K-Pop?

K-Pop is not something I have ever been interested in, nor is it something I have been exposed to in my life. Because of this, I thought it would be fun to look into it a bit more.

BTS

So, what is K-Pop? I’m sure a lot of people already know but K-Pop is an abbreviation for Korean popular music. The genre consists of electronic, hip-hop, pop, rock and R&B music, originating in South Korea (Kpop For Beginners, 2019).

While originally only popular amongst teens and young adults across Asia, thanks to the internet people all over the world can now enjoy the music and fashion and style of Korean idol groups and singers.

History of K-Pop

K-Pop dates all the way back to 1885 when Henry Appenzeller would teach American and British songs to school kids, translating the lyrics into Korean. These songs, known as changga, were banned during Japan’s rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945 as they denounced Korea’s colonial oppressors (Mersereau, 2017).

Black Pink

In 1945 Korea met the Western culture with American popular music, being introduced by the U.S troops that stayed after the Korean War ended. During the era the first Korean pop stars appeared including The Kim Sisters in 1959. Other  notable K-Pop singers include Seo Taiji & Boys in 1992 and H.O.T. in 1996 (Mersereau, 2017) .

Seo Taiji & Boys were the breakout group that inspired K-Pop. They wore baggy pants, rapped and danced, something that was very different to the music that Korean’s were used to. This began the rise of the K-Pop we know today, it’s an idea rather than a genre (Explained: K-Pop, 2018).

The current K-Pop landscape in dominated by pop groups that emerge under the training, management and total control of the record labels. These are known as ‘slave contracts’ as they are one sided and long running with only a small percentage of the total earnings going to the artist (Mersereau, 2017).

My cultural background is Italian and Australian. I am never exposed to music that is outside of these cultures. The music I listen to is heavily influenced by my friends, who are mainly into current and popular music. I have no favourite genre but can say that I don’t like heavy metal. I don’t listen to much music outside of Western countries so K-Pop is very different for me. Keep this in mind as you watch me watch K-Pop. I decided to look into some of the more popular current K-Pop artists, BTS and Black Pink.

References

Explained: K-Pop. (2018). Directed by E. Klein and J. Posner. United States: Vox.

Kpop For Beginners. (2019). What is Kpop?. 28 Oct 2019. https://kpopforbeginners.weebly.com/what-is-kpop.html

Mersereau, J. (2017). A brief history of K-Pop | A.Side. A.Side. 28 Oct 2019. https://ontheaside.com/music/a-brief-history-of-k-pop/

More on my Autoethnographic Experience

The experience I talked about in my previous blog post is from the perspective of a very westernised Australian who has an Italian influence due to cultural background. Not only is my cultural background very different, my work life, university life and friendships have also shaped my life experiences. These aspects of my culture have contributed to shaping my experience in the Japanese restaurant and my perceptions of the Japanese culture from this experience.

Ellis et al (2011) states that stories enable us to make sense of ourselves and others. It is a way for us to understand our feelings and emotions and why we felt the way we felt. This experience has allowed me to understand the Japanese culture a bit more, not only through the food, but through the other aspects of the restaurant, such as the atmosphere and waiters. During my visit, I began to understand that my heavily westernised culture shielded me from fully experiencing this part of Japanese culture.

Furthermore, this relates to a concept within autoethnography called reflexivity. According to Wall (2006), reflexivity refers to the point in which ‘the researcher pauses for a moment to think about how his or her presence, standpoint, or characteristics might have influenced the outcome of the research process.’ I realise now that even something as small as ordering food was influenced by my culture. I walked into the restaurant ready to try all different kinds of food but when my friends and I ordered we stuck to the popular dishes or ones that I had tried before. I didn’t eat anything with raw fish because I don’t like raw fish and I didn’t try Ramen because my friend convinced me that I didn’t like it. These huge parts of my culture influenced the outcome of this experience. Additionally, the dishes we deemed popular were decided by western popular culture and a discussion with my friends and family and what they thought of as a popular Japanese dish.

Finally, within ethnography, writing is considered a method of inquiry. Wall (2006) suggests that ‘writing is a way of knowing – a method of discovery and analysis,’ and that by writing in different ways, we can discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. I am not able to distinctively remember the details of my experience but being able to write about it in the form of a narrative has allowed me to relive my experience and reflect. Through this exercise I have learnt that there were limitations to my experience brought on by my own self and my unwillingness to be open to new experiences. However, I was able to involve myself enough in the Japanese culture in the restaurant to learn something new about the culture and myself.

Autoethnography allows the researcher to reflect on their experience and how certain aspects of themselves and their cultural framework influence their experiences. Through this reflection, I have noticed that certain aspects of my life, such as my culture and friendships, have a heavy influence on the decisions I make and how I take to new experiences.

Reference List

Wall, S. (2006). An Autoethnography on Learning About Autoethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(2), pp.146-160.

Ellis, C., Adams, T.E., and Bochner, A.P. (2011) ‘Autoethnography: An Overview,‘ Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12:1.
Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095

My Autoethnographic Experience

Asian culture happens to be the culture that I have been least exposed to in my life. However, there has been one particular experience I have had with the Asian culture that I want to talk about. I have never been to an Asian country, in fact, my first trip to an Asian culture will come in January 2020 with a girl’s trip to Japan. Being the westernised kids that we are, we were concerned with the food aspect of the trip, as we have never really eaten authentic Japanese food before, so we decided to visit a traditional Japanese restaurant to prepare for our trip.

The atmosphere in the restaurant was calming and the waiters were all really polite and helpful. They made us feel very welcome. The restaurant made it seem like you were stepping into Japan with the colours and atmosphere being such a prominent part of the restaurant. I’ve heard that in Japan and some Japanese restaurants here in Australia, you order off an iPad and don’t really interact with the waiters. There were no iPads but the interaction with the waiters was minimal. Instead of them taking our order, we were given a menu and a pen and just had to mark next to each dish we wanted, and how many we wanted.

The food was very fast in coming out. We had pork buns, dumplings, fried chicken, noodles and rice. I’m not going to lie, the chicken was pink and looked very undercooked and unappealing but it tasted great. The dumplings also tasted amazing, we ended up ordering more. What I didn’t like was the pork buns and noodles. I’ve heard that disliking pork buns is an uncommon trend but they just weren’t appealing to me. The noodles were also not great to me but my friend loved them. We got some that came in a type of soup, and others that were on their own.

Every time the waiter came out he was very friendly and accommodating to the fact that none of us could use chopsticks, trying to teach us how to use them. The fact that a lot of the workers didn’t speak English that well, we had no troubles communicating with them. Overall, this experience was something that I would definitely do again. I am excited to try more Japanese food as part of the group assessment for Digital Asia. We are going to a different restaurant so I am curious to see what’s different and what’s the same.

The Host (2006)

And we’re back for another session of live tweeting!

This is not the first time I’ve experienced live tweeting, so going into this seminar I knew what to expect and was prepared to share my opinions and engage with others.

In the seminar, we screened The Host, described as ‘horror thriller, a political satire, a dysfunctional family comedy, and a touching melodrama’ (Emerson, 2007).

This is not usually the type of movie that I would watch, so I was both excited and doubtful. By the end, I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed it. Culture would have played a huge part in this outcome as well as the direction of my live tweeting and how I engaged with other viewers in the Twittersphere.

Now my obvious cultural characteristics would be an Australian student with a heavy Italian background but this isn’t the only type of culture that would have influenced how I perceived this movie. Part of my culture would include the importance of family relationships and friendships and the emphasis placed on certain qualities like creativity, loyalty and trust. I would also consider my part time job at Woolworths as an important part in shaping my culture. It’s this personal framework that guides my perceptions and opinions of this film.

Due to the importance I hold for family relationships, I was able to relate to the main characters that make up the family. The themes of dysfunctionality but also loyalty and teamwork were the stand out themes I saw in the film. My attention was focused heavily on these relationships and was shown in my live tweeting. I found that the film portrayed a family that was evidently dysfunctional and had their fair share of issues and arguments but were there to help and were supportive during the emotional times.

https://twitter.com/nc962_uow/status/1156370608478801920

The other stand out theme was the focus on the sister of the main character, an Olympic archer. With this being highlighted during the beginning of the film, it made no sense to me that the other family members would not let her have a weapon against the monster. Within my Italian culture, there are still specific ‘gender roles’ but living in Australia and therefore primarily adopting Australian culture, this made almost no sense to me. In my day to day life and specifically in my part time job, the idea is: whoever is best for the job gets the job. The idea that she wasn’t allowed a weapon was just frustrating. After reflecting on the film content and background I came to realise that in Korean culture it is the men who look after and protect the family. So, where I saw this as unequal, it is really an accurate reflection on that culture which is different to mine.

https://twitter.com/nc962_uow/status/1156359107395239936

Reference List

Emerson, J. (2007). The Host. Reviews. 1 Aug 2019. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-host-2007

New On Netflix USA. (2019). The Host (2006) on Netflix USA : New On Netflix USA. 1 Aug 2019. https://usa.newonnetflix.info/info/70059029