Someone said to me on Formspring that they noticed I’ve been reblogging a lot of Exo on Tumblr, and if that means I’m “back” into K-pop. I guess you can say that based on my K-pop activity as of late. I started watching dramas religiously mid-2009-ish onwards and while I still knew what happened to groups, I didn’t follow anyone intensely and then my energy for K-pop seriously took a hit in 2010 when 1) the dramas got even better and 2) DBSK split.
It’s May and maybe there will be an upswing of things in the second part of the year, but 2012 has been extremely disappointing in terms of drama quality and output. This seems to be the year of cable, which offers a healthy number of alternatives, but that’s not enough to take away the extremely bad taste that MBC, KBS, and SBS have left in my mouth thus far. It’s drama after drama of mediocrity and sometimes it’s even dipping into feces territory -_-
So there are a ton of dramas in the horizon that are in the midst of production, or at the very least, have casts and I thought I’d weigh in on what I think of them before they premiere.
…And guess what? The rest of 2012 ain’t looking too hot either. With that little to work with, reblogging awkward screencaps of half-blinking Kris and Hangeng occupying the same space, gifs of Kyungsoo choking on water, etc. seem necessary.
COME ON DRAMA GODS, THROW ME A BONE HERE.
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(via Harper’s Bazaar Korea)
I hope it’s only in my imagination that Kim Soo-hyun looks like a cocky prick in all his photos since Moon/Sun wrapped. Sigh.
I realize I’m really bad about wrapping up opinion-caps for dramas I watch. I always lose steam halfway into it, so I’m just going to wrap up a drama I never got around to doing, and briefly give an overview of dramas I’m currently watching but haven’t felt the urge to fully dedicate posts to.
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This post is a long time coming, and probably has been in the making since Super Junior first started promoting in China.
Hallyuism at this stage in the game is all about the money. Korea is a place where trends catch on in a millisecond, and people have caught onto the fact that K-pop can make money, and a lot of money at that. So I get it: it’s a cultural product worthy of pride, and it’s an important national export.
The thing that drives me nuts is the extent to which the people exporting their pop and their business in pop have so little consideration for the cultures and countries that they want to export to. I’m not going to call the kettle black, because I understand that I, as an American, come from a country that is notorious for disregarding the cultures and sensibilities of other countries when it comes to forcing our media and culture onto others.
But I obviously have a horse in this particular race, which is why I feel the need to call K-pop out on this. I work and deal with K-pop, and as a non-Korean observer of K-pop, seeing things happen in K-pop that affect me on some level trigger certain reflexes and emotions. At a moment when K-pop is being so highly self-lauded and whose output is being so aggressively marketed outside of Korea, it disgusts me that it will on the one hand pay so much lip service to the markets and countries it’s trying to pursue, and then on the other hand exploit the shit out of it while maintaining fake deference.
And this rant will be primarily about inklings of things I hated when I watched Super Junior M promote, and now stirring me once again with Exo.
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Well, this ended up being an easy write -_- Being compared to SM and their Exo teaser deluge was an analogy so shameful that it brought you the final edits to this post, something I’ve struggled to write for two months. I don’t even know why it was that hard to write, but finally finishing feels like a writing weight has been lifted off my shoulders…
Out of 100 points, I would give Tree With Deep Roots a 90, which is the highest I’ve ever rated a drama. I’m such a Tiger Mom.
Tree isn’t perfect — in fact, there are some huge glaring flaws about it too — but it was nothing short of an explosion as a drama. It really stirred me as a history student and gave me more food for the brain than any other drama has. More importantly, it gave me a craving to learn more, and an obsessiveness in using what I learn to apply to other realms of Asian culture, which I think is the ultimate mark of successful storytelling.
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