A kung fu fighter in a disco

"Today my body is acting strange, as if it doesn't belong to me." Returning to the locked ward, we present IU's new video, "The Story Only I Didn't Know":



(If you don't see English subtitles, click through to YouTube and then on the lower right click CC.)

The major aesthetic question is can even a singer as sensitive as IU get me to like ballads, the answer here being, "Well, she did this time, but she doesn't always."

The lyrics are basically, You were leaving for good, you never actually felt love, but I was the last to know. Or as the Zombies might have said, Well, no one told me about him, the way he lied. The video, however, surrounds the track in a whole psych-ward story, bathed in numbed-out, walking-dead white. So the shattering of what was probably a brief affair is a mental shattering as well, love leading to pathology, or love itself a form of insanity - 'cept just because they're in an asylum doesn't mean the video is presenting this extreme breakdown as anything but the way things are, a hyperbolic expression of how it feels, and no sense that love shouldn't be this devastating thing, or that maybe such devastation isn't love.

Dialogue at the end:

"Your father passed away, right?" "He will come back. Everyone thinks he is my dad. But that person... is not my dad," leading some YouTube commenters to think the video's adding an incest and abuse theme, or a stepdad theme, or both. But a simpler interpretation would just be that the doctor is trying to link up the young woman's trauma with the recent loss of her dad, whereas the woman's got a different man on her mind, loss piling upon loss.

Conveniently, today in America this vid is introduced by an ad for Source Code, a flick about a military man whose mind crosses over into another man's body.

Beautiful song.

( You must look like someone I once knew )

Nothing problematic about this one, at least for me, except to wonder why sullen passion is captivating in this video when I wouldn't find it sexy in real life. Ga-In is gorgeous, of course, with her chiseled, chilled prettiness. Narsha's made up as her twin, and the fierceness between them is stronger than anything they might feel for the guy.

Even though I've watched the thing about twenty times, the ending still holds me: Ga-In with her smirking malevolence, her look saying, "Oh, you're going to kiss me too? Yes. My animal power." And then the focus on Narsha, smooth and blank, way more deadly. I'm assuming Ga-In doesn't realize it's a kiss of death.



Any thoughts regarding:

--The picture on the wall (seems to depict the 18th century, a hat, a parlor? a sitting room? a boudoir?)
--The shiny modern apartment in muted tones (as a place to have sex?)
--The dog? Someone walks a dog down the hallway.

The director, Hwang Su-a, fades her shots in and out at the start, giving us a lot of information but making the scene feel indolent and ominous, despite the fast cuts. Then, as the electrocution device is prepared, the cuts get sharper, and we click into the song.

Rihanna, call your manager.

Here's some stomping r&b that's intensified rather than compromised by the four-four and the Autotune, singers as strong as the beat. And I get that the performers may potentially be seizing the derogatory "Piggy" and turning it around, making it their own. My main problem with the vid is that, if the point is that fat can be sexy, then the singers should be allowed to really shake their stuff and show some skin.



At the pizza chompin' start, the vid's trying to have its cake etc. and eat it too, uplift the Dolls and make fun of them at the same time. That's what I feel about the name "Piggy Dolls" as well. I don't want to prejudge how audiences will take this, of course. Think it's good that these women are out there. YouTube commenters are trying to position the Piggies as "real" in comparison to other idols, which is problematic in its own way. I guess I think this is all too defensive, but we'll see.

Also, though the arrangement and the performance are strong, the song's not all that special, doesn't quite hook or grab, is too anonymous.

(Since I don't understand Korean, I don't know if or how the lyrics fit into this.)

This week we present a trio of leggy model types in their late teens/early twenties dressing like kiddie toys in a kiddie picture book. It looks incongruous and eerie to me. As Mat says, "It's odd, because they almost have a supermodel look to them with their long legs, and it just seems grotesque to put them in cheap girly Halloween costumes." I think you get a lot of this in Korea; I don't have any insights. Orange Caramel are a sub-unit of the fierce After School, so perhaps this is a chance at another identity (or maybe it's a way to wall off this side of their characters so the rest of After School - mostly mid to late twenties, and supposedly inspired by the Pussycat Dolls' eroticism, though I don't necessarily see that - aren't contaminated by the little-doll stuff).

Orange Caramel "아잉♡"


For further reading, see petronia on twee versus burikko.

(Orange Caramel also do a nice version of M2M's "The Day You Went Away," which it turns out has been covered a whole shitload of times in Asia.)

EDIT: Of course, just because something might strike us (in our ignorance) as grotesque doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with it, or anything problematic. Or the problem might only be ours, that we don't understand what's going on. But women acting girlie can raise a red flag. That is, do women in that world generally have a choice not to act girlie? What are the consequences for those who don't act girlie?