Anyone Else Over Gangnam Style?

I am.

The Gangnam Style video is now the most watched in Youtube history.

I mean as a song it's catchy and as a video I love the message that the massive and shallow consumer culture that Korea has adapted in the last 30 years is ultimately un fulfilling and that real happiness is found with other people, not things.

However, I think someone needs to explain to people that:

1 - Psy sold out after ridiculing Korean consumer culture.
2 - Psy does not represent Korea.

In Gangnam they are now building a Psy/Kpop themed park (seriously) to promote tourism and Kpop. It's like no one realizes that Gangnam is being ridiculed here. But I guess when Psy is now hawking sell phones, cars and beer it's hard for him to keep his image as an anti-corporate, anti-consumer guy. I wish he had spent a bit more time pointing out that part of his song and his ideas, get people thinking about what really matters. It's not like we aren't ultra-consumerist in the west. Bill Gates married a model for a reason. I just think we feel bad about it. However, blatant consumerism and status seeking ARE met with resistance. Anna Nicole Smith was called a gold digger (with just cause) but here she'd be admired in a few circles. That IS a problem. It's one of the soul and culture but it's a problem and it's one that Psy had ridiculed. It could have been a springboard for a real soul searching discussion. Instead we get a new theme park and kids are buying LG brand Psy cell phones.


Psy is on record as saying that he does not represent Korea or want to, yet everything he does in analyzed and discussed here. Pictures of him smoking in Toronto are panned, yet virtually every Korean male smokes (ie - he IS representing the reality). Psy is, in fact, the opposite of what Korean pop culture is about. Kpop is SO youth and sex appeal focused that it's debatable what real music there is. It's catchy, very catchy actually, but it's nine girls in tight clothes. This video by T-ara is a much better example of the average K-pop video. A post apocalyptic future where the women still manage to have $200 worth of makeup on, have no muscle or fat to speak of and spend time playing with cute rabbits while being hunted by hordes of homoerotic men also wearing $200 worth of makeup. The Walking Dead it is not. This is what Korea has been pushing as it's pop music successfully in Asia but without any real success in western markets for years. There's a reason for that. There is no substance. Psy is a fat, 34 year old man. In Korea he was not well received before this. He had a fan base but he was old and not attractive to far too many people. Suddenly he breaks in and now he represents Korea? He is what Korean pop culture has been loathing for 15 years and why he did a parody of that lifestyle the way he did.

In any event I think Psy is more Ricky Martin that John Lennon and in six months some new thing will have replaced him internationally. For now though it seems an opportunity lost.