The
Korean Wave that has staked out a big chunk of Japanese entertainment turf has
failed to touch me. Its contemporary and costume TV dramas leave me cold, while
its pop groups, the articulate and well-groomed potpourri of eye candy, utterly fail to work their charms on me.* It’s
not like South Korea’s offshore shenanigans have neutralized the potential of
its soft power. My addiction to Chinese wushu
serials, a misbegotten conglomeration of the Streetfighter arcade games, Chinese history mangled beyond belief,
and the most hackneyed and unbelievable plots and narrative devices this side
of Shakespeare, remains unabated despite Beijing’s repeated incursions into
Japan’s undisputable territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands. And to be
truthful, Perfume leaves me cold too,* so it’s not as if I have anything
against pleasure-androidy song-and-dance groups just because I have a beef
about Takeshima.
But
that doesn’t mean Hanryu sucks; it
only means that I don’t get it. So, if my professional interests dictate that I
should understand it—it doesn’t, thankfully—I should at least make an effort to
understand its public appeal, shouldn’t I?
Same
thing for political analysis, yet it’s even harder to do.**
* I’ve always preferred disorder over
order, which may be why I’ve always believed that Cyndi Lauper is vastly superior
to Madonna.
** For corroborating evidence,
you need only to look at what so many talking heads are saying around the US
presidential election.
1 comment:
Hi, I started following you! Thank you for your post, and please visit my new blog on Korea someday. Thank you in advance.
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