A French Version of the Wondergirls
Well, in so far as it’s an inane, essentially meaningless song and/or dance step, but which the whole country feels compelled to copy. Sorry if recent posts such as this, this, and this led you to expect a post about 15-year old-girls instead.
I’ve put the video up because, next time you complain about hearing “Tell Me” for the fiftieth time, then by all means rant away, but it’s healthy to remember that Korea doesn’t exactly have a monopoly on mindless fads. Like Janet over at Stranger in a Strange Land says of the video, “after a few weeks of being in Paris, I’ve seen people do this [Tecknotonik] dance in the clubs, on the streets, and on the subway. It’s pretty hilarious.” But then she learned that this dance was in fact a trademark, pushing everything from branded clothes to energy drinks. To embellish her words a little, that meant that what appeared mere harmless fun before, now left her feeling a little jaded and cynical. Similarly, while I never jumped into the whole Wondergirls furor in the blogosphere here, and won’t now either, I did follow it, and it was always good to keep this profit motive in the back of my mind. In particular, it helped me to remember why increasingly sexual images of them in the media couldn’t be dismissed as mere overanalysis, as a lot of commentators did.
Lest the Wondergirls leave me sounding jaded and cynical myself, there’s always that video in the last post to help me. And as for France, here’s still some genuinely fun, cool and creative work from there that I’ve been looking for an opportunity to share for a while:
Admit it, you liked it…especially the noises.
It’s jumping ahead a little, but as I’ll explain in my next two posts, I’ll be looking for and highlighting similar things from Korea on the blog from now on. Watch this space.
(Update: By coincidence, just a few minutes after I finished this post I noticed that Michael Hurt had just written another post on the Wondergirls at his blog. I did say that I wouldn’t discuss them on the blog, if only because I couldn’t do the subject justice after all the time and (virtual) ink that other bloggers have already spent on them, but I couldn’t help but notice one point of his related to the above discussion: that most Koreans refuse to acknowledge that the Wondergirls are sex symbols at all. Again, this not only encourages people to dismiss qualms that their skirts are too short, or that their dancing is too suggestive, but it also deflects attention away from the various companies and individuals profiting from them doing so, instead implying some perversion in mind of the commentator for looking at schoolgirls in such a sexual way.
He goes on to say that that “parallels the notion in idea that in Korea, people are all good, clean Confucians who don’t do dirty things (but just save it for the love motels and leave that “skeleton bone” there – hehe, yes, I meant for a double entendre to be read there!), while Americans apparently hump everybody, according to everybody not American,” and that was a healthy reminder to myself that if I did have to choose one of Korean society’s biggest flaws, it would be precisely this obstinate refusal to admit unpleasant realities.
Michael is often one of those accused of overanalysis, but in my mind this latest post of his on the issue is a very succinct and timely summary of the issues raised by the Wondergirls’ popularity. Even if you’re tired of them, I recommend checking it out)
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I’ve seen tecktonik mentioned a few times but had no idea it had become so popular — and connected to a Yelle song at that!
Another example that comes from abroad is the Japanese Para Para (パラパラ), with origins in the late 1980s and modern off-shoots centered on techno and trance music. Certain musicians will make particular dances for their songs, which are then copied by their fans and performed at concerts (and, presumably, other public places when fans gather together).
Hinoi Team (a group of girls aged around 15-17) are who I usually associate with Para Para, and a search on YouTube should yield more than a few results. The Wikipedia entry for Para Para even claims that Mickey Mouse and other Tokyo Disneyland costume characters performed Para Para during 1998-1999. Would this make Para Para groups the Japanese version of the Wondergirls, but from a decade before?
Thanks for passing that on. I think I’ve read about Para Para in one of the links in my blogroll to the right, but I’m not sure which one.
The reason the Wondergirls have gained such notoriety, at least in the Korean blogosphere, is because of their ridiculously high mini-skirts and suggestive dancing and poses. Like I say in an earlier post, “junior idol” photobooks are common in Japan, and so (presumably) no-one would make much of a girl group wearing and doing the same there, but it’s pretty new to Korea. Do you know or anyone know if Para Para did the same, or if they were just an simple, “innocent” girls’ group?
I’m certainly no expert on Para Para, but I don’t think mini-skirts are a necessity and what I’ve seen in the way of music videos hasn’t included anything in the way of suggestive dancing. Incidentally, I did a search for Hinoi Team on eMule and one of the results was for a bikini “junior idol” photobook from one of the members — but as you said, the climate in Japan is much different than Korea when it comes to that sort of thing.
My previous comparison was more in relation to the creation of specific dances for songs, similar to the connection between the Wondergirls and Yelle. (Yelle is lewd in her songs, but I’m not familiar with her ever dressing or acting that way in her music videos) When it comes to (out of place) scantily-clad performers the Wondergirls would win, hands-down.
Just for the sake of reference, the following link is for the performance video that marked my first exposure to Para Para, and what subsequently comes to mind whenever I think of the genre:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9GUTS5lkdhQ
Ah-haa! Thanks for the link. When I saw it, the first few seconds reminded me of DDR. Then I checked out “para para” on Wikipedia myself, and I realised that I’d read about it in Time magazine in something like 1995, it commenting that having a preset list of dance moves to learn for each song came naturally to Japanese people brought up on rote-memorisation at school.
Now that I’ve seen it for myself, I can’t really see any connections between it and Korean girl groups dressing and dancing lewdly ten years later, and wonder why people did. Para-para barely even involves movement of the legs, for instance, and the only connection I can see seems to be in the ages of the singers.