from the perspective of male gaze.
On the other hand, it only one-sidedly stops at questioning and even denigrating the femininity that represents innocence and loveliness, not pointing criticism at the gender inequality system, but also another stereotype of femininity, and it can even be said that the underlying logic of "female competition" has not disappeared.
This sense of disconnect between feminist concepts and works is partly due to narrow feminism and the fact that the K-pop consumer market still values the ratio of male consumers. This will inevitably be projected into its **, which will make the audience aesthetically tired in the constant repetition and stubbornness.
In addition, the relatively conclusive plagiarism controversy surrounding the (g)i-dle captain and team producer Tian Xiaojuan has also been seen in recent years as "discrediting" the efforts of female ** people to maintain control over the creation of original works on the premise of eating feminist dividends. Furthermore, for female producers in the K-pop industry, it is also one of the cases that can be affected by the "loss of both". This is also contrary to the feminist image presented in his ** works.
In February 2022, after Tian Xiaojuan's song "Sun" for the girl group talent show "Heartbeat After School" was similar to some of the melodies of "W**E" released by the boy group ATEEZ in 2018, which raised questions about plagiarism, Tian Xiaojuan Fang added "W**E" producer Eden-ary to the composition column, but was posted by AJEEZ's company KQ and Eden-ary saying that she "didn't know".
Even though Tian Xiaojuan later apologized for the controversy, "Sun" was still registered in the Korean ** Authors Association in June, and Eden-ary was removed from the composition column. Interestingly, after a year, these posts full of plagiarism arguments were also deleted one after another under Tian Xiaojuan's report.
Of course, it is undeniable that even if the feminism and feminist ideas of the girl group contain certain paradoxes, this does make many female listeners pay attention to women's issues. It's just that it is just a matter of imitating the power of European and American women's DIVA, and bluntly combining it with K-pop, which is inseparable from the influence of Confucian culture, and a sense of contradiction arises spontaneously.
At present, the deformed ** system in which men are the main management and the proportion of female consumer audiences affects the consumer market also makes the so-called "awakening" of the vast majority of female ** people inevitably have a certain duality - that is, either a good girl or a bad girl.
The most typical one that has also been borrowed more by the girl group is the transformation of Taylor Swift.
In the early days of Taylor Swift's debut, her image as a youthful and sweet country singer was seen as a "girly lover", when she emphasized that she only wrote "songs about [her] feelings"; Later, with the recording of Taylor Swift with Kanye and Kardashian, Taylor Swift, who is considered to be lying, frequently in love, and writing her ex-boyfriends into the song, became an outlier "bad girl". Even if his innocence is confirmed, Taylor Swift has become a source of rugby that can be seen by some as ruining the outcome of the game, even if he just watches a rugby match.
However, since 2014, Taylor Swift has begun to gently or sharply counter all bad criticisms in her works, holding high the banner of feminism against the exploitation of women in the ** industry. For example, in! ", he questioned the unequal status quo in the industry that the continuous love of male ** people is regarded as a romantic anecdote, while women have to suffer humiliation for this, including in "The Man", which is a further "yin and yang" gender double standard, even if there are the same achievements, women still have to encounter difficulties in treatment and social recognition.
In Taylor Swift's work from a female perspective**, it is rare to see a single.
1. Flat, narrative-cumbersome slogan lyrics are generally narrative of small and big, powerful and counter-unfair attitudes, concrete expressions, and catchy lyrics to tell the story of oneself or other women's experiences. For example, some music fans pointed out that "! The stones and sticks thrown by people are described as criticism of women's plight and criticism, and the obvious and understandable expressions often do not need to be reprocessed and moistened by fans to understand the emotions they want to express.
Therefore, this can also arouse the most direct and widespread resonance among listeners, especially female audiences, and its controversy is not like that of K-pop girl groups, but really wins the recognition of this group. Of course, this image has also allowed it to further accumulate capital and success, and has led to the further popularity of women's storytelling in the mainstream vision. This is precisely what is said to be "both submissive to the commercial system and the ability to skillfully exploit its rules and at the same time betray it to some extent".
However, does an idol girl group have to be feminist? Not.
In the K-pop category, which also focuses on exquisite makeup and scenes, there are also examples of overturning the objectification of typical women. For example, this month's girl's "butterfly" no longer serves to show the image of a refined girl group, and the members are all solid color long clothes and trousers, simple and low-key shapes, and have become the "performers" of the song and dance concept that expresses that all women are in a difficult situation and "all girls are precious girls of the month under the butterfly effect".
1. The low-key costume naturally shifts the audience's attention to the performance, rather than staring at the body parts and pointing out whether the makeup is exquisite and in line with the members.
It is worth mentioning that the main camera angle of this MV is not focused on the girl group, but mainly focuses on amateur women of different skin colors, ages, religions, and body types around the world, such as Icelandic girls with albinism, Chinese girls in uniform uniforms, religious girls bound by headscarves, and so on.
These amateur women of different shapes also express their vitality and eagerness to break out of the cocoon and become independent through running, dancing and other behaviors. Compared with the perspective of educating women on how to do it with an empty sense of "preaching", this is a meaningful commercialization attempt to break the objectified image of the girl group and subvert the narrative of the traditional girl group.
Pop critic Choi Soon-sil believes that "female idols are still largely marginalized in the K-pop industry, and they are unable to access sensitive topics, especially gender-related topics, such as feminism, which will make the industry and idols worry about losing the proportion of male consumers." However, she also pointed out that the best stories from a female perspective need to break down restrictions and make changes, "so that the products of girl groups are diversified, and women in real life can also be positively affected by these efforts."
It can be said that if we want to talk about women's issues well, we can't just empty slogans.
Taylor Swift, mentioned above, makes a series of satires around the privilege of being a man in The Man, asking, "If I were a man, would I have used privilege to the top sooner?" And confronted the plight of accomplished women in the song, "If I show off my wealth outside, my image will change from hard work to relying on people to be on top", and finally fell on the best among women who dominate everything. Similarly, in Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger", she tells women that "stronger" is because "what can't kill me makes me stronger, and just because you're not there doesn't mean I'm lonely."
On the other hand, this sense of emptiness and slogan avoidance also lies in the ** peopleWhether the focus is on going deep into women's and women's rights issues, rather than just absorbing the dividends of opposites and contradictions, and stereotyping women under a certain identity.
For example, the precursor song "Wife" released by (G)i-DLE this time is exactly the same as the stereotype of "tradwife" under the influence of the resurgence of global conservatism. Even under the polishing of the Chinese translation, the third-person "she" in "want me your wife but she is uhm uhm" is replaced by the first-person "me", and then the interpretation of dropping the book bag is "But I don't buy it, let me hesitate first".
Looking back at the original lyrics, "climb up", "feed me", "show you a beautiful dance like a fish in water", and a large number of specious abstract lyrics full of tone words have also been pointed out by a large number of Korean netizens and Korean women's forums that they are drooling, and use certain 19 forbidden sexual innuendos to describe housewives, and it is impossible to intuitively hear from the song that "women don't have to be housewives" The independent meaning of "women don't have to be housewives" can be heard from the song.
This also reveals that the so-called women's works such as (G)i-dle still have limited expression of feminism, and they are "appealing" to the public with a simplistic and one-sided understanding of women's situation and cognition.
Of course, the industry's systemic prejudice against women, especially idol girl groups, has existed from beginning to end, and it is not easy to disappear. Trying to enhance the depth and connotation of the work through social issues is also a habitual practice that many K-pop artists have tried and tested, but how to grasp the commerciality and humanistic care is still a big problem.
Just like now, K-pop girl groups are shouting anti-appearance anxiety, anti-body anxiety, and being a Super Lady, but it is difficult to really shake off the delicate makeup, or cute or charming expression management that attracts fans to "enter the pit", to express the shackles of sexual attraction.
As a product born under the aesthetics of white and thin, it is difficult for the girl group to get rid of the influence of the male gaze, as netizens said"There are no touching and resonant lyrics and a ** sexual core, but my sister is the queen and I am a tomboy, which is too pale for a girl group that can't get rid of the external public aesthetic influence and is difficult to really be your own."
It is precisely from this stance that (g)i-dle stands on the position of "instructing" female listeners to follow her to become "super lady", which is nothing more than a female audience to raise objections. Even Taylor Swift and Beyonce, who have also encountered doubts, do not stand in the perspective of "human teachers", but resonate with female audiences with a level-headed attitude.
After all, the bottom line of the creation of feminist ** or feminist ** works is "female equality", otherwise it will only have its shape and soul.
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