POPWATCH (December 2012)

POPWATCH (DECEMBER 2012)
It was a good year.
By Moses Kim

HyunA – Ice Cream
This summer, 4minute ringleader Hyuna inspired some controversy with her cover of PSY’s “Gangnam Style”: she had already developed a reputation for being something of a teenage sexpot, but her vocal style on that video took her to a whole new realm of sensuality. It’s not surprising that PSY would revisit her in the music video for “Ice Cream”, either, seeing as how both have made careers on cartoonish, Technicolor personas and music. Understatement is a completely foreign concept to this song, which bursts to life on chunky, blaring synths and a hip-hop beat. Both are plenty amiable, but the real core of the song is HyunA’s oozing, sticky performance, whether she’s having fun with the robotic “cream, cream, cream, cream,” running through the background of the chorus, vocal hook in the background or declaring “I GOT THIRTY-ONE FLAVORS” with an attitude that transcends camp: throughout “Ice Cream”, she also offers us thirty-one different hooks. No matter what your thoughts are on the song or HyunA, I guarantee at least one of them will stick. B

missA – I Don’t Need A Man
missA’s most glaring flaw has always been their lack of personality: their songs are generally well-crafted and atmospheric, but anybody else could step in to sing and I wouldn’t notice. “I Don’t Need A Man” feels like an attempt to rectify that issue a bit, and unfortunately a slightly artificial attempt at that. It’s packed with vocal harmonies, shouts of “HEY” and “OH”, and a neat little bit in the chorus where each of the four members gets a chance to show some sass. Despite the amiable, sunny vibes of the track, it still falls a little short of feeling completely sincere, though: “This is for all the independent ladies,” they declare, but the song only scrapes its titular conceit, focusing less on emotional independence than on financial independence. In the moment, though, it’s a plenty resonant expression, but I still wish that I could hear what missA has to say that any of my friends couldn’t already say better (albeit much less musically). C+

Lee Hi – 1, 2, 3, 4
Talent show stars seldom make it big after they win it all, but Lee Hi has surprised right out of the gate with “1, 2, 3, 4”, her debut single. Everything about this song demonstrates a maturity to her perspective, from the snappy, measured instrumentation to the refreshingly distanced lyrics: “Time will resolve everything,” Lee Hi declares, accompanied by harmonies that sound weary but wise. That said, she also has a bit of fun with her performance, counting down in the last chorus, adding in flourishes to the melodies, and delivering the kiss-off “Why don’t you just piss off now?” with a scorching intensity that would make Adele blush. All that, and it also does more for feminism than “I Don’t Need A Man” ever did. What’s not to like? A

Noel – Things I Couldn’t Say
What’s nice about “Things I Couldn’t Say” is how surprisingly pretty it is. Noel may just be laying his regrets onto the music, but he does it over a soothing, lush bed of R&B that feels wonderfully lived-in; unfortunately, that’s about all I can remember from the song. Try as they might, Noel and his lyrics begin in sadness and never manage to move on from it, so mired in the song’s conceit that it never suggests anything even remotely personal. By the time the chorus “builds” to a vocally-manipulated chorus of men angsting in yeahs and oohs, the truth becomes clear: there’s a lot of things he couldn’t say, but it doesn’t look like Noel’s going to say very many of them even now. C+

Epik High (ft. Bom of 2NE1) – Up
I know very, very little about the rap duo that is Epik High, but damned if this didn’t just win me over completely. Though the group obviously specializes in hip-hop, one of that genre’s greatest strengths is its ability to seamlessly crib from various other influences to create something wholly novel, and that strength is in full play here: “Up” begins as a sincere ballad apropros of Bom’s emphatic caterwauling before it takes an abrupt turn into a stadium march, eventually settling into an invigorating back-and-forth dialogue between the two. Self-empowerment anthems usually relegate themselves to either extreme of the emotional spectrum, be it weepy balladry or dopey-eyed swagger. “Up” stitches them together and soars even higher. A-

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEWS
Ailee – I Will Show You
Featuring an incredibly powerful performance from the surprisingly gutsy Ailee, loaded with vivid details of things bought and forgotten that sting, anthemic to the max—this song’s only flaw is how haphazardly the two halves of it are patched together. B+

Gain – Bloom
“Bloom” whirs and chugs along at a groovy little pace, but when the chorus goes for cotton-candy sweet, it emerges soaked in corn syrup instead. C

PSY – Gangnam Style
On my first listen to “Gangnam Style”, it would have qualified for an A. You would think that overexposure through the song in literally every medium possible (we’ve seen anime parodies, a political takedown of Mitt Romney aptly titled “Romney Style”, and even a mash-up with MC Hammer’s “Too Legit To Quit” at this point) would sap the song of its immediate, carnal power, but this gem has stood the test of time. A+

HyunA – Oppa Is Just My Style
Nobody dethrones the master, HyunA, certainly not somebody who meows all of her lyrics like a feral kitten. D-

G-Dragon - Crayon
One of the most surreal experiences K-Pop had to offer this year, this track still hits hard; whether it’s a good buzz or a bad buzz is a question for another day. B

Before I end up descending into self-indulgent verbal fellatio, I’ll cut myself off there. Any way you slice it, this was a groundbreaking year for Korean pop, and though I am often disgusted by the naked consumerism of the entire genre, the passion and talent of the artists in our nation always manages to transcend and surprise. In any case, we can all look forward to turning our televisions on in the last week of the year, when all of the Korean broadcast networks will be airing their end-of-the-year music extravaganzas, and seeing PSY dance to “Gangnam Style” about twenty more times. I know I’ll be there.

Cheers to 2012!

Music Manufactured

Music Manufactured
By Daniel Tahyun Lee

Flame throwers on the stage roar fiercely as the music in the amps blast with a heavy beat. Figures dressed in shiny black nylon tights and leather boots start dancing. Sugary melodies flow out from their mouths, a bit too perfectly. Every move strikes to a certain rhythm, calculated. The millions of fans roar with applause. The K- Pop industry declares victory in this concert hall. Little does the crowd see that the spectacle in front of their eyes is a product of heavy industrialism and bloody competition. Following the recent international breakthrough of K- Pop, the Korean music industry is now identified through the pop sensation itself. Yet the genre saturating the industry is not a healthy signal.

In order for an artist to partake as a musician, two parts are incorporated in the process: production and distribution. In an ideal record making process, production is executed by mainly artists themselves. The artist is in responsibility of the general creative direction of a record. Apart from the production process, the distribution is a phase that is usually carried out by record labels. Thus, the conventional idea of making music was the musician making music and the record label selling it. Though artists such as or Arctic Monkey have shown their own spins on this process (being much more hands on in the distribution process), they succeeded in sustaining the quality of their music. The problem arises when the distribution engulfs the intent of the production.

In its nature, music that falls into the category of K-Pop always involves a giant entertainment corporation behind the curtain. As entertainment mogul Park Jin Young proudly said: “We don’t consider ourselves confined to the music we make. We believe that were showcasing the person as the product.” With all the young boys and girls, and fancy dance moves, it is no doubt that K-Pop is about marketing the person. The question is whether the music they put out actually has anything to do with that person. In most occasions, the answer is no. 

As a matter of fact, the majority stars of K Pop all follow a certain process of manufacturing. It all starts with a large corporation’s board, planning a new product. When the theme and marketing strategy of the group is decided, the recruitment begins. The corporation selects from a pool of “trainees”, or candidates that have gone through boot camps and facial modifications. Once the team is put together, songs are bought from major song writers and the dance routines are choreographed. After months of practice, the first “mini album” is released, and an artist is shown to the world.

Notice how the artist is nothing more than a portrayal of the music they are given. The focus indeed shifts from the music to the person. All of this happens, while a majority of artists have no contact with creative input whatsoever. Music is no longer “music” but a decomposition of song writers, dancers, stylists and artists. Fundamentally, it is music designed to treat the comprehensive need of the mass.
Let’s take a look at an equally competitive but fundamentally different place: the American music industry. With the exception of similarly produced “idol stars”, the American way of succeeding as an artist is individual struggle. An artist starts alone at first, sometimes independent or signed to a smaller indie. The artist begins to expand upon a local fanbase. After being singled out by a music authority, the artist will be able to play as an opening act for other, popular bands. In time, the artist achieves independence and receives a record deal to play his or her music. One of the most prominent criticisms that come after these deals is that the artist has become a “sell out”:. Yet in K-Pop, the production begins with being a sell-out. The ripple effect begins when this sort of music begins to choke other genres of less industrial music with its superior marketing and capitol. K-Pop has gradually become the very definition of Korean contemporary music. The spotlights of each genre of rock, electronic, alternative, hip-hop and jazz turn off as K-Pop thrones in mainstream music.

The next step K Pop is to strive toward is becoming a genre of music in which artists actually contribute creative input in the process of production. The artist’s creativity, not the corporation’s business plans, should be the main dish. The sole purpose of K-Pop is not to sell, but to set a certain ideal in music. Hopefully, artists will learn to differentiate their music and learn to not be confined by the industrial boundaries of K-Pop. It starts with the first step: adopting a critical approach to the music we hear. It starts with ordinary listeners understanding that most of the music on the charts, are not there because of the music.

A Good Con Man

A Good Con Man
By Yewhan Choi

             The movie Catch Me If You Can, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, was a great sensation. The movie is about a very intelligent con man becoming an FBI agent after getting through various personal hardships. DiCaprio plays the con man in the movie, showing people how intelligent, handsome, humane and loyal a con man can be. This great projection of the con man created by DiCaprio made people have fantasies about the ideal of the ‘good con man’: a crook who is intelligent and attractive but most importantly a good natured man. This great demand for the‘good con man’as finally satisfied by the ‘White Collar drama series provided by ‘USA network’.

             If Catch Me If You Canfocuses ona con man becoming part of the FBI, White Collar focuses on things that would happen after he becomes part of the Bureau, centering the action on an excon man and FBI agent solving fraud cases together. White Collar features mainly two main characters, Neal Caffrey who is the ‘good con man’ and agent Peter Burke who is the FBI agent in charge of him. There are also many supporting characters such as Mossi, the ex-con partner of Neal who helps his best friend when in trouble, and Mrs.Burke, the wise wife of Peter Burke. All of these characters take part in the story, which makes them all important.

White Collar has its own unique style of story development. Every season, there is a main event that mostly threatens Neal or Neal’s relatives, and the event develops episode by episodeas Neal and Burke solve white collar crimes.This typical style makes people await each newepisodes. Yet it isnot only the typical story development that attracts people, but also two other reasons that attract people to watch White Collar.

             The first reason is that White Collar has different kinds of cases. Even though it is easy to find TV series handling murder or sexual violence cases, it is difficult to see ones which handle fraud cases. The White Collarhandles real white collar cases such as art fraud, currency forgery, robberies, and so on. These rare kinds of cases allow White Collar to have different approach while solving cases. Most times, theyfeatureNeal cheating the con menas Peter and Neal go undercover. These fresh new cases and approaches attract people to fall in love with White Collar.

             The other reason is that White Collar has fascinating characters and great shooting spots. Peter is a man who is devoted and in great love with Mrs.Burke. He is a man with persistence and also a man who can’t be bribed because of his faith in justice and right. Even though his firm faith makes him hot tempered when things doesn’t go in his way, he soon gains his consciousness back and solves cases. Neal is a character who is very intelligent. He is a master in arts, and forgery. Also he is a quick thinker and has smile that can tempt any women in this world. Unlike other impostershe is a good natured man, who never uses guns and doesn’t like hurting others. The shooting and the story of White Collar takes part in New York City, a city which represents modern life and longed by everyone. White Collar successfully projects Neal and Peters’ fancy modern life which allow people to have their own fantasy as a New Yorker.

             So people, if you want to take a look at fresh, extraordinary but not-violent cases or want to see hot, attractive males using their brains to catch fraud criminals, watch the White Collarseries. You guys will not regret your choice.

The Hymn Of Death

The Hymn of Death
By Beom Joon Baek

             “I’ll be back in a minute.” That’s what they always say in the movies. A blonde jock says to his blonde girlfriend that he’ll check out what’s going on outside. He leaves. Only the prom queen is in the room. She hears some muffled noise outside, but something eerie is in the air. “What was that?” She turns around, just to see a bird on the tree branch. “Damn, shouldn’t have watched that crappy horror movie. Where’s Ethan anyway?” She need not have to question that no longer, for she sees his head the next second. Just his head. And a masked man with a bloody axe on his hand. She looks beyond the mask, beyond the eyes of the unknown, and for the first time in her life, she feels the cold smell of air.

             That’s how a typical horror movie. With a typical jock and a typical prom queen, with a typical serial killer, with the typical story of sex and death, horror films have dominated our sense of guilt and pleasure at the same time. As Halloween is just around the corner, horror movies are going to be a quite a sensation. However, for the sake of good Halloween, and for the sake of protecting the minds of Daewon students from the nefarious influences of watching a crappy horror rip-off, this is a list of four horror films that you may have heard about, but didn’t had the guts to see for yourself.

             The first film that will haunt you for the rest of your lives is the horror classic The Shining. Based on Stephen King’s eponymous novel, it was directed by the legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, is a down-to-his-luck writer who accepts a part-time stint as the manager of a local hotel during its winter. He brings his wife Wendy and his son Danny along. The relative peace of the hotel deteriorates as Danny starts to have “the shining,” the ability to see ghosts that haunt the hotel. However, the true horror of this film is not the ghosts:; it is us, the humans. As the inherent tension within the hotel begins to manifest itself in the most grotesque ways, murder lurks within those inside. In order to describe the movie, it is imperative to know the enigmatic director who made it.. Stanley Kubrick was the Steve Jobs of filmmaking. His filmography is, contrarily to the other renowned directors like Spielberg and Kurosawa, known for its brevity. Of his career spanning half a decade, he only made 16 films, relatively not a huge number. However, it was his zealous perfectionism that made him the jack of all trades. His masterpieces would range from black comedy (Dr. Strangelove) to war (Full Metal Gear) and science fiction (2001 Space Odyssey). The key to success wasn’t that he was a genius; he was literally a paranoid director who could not care less about the means, just as long as he got the ends. One infamous instance could be found in The Shining. The movie’s female protagonist, Shelley Duvall, could simply not act as the director wanted her to. So, he would abuse the fellow actress, both physically and mentally. Bullying proved to be his superior weapon against her, turning all the crew and the producers on her. Then he moved to physical level, where the director, furious and fastidious about one shout, tried to rip Duvall’s whole hair, just for the sake of directing. Duvall went beyond what a normal actress could cope with,, and her reactions during the whole movie, like when Jack tries to kill her with an axe while saying his signature line “Here’s Johnny,” are more or less genuine.

             The second film is also a modern classic, albeit one not as renowned as the first one. In Battle Royale, by famed Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku, the Japanese authorities, having seen the youth being more rambunctious and chaotic than ever before, organizes a tournament called “Battle Royale.” The totalitarian government, named the Republic of Greater East Asia, organizes this paranoid game as to stop any kind of insurgency within the mainland Japan. The main point of the game is for the students to kill their classmates for three days until there is only one winner. To chick-flick fans out there, think of it like The Hunger Games, only deadlier than before. The reason why I picked this movie over other Japanese horror movies is that Battle Royale might be the only one that we, as students, might be familiar with. Although it is a thriller, and although we don’t kill each other ( but we could, depending on the definition of killing) , the story very much reflects the problem of the current educational system; there is only one winner. In this world of competition, Battle Royale is everywhere in our lives, from Mr. Kim’s CR words to our dear Mr. Cho’s Lit class. Along with a laconic comment on the prevalence of violence in our media, Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale makes us reconsider what it means to be a student and a teenager. Once we start to be cognizant of the fact that as students, we are forced to beat, compete, and fight each other until there is only one winner, the true horror of this film is echoed around the hollow souls of our ferocity.

             The third film is the most obscure one on this list. Being a cult film, it remains one of my favorite films. Possession, by bizarre Polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski, is the film that will obfuscate all of us. Mark is a secret agent, and when he returns home for months after a secret assignment that we are never told, he tries to reconcile with his inattentive wife. He starts to doubt the reason why, and find out that his wife, Anna, is cheating on him. Her lover’s name is Heinreich, a German man with a sound complexion that makes Mark envy him. However, the real queer thing about this film is that Anna’s real lover is a giant squid-like creature. No kidding, that the movie does not become a slapstick comedy after that. Anna kills her Heinreich, her husband’s personal detective, and tries to kill her husband. The plot goes off the record, as the movie itself becomes very dreamlike and chimerical. Along with gore and sex, Zulawski, while bewildering the viewers, manages to give a commentary about marriage and the responsibilities of bearing a child. In this era a nuclear family, the director manages to explore the hidden tension within the boundaries of the so-called home.

             And if you thought The Possession was weird, you have not heard of David Lynch. Lynch is one of the most famous surrealists in Hollywood, and he has a good reason for that; his films, from Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive, have captivated the modern moviegoers with his more surrealistic and nihilistic approach to any kind of storytelling. The reason why I put David Lynch’s whole filmography under the label of horror is that he manages to elicit our subconscious fears as we watch his film. As I watched his magnum opus, Mulholland Drive, my rationality started to fade away, and what remained inside was pure emotion, not romantic but bestial and savage in nature. To make a film that elicits such a response, David Lynch tosses the truth of humanity itself, that we are, after all, animals, disguised under the façade so delicate and diaphanous that even the most complicated and sound rationality cannot stop the flood of our desires.

             This is the four movies that I want our readers to watch this Halloween. Some are violent, others are not. All are rated over 19, so you might say that you can’t watch it, but seriously, we all know that you don’t care about the ratings system. So, this Halloween, grab your best friend (or your girl/boyfriend) and test your abilities to be the horror master!

Writing a review

When you write a review, you have several approaches you can take:

1. short-form reviews - this is a good approach to take if you are trying to cover as many things as possible in one article. (doing an article on all of the films coming out or the latest K-pop hits would warrant the short-form review treatment.)

2. long-form reviews - if you want to do an extended commentary on whether a work is worth checking out or not, this is the form you should take.

3. analyses - these aren't reviews in the strictest sense of the word because they're not a discussion of quality; this is more of a look at the themes/implications that a work of art would carry.

All of these are useful formats to know, and it's likely you will have to try all of these as you cover different mediums of art. Don't worry, though; once you get the basics down, writing a good review isn't too tough.

SHORT-FORM REVIEWS
If you're a fan of American TV, there's a chance you'll have seen an article like this one covering all of the new shows debuting. Now, when there are something around thirty new shows premiering at the same time, there's no way you can afford to write a full article for each and every one of them. In this case, you try to skim over the premise of each and give a brief opinion on all of them in order to cover more ground. This is the objective of a short-form review: to give an insight using as few words as possible.

Now, the good news is that you will never have to do anything as huge as that article: the majority of short-forms will be for either A) pop music or B) films. (The exception to that sorting is C) new television shows, but that will only take place in September. We'll aim to cover around five to six songs/film in each article of a short-form review series.

If you've been tasked with covering all the hot new summer films that have come out, then here's a place to begin:

1. Do your research. You have to get as much of the important material as possible, so before you even type a single word, ask yourself: what would my friends be interested in? Which works are the most relevant/current? You may be a huge 2NE1 fan, but if SNSD has a new #1 hit out, then you'll want to cover that, no matter how hot you think CL is.

2. Do your research, part 2. (This is the fun part, so relax!) You wouldn't take a GLP quiz on an article without reading that article first. (Well, some people would, but I assume the best of you.) Similarly, don't give an opinion on something if you haven't actually experienced it first! Do you have to cover May's hot new songs? Then take the time to listen through everything and pick a few you want to write about.
Now, the catch is that in some cases, doing this is impossible. You certainly aren't going to watch 10 movies after finals just so you can write a summer movie recap, right? In this case, you might be better off watching trailers and giving impressions based on those. There's always a way.

3. Get your feelings down. When I was in charge of POPWATCH (covering K-Pop) last year, I found that it helped if I just sat down with a blank sheet of paper and jotted down every single thought I had while I was listening. People read reviews because they want to know if what YOU feel is worth feeling for them; recording those feelings goes a long way towards insight.

When writing a review, try some of these things!

-Provide background information. Not everybody will know what you're talking about when you jump right into reviewing, so make sure you provide the context for each work. Talking about how that work fits into the scope of an artist is always a good idea.

-Focus on the main attribute of the work(s) you're covering. Short-form reviews are fairly broad; you gotta get the main idea across as quickly as possible. Reducing a work to its most prominent characteristic and then building other insights around that one often gets this done. Pound it in once again at the end for extra effect.

-Mix your opinion in with the facts. The lack of an actual opinion is often a problem in short-form reviews. Remember: you're not recapping or summarizing a work, you're providing an opinion on it. This is the difference between "Transformers is a movie about car robots who get peed on by dogs. It's fun and stuff. Bagels." and "Transformers is a monster of an action movie, with exquisite set-pieces, fiery explosions, and an Oscar-worthy performance from Megan Fox."

(Bending over a car trunk so your booty sticks out is hardly acting, but for the sake of that example let's just hypothesize that Megan Fox can, in fact, act.)

Here's a short-form review I did for SNSD's The Boys last year; see if you can spot some of the techniques I mentioned earlier.

SNSD – The Boys
For a group with such a lively personality, SNSD’s music has always been quite minimalistic, all the more better to pound their massive hooks even deeper into the earphones of fans everywhere. While “Oh!” and “Hoot” offset their sparse compositions with cheery pep, though, “The Boys” forgoes this attitude completely. At times it almost seems to revel in audio fascism, subsisting only on a diet of glitchy, spaced-out beats and distorted, robotic voices. Don’t be fooled, though: despite its barren terrain, the track stealthily builds until all of the nuts and bolts come together in calculated harmony. To sum up, like all SNSD tracks, it’s about boys, it’s loud, it’s pretty low on brains, and it’s going to steamroll every other song in Korea for the foreseeable future. (B)

If you want more ideas for short-term reviews, this website is a good place to start.

LONG FORM REVIEWS/ANALYSIS
Short-form is great for some things, but sometimes reviewing requires a deeper level of understanding. You might want to talk about that album that everyone's been talking about for the part two months, or that book you think deserves more attention, or that film that you find particularly interesting for whatever reason. And if you really want to make a point, "it's clever and funny and good, bye" isn't going to cut it.

Welcome to...(evil voice) the art of the LONG-FORM REVIEW! BWAHAHAHA!

You may be confused at the combination title up there, but quite honestly, writing long-form reviews is quite similar to writing an analysis piece. The objectives are different, but you'll use a lot of the same methods to get both places.

Things to think about:

1. Figure out your thesis. Yes, I'm serious: think of a thesis. A review is basically an opinion, and if you have no idea what your own opinion is, then how will anybody else?

In the case of a review, what makes that work good/bad/worthwhile/worthless, and why?
In the case of an analysis, what is this work trying to say/how does it fit into a bigger social or cultural picture?

2. Break that work down. A work of art never hinges on just one aspect. A film is not just an acting showcase: it's a script, it's visuals, it's a story, and it's a performance. An album is not just a voice: it's that voice, plus the songwriting, plus the lyrics, plus the production. Scrutinize each aspect and figure out how it fits in.

3. Look at the good and the bad--and back both up. Much like how hearing about how great/awful that movie/singer/TV show is and how everybody loves/hates it and how you have to watch/boycott it TODAY can get annoying, overly effusive praise--or criticism--can actually make you look less credible. It's perfectly fine to love or hate something, but just make sure that you can support those claims.

This is where both Steps 1 and 2 come into play: you go back to your point-of-view, and you show all of the evidence that supports that point.

Compare these two blurbs:
"Lea Michele is such a good actor [that's cool you think that, but what defines a good actor?], and boy can she sing. [I haven't heard her, can you include a YouTube link in your article next time?]"
"Lea Michele perfectly captures the struggle between the child she is and the adult she wants to be [why Lea Michele is good], particularly in a heartbreaking confrontation with rival Quinn. [evidence--a scene in which she displayed that attribute]"

4. Begin and end with the big picture. Once again, writing a long-form or an analysis is like writing an essay--it begins with the point of view, you justify it by breaking your topic down, and you end by reminding your audience why that matters. If you can do that, then you can write a badass review.

Here is one of my favorite reviews/analysis pieces of all time, if you're hungry for a good example.

Congrats on making it to the end of this how-to. Now go and put some snotty artists in their place.

-Moses Kim