I am an American born Asian male teenager. According to the East Asian Youth, there are two kinds of Asian guys: the smart, athletic kind and the cool, lenient kind. I don’t fit under neither types and as a result, I became self-conscious of the way I act, not to also mention my overweight body. I didn’t know how to be myself while conforming to the stereotypes. That’s when I discovered Kpop, or Korean Pop Culture. I immersed myself into the music, the dramas, and even the food. I found a second home, even if it was through my computer. These korean stars were talented, funny, and most of all “cool.” They had an aura around them that I was not able to find in any American stars. Maybe it is because they were all “trained” to do so; but …show more content…
To start off, I will be explaining what Kpop is, what is the “Hallyu” wave, and Local vs Global identities. My second section is the K-pop production: what idols are, how idol groups are formed so that will be like recruitment, training, the so called “death contracts,” etc. My third section will be about where K-pop differs from American pop. This will already be mentioned in the first section but this will be in depth research on such “differences,” and this section will actually require me to use a lot of YouTube videos. This section will have me using a lot of react videos where “Americans” react to Kpop or vice versa. The fourth section is the real deal: the mula. Where does the money come in from, where does the money go to, why is so much money being spent, etc. For my last section this will be where my conclusion is formed.
If an average Westerner were to be asked of a successful music artist, they might think of a band like Coldplay. Having global concert tours across Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, etc. Another may be Adele––who had sold over 8 million copies of her newest album ‘25.’ In short, one might expect the names of American or other Western artists to dominate the iTunes libraries and download charts in the United States. But while the American industry is certainly doing well, the Republic of Korea, a country whose population is only about 50.5 million, has managed to cultivate a vibrant and
The schools I went to before third grade had a strong Asian population. Asians were the majority; there were rarely any non-Asians in those schools. During that time, I was allowed to stay innocent and uncaring of what others thought of me. It was a pity those golden days couldn’t last longer. The school I transferred to for the remainder of my elementary education had an extremely low Asian rate. In fact, you could have listed all the Asians in the school with only one hand. With little to none Eastern Asians, my parents pushed me to work harder. Unbeknownst to them, they were trying to mold me into the stereotypical smart Asian. The changes were subtle at first since they
To be young and Asian in America is a special brand of torture. There is an unspoken dictum of silence that grips Asian youth, a denial of our place in popular culture. Asian youth walk in America not quite sure where we fit in-black children have a particular brotherhood, Hispanic children have a particular brotherhood, white children own everything else. We cannot lay claim to jazz or salsa or swing; we cannot say our ancestors fought for equality against an oppressive government or roamed the great hallways of power across the globe. We do not have a music, a common hero, a lexicon of slang. Asian youth experience personal diasporas every day.
Growing up as an Asian American, I often struggle to identify my own cultural identity. Being the first generation of both my mother and father’s side of the family, I more than often get confused between American and Asian culture when applying them to society or at home. While being raised at home, I am largely influenced by culture and traditions from Asian parents and relatives. However, when I go to school or someplace else, I am heavily judged for practicing part of my Asian culture because it is entirely different than western or American. With that being noted, I began to learn and adapt to the western culture in hopes of fitting with society as well of trying to keep my Asian culture intact. As can be seen, this situation I dealt with is the same problem the whole Asian American community faces. Mainly focusing on younger generations like me for example, the Asian American community struggles to adapt to the western culture because they were raised with an Asian influence. Wishing to fit in society and be part of the social norms, the Asian Americans community faces issues that identify their cultural identity.
Popular music is often one of the best lenses we have through which to view our own cultural orientation. Many of the artistic and experimental shifts in popular music have mirrored changes in our own society. For instance, the emergence of Elvis Presley as a public figure would signal the start of a sexual revolution and the growth in visibility of a rebellious youth culture. Similarly, the folk and psychedelic music of the 1960s was closely entangled with the Civil Rights, anti-war and social protest movements. In this regard, we can view popular music as an artifact through which to better understand the time and place in which it is produced. In light of this, the state of popular music today may suggest troubling things about our society.
Speaking of unique aspects about me as an individual, I would say that nothing can be more valuable and meaningful than my international experiences. My academic background, academic discipline and my personality are in fact closely related because of these valued experiences; they allowed me to learn and to explore various cultures, to expand and to broaden my knowledge and vision beyond mediocrity, to form and to shape my personality and most importantly to know who I am and who I want to be.
It is a significant struggle for many first or second generation of Asian-American who need to fit in two different culture and expectations sets, especially for who born from early 1980s to late 1990s. On one side, we have to get into the American culture. On other side, we are encouraged to preserve our traditional personality and keep our Asian ethnicities alive. Fail to keep either side of expectations can lead to rejection or culture crisis.
Nowadays, people are exposed to more cultures that they are not accustomed to than in the past. As the years go by, more interracial marriages are being accepted exposing future generations to multi-cultures. I am an American teenager with an Hispanic background. My parents, born and raised in Guatemala immigrated to the United States a few years before my birth. Since my birth, I have been exposed to two very different types of cultures. I have lived in the United States all my life while I have visited Guatemala a couple of times for a few weeks each. Being more accustomed to life in the United States, life in Guatemala is very distinctive. Communicating with family in Guatemala was definitely more challenging than communicating with the family back home in the United States. These types of situations have led to “complexities” in communication, a topic that LaRay M. Barna analyzes thoroughly in her article “Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks.” The “complexities” in communication that Barna addresses are spread into five stumbling blocks: language, nonverbal signs and symbols, preconceptions and stereotypes, tendency to evaluate, and high anxiety. These five stumbling blocks can occur in any shape or form in communication between two cultures. Language, nonverbal signs and symbols, as well as preconceptions and stereotypes are the stumbling blocks that occurred most when communicating with my family that reside in Guatemala.
“Mom, why is she so dark like fillipino if she’s korean like me?”, “I thought asians were suppose to be smart”, “Since your last name is Kim are you related to Kim Jong Un?”. These were some of the comments I’ve heard growing up in, my whole life. Not just from America where people see me not as a true American but also from Korea, where there is no ethnicity difference. Growing up, I learned to understand it was because I looked different and racism is a concept that is inevitable, but the summer of seventh grade I visited Korea, it changed everything. It had been a while since I last visited Korea, I had been so young I could not remember anything. But when I went that summer when I was older, I was shocked. In a land where I thought I belonged to with my race, was doing the opposite of what I had to learn to overcome in America. In a place where I thought I looked the same still had reasons to accept me. Even though I was the same race as the people there, I still wasn’t good enough. My skin was to dark, I was too big, my face was too round, and I didn’t look ‘asian’. Racism had been consistently plaguing by my side since the beginning.
Music has imbedded its roots into the American culture, and its branches of different genres are heard by millions every day. The music of America is one big melting pot that is a reflection of society’s own cultural melting pot, and the expressions of its people centered around what was happening during that time period. Popular music is believed to reflect the mood of the country during that period including important events.
I did a couple of drafts for this essay. For this assignment, I progressed in a much more organized sequence. When completing my secondary research, I was able to gain a lot of insight and develop my topic into how I wanted it to. Before doing so, I was sure I wanted to centralize my topic around K-pop but was not sure how and where I should focus my paper into. The primary research was my favorite part. I felt very involved with
So, if I make the fried Kim-chi with the Kim-chi from a market, it is just not tasty as much as the one that my mom made. Yet, however the taste of it, every time I eat Kim-chi, it reminds me of my mom’s caring for me and the fact that I am Korean. Because when she tried to make me eat Kim-chi, she always used to say like ‘oh, Koreans should eat Kim-chi.’ By that time, however, what she said did not really come across my mind. Since all the people around me were Korean, I did not really know what being Korea means. But now I am in America, and being ‘Korean’ becomes one of the unique characteristics that represent me.
"South Korea is a country with a population of 50,924,172 and counting" ("The World Factbook: KOREA, SOUTH"). It is a nation that has been the center of many tug-of-wars. It is a nation that has had to fight in order to survive independent. Years ago, no one thought much of this country. So what is it about this little place now, that sets it apart and breaks it out of the mold of just another Asian country? Though South Korea may be a small country, the style of cuisine, community culture, and generosity are just
Music plays a significant rule in our lives. It’s a melody and rhythm we live in. It plays a very essential rule in our day to day to life when it comes to expressing feelings, passing time and for other uses as well. Though we in general may not think about how music has changed so much in the past few decades we must acknowledge the fact todays music is the outcome of the various change in the past. Today’s majority of music we hear is what we define as more as a “westernized” music. Considering other cultures in the world, a huge impact of western music is seen within them. Westernization and modernization are two different words with different meanings and they have two different impacts on a society. Modernization is used to define the improvements and show a progressive transition from one stage to another. Westernization is the concept of being influenced by the customs and techniques of the western society and reflecting them in a non-western culture. This essay will discuss furtherly about the impact of the western society on music cultures of North India and Korea by looking from both the positive and negative point of this impact.
For this assignment I decided to focus on music primarily Korean girl groups, specifically for me the group I don’t like the most is Black Pink. In my opinion they are all good individuals and characters, however the type of music that they create is very similar to other types of girl groups such as TWICE and 2NE1. The main aspects within the types of music that these girl groups create, stems from a heavy mixture of “aegyo” which is a cutesy concept that over displays femininity as band members attempt to portray affection in child-like voices, features, gestures, and expressions. This form of cutesy concept in my opinion is demeaning towards women, as I don’t think the main body of the group should revolve around this. Another aspect I
If we were to jump straight to English K-pop entertainment sites such as Soompi, Allkpop, and Dkpopnews, there would be many things we would not understand, such as references to aegyo or hwa-ting which are the terms for overly cute actions and the phrase meaning "You can do it!". Or if we were to find ourselves watching a multi-artist concert we might find ourselves questioning why there are sections with different color light sticks. The reason being to signify the different artists fandoms. These things are all common knowledge within fandoms. That is why they are the very foundation of which K-pop music is built on.