Gangnam is a tony Seoul neighborhood, and Park’s...

Gangnam is a tony Seoul neighborhood, and Park’s “Gangnam Style” video lampoons its self-importance and ostentatious wealth, with Psy playing a clownish caricature of a Gangnam man. That alone makes it practically operatic compared to most K-Pop. But I spoke with two regular observers of Korean culture to find out what I was missing, and it turns out that the video is rich with subtle references that, along with the song itself, suggest a subtext with a surprisingly subversive message about class and wealth in contemporary South Korean society. That message would be awfully mild by American standards — this is no “Born in the U.S.A.” — but South Korea is a very different place, and it’s a big deal that even this gentle social satire is breaking records on Korean pop charts long dominated by cotton candy.

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Max Fisher, “Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea’s Music Video Sensation”

One of the side-effects of “Gangnam Style” going viral is that people in the West are using it to talk about themselves. For writers like Fisher, Psy embodies that archetype of the self-aware, ironic satirist who always stands outside of the world he is depicting (and criticizing). This is a particularly Western (specifically American) artistic mantle that Fisher has bestowed on Psy, and I don’t think it fits. It’s more that it presents an opportunity for Fisher to repeat cliches about pop music in general (nothing more than “cotton candy”), and there’s also a subtle ethno-cultural dynamic here: Fisher knows that he and his fellow Westerns get this satirical stance, but he’s not entirely sure if everyone in Korea gets it. Presumably, they aren’t as sophisticated as Western elites who position themselves above the masses and look down on “low culture.”

Fisher even plays up the fact that Psy studied in the U.S. It’s like he’s trying to depict the artist as caught halfway between the world of Korean entertainment and the more savvy West, which has long regarded pop music as nothing more than “cotton candy,” mere fluff. Fisher is pulling him bit-by-bit towards the U.S., but I’m not sure that’s really appropriate for someone like Psy. It parallels the reactions people have toward “Gangnam Style”: I’m sure some will see it and want to delve further into K-pop, which they (rightly) assume holds similar pleasures, whereas others will see in it confirmation that the rest of the K-pop industry is frivolous, taking itself too seriously.

Fisher’s hysterical tone—he notes about Korea that “in 2010, the average household carried credit card debt worth a staggering 155 percent of their disposable income (for comparison, the U.S. average just before the sub-prime crisis was 138 percent)”—serves his point that it is up to well-educated elites to point out society’s ill, because the masses are too busy pursuing only the most superficial pleasures (e.g. expensive coffee). Is Psy really saying something in line with Fisher’s narrative, or is he merely deflating local, Korean pretentions pertaining to wealth? You can talk one way to your own people, but outsiders will always find ways to exploit the criticisms you make.

What I find most irritating about Fisher’s attitude, though, is the way it falls in line with the current attitude in America of skepticism towards art and entertainment in general. He doesn’t just talk down to pop music: by raising Psy up as this figure who is worthwhile precisely because he’s skewering the pop industry, Fisher is implicitly valorizing prejudices against taking art seriously. We’ve long become accustomed to conventions within art, and so the only thing to do is to endlessly poke holes in those conventions. This is postmodernism lite, but it doesn’t really take us anywhere productive. It’s far more radical to re-engage the pleasures of pop music and art that thrives on convention (like, for instance, even Shakespeare) and to take them seriously. I think Psy is doing exactly that, in fact: just watch any of his live performances and you will see that he enjoys hamming it up and playing these goofy roles. But at this point, everyone can see what they want in “Gangnam Style.”