Response to Lenika Cruz in the Atlantic

Yesterday two very different English-language articles about BTS came across my twitter timeline. The first, from Atlantic Magazine was yet another in the seemingly unending series of first person fan memoir pieces titled “I wasn’t a fan of BTS. And Then I was.” The second, from DJ Booth, was an in-depth look at RM’s lyrics and artistry from a hip-hop perspective.

The second article is the one I wish we saw more of. The author, one Elliot Sang, looks at RM’s lyrics and artistry from a serious perspective. Aside from a few very minor points where it’s clear the author is not familiar with the K-Pop scene or Asian music history in general (in what universe was Big Bang ever known for their “crisp choreography”?????), overall the article is a breath of fresh air in what is swiftly becoming a BTS-clickbait-industrial complex.

The Atlantic article on the other hand. Where to even begin…

Maybe here: BTS fan narratives are not newsworthy and reveal nothing about BTS.

I’ve written about this in other posts but English-language media has almost completely warped the traditional fan-idol dynamics so that ARMY is in the spotlight; ARMY is what’s talked about.

Just from the last month, BTS’s mainstream news coverage in the US includes ARMY translators in the New York Times (with no mention of the fact that they are doing unpaid labor for a billion dollar company hmm...); Sasaeng Fans in Newsweek; ARMY backlash to an Australian news show in USA Today; and BTS’s lyrics being a love letter ARMY in Seventeen magazine... you see where I’m going with this.

Most English-language news coverage of BTS is not about BTS themselves.

So, fine, ARMY is the story. There is plenty to be written about ARMY. I’d love a journalist to interview some of the OG i-ARMY who whipped the fanbase for votes to get that first Billboard Award to understand their thought processes or for a journalist to seriously dig into the mindless mob mentality that characterizes ARMY twitter these days as fans race from imagined outrage to blowing up nobody songwriters who say one good word about the members or for a journalist to take a good, long look into what it says about i-ARMY that they are so invested in making sure that BTS’s views on “social justice” issues align perfectly with their own.

But none of that will happen. Why? Because--like the author of the Atlantic piece--the media exists in this weird bubble where the only things possible to know about BTS are what is already “known” about BTS. And, to be frank, that is not much if your time as a fan began… when was that exactly, Atlantic author?

I was already yawning when I sat down to watch Saturday Night Live one evening this past April.

BTS were on SNL on April 13, 2019. This piece was posted on July 18, 2019. So… just about 4 months ago. 4 MONTHS AGO.

Because the group’s lyrics are mostly in Korean, I picked up some Hangul and can now sing along, albeit imperfectly, to much of their discography.

*cough*

Not to cast doubt on this woman’s language skills but as a native English-speaker with no background in Asian languages you cannot learn shit about an Asian language in 4 months. Right here, with this sentence I call bullshit on this entire piece. Unless she was in some sort of intensive 8-12 hour a day Korean program for every day of those four months, what can she have possibly “learned”.

“Some Hangul”? What does that mean? She can sing phonetically to 뱁새? While that shows a bit more dedication than those who never bother to learn the lyrics it’s ultimately still a very shallow engagement with the Korean language, with the lyrics, and with the group itself. As one of my very dear twitter friends said recently, the more you learn the more you understand that there is so much more to learn. “Some Hangul”???

I’ve learned, though, that being a fan of BTS means becoming intimately familiar with the many prejudices and hierarchies of taste that casually belittle the thing you love—and then deciding that none of it has any real power over you.

This is really the point of the piece and it’s one that many young women need to hear. I do appreciate that message. It’s one I had to come to by myself many, many years ago. The white, male academy that dictates the prejudices and hierarchies of taste basically owns the entire critical machine. To like anything that goes against it--without caring--is like breaking out of a glass box you didn’t realize you’d been trapped in.

HOWEVER, that message in and of itself is no excuse for giving a four-month old ARMY a platform to write from a place of authority on BTS when she has engaged so shallowly with the group that she regurgitates this finely honed press release as capital “T” truth:

BTS were by no means destined for such heights, having debuted in 2013 with a tiny company in an industry ruled by three giant record labels. Since at least 2017, critics have been trying to formulate a unified theory to explain BTS’s success in the mainstream U.S. music scene in particular, eclipsing other K-pop crossovers. Writers invariably point to the group’s early adoption and savvy use of social media to connect with fans, who have in turn helped BTS smash record after record. Critics also mention BTS’s socially conscious lyrics, their openness about taboos such as mental health, their empathy for the struggles of younger generations, and their emphatic message of self-love.

Let’s go point by point:

BTS were by no means destined for such heights, having debuted in 2013 with a tiny company in an industry ruled by three giant record labels.

It is true that nobody could have predicted this level of global recognition but that “tiny company” was actually an off-shoot of one of the Big Three talent agencies (not record labels) and the founder had plenty of insider industry connections. Big Hit was far from being a Dickensian orphan rags to riches story and something closer to one of those Regency romance novels where a countess’s country cousin, comparatively poor but still “class”, ends up marrying a wealthy landed gentleman. Big Hit is not now and has never been “independent” in the way we think of it here aka non-corporate.

Since at least 2017, critics have been trying to formulate a unified theory to explain BTS’s success in the mainstream U.S. music scene in particular, eclipsing other K-pop crossovers. Writers invariably point to the group’s early adoption and savvy use of social media to connect with fans, who have in turn helped BTS smash record after record.

Lol. Okay. “Critics”. Those guys were just dismissed as elitist hacks. Sure. THEY suddenly know what they’re talking about. (Massive eye roll here).

First of all, MANY other K-Pop groups use social media to connect with fans. Instagram, Twitter, V-Live, Fancafe… SHINee’s Key goes on Instagram live all the damn time to chat with fans.

AND Big Bang fans were the first to organize globally via social media to whip votes to get their boys invited to the European MTV Music Awards in 2011 where they won Best Worldwide Act thanks to those votes. The key this writer is missing--maybe because she was spending 8-12 hours a day studying Korean for the last four months--is ENGLISH. BTS (well, RM) used to engage with their international fans in English. He speaks good colloquial English and is a fan of American/foreign art. He is accessible and understandable to English-only fans in a way that other K-Pop idols just aren’t. You need to speak Korean to use Fancafe or interact on V-Live. That barrier to accessibility was substantially lowered with BTS.

Critics also mention BTS’s socially conscious lyrics, their openness about taboos such as mental health, their empathy for the struggles of younger generations, and their emphatic message of self-love.

Again “critics”? What do those critics know?

MANY other groups speak to these issues in some way or another. Idols write personal lyrics for songs. Idols have opinions about politics. SHINee’s Jonghyun certainly did. But the issues that we care about in the West are not always what is important in Korea. Add to that the missing piece here which is that Export K-Pop is explicitly a soft power tool of the government, a group in the spotlight does not have the freedom to speak out without the implicit and very threat of punishment. Of secrets being revealed if you don’t play ball. Do you think the members of YG Entertainment are the only celebrities in all of Korean music to use marijuana and employ call girls? Strange how none of the men implicated in Jang Ja-yeon’s suicide ten years ago were ever publicly named and shamed and punished...

AND considering the engagement with the lyrics is so shallow for most international fans that “some hangul” is apparently enough how much can this really be a factor in their popularity except that international fans like the narrative of liking a socially conscious group because it means they can throw it in the face of those “critics” they claim not to care about.

The author goes on to talk about racism against BTS, which is certainly present in the United States. However, absent from the discussion is the racism thrown around by ARMY who crow their superiority over those fans of “plastic” K-pop idols like EXO. Or the ARMY who like to shit all over “Kpoppies” for liking inferior music that doesn’t talk about mental health or whatever. As if the message of “Mic Drop” (Check out my bag full of trophies) is in some way objectively “better” than the message of EXO’s “Ko Ko Bop” (Let’s get it on.) Really? REALLY?

At the end of the day, fan narratives like this only serve to reinforce the very thing that this author claims to be speaking out against. BTS is not a guilty pleasure but a pleasure. Yes, I agree. But then why do you need to justify that by trotting out the same old narrative that well, yes, BTS is a boy band but they are from an independent group and they write their own songs about mental health when even the thinnest scratch of the surface will reveal it to be as artificial as Jimin’s pink hair?

There is nothing wrong with liking pretty singing and dancing boys. NOTHING AT ALL. The danger comes when this outsized narrative is pushed on them. When the only outcome is that they can never live up to it that, they will be revealed as hypocrites in the end.

Why is i-ARMY’s need to have BTS be worthy of them somehow never openly and honestly discussed and criticized?

Why do I feel like almost all English-language coverage is writing about a mirage? That the group they write about is one I do not recognize?

(Originally published July 19, 2019)