On the #BTSsyllabus
In the years since I originally wrote those scripts for my idol history series I’ve been posting, a few things have changed in idol world. Johnny’s & Associates now puts music videos on YouTube, SM Entertainment may have finally gotten the AKB/Menudo rotating member concept they’ve been trying for since 1996, and BTS fans have chosen the worst and darkest timeline. And as I go back over my old show notes, I’m reminded again at how shoddy the English language scholarship on Asian idol groups really is and with the boom of BTS-ology studies it’s just gotten worse.
One of the things called to my attention was a project called the “BTS Syllabus” that claims to be a collection of resources to help future scholars of BTS. What it appears to be in reality, judging from the articles I’ve seen flagged on Twitter, such as a Time magazine profile of fan translators written by a BTS fan-journalist, is a collection of puff pieces and personal fandom stories that have little scholarly value and are completely free of objective study let alone serious critique.
This is a big problem when trying to research anything substantial on idol pop in general but on BTS more specifically as their fans have come to dominate the conversation in the media. The BTS fan-journalists are the ones writing the glowing album reviews for major publications that then get funneled to places like metacritic. The BTS fan-journalists interview the BTS fan-academics about the group for profiles and other pieces in mainstream media outlets. The BTS fan-journalists get invited on podcasts to act as authorities on the topic. They have created a media bubble where absolutely nothing from the outside is allowed in, not even the words of the group members themselves when they go against the dominant fan narrative. And all critique and serious discussion are banished.
If this was about fans just wanting to enjoy fan-girling in their own circles, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. There should always be space to just enjoy something. BTS fans should be able to write and produce BTS blogs and podcasts and newsletters for their own enjoyment just like I write and podcast for my own enjoyment. But that’s not what’s happening here. These BTS fan-academics and BTS fan-journalists have a very real monetary and career interest in promoting their “expertise” in BTS which means they have a very real monetary and career interest in keeping the BTS positivity bubble going as long as possible. While the actual journalists at the Financial Times have been writing about the serious concerns about the financial health of BTS’s parent company, the fan-journalists have either ignored it or spun the news so hard the relationship to reality was broken.
Whether or not they have doubts about the tactics used to chart BTS songs, such as fans spending hours bulk purchasing mp3s and redeeming them, it can never be seriously discussed or critiqued because to do so is like pulling at a loose thread, and it will unravel the whole project. We will begin to ask why fans feel compelled to do this unpaid labor on behalf of a major corporation and who is benefitting from their missed exams and empty savings accounts. And if that happens the fans may choose not to buy and stream and their investment in “BTS” as a brand will fade and who will pay for articles about fan-translators then?
If fan-journalists asked why BigHit gave fans a survey asking intrusive questions on their mental health, they will then have to question why BTS pivoted to a mental health-heavy promotional narrative soon after that and whether or not we should take their self help rhetoric seriously.
I do find it worrying that not only are false narratives being sold to impressionable youngsters but these fan-journalists and fan-academics are setting conventional wisdom not just around BTS but on idols in general and the conventional wisdom they are preaching is simply wrong. There are essays and essays written about BTS and Jung but few mention how Namjoon himself said that he basically just read the back of the book. Tweet after tweet congratulated Jungkook as director of the “Life Goes On” MV but there was no mention of the YouTube livestream he did discussing his own mixed feelings about taking that credit when he didn’t think he’d really earned the title. Press releases are regurgitated nearly verbatim in articles and a complete lack of knowledge on the Korean music industry--let alone the broader Asian industry--is standard. One fan-journalist claimed to have taught herself enough Korean to read BTS’s lyrics after a mere four months of being a fan… which she became in 2019. Now this fan-journalist appears as a “BTS expert” in the media.
I really lament anybody new to the subject and attempting to get anything close to an objective reading on this group, who we are told over and over again are great artists--nay, the greatest artists, the Next Beatles™--without ever being told what that artistry actually is. Is it technical skill in singing? Superior skill in rapping? Songwriting? Dancing? Stage craft? What is it exactly, artistically, that makes “Dynamite” different (and better) from a song by the Jonas Brothers or One Direction?
I listened to Be and to my ear the songs are indistinguishable from western Top 40 pop. Is that art? Is that progress?