Demarcations of Success: A rebuttal to TIME MagazineāsĀ āHow BTS Is Taking Over the Worldā
Itās inevitable. When it comes to American coverage on non-American media objects, Said-levels of āotheringā should be anticipated if not expected. Such is the case with Time Magazineās latest piece rightfully showcasing BTS and their accomplishments stateside. The inability to praise one Korean artist without dragging down the reputation of another is baffling. We often donāt do that hereāor at least not to white male artists. Female musicians have been juxtaposed countless times.
But I ask, what does saying āits biggest starsāincluding Rain, Girlsā Generation and Big Bangālargely failed to gain traction in Western marketsā accomplish? What added value does it give to BTS, a group who admires and respects the aforementioned āfailingā groups?
And I ask, what are your qualifiers for success? It canāt be sold out arenas. Big Bang not only sold out their arena shows but managed to carry on despite a hurricane. Big Bang didnāt come to the U.S. to promote themselves, they came to perform for their fans. They succeeded because they, like BTS, have an incredibly invested and loyal fan base. To say Big Bang, who never set their sights on Western expansion, failed does a disservice to the respect and love they wanted to show their international fans. Not to mention that in 2015 they held the largest K-pop arena tour in U.S. history, adding quantitative value to their reception in the United States. Even if that record has been broken, does setting it in the first place mark a failure?
Is it collaborations with Western artists? Because Big Bang has worked with a range including Missy Elliot, Baauer, Skrillex, Diplo, Major Lazer, and Pixie Lott.
It canāt be TIME coverage. Not only has TIME Magazine talked about almost all of the aforementioned artists, Rain spent two consecutive years topping their TIME 100 poll.
So is it press coverage? Rain has been featured in an incredibly long, and hilarious, Stephen Colbert sketch (also covered by Time Magazine). Big Bang have graced a number of local news outlets. And Girlsā Generation really made the whole āK-pop on late nightā moment happen when they appeared on David Letterman.
Oh letās also talk about how Rain made his mark as a Hollywood movie star.
If these are the āfailuresā then who gets to decide success? Because if success is merely āeverything BTS has done,ā then why are we talking about others in the first place?
Rain, Big Bang, and Girlsā Generation fought through the dominance of American pop culture with nothing but 360p YouTube videos and a collective of fans who took to the streets, rather than to their tweets, to promote them. Theirs were the years of flash mobs. While online forums and fan-focused sites existed, it was the efforts of their fansā physical actions in creating petitions and hosting their own in-person events that proved K-popās value and high demand in Western countries. And by no means is this to discount BTSā smart social media strategy or the unity of their fans but if we cannot acknowledge that the power social media and the internet has changed dramatically within the last decade then we have no business being in media.
At what point can we step away from such latent racism and misogyny (because letās face it, Korean girl groups have been trying to the U.S. far longer than any boy and itās not just lack of talent holding them back) and talk about a groupās accomplishments and their successes without dragging the rest of the country they come from.
At what point can we actually show respect to BTS, the artists they grew up on, and the country they love and call home. These boys would never stand on a stage and proclaim āWe have succeeded where all other Korean artists have failedā so why are we forcing them into a narrative of competition? BTS and Big Bang have never stood in opposition to one another, they donāt need to start now simply because American news writers canāt fathom the idea that multiple artists from other countries are successful.
In fact there are more ways to make non-Western media objects palatable for Western consumers that does not include establishing them in opposition to one another. What weāre experiencing now is an effort to handle the cognitive dissonance that something non-Western, and explicitly not from the United States, can be successful using a modern version of the same theology Edward Said outlined in Orientalism. Rather than continuing the old narrative of the Western world being superior, and hence needed to conquer Middle Eastern and Asian āinferiorā nations weāve now twisted it to dictate how one non-Western artist is superior to another. The āotheringā of Saidās āOrientā is now the othering of groups who do not fit a profile of successful in the United States. Thus, by not fitting US mediaās specific criteria, the non-BTS K-pop group becomes the inferior āotherā that has already been dominatedāor in this case has failed to achieve success using a clearly arbitrary rubric. This is not to say BTS is not successful, but there are ways that we can highlight their success without āotheringā any other Korean pop group in the process. This tactic is not only steeped in racism but ultimately does everyone in K-pop a disservice.
News flash: K-pop isnāt a one off phenomenon spurred on by BTS. K-pop is an ever growing system, not unlike any other media industry, that will continue to experiment and export and grow. Just because we have a hard time accepting its diversity here does not mean it hasnāt conquered the interest of other music markets. Letās leave Orientalism back in the 1970s and stop othering artists just because weāre unable to break our own narrow mindedness. It comes across as racist, lazy, and overall inaccurate. We can do better. Letās start now.
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