Second Reflection

Bhavya Dharanikota
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read

For the piece of media that is more positive and deals with relevant issues thoughtfully and thoroughly, I chose to analyze the lyrics to a song from a youtube video I stumbled upon last year. The song is called Silver Spoon (or alternatively, Crow Tit) by the Korean band BTS. The song deals with the “spoon” metaphor that is popular in South Korea, in which people are born with golden spoons, silver spoons, rusty spoons, dirty spoons, and so on and so forth, which describes both their socioeconomic status along with as their generational plight. Many young South Koreans, like many American millennials, feel that previous generations have left unstable environments for the current generation to inherit. Another important piece of commentary the group makes through the song is the animalistic hierarchy in which crow-tits, a type of bird also known as parrotbills, are aiming to get to the very top of the avian world but ultimately don’t succeed. The Korean idiom, “if a crow-tit walks like a stork it will break its legs” (“뱁새가 황새 걸음을 걸으면 가랑이 가 찢어진다”), is a pretty widespread on, and it’s used as a reminder for people to remain in their lane and in relation to someone seemingly low-class trying to reach a higher class of society. The song also expresses anger over many young workers being coerced to accept what is known as “passion pay” in Korea (열정페이), working for free to gain “experience.” By embracing the identity of a crow-tit, BTS reclaim the looked down upon “underdog” narrative their career path depicts, and draws attention to the world that appears to be biased against their generational peers trying to achieve success.

For the piece of media that is a lot more negative and deals more with misleading point of views and missing details, I still stayed in a political/socioeconomic sphere, but shifted to a more drastic side of things. Anyone who pays attention to the news these days has heard of Tomi Lahren, who proclaims herself as a fierce advocate of the conservative side of politics and a loyal Trump supporter. I tried to find one of her Youtube videos that showcases the manipulative reporting tactics she employs to use but I couldn’t only use one, so in this case I’m going to lump all of them together. Tomi Lahren exerts her white privilege and masks the ideal of it by saying ‘these are my thoughts- feel free to disagree” and yes, I disagree. I disagree with how she lumps all democrats together and rarely, if ever, gives any validity or credibility to the other side of her argument. She believes that if you aren’t a flaming conservative, then you have no part in being an active member of society, makes half of her statements invalid because she doesn’t want to acknowledge the other side of things. There is nothing wrong with having your own opinion (in face, it’s something that should be encouraged even when your opinion may be disagreed with!) but when things go too far, it should be cause to step back and reevaluate things. She refuses to speak on the issue of racism, claiming she “doesn’t see color”, yet lumps all black people in together in almost all of her videos. She likes to discuss white privilege and how it seemingly isn’t real — just because she denies her privilege doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And yet, despite all of this (and more), people still listen to her and support her and her other social media platforms just because she speaks of her opinions with clarity and conviction. It shouldn’t be fair that someone with such extreme views should have such a large following, because what she does is mislead an audience that is too lazy to go and see if her far fetched claims have a basis in any solid reasoning.