Why is the "feminist music" of the K-Pop girl group full of paradox?

Author | Ding Qianwen Edit | Fan Zhihui

Entering the wave of K-Pop's fourth-generation (the fifth generation of mainland algorithms) idols, women-related social issues have become the "muse" beloved by Korean entertainment idols.

With Billboard's new BIllboard 200 album chart ranking released on May 30, the popular K-Pop girl group (G) I-DLE broke the highest record on the list with its new album "I FEEL", ranking 41st. But what followed was the title song "Queencard" that generated a certain gray controversy in the results of fans helping to rise to popularity.

The focus of the controversy is the production concept of the song, which revolves around the highly discussed feminist topic of appearance anxiety and "accepting the true self", but because the lyrics depict a lot of views on "beauty", especially the lyrics of "Look so cool look so sexy like Kim Kardashian", it is generally regarded as a "tribute" to Kim Kardashian, a major plastic surgery owner and anti-feminist controversy.

However, whenever the K-Pop market touches on the theme of "feminism", or more bluntly, it can be regarded as the subdivision of "feminist music", it has never escaped a certain sense of paradox.

Let's feminist music

It is obvious that the new generation of K-Pop girl groups around feminism has been extremely successful, and many girl groups have already enjoyed the gender dividends brought by feminist themes.

The "feminist music" featured by these idol girl groups can basically be divided into two interpretations of the themes of "female power" and "female love", and the girl groups have also taken advantage of this to firmly occupy the top of the K-Pop local list.

For example, ITZY started from "Dalla Dalla" in the early days of its debut, with an independent self and dreams as a group concept; The core concept of LE SSERAFIM's "fearless" is to link women to ambition, and his latest work "UNFORGIVEN" is still in the top five of South Korea's Melon Day list; Another of his works, "Eve, Psyche and Madame Bluebeard", further shouts that "break the taboo, the rules are made by the girl".

In contrast, (G)I-DLE explores women's love from a universal perspective with the trilogy of "Tomboy", "Nxde" and the new "Queencard", which is still winning the Melon daily chart so far; After the "narcissistic trilogy" of "ELEVEN", "Love Dive" and "After Like", IVE continued to focus on conveying the sense of confidence in showing "self-love". Its "I AM", released in April, broke records repeatedly, ranking first place on major Korean music source lists for more than 35 days, and became the most vocal song in South Korea's offline KTV (statistics as of May 23).

To a certain extent, these representative new generation of girl groups, because of the focus on feminism, the gender proportion of their fans is gradually dominated by female audiences, and the law of "those who win female fans wins the world" that was more obvious in the past in boy groups, especially in terms of album purchasing power, is also tilting towards the field of girl groups. For example, according to the album purchase data of girl groups on Circle, female fans such as (G)I-DLE, IVE, aespa and other female fans account for more than 60%, and set a million-dollar sales record no less than that of boy groups.

However, this feminist music trend, which can bring the blessing of the "gospel", has not only emerged in recent years. In the course of K-Pop's history, feminism and feminist topics have always been a kind of use element around musical works, and even compared to today's slightly subtle lyrics, the early days were full of fierce rebellion.

For example, the landmark BoA masterpiece "Girls On Top" released in 2005 with K-Pop feminist music made a strong criticism of male superiority, the unfairness of male thinking, and the deep-rooted gender discrimination in Korean society; Miss A's 2012 book "I Don't Need A Man" is more blunt in encouraging women to live for themselves, promoting the idea that "independent women live best". Interestingly, it is precisely because of the overly blunt encouragement of women to be independent and not to rely on men to live, Miss A's few male fans have been left since then.

Of course, some K-Pop music works that do not intuitively mention women-related issues are still widely regarded as representatives of "umbrella" with female consciousness because of their meaning. For example, Girls' Generation's debut song "The World Reunited" released in 2007 was originally intended to convey to modern people the power of hope and encouragement for the new world, but it was also given the symbol of the "women's battle song" in the Korean women's movement because it became a symbol of the "women's battle song" in the Korean women's movement to abolish the crime of abortion and the "sister is coming" movement of Ewha Womans University.

It is worth noting that most of the above K-Pop feminist music works with representative significance of the times are mostly written by male producers, such as ITZY and Miss A's works are written by producer Park Jin-young (JYP), and the epoch-making "Girls On Top" is written by SM producer Yu Yongzhen who has a strong female competition atmosphere today, and there are few female producers who are responsible for the main production of such music works like Tian Xiaojuan, the captain and producer of the girl group (G)I-DLE team.

It can be said that male producers dominate the production of some K-Pop feminist music, fundamentally because of feminism, feminism and other related issues, like other social issues, are more regarded as commodity elements in popular culture that can help artists open up their popularity and reputation. Therefore, in the feminist music system of K-Pop, it is not surprising that male producers have become the main perspective of singing women and occupy a position that cannot be ignored.

Similarly, some boy group idol music has also appeared a short-lived trend of speaking out for women's issues, which in which they appeal for gender parity from a male perspective, or praise women's social contributions and existential value, etc., more out of emotional provision to provide encouragement and comfort.

For example, BTS produced and released "21st Century Girls" in 2017, which praises the strength of women and the courage to break the glass ceiling, without depreciating themselves. And this work has also become a "measuring ruler" used by many K-Pop audiences to satirize and contrast K-Pop male artists involved in negative content such as sex scandals and misogyny.

It is not difficult to see that whether it is a girl group or a boy group, the music concept of cutting into "women" will attract the attention of female audiences to a certain extent, and even trigger a certain degree of empathy and enhance fan stickiness. In the final analysis, the feminist dividend, wherever it is placed, is a business that will not lose money.

However, as women's rights become the wealth code of K-Pop, K-Pop feminist music with the blessing of this popular item will inevitably face the more rigorous scrutiny standards of female audiences under the awakening of women's consciousness. Even if (G)I-DLE, which "purified" the existence of indecent information on Korean search sites because of the previous song "Nxde", which talked about "true self" in nudity, it still caused criticism from some netizens for its one-sided feminist music on "Queencard".

Why is the idol's "feminist music" full of paradox?

The most intuitive reason why the feminist music works of K-Pop idols are full of paradoxes of polarized evaluation is that idols themselves are products of gaze culture, and girl group idols are reinforced with the shackles of male gaze. This is also at odds with the feminist demand to break the gaze and have autonomy.

It is precisely for this reason that the overcommoditization contradiction in K-Pop idols has become a point of controversy, and this is also the result of the effective operation of the K-Pop idol system.

In essence, idols are professions that sell dreams, concepts, youth, spiritual power, and even have a certain sexual fantasy color. The characteristics of the idol itself will also be set as a selling point to be amplified after being processed by the brokerage company, and used as a special symbol to visualize the definition to improve its recognition.

But it also reflects from the side that the value of K-Pop idols is destined to be generated after commoditizing the self, which means that it is destined to be unable to truly escape the so-called worldly scrutiny. Such as white and thin standards, service refinement, beauty service, ambiguity in the "absolute domain" of short skirts, indecent suggestive dances of physical nudity, etc., are all rules of the game that idols must abide by, so shouting "anti-appearance anxiety" and "accepting real appearance" from idols and other goals that women in the public field today advocate must have a strong sense of separation.

For example, (G)I-DLE'S "QUEENCARD" talks about women's bodies and appearances, while shouting to women "enjoy confidence no matter what kind of body", the other side members have already managed all aspects of appearance. Tian Xiaojuan, who was pointed out for her poor appearance, could not do without platform heels, and members such as Song Yuqi and Cao Weijuan showed extremely thin bodies, etc., and the ultimate image management of such idols was also opposed to the musical content, making this women-related musical work difficult to convince.

Some fans who were disappointed with this work pointed out that "overly focusing on appearance anxiety in the theme of women's rights to discuss whether it is beautiful or not is actually a very superficial pattern." And this is why, at present, it is difficult to really find representative symbols among K-Pop idols that represent the Korean feminist movement and feminist music culture, but they only stay at the level of moderation.

In other words, K-Pop idol girl groups and even the so-called "feminist music" are essentially capital commodities under the influence of socio-cultural and market capital interaction, pointing to the purpose of commercial popularity from the beginning of their creation.

Whether it is the continuous popularity of Girl Crush or Teen Crush and other styles, K-Pop girl groups gradually abandon the pure girly style and sexy style that target the male audience. This abandonment is also due to the fact that it has not separated from the benchmark of serving the masses, but in the context of following the changes in the mainstream consciousness of society, in order to attract the fan economy, especially female fans as the main force of fan consumption. FOR EXAMPLE, THE MUSIC WORKS OF ITZY AND LE SSERAFIM IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THEIR DEBUT MAINLY RESONATED WITH FEMALE AUDIENCES, AND PUT THE DEPICTION OF WOMEN'S SPIRITUAL WORLD IN THEIR BASIC POSITION.

However, whether the music works are elegant and gorgeous, millennial retro music style, or constantly in line with European and American style of songwriting, the fatal thing is that K-Pop feminist music is almost inseparable from the conservative tendency in universal values, and the musical concept is still inseparable from the "female voice" works that shout love and love anxiety, and even still stay in the self-affirmation based on becoming a "queen" after bidding farewell to "scumbags", and this cannot be consistent with the concept of self-love advocated by Korean women.

Therefore, the two songs "In The Morning" and "LOCO" in the later period of ITZY were sluggish compared with the early musical works that held the banner of independent women, and it was not until "SNEAKERS" returned to the mainstream topic of women "independence". Similarly, the (G)I-DLE feminist trilogy and IVE's "narcissistic trilogy" are still accompanied by a certain pseudo-feminist and pseudo-feminist controversy, which is not without contradiction with the musical concept that some female audiences prefer to see depicting abstract content such as dreams, ambitions, self and even social topics.

Of course, it is undeniable that this shift has helped to amplify the focus on women in the field of popular culture and increase the possibility of women's awakening under its influence. However, as the writer Beauvoir said in "The Second Sex", "the interests of bourgeois women and proletarian women are not consistent", and the K-Pop idol feminist music based on the commercial establishment is also different from the group goals of feminists and feminists, and is more one-sided in formulating women's rights and music creation to attract audiences.

Therefore, the "invasion" of women's issues by capital is actually the musical alienation of idol women.

Just as Girls' Generation's 2011 release "The Boys" was once considered a musical work that speaks for women because of its strong style and female lyrics, in fact, the theme of the song is to encourage men to "stand up" from a girl's perspective.

It is difficult to say whether this kind of free thinking of the K-Pop idol industry will make the "feminist music" it produces a product of copying social ideology, but it is certain that these feminist music of K-Pop may still have a certain distance to become the "feminist spirit model" in the mouths of some fans.

In a sense, music is a humanistic art with the unique spirit of the times, reflecting the cultural level of the current society, and this over-commercialization behavior may also solidify feminism and feminism into an additional element that can be exchanged for dividends, rather than the music content that really touches the resonance of thought, which may also make K-Pop go to a certain extreme.

epilogue

However, this does not mean that K-Pop idols should be deprived of the right to use feminism as a musical concept.

In the 80s of last century, it was also the era when Hong Kong music deeply influenced the Korean music scene, Anita Mui did not shy away from talking about works such as "Bad Girl", which has independent female desire, and "Lady", which satirizes patriarchal culture, and has also cast a highly controversial but successful bomb in the global music scene. The attitude of those in high positions to examine patriarchal culture in her music is deeply "offended" by a large number of male fans. Interestingly, even gay men do not universally recognize their music, and female fans make up an overwhelming proportion of Anita Mui's fan base.

Lyricist Li Zhanpeng once mentioned that this was determined by changes in social and cultural needs, "In Hong Kong at that time, women entered the workplace and began to become independent, and there were already many voices in the society fighting for women's rights and interests. At the same time, the popularity of more traditional female images in film and television works has declined, and audiences have turned to women they can identify with and reflect social trends to follow. ”

In the same way, the "feminist music" of K-Pop idols can have a certain degree of repercussions and have corresponding positive significance. It is precisely because of the active development of the feminist movement and the large-scale awakening of Korean women's consciousness in the Korean social environment that popular culture is also exploring more popular content under the premise of adapting to the trend.

On the other hand, the gradual increase in the sense of existence and voice of female fans has also made the idol operation strategy pay more attention to the thinking and behavior of this group, even if it is limited to commerciality, it is inevitable to create idols based on the scrutiny of female fans. To a certain extent, the high-frequency emergence and success of K-Pop feminist music is also reconstructing the K-Pop market system and giving fans room for empathy.

It should only be noted that whether to use "feminist music" to expand market reputation, or to really speak for women from the perspective of public figures, this still requires K-Pop idols to work hard and listeners to carefully discern.

After all, in the context of Eastern society influenced by traditional culture, especially Confucian culture, K-Pop singing women is actually more like a barometer reflecting social and cultural changes, but this moment falls on the "women's uprising" of counterculture.

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