Tuyet 9

Nguyen, Thi Bach Tuyet2011190173CLC4712 01Popular Culture: A Cute New World Final Paper

Korean Girl Groups Cuteness:Powerless in Form of Power

Korea is witnessing a phenomenon that has never occurred in its history - the rising power of its popular culture all over the world, especially in its neighborhood areas. In the rise of Korean pop culture, the hottest phenomenon is the rising power of Korean girl groups. A larger number of girl groups debut in Korea each year and they are dominating all aspects of Korean pop culture, from music, drama, fashion, beauty and advertisement. Observing the dramatic rising in power of Korean girl groups, a writer of Korean Magazine even suggests that the dominance of girl groups in Korea is a sign of Korean society shifting from a masculine-dominated era to one of feminine equality (Jeong). However, as the Korean culture puts great emphasize and values the cute characteristic, most of Korean girl groups achieve their dominance in pop culture by conceptualizing them as cute girls who are more childlike rather than authoritative and thus being more powerless rather than powerful. In other world, the analysis of the rising of Korean girl groups suggests that the real power of Korean girl groups is being powerless.To begin with, the examination of Korean pop music proves that Korean girl groups are gaining more popularity and dominance comparing to several years ago. Korean pop culture started gaining its popularity at the end of 1990s and early 2000s. At this time, Korean pop music is conquered by boy groups who gained enormous success both in Korea and oversea such as DBSK, Super Junior, and Big Bang. It is true that the number of Korean girl group in this period is not small. However, they usually have short life span and incomparable to boy groups in term of attracting audiences, and earning money for their management agency. The boom of girl group in Korean pop music can be dated back to 2007 with the unimaginable success of Wonder Girls, and 2009 with the Girls Generation phenomenon. Since then, the number of girl group keeps rocketing, leading to their dominance later on. For example, there 40 girl groups debuting from 1997 to 2008, but that of the period between 2009 and 2012 is 66 (Nguyen RDQM Group Presentation). Following the rising in number, Korean girl groups are also gradually dominating pop music scene. According to korea.net magazine, girl groups can be seen on every screen, appearing in TV dramas, entertainment shows and even documentaries (Jeong). That is to say, Korean girl groups are in the center of publics attention and their appearance in media is very frequent. The Forbes Korea magazine also proves the dominance of girl group in its Power Celebrity 40 List 2013 in which six out of forty most powerful celebrities are girl groups. At the first glance, it seems like the era of girls is coming since they are dominating the pop culture with their powerful influences. The society is transforming and giving girls more opportunities to success and more attention. However, witnessing the massive rise of girl group, one must pose some questions: what lay behind the rising popularity of girl group, and is it really a sign of girl power as acclaimed? In order to answer those questions, it is very useful to utilize the theory of affect by Massumi and the theory of cuteness by Sianne Ngai. According to Massumi, affectivity mechanism is divided into three separated stage. The first stage in the mechanism is affectivity which is defined as the messages sent out by people or objects to other people. The next stage is the moment when those affectivities generate some certain kinds of feeling inside the affectivity receivers. Those feeling can be good ones such as happy, comfortable, and easy or bad ones such as sad, nervous, uncomfortable depending on what kind of affectivities that the person received. Finally, those feelings will be translated into emotions of love, like or hate towards the affectivity senders. In the case of cuteness, in the book Our Aesthetic Categories, the author Sianne Ngai defines cuteness that: cuteness is not just an aestheticization but an eroticization of powerlessness (Ngai 3). That is to say, cuteness is a state in which the beauty, the significance of an object lay in its powerlessness. The most important aspect of this kind of beauty is that the powerlessness of an object is intentionally highlighted and exaggerated and thus the more powerless it is, the cuter or more beautiful it becomes. Therefore, some prominent traits of cute objects may include softness, smallness, innocence, tenderness, unthreatening feeling and so on. For example, Rillakuma (Figure 1), with the design utilizing roundness and flatness, is perceived as one of the cutest toys in Japan.

Figure 1Beside the roundness and flatness, Rillakuma has big eyes, but no mouth and completely no facial expression. Those details emphasize the unthreatening and thus powerless characteristic of Rillakuma. Therefore, the charm or beauty of Rillakuma is none other than its powerlessness which is exaggerated in the design. Due to the fact that cuteness associated with unthreatening feeling or smallness, cute things project an image of weakness, submissiveness, helplessness, passiveness, and vulnerability. Those images are the affectivities which objects send to the receivers. In her book, Ngai also suggests that in order to judge something cute you first have to feel your own dominance in relation to it (Porte 1). It means that those kinds of affectivity sent by the cute objects usually provoke the feeling of dominance, of power, which ultimately leads to the desire to exert power over them, to overprotect. In other words, the purpose of cuteness of an object is to make the object look more vulnerable, passive, and stupid so that people can feel their power over it. In the last stage of affectivity mechanism, in responding to the generated feelings, people start loving and adoring cute things. In short, the affectivity mechanism of cuteness can be summarized in three stages: image of weakness feeling dominance loving and adoring. It is apparent that the affectivity mechanism of cuteness suggests an imbalance of power (Ngai 54) between the cute things and people who love the cute things. In order to be judged as cute, an object needs to maintain a relationship in which it has to present itself as ridiculously ignorant, incapable, and submissive towards the other. Cuteness thus disempowers the object and empowers the cuteness judgers at the same time. Despite the fact that cuteness disempowers the object, it is capable of generating powerful demands for love and attention from affectivity receivers. For instance, people are very easily lured to buy cute products like Rillakuma. Also, Yanto Chandra comments on his article: People with cuter faces tend to be perceived as warmer, more honest, and believe it or not, are more likely to be selected for jobs and promotions (1). Up to this point, it is can be seen from the examples that the powerlessness of cute objects becomes its effective weapon and thus surprisingly playing a role of power house in the game with cuteness lovers.The theory of cuteness and affectivity will offer a more insightful look into the "power of Korean girl groups because cuteness is, no doubt, the most popular concept and the most powerful weapon of girl groups. As mentioned above, the starting point of the boom of Korean girl groups is the overwhelming success of Wonder Girls with their songs Tell Me in which the omona gesture (Figure 2) became the trademark of the song and Wonder Girls themselves.

Figure 2The omona gesture, by showing the shyness, tenderness and thus cuteness of young girl, made Wonder Girls popularity skyrocket in a short period of time. In addition, speaking about the milestone of Korean girl groups development without mentioning Girls Generation with their hit Gee will be a fundamental shortcoming. Despite debuting in the same year with Wonder Girls, Girls Generation, with the concept of little sisters, did not manage to captivate the heart of people until they followed Wonder Girls and changed to the cute concept with their biggest hit Gee. In the song Gee, the cuteness is overtly and excessively expressed in their facial expression and the G shape hand gesture (Figure 3 and 4). (Figure 3) (Fugure 4)Beside Wonder Girls and Girls Generation, cute concept is sweeping other girl groups such as T-ara, Kara, Secret, A Pink and so on. However, cuteness in term of outfit, hand and facial gestures are just superficial. The deeper level of cuteness of girl group can be read from the lyric of their songs. Take the lyric of Gee as an example. The song itself is a story of a young girl first falling into love. Because of falling in love for the very first time, the young girl, at first, appears to be very shy, innocent, and tender when she keeps crying I feel so embarrassed I feel shy I cant look at you What should I do? What should I do? Im a fool I cant even say anything I dont know I dont know I dont know . Later, when the feeling of the shy girl is exaggerated to the point that My eyes are blinded [Because the boys are so handsome] I cant breathe because Im trembling my trembling heart Im shocked my body is trembling Im engulfed by loves fire my heart is anxious Im a helpless fool , her cuteness is also exaggerated from shyness, innocence, and tenderness to submissiveness, timidity, helplessness, vulnerability, and powerlessness, for she is totally motionless, blinded and unable to react or do or say anything. In addition, the repeating use of the words What should I do, trembling, and helpless fool clearly portrays an image of extremely passive and submissive girls. The phrase I dont know which is repeated so many times in the lyric also does not sound innocent as it is supposed to be. On the one hand, it adds to the passivity, stupidity, and ignorance of the girl because she admits that she does not know anything, does not know how to do and what to say. On the other hand, it also indicates that because the young girl does not know anything, boys can use and do whatever he wishes to her. Up to this part, the image of cute girls with prominent traits of cuteness innocence, tenderness, helplessness, vulnerability, powerlessness, and independence are completely projected. The fact that Korean girl groups manage to dominate the pop music with the overtly cute concept proves that cuteness has become their powerful weapon. By applying the theory of cuteness and affectivity, one can come to a conclusion that the fundamental element lying behind the rise of Korean girl groups is the concept of cuteness; and the real power of girl groups is their ability to maintain their powerlessness. This is because girl groups must put them in a ridiculous situation in which they present themselves as more submissive, stupid and ignorant than they are. In order to win the game, and gain power, girl groups must disempower themselves so that they can generate the power demanding for love and attention from public. That is to say, the girl power which is acclaimed by both girl groups and media is actually powerlessness in the form of power.In a culture which greatly value cuteness like Korean culture, cuteness does not just exist in the small world of girl group but spread to the whole society, especially among girls and female adults. In Korea, it is not hard to see how a girl or even women utilize excessively their cuteness to make a demand for other people, especially to their boyfriend, father, and male partners. It indicates that the only power of a girl is her powerlessness which she must maintain and utilize in order to get what she wants. Therefore, this phenomenon does not in any way empower girls and women. Rather, it is widening the gender gap which has long been a serious social issue in the patriarchal society of Korea. The rising power of girl groups thus never contributes to the feminine equality but only generates the false idea of feminine equality in society. That is because the phenomenon teaches girls and women that they only way to gain power is to disempower themselves.

Work citedJeong, Deok-hyeon, Swept Up by Girl Groups. The Korea.net Magazine. Mar. 2010. Web. 19 June 2013Gee Girls Generation. SM Entertainment, 2009. Music Video.Tell Me Wonder Girls. JYP Entertainment, 2007. Music Video.E-tribe. Gee, trans. Cathode, Soshified, 5 Jan 2009. Web. 19 June 2013Sianne, Ngai. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Cambridge: Havard University Press, 2012. PrintTuyet Nguyen, et al. Research Design and Qualitative Method Group Presentation. May 2012Rebecca, Ariel, On Our Aesthetic Categories. Los Angeles Review of Books. 14 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 June 2013.Lizzie, Cute Girls Finish First: Is aegyo a form of power? Beyond Hallyu. 8 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 June 2013 Yanto, Chandra, Girl bands and the phenomenon of cute economics The Jakarta Post. 23 May 2012. Web. 19 June 2013.Forbes Koreas Top Power Celebrity 40 List 2013. Forbes Korea Magazine. 28 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 June 2013