marxist snippet of thesis: legitimization of participation

"gangnam style" is such old news, but since psy is still around in the media with his new song, "gentleman," i suppose my interest in the first is still relevant.

one of the issues that i spend a length of time discussing in my thesis are the terms of access into "stardom."

global success = success in the "west" = success/acceptance by american hollywood

these are the eurocentric standards of the global music industry, the u.s. or u.k. billboard charts being THE goal, whereas other regional (korean, mexican, polish) billboard charts are deemed inferior.
both hollywood and those outside of it perpetuate these standards.
occidentalism exhibit A: the korean pop industry. poorly mimicked american pop from decades prior, selling plastic sex objects moving mechanically in sync, etc, etc.

how does one gain acceptance by an industry run by white men?

1. conformity to their ideas of accepted representation.
for asian men, this usually means a self-deprecating asexual clown, a.k.a. not sexy or attractive or serious whatsoever, since any of those would pose as a threat to the careful set up of brad pitt being the hot guy.

2. legitimization by insiders.
in hollywood at large, this means, again, white men, or powerful ladies (by pop cultural standards), or powerful rappers. with psy, this has been done through tweets by scooter braun (justin bieber's manager), t-pain, britney spears, etc.
even just the acknowledgment of his existence by western media grants him this legitimacy, such as psy's appearances on the ellen degeneres show, cnn, chelsea lately, etc.
hip-hop is different, but similar. it's not run by white men, but if you're asian, you still have to prove your own worth. same with women.
in the case of hip-hop, psy was not granted legitimacy.

here is an excerpt on this section about legitimate participation (particularly in hip-hop):

Psy’s physical appearance may not conform to the reductively homogenous standard of beauty applied to Korean pop artists, but his American education—in part at a musical institution—must have contributed to his acceptance by his record label and mainstream audiences. Similarly telling is the greater magnitude of respect he has earned from Koreans after having “made it” on a “global scale” with his concerts with Madonna and in Times Square during New Year’s Eve. Innumerable blog posts congratulated Psy for the song’s success and hosts of Psy’s Korean television appearances frequently referred to Psy as a “world star” with a mix of reverence and envy. Various Korean media reports have also lauded “Gangnam Style” for drawing greater interest to the nation and its culture. This is the reproduction and perpetuation of Eurocentrism through consent on a global scale. If we accept Louis Althusser’s words that “ideology hails or interpellates individuals as subjects,” the construction of the subject becomes complete—and the ideology successfully reproduced—when the individual—the Asian Other—affirms mutual participation. Koreans adhere to standards that always deem them second best, yet wonder why their music fails to receive attention from Western audiences.

The international embrace of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” in part legitimatizes the “universality” of Hollywood’s standards, as exemplified by its musical composition: remove the Korean lyrics, and it is nearly indistinguishable from popular European or American electro-hip-hop (think LMFAO, whose music in the past years had been a standard in nightclubs). Yet Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has thwarted these measured filters of Korean marketers and gained popularity through YouTube, a quasi-democratic, ostensibly unmediated platform.

However, YouTube, too, operates on social and technological algorithms: the choices its users make depend on the patterns of their previous viewing history (accepting or rejecting YouTube’s “recommendations”), as well as their larger socio-political and cultural contexts. The notion that Psy’s music video for “Gangnam Style” could have been viewed by any YouTube user anywhere in the world is merely a theoretical one. The video circulated mostly among Korean (and Korean American, Korean Australian, etc.) users upon its release. It spread rapidly outside of this circle only once it somehow came to the attention of, then was shared by, an American celebrity on Twitter. It is reported that rapper T-Pain was the first Western celebrity to share the video with the comment, “words cannot describe how amazing this video is.” This was followed by Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, who asked “HOW DID I NOT SIGN THIS GUY!?!??!” as well as Katy Perry and Britney Spears, who each have more than 23 million followers. These celebrities’ Tweets dispersed the video to millions of users, legitimizing it as worthy of attention.

Western media’s treatment of Psy’s global rise follows a predictable Cinderella story arc: before having been “discovered” by an American audience, he was a non-entity, his decade-long career and success in Korea of little importance. This is the “muteness imposed on the Orient as object” of which Said speaks: “What was neither observed by Europe nor documented by it was therefore ‘lost’ until, at some later date, it too could be incorporated by the new sciences of anthropology, political economics, and linguistics.” This, of course, is not restricted to Psy or those outside of the American domestic sphere. Only once Hollywood—as reigning ideological producer—names it does any object assume form.

Hip-hop began as a subcultural movement, giving voice to a narrative outside of the dominant language of mainstream American pop culture (until it was inevitably swallowed up by that same mainstream). Especially during the height of hip-hop’s popularity in the 1990s, many excluded from the dominant culture gravitated toward the perceived freedom of expressive possibilities provided by this alternative platform. Hip-hop presents itself as a more democratic culture, with acceptance based on pure merit. Freestyle rap battles, an essential element of hip-hop, serve as the tests: individuals compete with one another before an audience, testing their verbal prowess through improvisation. The winner gains respect and acceptance through the crowd’s consensus.

Yet hip-hop erects a parallel elitism. As an alternative culture, the genre frequently sets itself in opposition to white mainstream culture. The oppositional tendencies of the movement become distorted in some contexts as a black-white dichotomy. Blackness becomes the center of hip-hop’s power structure.

            The Chinese American rapper Jin gained initial acceptance into mainstream hip-hop through on his own merit. Jin appeared before a national audience in 2002, when he won the “Freestyle Fridays” rap battles on BET’s show 106 & Park for seven weeks in a row. His consecutive wins demonstrated his worthiness before the hip-hop community, and, in 2004, he became the first Asian rapper to release a solo album under a major record label in the United States. The Rest is History reached its peak at spot number twelve on the U.S. Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

In order to market Jin to a wider mainstream audience, Ruff Ryders, his record label, needed to legitimize the Asian presence in a culture dominated by African Americans and Hispanics. Jin went through typical legitimatizing routines, appearing in other Ruff Ryders videos while fellow artists appeared in his. And then he went further, repeatedly addressing his own Asianness in his songs as a preemptive tactic (he released “Learn Chinese” as his first single) and emphasizing his affiliation with the highly regarded Ruff Ryders by releasing a song explicitly titled “I’m a Ruff Ryder.”

            Jin paved the way for other Asian rappers to enter the national scene, but even the more recent success of Far East Movement in 2010 was met with mixed attitudes about the group’s Asianness. All of its members always wore sunglasses at the beginning of their mainstream debut—in their music videos, live performances, and other media appearances. Some fans’ glimpsing the eyes behind the glasses offered predictably shocked responses—“They’re Asian?!” Many Asian followers criticized the sunglasses as a device to “hide their eyes because they’re ashamed [of their race],” which some admitted may be a disadvantage to the group’s career. Far East Movement’s more mainstream pop electro-club sounds, however, kept at bay protective antagonisms from hip-hop’s traditionalists.

Psy’s “Gangnam Style”—with similar mainstream dance sounds—followed the immense popularity of Far East Movement’s single, “Like a G6.” By the time Psy’s video appeared, it was a little less strange to see an Asian music entertainer who did not explicitly formulate his American presence around his Asianness. But remember that Psy’s visual humor was the driver, not the musicality of the sounds. If being granted visibility in Hollywood requires participation on its terms, Psy’s access indicates that the manner in which the video portrays Psy agrees (at least to some degree) with an image of an Asian man deemed acceptable by Hollywood.