Tell Lisa about her participation in the Crazy Horse show at one time: Can Dance Rely on Her to Improve?

Entertainment 丨Issue 14

Wen 丨 Xu Yunze

Editor丨Ellow

• 1

  The origin, nature, and main audience of the Crazy Horse show all determine that its display of the female body is by no means a beautiful and confident display of women's spontaneous consciousness, and its essence of catering to men has not changed. The participation of the top female idol, Lisa, is also difficult to achieve the liberation of "striptease" from the taboo and erotic meaning condensed by men and return to the hands of women themselves.

• 2

  Lisa is ultimately an idol who is pushed out through the Korean star-making market and has to pay for fans. The creation and overthrow of gods in the idol world have happened repeatedly in this generation. Perhaps the trend view of the young free new woman she symbolizes has always been an illusion in the idol industry.

• 3

  Lisa's participation in the "Crazy Horse Show" in addition to the controversy at the factual level, also triggered widespread rumor dissemination and public opinion tearing. In the final analysis, this issue integrates gender, ethnicity, capital, and the collision of old and new values, which makes the incident quickly ferment into a hot topic.

In the past few days, Lisa, one of the members of South Korea's top girl group BLACKPINK, participated in the Crazy Horse show and exploded the whole network around the world. Girl groups, top players in the entertainment industry, gender issues, ethnic issues, edge rubbing / erotica / striptease and other words, are all blockbuster public opinion codes, superimposed together, whether it is a fan of BLACKPINK or Lisa herself, whether it is to the audience of Korean entertainment or girl group, regardless of whether you have previously understood the Crazy Horse show, a French dance club and its performance form, in this public opinion explosion, you can find a participation angle.

In the midst of the development, fans of BLACKPINK and Lisa collectively expressed dissatisfaction and disappointment, and the sister of the largest station in China took the lead in removing fans overnight on Weibo, and the scolding and camp tearing caused by this on social media also intensified. The official head of the Crazy Horse Show publicly stated that inviting Lisa to join the club performance was "to attract young female audiences" and create a "proud and free stage", which not only did not calm the dispute, but triggered more fierce criticism, and things also pointed to a clearer point, Crazy Horse was accused by netizens of using the guise of women's freedom to cut leeks, PUA and domesticate women, and Lisa herself became a representative of backstabbing women, turning her head to "flattering men" after eating the dividends of female fans, and self-depravity.

Paris, France, Crazy Horse Club/Source: CFP licensed use

Crazy Horse show's power field and striptease labels

One Lisa alone cannot change the status quo of male condensation and stigma

The public's resistance and dissatisfaction with Lisa's participation in the Crazy Horse show stems from the conflict between two layers of cognition, that is, the traditional sense of vulgarity, flattery, male gaze, objectification of the female body, stigmatization of women and other discourses represented by the Crazy Horse show, and the discourse represented by Lisa that women rely on talent and their own efforts to achieve success without attachment to men.

The Crazy Horse show, a traditional Western club with glamorous dance as its core selling point, is known as one of the three major performing arts in Paris, and the Moulin Rouge, which is the same name, is already a venue for erotic and restricted performances. Rumors about this "high-end nightclub" have always had a strong erotic filter, and it is said that the Crazy Horse show has 12 strippers, especially known for showing the naked dance of the human body, initially to serve European upper-class men, and later continue to "expand customers", receiving 150,000 visitors a year, consuming 73,000 bottles of specialty champagne, 500 liters of body lotion, 2,500 pairs of suspender stockings and 300 lipsticks. According to the book of American journalist Elaine & Theorino, the performance process of the Crazy Horse show is extremely provocative, bathtub, wet body, pole dance, only from the name of the program list, full of sexual innuendo, with various forms of female body display to satisfy the desire of male audiences.

In just a few days, the Crazy Horse show that we quickly learned from various channels also has an artistic, high-end, free and open halo in the mouths of some self-media bloggers and fashion industry practitioners. Well-known artists Dalí, Gaultier, and European and American stars Rihanna, Beyoncé, etc. are its fans, the female dancers are dressed in the ultimate luxury Chantal Thomass diamond-encrusted underwear, and the feet are wearing couture CL red heels, and the lighting design is intended to use the female dancer's body as a canvas for the artistic creation of light and shadow. In order to achieve the "artistic effect", the Crazy Horse Show has strict requirements for the body of female dancers, in addition to height and weight, three circumferences and leg length, there is also one of the most intriguing "distance between breasts".

Paris, France, Crazy Horse Club/Source: CFP licensed use

Erotic or artistic, male condensation or women to show their bodies, has also become one of the core controversies of this public opinion. There are comments that Lisa can dance sexy on the stage of the girl group, but should not perform any shows on the Crazy Horse stage, similar to Beyoncé, who recorded her own MV in the Crazy Horse Club venue, but in essence she did not "join" the erotic industry system of the Crazy Horse show. Objectively speaking, the main audience audience of the girl group stage is young women who love kpop, and the Crazy Horse show is a product of the patriarchal society at that time. At the same time, we must acknowledge the fact that to this day, in the field and context represented by the Crazy Horse show, women and female bodies are still objects of objectification, gaze, control and use, and its display of the female body is still not a beautiful and confident display of women's spontaneous consciousness, and its essence of catering to men has not changed.

The director of Crazy Horse once said: The core attraction of the Crazy Horse show's showile performance lies in temptation, but temptation is not frivolous, but a war, and whether you want to lose or win determines whether it is vulgar or artistic. Some supporters also say women dancing to take back the right to express their sex. This statement is indeed deceptive, and he encourages women to go to its field and context, and win an inexplicable war by giving themselves away with the rules they have constructed and established: Come, come and impress us, and wash away the historical stain of pole dancing and striptease with your flesh!

Coachella Music Festival Lisa Hot Dancing / Source: CFP licensed use

In a more open and pluralistic contemporary environment, the "female body" has indeed taken a lot of time and effort from the object being gazed to the subject that can be displayed autonomously and freely. Discourse trends such as "my body is my decision" and "freedom to dress" also liberate the "female body" from the taboo and erotic meaning condensed by men and return it to the hands of women themselves. However, this liberation and transfer cannot simultaneously dissolve the real existence of objectification, control, and use of women that has existed for a long time in history, and that they still stubbornly exist in many fields and contexts today; Nor does it mean that all women's body displays, regardless of the field and context, leap to become spontaneous and conscious, progressive and feminist. From the sexy dance of the girl group to the Crazy Horse show, it represents the core contradiction of our time on the subjectivity and autonomy of the female body, that is, the contradiction between women's efforts to constantly update their body autonomy and the historical baggage of the objectification of women's bodies.

In essence, the erotic meaning of Crazy Horse, the stigmatizing label of striptease, should not and cannot be scrubbed by the feminist, feminist flesh, and female idol like Lisa, who is already in full swing in her own system held up by young new liberal women, does not need to plop into the old world.

Twilight of Idols: Asia's Top Idols "Fall" in the West

How long can the idols leeks still be cut

Compared with domestic fans and the Asia-wide public opinion field, the reaction of the European and American sides is much more flat, and from the perspective of the entertainment industry rather than sociology, Lisa's choice is not surprising, it is simply correct and deserved. For some insiders, the scale of the Crazy Horse show may be more exaggerated and more sworn than the general public thinks is a strip show, but everything is routine in the logic of industrial capital that has not been sociologically examined. Like most entertainment trends and products, Kpop has traveled from the United States, to Japan and South Korea, and then to other Asian markets, including China, and its rise is a popular and pop culture that has never promised to take on any social issues.

In the past three or four years, Kpop's popularity in North America has been soaring, and the market space is also increasing, "reverse" invites Asia's top Kpop girl group members to supplement and stimulate market supply, take the "girls power" express shuffle and reshape fan consumption, and from the perspective of marketing, maximize the use of social media communication energy, actively create contradictions and conflicts to stimulate selling points, this entire chain, in Europe and the United States more sophisticated, more mature, Therefore, in the entertainment industry system, which is more ruthless about the commercialization and price of star artists, there are market observations, business negotiations, and interest exchanges, but there is probably no shadow of so-called values at all.

Crazy Horse invited Lisa, and indeed wrote on his face the ambition of "wanting to attract young female audiences" and absorbing the Asian market. In this anxious and long historical cycle, the once polar "luxury pornography" route of the multipolar entertainment industry is also facing decline, the economic situation cannot support aesthetic luxury, and the awakening of women's consciousness in various industries and fields has broken the erotic narrative. From the Victoria's Secret show to the Crazy Horse show, they all want to transform, want to break through, and want to eat feminist rice, and the best solution seems to be to invite popular young female idol stars, attract global attention, and recreate the "proud and free stage" where young girls pay.

After Lisa officially announced that the Crazy Horse Show caused great controversy, the Crazy Horse Show officially responded

But it's hard for us to say at the moment that all disputes are just wishful thinking on the part of the fans. After all, the space, scale and bargaining power of emerging markets in Asia cannot be underestimated, and much of it comes from the fan economy and the discourse power it forms. Celebrity idols held up by capital have been pushed down and disintegrated by fans, such things have become the norm in the domestic entertainment market, and this feeling of dominating the star path and destiny of idol stars supports the huge fan economy, and also stirs the fan group countless times to produce their own words, to praise, to pursue, to question, to criticize.

In the midst of the boisterous discussion on social media, there is a voice that is very characteristic of the times: no matter how mysterious the internal performance is, the video can be seen streaming online in an hour. In the exploding streaming era, secrets and intrigues have little hiding place like privacy and borders, and it forms a third power outside of traditional capital and public crowds, which both dismantles the former's monopoly and dissolves all serious discussions of the latter. When we put all kinds of talk about women's rights, freedom, and fairness into this event, they all become short videos that go viral on streaming media and no longer have any connotation.

As for Lisa's choice, there may not be so much downward freedom, so much knowing that you can't do it, from embarking on the road of the entertainment industry, training hard every day, to conquering one stage after another. After achieving the top level in Asia, her value system may only have a larger market, more money and more traffic. The deification of stars and idols is done by fans working together. As individuals, they may never intend to be role models, whose light, faith and hope, they consciously cooperate with the popular god-making movement, in exchange for realistic dividends, that is, bear the risk of being disenchanted. The latter redoubles their urgency to exchange benefits, and in a generation that has been making gods, tearing down, and everything has been accelerating, star idols essentially have little choice in the face of a flood of group consciousness or group unconsciousness.

Coachella Music Festival Lisa Hot Dancing / Source: CFP licensed use

Gender + nationality + entertainment industry capital, explosive topic physique

It is not Lisa that tears the public opinion field, but the change of old and new values

Some netizens picked up that Lisa's ticket price for the Crazy Horse show was 250 euros, which was lower than the cheapest ticket in the front row of BLACKPINK's French concert, and this serious self-lowering of the price made most people uncomfortable. There are various speculations about this, the most popular and the most evil include that Lisa is to please her "rich boyfriend" LVHM Group Sangongzi, 3 of the 5 performances are not public, only for the upper class of European elites and rich people, and even Lisa, like many star artists, joined a secret organization that controls the global entertainment and media industry, to perform on the Crazy Horse show, it was she who submitted a "petition" to the organization according to discipline in order to gain greater power and interests.

Rumors are everywhere, to some extent, which shows the degree of paradoxes of this matter, and also shows that the reason why the public's attention to this matter is so high is still inseparable from several classic themes: capital, entertainment industry, conspiracy theories. For example, the rumors of Lisa joining a mysterious organization are very popular, and after careful study, the way the mysterious organization operates and rules on the Internet is indeed almost one by one with the public imagination, the operation and control of the entertainment industry by capital, which is indeed almost one by one: the symbolic creation of star artists, the entertainment products that are constantly instilled, the whole chain and organized operation mode, the exchange ceremony of personality honor and disgrace and commodity value that enterers must go through, and the crowd of people on top of this, great glory, and so on.

The BLACKPINK girl group and her four members, under the blessing of women's brave, generous, confident and beautiful auras, have not been free from all kinds of doubts. The form of Korean entertainment girl group dance itself has been controversial, many classic dance moves have been accused of strong sexual innuendo, team member Jennie participated in HBO's new drama some time ago, but contributed a large-scale hot dance between two white men "sandwich biscuit" style performance, the rest includes members performing paddling, doubtful strength, stylists arrange performance costumes for them, bottoms shorter and more exposed, etc. Lisa has always been recognized as the perfect female idol, extremely gifted, conscientious, and impeccable in her narrative from origin to personal growth, in line with values in every sense of the word. But it is this Lisa, who strangely joins the disgraceful and controversial system of the Crazy Horse show, and has to make this part of the public who believe in rumors once again confirm their own ideas about the power and capital structure of the entertainment industry: First, the idols held by capital are, in the final analysis, subject to the influence of capital; Second, even the top super-idols in Asia can still only assume a passive role in the Western market.

BLACKPINK/Image source: CFP licensed for use at the Coachella Music Festival

Kanzuko Ueno incisively explained erotic capital in her book "Starting at the Limit", pointing out that erotic capital does not have the same cumulative properties as economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital, and erotic capital can not only be obtained through hard work, but also cannot be accumulated; Moreover, its value can only be assessed unilaterally, and the criteria for evaluation are entirely in the hands of the evaluator, that is, the superior party of power; It is doubtful whether the owner of erotic capital (i.e., women) owns it, and calling it capital in this case is just a misleading metaphor for the fact that in the erotic market, "female agency" can absolve male consumers, and in this power game full of money and desire, there is no freedom of choice.

Cardi B, who was once a hit, passively chose to work as a stripper with fast money because she wanted to jump out of the quagmire of life, and after she made money, she also said that she did not recommend girls to "go to the sea", because she knew better than anyone that behind this performance was the exploitation of the powerful superior to the inferior. Ms. Ryomi Suzuki, who talks to Chizuko Ueno, is also a woman involved in the sex industry, and one of her reasons is to become her "object that intelligent mothers cannot understand", and to some extent, it is also a window period for gender issues, superimposed on topics such as generational and parent-child issues, and rushes into contradictory narratives that cannot be traced but are likely to repeat themselves.

Lisa, an Asian female idol who should not lack money, fame, and status, actively participates in the extremely labeled environment of the West to perform - we can have countless perspectives, analytical logic, speech and judge arguments, gender, ethnicity, power and capital, these issues and their symbols, all words show that at present, the past value system has been deconstructed little by little, the new consensus is always suspended in the unknown, and we are in and will be in a historical cycle for a long time, its length and anxiety, testing the cognition and emotions of all people.

Coachella Music Festival Lisa performs pole dancing / Source: CFP licensed use

epilogue

The various public opinions surrounding Lisa and the Crazy Horse show have unveiled the hidden changes in the capital and power structure of the entertainment industry, and for decades, some of this industry has been climbing, some are sinking, some are speculating and seconding, and some are unwilling to be swept into the historical garbage heap. But it is still attracting people to project their emotions, imagination, and their own definition of success and victory in the name of the flashy phantom in the spotlight, drunken gold, or in the name of justice and freedom, and take people's eyes and saliva into their pockets, and move towards the next century.