The New Yorker on K-Pop

In effect, Lee combined his ambitions as a music impresario with his training as an engineer to create the blueprint for what became the K-pop idol assembly line. His stars would be made, not born, according to a sophisticated system of artistic development that would make the star factory that Berry Gordy created at Motown look like a mom-and-pop operation. Lee called his system “cultural technology.” In a 2011 address at Stanford Business School, he explained, “I coined this term about fourteen years ago, when S.M. decided to launch its artists and cultural content throughout Asia. The age of information technology had dominated most of the nineties, and I predicted that the age of cultural technology would come next.” He went on, “S.M. Entertainment and I see culture as a type of technology. But cultural technology is much more exquisite and complex than information technology.”

This week, the New Yorker has an article on the phenomena known as K-pop. 

The author has a general pessimistic tone on the actual quality of the art. Americans won't much care for the assembly-line packaging. The androgyny of the men simply won't appeal to American cultural norms. The stars would not survive a TMZ-world of celebrity gossip.

I don't know. Here's a video of one of the groups.


I find it catchy. I wouldn't exactly spend an evening poring over lyrics for deep meanings, but then I always thought that people took Nirvana too seriously for what it was: entertainment. I wouldn't mind listening to this in a mall or on the way to work. It sounds happy, energetic, optimistic, things which I need more of. It's escapism, an entry into a dream-world of color and beauty. 

This really reminds me of Richard Hayne's Urban Outfitters. Hayne oversees a stable of designers who work on the product line. It gets mass produced, like how the performers in these groups are pretty much interchangeable cogs. On that note, anyone who really knows say, hip-hop, knows that you don't follow the individual rapper, who really is an interchangeable cog, you follow the producer who is the talent. 

But on to the other points. Androgyny. N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys sold millions of records and they too were quite androgynous. Next?

America's celebrity culture would tear them apart. That I agree with. TMZ is the nastiest thing I've ever seen on television, worse than daytime talk like Jerry Springer.