#canvasbyleo long post

[reistellae]

A really really long reflection 2/3

The second part in my long, reflective essay. If you haven’t read part 1 (it’s a snooze admittedly), lemme summarize: racism within American society is long and runs deep, it will not be erased overnight; in pop culture and entertainment, Asians/Asian-Americans have never been taken seriously in post-WWII America; the rise in popularity of anime and jpop and the Internet eventually leading to the globalization of kpop. We are currently at 2016.

We last left off in 2016, where BTS was gaining some major traction worldwide. During this time, other kpop groups were making their moves in the States. GOT7 had their FLY Tour shows in the United States July 1-11th 2016 and were doing tons of press interviews to promote the concert. The kpop convention + concert (KCON) had steadily been growing in popularity since its first con in 2012 with a 2016 lineup that featured Seventeen, BTOB, Ailee, Crush, Dynamic Duo, BTS, Day6, Mamamoo, and Eric Nam at the New York convention and  Amber, SHINee, Block B, Dean, GFriend, IOI, Girls Generation TTS, BTS, Eric Nam, Twice, Monsta X, and Astro in at the LA convention. EXO had their EXO’lu’Xion Concerts in the States from February 10-21st, 2016. 

All in all, it became very clear that kpop had an audience in the United States and it wasn’t listened to by just Asian-Americans anymore. The audience became diverse, with people of all ages finding groups that appealed most to them. 2016 saw the year of the announcement of One Direction’s indefinite hiatus, which meant there were teenagers and young adults who were looking for new things to listen to, causing a small shift in fandom culture. I say small because kpop fans and Directioners famously had a lot of conflict, particularly on Twitter, and many Directioners would be xenophobic and racist towards kpop fans and their favorite groups with comments such as “You listen to ching chong music,” “You can’t even understand what they’re saying,” and so on, so I think the overlap between Directioners and kpop fans was very minimal. 5 Seconds of Summer, another popular band in the West, had announced a hiatus around 2016/17 and I believe this was where a lot of new fans came from. 5SOS had an audience of relatively “emo” and “edgy” teens who look for something different and tend to be more open minded, against the “mainstream” groups like One Direction. A lot of 5SOS fans shifted into kpop during the band’s hiatus, from what I’ve seen on Twitter.

However, racism is not just an American problem, it’s global. And within kpop and South Korean culture, racism and colorism run almost just as deep. This was no secret to many Asian-American/non-Korean Asian fans or to black fans. Many groups have incidents of blackface, saying colorist comments, allegations of cultural appropriation, and saying n*gga. A common defense fans would come up with when confronted with the scandal would say “they didn’t know any better,” “they don’t have black people in Korea,” “get over it, it isn’t hurting you,” and many more excuses. As a result, this tends to cause a divide between black kpop fans and non black kpop fans. The discussions of racism within kpop tend to go one-sided, with black kpop fans feeling as though they are silenced and ignored by other fans, idols, and companies. Pop culture in America often takes things from African American culture and acts like they are “new” and “fresh” and “trendy” which leads to kpop idols adopting these things as well to seem cooler. 

Back on BTS, they were no strangers to racist scandals. Leader RM debuted with a fro-hawk-like style, did a rather poor imitation of Stevie Wonder while wearing dreads and sunglasses, and said that he was surprised with how dark fellow members were when he first met them. No formal apology directly stating what he had done was ever issued, so it can be assumed that Bighit Entertainment, the company in charge of BTS, brushed it off. Despite this, the fandom would continue to grow on their main platform of Twitter. 

Twitter is the most immediate way to find people who have common interests as you and to keep up with your favorite celebrities and BTS established early on that they were good at keeping up. Posting little videos of day to day life, interacting with fans often, and posting selcas almost daily, ARMYs were able to feel close to BTS through these interactions. ARMYs would also find other ARMYs and they built a community full of fandom jokes, fanart, fanfiction, and so on. The momentum continued into 2017 with the release of WINGS and its repackage You Never Walk Alone. The MVs for Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Not Today broke Youtube records at the time and they were to go on to another world tour for WINGS. 

2017 is also when some major issues within the fandom began being discussed. Stan culture within itself wasn’t new and while it provided positives such as giving people a community online, it was unforgiving to those who were not within the fandom. ARMYs had a history of fanwars against the other biggest fandom, EXO-Ls and both have done terrible things to each other. In late 2017, African-American rapper CupcakKe had tweeted stating that she would like to have sex with member Jungkook. Subsequently, ARMYs harassed her and said everything in regards to her size, to her being black, and slutshaming her. The abuse was so bad that she deleted her Twitter for some time.* RM and African-American rapper Wale collaborated on a track and some ARMYs accused Wale of just using RM/BTS for clout. Around the same time, however, BTS themselves were making progress within the United States. They had been invited to the Billboard Music Awards to accept an award for Top Social Artist and that same year performed DNA at the American Music Awards, both firsts for a South Korean group. 

*I’m ending this part here because as I was checking the dates for the CupcakKe incident, I watched a video which talked about when CupcakKe returned to Twitter to call out the double standards of how fans can tweet things like “I want Taehyung to cum on my face for 365 days” without a blink but when she says “I want to jungkook to fuck me,” she gets harassed. I made the crackhead choice of checking the comments and I was honestly disgusted. Here’s some screencaps of what I read: 

Now I obviously am trying to remain completely unbiased in this history rundown and will hopefully give my full opinion in the final reflection, but this shit is what disgusts me. CupcakKe is a grown ass woman and uses her social media however she damn well pleases. Literally her whole brand is about a big, beautiful black woman being openly sexual and clearly these commenters and those who upvoted don’t understand that. They do not understand the actual trauma black people have to deal with when they are called dehumanizing things, especially as a public figure on social media. “Oh she’s just looking for attention,” “Ignore this and vote for Mama!” It literally has my blood boiling as I’m typing this. THIS is why black women feel unsafe talking about their experiences with racism, slut shamed, double standards, etc. Because NO MATTER WHAT, people will try to silence them. And yes, I know it’s a small fraction of the fandom but the fact that there’s even HUNDREDS of people who think similarly really is telling. And I looked at the replies too and not many people were actually defending her AT ALL and those who were weren’t getting much love.

Anyway, part three will be coming probably tomorrow. I’m drained.

Part Three

[reistellae]

A really really long reflection 1/3

So, the other day, there was some controversy and I’ve been having thoughts about it since literally last night. This’ll be a long post, so don’t feel the need to read through all of it if you are not interested or don’t know what I’m talking about. 

NOTE: I realized this one was getting super long so I made it a multipart. I’ll add links to any subsequent parts as they’re posted.

Part Two

Part Three

I won’t dwell too long on the initial thing, but basically a post from an anonymous opinion blog was shared around Twitter. Those of you who know what happened, know pretty well how quickly that post went to all hell. People were being accused of racism and one blog even reported getting death threats (one that was posted told the user to “get r**** and die of AIDS.”) I won’t give my opinion on the subject in question itself, but I do want to give further context into how this situation happened and what it means about stan culture, conversations about race, and diversity within pop culture as a whole.

America has been historically racist against every non white group, that shouldn’t be a surprise. And since racism is something that is deeply rooted within a society, it is not something that can just easily be erased because of some laws or some money. Reminder that the slavery of Africans had been occurring for 300 years before they were “free.” Just because African-Americans have civil rights and white people love Beyonce, doesn’t mean that racism is dead. 300 years of mistreatment, trauma, stripping people of their humanity cannot go away in the nearly 60 years since the civil rights movement. 

In the entertainment industry and pop culture alone, minorities are still discriminated against (large due to the fact that those in charge of entertainment agencies were/are old white men). Japanese silent film actors in the 1910s-1930s were popular until WWII virtually wiped out all main roles for Asians/Asian Americans. They were relegated to yellow face or straight up racist caricatures of dog eaters, communists, and unable to speak English properly. This role of “the comedic Asian” has prevailed almost unchallenged except for in martial arts films. Asians/Asian-Americans also are ignored within the music industry. Every now and then, there would be a glimmer of change, but the status quo would remain unchanged. Genres like jpop and jrock saw a surge in popularity in the 1990s-late 2000s because of the rise in popularity of anime but these were mostly considered niche interests and the Internet was not quite as widespread or sophisticated as it is now. 

Enter kpop. Kpop used to also be a niche interest, usually only indulged in by Korean-Americans and other Asian-Americans. Around the late 2000s/early 2010s is when kpop had its initial huge surge in Western visibility. Wonder Girls were on tour with the Jonas Brothers, BoA and Girls Generation released albums in the United States and had made appearances on Good Morning America and Late Night with David Letterman, Psy’s Gangnam Style had become a viral sensation, and Super Junior, Bigbang, 2NE1, and Girls Generation were being nominated for and winning various international awards such as Mashable, Youtube, MTV and more. Bi Rain was featured in TIME Magazine in 2006 and 2007, sold out two Madison Square Garden shows in a matter of days, topped TIME polls for 3 consecutive years, and starred in three Hollywood films (Speed Racer, Ninja Assassin, and The Prince). Aside from Gangnam Style, kpop itself had not yet fully entered the mainstream, but 2012 definitely saw a surge in the visibility of kpop.

Around this time, the Internet had become more widespread and was becoming the dominant source of entertainment and information for the average home. Youtubers began making videos reacting to popularly requested kpop videos like EXO’s Growl, 2NE1′s I Am The Best, BIGBANG’s Fantastic Baby, and Super Junior’s Mr. Simple. Some of these channels only did them for the additional views, but some Youtubers and their regular fans became curious and looked more into kpop. Reaction channels were huge in the early 2010s because of this and this trend would continue well into 2015.

2015 was what, I would consider, the first initial surge in popularity for a particular kpop band; BTS. The group had debuted in 2013 and appealed to a lot of western listeners with their early dark hip hop concept and their songs featured lyrics that deeply resonated with their teenaged audience. Themes consisted of following their dreams, wanting to be successful, and young love. 2015 saw the beginning of what some ARMYs would call their greatest era: HYYH/The Most Beautiful Moment In Life. One of the promoted tracks, Dope, would become a viral hit. The song was infectious and high energy and really showcased the group’s crisp choreography. HYYH would have 2 part mini albums before part 3 came out in 2016. Each video they dropped would do consistently well: I Need U, Run, Fire, Spring Day. Their fans, enthusiastically spreading about the Internet, would want to share their favorite songs and communicate with like minded fans, thus creating the phrase “Any ARMYs here? XD” that would often show up in Youtube video comments, regardless of the content of the video. 

I know this history lesson is long winded and most of you guys DON’T want to/need to read it but as I said, I think it’s important to look at things contextually before drawing a final opinion on a topic. Me personally? I got into kpop in 2011 and it was the natural progression from me liking jpop from 2008. So most of what I’m saying, I saw firsthand. Obviously my perception isn’t unbiased, but I am reading articles and pages to make sure I’m stating things correctly and am trying to not come off as biased. 

Part Two

Part Three

[reistellae]

A really really long reflection 3/3

The riveting conclusion of my fucking multipart essays examining BTS/ARMYs in recent months, stan culture, and discussions of race within pop culture. In my conclusion, I’m gonna state my opinion on a recent incident that sparked this series.

Part one I went through a brief history of Asian/Asian American representation in American pop culture and the rise of kpop into the mainstream.

Part two went further into detail about the rise of BTS and their activities and the growing toxicity of the ARMY fandom.

Now we are currently in this timeline at 2018.

Before I continue with the history lesson, I’m gonna make a very important distinction here between the typical ARMY and what I’ll be calling an ARMY tribalist. The typical ARMY makes up the majority of the fandom: they follow BTS on social media, interact with the group’s posts and with other fans, stream MVs, vote for them on award shows and typical dedicated fan behavior. An ARMY tribalist takes the usual activities and behaviors and multiplies them in intensity to a million. A tribalist will put the fandom/group over everything else; over logic, over reason, over disagreement. Their loyalties are to their group of choice. Anyone can be a tribalist for a certain fandom that they are in, it’s not exclusive to ARMYs, or kpop in general. There’s Ariana Grande tribalists, DC tribalists, My Little Pony tribalists...the list goes on. So, I want to say that I don’t think all ARMYs act the same way the tribalists do, but the tribalists are the most active and the most vocal of the fandom and have influence over the average fan.

Now let’s get back to 2018. BTS had finished a wildly successful year in the United States. Thanks in part to their recent appearances at American award shows, stores such as Walmart, Target, and Barnes and Noble began selling their latest album, Love Yourself: Her. BTS merch also started to drop in Hot Topic. LYH had record sales for the group and for a kpop group in general thanks to this new audience or in part to loyal fans having access to buy albums without paying for overseas shipping. 

Despite this, scandal wouldn’t be too far behind. In May of that year, an article was published that discussed black ARMYs who were receiving racially targeted harassment from others within the fandom. Acts such as whitewashing selfies, making jokes about slavery, and calling them slurs were highlighted in the article. BTS/Bighit Entertainment were asked for their comments on the matter, but as of February 2019, there has been no public statement issued regarding this. 

The rest of 2018 was perhaps BTS’ biggest year: they were featured on the cover of TIME magazine, spoke in front of the United Nations as representatives for Unicef and their “Love Yourself” Campaign, released Love Yourself: Tear and Love Yourself: Answer to record breaking numbers, and had major shows in the United States for their Love Yourself Tour. Understandably, ARMYs were very proud of their favorite group.

As early as mid-2017, some ARMYs felt as though American media/artists did not take BTS seriously or were only using them for clout or extra attention. Pop culture tends to focus on whatever is popular at the moment, BTS being a popular group and kpop being a popular trend, of course American media outlets would pay special attention to kpop (although many outlets had covered kpop, though in smaller occurrences way before 2017). These outlets do need to make money at the end of the day and simply cannot be personally invested in every single thing they discuss. With that being said, I personally think it isn’t entirely impossible that some artists actually do like BTS/kpop. Kpop is appreciated worldwide by all sorts, so it doesn’t seem too out of line that celebrities do too. But obviously, it is music business, and some moves are only made to attract a new audience, which is fine. The fans also benefit from this newfound American fame BTS has: physical albums being sold in stores, more stops on their American tour, seeing them on a local television time at a reasonable time, merchandise at local stores. Of course, all of these benefit the providers because they get money, but that is the trade off of capitalism.

As I said, scandal continued within the ARMY fandom in 2018. With the release of his solo debut album, ARMY tribalists posted a fake translation of one of Mino’s songs with the lyric “baby girl” and accused the rapper from YG Entertainment group Winner of being a pedophile. Girl group Momoland was caught on camera laughing at something during an award show and Jimin coincidentally was singing at the time, ARMY tribalists took this as the girls were making fun of Jimin and proceeded to relentlessly attack the group to the point where they had to turn off Instagram comments for a time. The harassment of black ARMYs had not stopped and while some showed support for them, the fandom made major efforts to not let the group see it. ****** Trigger Warning: Suicide, Death ******  In December of 2017, SHINee member Jonghyun had committed suicide. It was a tragic day for SHINee World across the globe and many fandoms showed their support. Majority of ARMYs also showed support during this time, however, tribalists took the opportunity as a time to make jokes. This would become an ongoing theme in many other tragedies, that ARMY tribalists would be disrespectful and makes jokes about the recently deceased.

These are not all the scandals that ARMY tribalists were involved in 2018, but these are the most egregious to me.

And now we are in the present day. I’ll lightly touch on the incident that inspired this reflection and then get to my final thoughts. On February 12th, anonymous opinion blog, unpopularkpopopinions, had published a submitted opinion that stated “I feel like army created this bubble for bts where bts is huge in the west when in reality the american shows they were on aren’t difficult to get on, every meme these days can get on ellen so that’s not really an achievement, those interviews were all awkward and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that bts were simply weird asian gimmicks for the american audience, something they can’t and won’t understand but it’s weird enough to get views.” Initially, most users, who were regular followers to the blog, agreed with the opinion to varying degrees and the conversation seemed to have hit its point. However, on the 14th, the post started gaining traction once more with tons more notes. A disgruntled ARMY had reposted the opinion on Twitter, which attracted a new group to the post. Most ARMYs kept their response to Twitter with tweets such as “just ignore it and let’s prove them wrong next comeback,” but others took to the post itself to respond. 

The common points for contention were 1. The American shows BTS were on weren’t difficult to get on and 2. BTS being seen as an “Asian gimmick.” The common arguments were “if it’s so easy to get on Ellen, how come your faves weren’t on?” and “Calling them an Asian gimmick? That’s racist, OP. This blog and anyone who agrees is also racist.” I won’t repost my entire response to the argument, but here were my main points: “ “America uses BTS for clout” is something I’ve mostly seen ARMYs say. Which clout is the wrong term because BTS doesn’t have Drake or Beyonce levels of clout; they are being used for clicks, engagement, whatever, which is reasonable since America is a capitalistic economy and if there’s a demand or an untapped market (rabid kpop fans) then it makes sense to exploit that. Most people realize that. The whole “Asian gimmick” bit that is what most of y’all are here for. If you literally read very closely, OP said “[they] couldn’t shake off the feeling that BTS were simply weird Asian gimmicks for the American audience.” It doesn’t say that they think BTS is a weird Asian gimmick, it says that from the interviews and other things BTS did in America, they had a feeling, a vibe if you will, that the American audience only SEES them as Asian gimmicks. You can agree or disagree with that point however you’d like, but y’all are claiming that this is how OP and others in the notes feel when that simply ain’t it.” And I stand by those points and I believe what I said earlier on in this post supports my point. It’s also hypocritical that just months ago, ARMYs were basically saying the same thing that this opinion did, but now it’s racist to point out that BTS are being used and the racist attitudes behind it.

So there it is, the ENTIRE timeline and build up. What are my thoughts? I think ARMY tribalists are the fucking worst. I think the fandom has a lot of hypocrisy going on, particularly within discussions about race. Why is it that CupcakKe is only looking for attention or that BTS shouldn’t see their black fans being bullied by fellow fans or that any artist of color who works with BTS just wants clout but as soon as someone points out that American audiences may only see the group as an Asian gimmick, that that is a serious racist attack? Why is it that people cannot point out that the group has done racially insensitive things in their past? Because tribe goes first. Not saying that those who agree with one, agree with all, but it is still a problem nonetheless.

I think fandom culture can very very easily feed into tribalism, especially in kpop. BTS in particular have so much content, that one could easily become obsessed within a matter of a day. From music videos, variety shows, fanfiction, fanart and edits, web series, merchandise, albums, and video games, I find it not too hard to believe that an ARMY tribalist only interacts with fellow ARMYs on the regular basis. I also think Bighit Entertainment is a rather shit company for never speaking up/allowing BTS to speak up on these issues especially since BTS are supposed to be anti-bullying ambassadors. 

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! I’m fucking tired. Do I still like BTS? Yes. I was just listening to Outro: Tear (the best outro in the LY series btw) as I was writing this and I think the group themselves are nice and talented. Do I hate all ARMYs? No. The fandom is too big to hate the millions of them, but I do find myself very very tired of them (and I’m sure they’re tired of An tiS like me). I’m just so fucking tired of all this bullshit with the fandom that I had to write down all my thoughts.

Part One

Part Two