The Standing Wave Theory of Korean Cultural Propagation, Or the Identification of the Resonant Modes of Korean Style
MAKING SENSE OF WAVES
It is high time to rethink the concept and metaphor of the “Korean Wave.” Originally conceived of in 1999 as a metaphor of water crashing, inexorably, onto the shore, the main power and crux of the metonymic use of the “wave” as a stand in for culture crashing , unstoppable in its force and persistency, upon a (foreign) shore is rhetorically as useful as it is logically unsound and, when considered to its logical conclusion, a poorly constructed, mixed metaphor. When land and water possessed of waves meet, the land and water are seldom strangers, as the metaphor tends to suggest, and waves are rarely singular, but are generally repeating phenomena if considered as a procession of individual waves. The only singular, wholly unique types of waves that would actually fit do the descriptive job would be that of a tsunami, which is a Japanese term for the truly unique shock wave caused by a sudden shift in land under or around the sea, generally caused by an earthquake or landslide. When considered this way, the tsunami as a shock wave created by jarring shifts in the underlying structures of the earth that causes an (initially invisible) shock wave out in all directions and can unleash staggering amounts of pressure and kinetic power when it reaches land is a great rhetorical device. Its rhetorical downside is the tsunami’s inevitably destructive effects. However, since the bulk of the metaphor’s rhetorical power lies in the unstoppable physical power of the referent and the tsunami-as-culture’s inexorability, it would likely work just fine in most everyday usages. Similarly, the American colloquialism for someone possessed of an unbelievable amount of skill, especially as expressed through physical prowess, is that of a beast. A person who impresses through an incredible display of style is similarly known to slay.
The “Korean Tsunami”?
Given how easily other colloquial metaphors have eschewed the negative connotations of their original referents, it is not difficult to imagine the Korean “tsunami.” Although the Chinese character root words that made up hallyu would likely not have worked out in as verbally a facile way in the case of han (“Korean”) grafted onto tsunami to yield a han-nami, it could have worked. But it is not the etymology of these words that would have likelly posed a problem; the logical issue arises from the casually haphazard way the term was coined and stuck over time as a rhetorical signifier for the products of a complex socio-structural process for which the term itself was ill-equipped to properly describe. And beyond just the metaphorically/logically awkward fit, the “Korean Wave” fails to define within itself the key unit of meaning that should be common to everything the term is used to describe: What is Korean about the “Wave” or its constituent parts? And another problem here is that what people on the street might choose to even describle Korean to be/mean in the colloquial sense seems to change drastically as time passes.
The problem is that almost nothing has been done to define a) what is Korean about it (besides the fact it describes cultural products from Korea, which has limited utility if you really push the concept to its logical boundaries and b) how this metaphor could/should be extended to explain how the wave propagates. Essentially, this essay is about developing a theory of Korean style with the hope that the theoretical framework can be extended to describe the Korean style — Koreanness — in its essential, fundamental form by tracking how/where it propagates as a Korean thing. One possible way to do this is by looking at the question of Korean style in the sartorial realm — in so-called “K-fashion.” Since the very currency of fashion is style, it is logical to look for a definition of a Korean mode of doing things by looking at Korean mode. In this way, one can better address the question of what is essentially Korean about things in a field such as K-pop, since the notion of what is “Korean” and what is “Korean culture” and explains its worldwide propagation and popular, positive regard has changed so fundamentally since before and after the idea of the “Korean Wave” came into common use just about two decades ago. It is also worth noting that Korean style, as defined in the sartorial sense, is the most cross-field permeating, inter-wreathing, protean skein of mediation of all the fields of putatively Korean media.
Put quite simply, fashion permeates many K-things. Inside K-pop, K-Cinema, K-Drama is the ever-present influence of Korean fashion as a constitutive element of that particular “K.” The converse cannot be so easily said to be true. In this way — by identifying the particularities and peculiarities of Korean mode and fashion, it should become easier to articulate a Korean mode or fashion in which other fields also tend to function. For example, if one can argue that Korean street styles are engendered and enabled by a certain kind of postmodern or even hypermodern genre mixing and this defines a Korean style of textual mixing-as-creation in itself, then might this not be a reason to think of K-pop — which itself is a kind of performance of postmodern pastiche-in-motion — as a natural, homologous cultural formation among many that took form after the alignment of certain key changes in the infrastructural conditions of certain cultural industries? In short, this is the way that many define hip-hop, as both a genre and a mode of thinking/doing things. And this may be the reason hip hop music, fashions, and even attitude show up in so many genres and fields that also share hip hop’s base aesthetic/attitude/mode.
What is interesting in the CL video above is the degree to which it successfully appropriates all kinds of cultural elements that are indeed alien to anything going on in Korean society and are loaded with meaning from value systems that are at least somewhat to completely incompatible with Korean society. Having a gold “grill” (with fangs, no less!), lascivious play with and brandishing of a riding crop, a mainstay of S/M sexual subculture, the obvious nod to chola gangster culture with the lowrider bicycle and the apparent moment of arrest by the police — which all adds up to a nod in the direction of LA gang culture, as well as urban life in LA — especially as punctuated by the allusion to actual biker gangs, followed by the performance of a dance “gang” with masks and apparently “dangerous” wear and moves. It is all topped off by a shot of Adidas shoes tied together and thrown over a wire, which is a staple in urban, gang culture as a monument to someone dearly departed. None of these elements are familiar to the average Korean viewer and in fact likely feel quite foreign objects that mark themselves as foreign practices from foreign — nay, American — cultural contexts.
The fact of the foreignness of these objects is not lost on a Korean viewer. Indeed, in the overlapping historio-psychological modes of Korean thinking of sadaejuui and modern Korean post-coloniality, it is the particular way in which they are foreign that is important.
Put simply, Korean people are quite used to bright and shiny, obviously and incongruously foreign things sticking out from Korean cultures, aesthetics, and things, from Koreanness itself. And the way the sticking out happens is, for the most part, shot through with positive feelings, positive connotations. Ever since the beginning of Korean modernity itself — and one shouldn’t forget that the very ideas of progress, enlightenment, and modernity themselves were initially foreign concepts from outside, mostly filtered through Japan — foreign things have always been associated with things that were generally understood to be good. (see Andre Schmid’s Korea Between Empires here.)
Then Korea enters its quite accidental encounter with America in the 1950s and ends up under the control and in the thrall of the notion of America and her things. American technologies, buildings, fashions, music, aesthetics, ideas, and even American English. And things American are not only obviously superior, but they are good.
Americans, on the other hand, are generally used to a different relationship with foreign otherness within the realm of popular culture and aesthetic concerns. Americans generally don’t like to watch subtitled films, listen to pop music in languages they don’t understand, or wear fashions that obviously come from specific other places. Now, when one adds on the historically specific encounter with an entity such as Frenchness, the feelings become suddenly, starkly (and perhaps even viciously) negative. The French language itself sounds effeminate and offensively foreign to American ears in a way that Italian or Spanish do not (those languages are a whole separate set of stories), the idea of sporting French fashions seems pompous and even ostentatious, and one must consider the way that the descriptor French itself carries the notion of something done wrong or even perversely. The “French kiss” is a lewd, tongue-filled verson of a normal, decent kiss, since the French were known for doing things more lasciviously and decadently — immorally — than Americans thought of themselves as doing. This is the particular way that Americans constructed Americanness against this particular other. Whatever the reasons or particular examples, the general Korean cultural attitude toward a certain kind of otherness vis a vis the great powers that have at different times exerted great influence over Korea has historically been one of deferential respect, especially as other great powers have carried with/through their influence ideas such as Enlightenment, Progress, or Modernity. Clear examples of how certain attitudes and positive “gusts of popular feeling” rode along with the concrete objects or technologies that marked these concepts were the Newspaper, the idea of National History, and the Department Store, respectively. In fact, one can argue (as scholar Katarzyna J. Cwiertka has brilliantly talked about in an essay called “Dining Out in the Land of Desire: Colonial Seoul and the Korean Culture of Consumption”).
Indeed, as several top Korean Studies scholars of modernity in Korea have argued elsewhere, even the very notions of modern identity and subjectivity themselves found expression and focus through now-seemingly-mundane things/places/concepts such as the department store, the radio, the movie theater, the public school, or even popular notions, such as the “modern girl” or “culture” — and it should not escape the astute reader’s notice that many of these concepts revolve centrally around new forms of modern media and modern modes of economic consumption. None of this relationship between what “historical materialist” historians such as the infamous Karl Marx call the fundamental and concrete, economic base of society (you could think of this as one might the hardware of a computer, which is one way I tell my students to think about it) that largely creates/controls/influences the malleable, less concrete stuff atop it (one might think of this as the “software”) called the superstructure has changed much. This is what Cultural Studies folks believe, and how such scholars think — that the stuff in our heads, or that comes from our heads, such as found in ideas or beliefs (ideology), things with messages such as novels, movies, and music videos (cultural texts), or even practices (say, like bowing to one’s elders, trends in popular dance) all exist within the bounds of social norms (rules to live by) that support the smooth operation of the base.
Yes, even — and perhaps especially — everyday fashion. If say, one lives within an economy defined by consumer capitalism that encourages — nay, relies upon — people consuming things to keep the fires burning and the wheels turning, and one of the popular impetuses of buying is argued to be that one’s identity can best be defined through what one buys (such as in cell phone cases, t-shirts, or even the clothing one buys that define “looks” that identify our affinities, such as in “punk” or “goth”), it is easy to see why this kind of behavior bolsters a value that helps keep all kinds of consumption happening and seen as a positive social good. This is a Cultural Studies way of looking at say, Korean street fashion as a cultural text, as a social and economic activity that helps keep the machine of the base humming and thrumming and helps everything in society just make sense. So, in this way, some very Korean pop culture characteristics that seem to describe Korean cultural products across different fields are those of textual impurity, cultural hybridity, and even the state of being quite comfortable with postcoloniality. (Jin et al.)
Indeed, one can understand this to mean “style” in the sartorial, which-clothes-do-I-want-to-wear sense in which it often finds colloquial use, or one might understand this in the sense of a fashion of doing things, a way or manner in which something is done.
And while the word “style” isn’t all too hard to define, a particular style itself is. And how a particular style can be seen as Korean most definitely is.
To demonstrate this, take a gander at the picture below.
What style is this? Does it have a name, or enough particularity that it can be assigned a name? Does it come from somewhere? What is going on here?Just what is it that she’s doing? I do not have the answers to these obviously rhetorical questions, which is why I pose them and will leave them temporarily unanswered.
I would, however, venture to guess that many people would call her “stylish,” which means she is seen as being possessed of a certain sense of style. And possessed of a certain particular style here. And likely possessed of different, distinct looks on other days that define her particular style.
It is easy to see that what is going on here has to do with layers. And possibly ligh against dark stripes/straps, from her ankle straps on her shoes, the dark and strong line of her outer hem, the white pinstripes on her coat, the stark, stenciled white letters on its sleeves, the black-and-white stripes of her clutch purse, and the same alliteration of stripes and straps all the way up to her black choker. And it occurs in cascading, enveloping layers.
But what the pattern seems to be establishing is an echoing symmetry in all this strapping and striping. And it’s a symmetry that is broken by the diagonal swoop of her assymetrical inner hem, something which she accentuates by wearing her jacket asymmetrically for the picture. Half-wearing it, actually, which adds to the extreme layering effect of her look. In sum, from the macro-level of this picture and her look alone, I’m able to pick up dark/light contrasts, echoing striping/strapping, cascading layers, and asymmetry as constituent aspects of her look. It’s the stuff I believe she did on purpose. As part of her plan. And how that fits into her plan elucidates the clear sartorial logic of why she chose not to wear any stockings. Of course, her rationale in the moment was probably “it doesn’t look right,” but this doesn’t mean there was no fundamental logic here.
But it is at the macro level this becomes interesting, where one begins to notice patterns of resonance; patterns of sartorial thought that is part of a system of communication that negate the idea that these are mere coincidences. Consider for a moment the following examples:
It should be easier to see where I’m going with this with concrete visual data from actual examples to ground the discussion, which is about to get a bit theoretical. Let’s just dive into it. shall we? Watch both videos, which are more interesting than you think right now.
So, understood simply, the fundamental modes in a standing wave of stylistic interconnected communication across not one medium but many media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) would be these complete waves, defined from node to node. Each blue or green section would be a wavelength that is a part of the fundamental mode in a standing wave. In physics talk, this is described as lambda (λ). Now, remember, a standing wave is the end result of multiple waves resonating up against one another until it looks like there’s a single, non-moving, standing wave. But all that action of multiple fashion modes bouncing around together results in clear patterns that are like the visible peaks between seemingly dead nodes.
In the end, those crazy kids at fashion week are the peaks or antinodes in a standing wave, while all of us normal-looking civilians are nodes in the same wave. Can’t have one without the other. And all these motions in the fashion media create resonances, which can combine to create larger amplitudes or cancel each other out, or create more, different changes to the mode. I think this one way to understand how trends “travel.” Because they do. And don’t — move through space. Once fundamental modes-as-styles get out there and start bouncing around in media space, they combine, cancel, and reinforce to create clear patterns in standing waves of style.
A MORE PRECISE METHODOLOGY
I’ve figured out that when the peacocking paepi I stop and photograph at Seoul Fashion Week are socially unusual antinodes, who themselves define and are defined by normal, non-peacocking people who are the nodes. The paepi are the peaks, and the nodes are definitely not the peaks. They are not one and the same, but they are intimately related and co-dependent. So if you take fishnets (or perhaps even fishnets worn “wrong”) as the lambda (λ) that makes up the mode, you see it reflected/reinforced in all kinds of places, slightly tweaked in myriad ways, cuz that’s how people do.
The important change I’ve decided to make based on this typology/methodology/tool of analysis is listing what I consider to be fundamental modes of the standing wave of style. The key thing to do is to identify these base harmonics that get repeated across space and echoed across time — and distinguishing them from the constitutive trends that define them. So are fishnet stockings the mode? Or fishnets worn in combination with other things?
Let’s keep going.
I see resonances with other modes, multiple lambdas (λ) Let’s keep going.
I’m still figuring out how this all will affect my methodology next fashion week, but I’ve figured out that the key to understanding Korean culture through fashion style — or Korean style as a definable thing unto itself — is to look at a the modes, not their constitutive trends. After all, the picture above does not record the first time a girl has worn a necktie, but if one sees her gender code-crossing as part of a bigger pattern of gender code-switching in fashion and style in Korea, it is easier to make this all make sense, to see what’s going on in the culture. And to be able to understand that the boy in the picture below is not just crossdressing.
So now, I have a better sense of what I’ve been looking for and why I’ve been pulling people aside for pictures. We’re looking for lambdas, not lambs.
Now that the conceptual framework for subject selection and evaluation has been established, linking this up to other parts of the standing wave of hallyu becomes easier. And I can look back on the familar patterns I found in Vietnam as lambdas — that’s what I noticed while walking around looking for “Korean style” and its constituent modes there.
