As you may or may not know there has been a storm on Twitter due to an article written by Seth Abramovitch about BTS for The Hollywood Reporter.
I had been scrolling on Instagram when a friend of mine, sent me the link to the article with the words; ‘You have to read this.’ As ever I complied easily.
The Hollywood Reporter is a good magazine for anything related to entertainment so imagine my surprise when I noticed the tone of the article.
You can tell pretty early on that there’s something off about the way it’s written. The focus on their ‘Koreanness’ is there from the start. While listing the (many) accomplishments BTS has made in the global music industry there’s a seemingly heavy surprise that they managed to do all of that despite the fact that all of the songs are in Korean.
Fan Mania
I hate the fact that the article mentions the ‘fan mania’ and later on goes in on the fact that the fans are mostly female between 10 and 30. It seems very dismissive and that just is very sexist. The fact that female fans are being written off as ‘crazy fans’ is a stereotype that is heavily rooted in sexism. Are singers not valid until they have male fans? The snub with the question of how long the fans will stay interested is horrible. Thanks for that vote of confidence.
Let people enjoy things. This is Pumpkin Spiced Lattes all over again.
Politics
Then there’s the whole answering politically charged questions with ‘all the spontaneity of a Disney animatronic figure’. Those questions were mostly about foreign politics like the U.S. or Saudi Arabia. First of all, in their lyrics they do mention social justice but from a Korean standpoint, which makes sense since that’s where they come from.
They even dropped a Japanese single with a Japanese producer because he had a history writing right-wing, misogynistic lyrics. RM even lets some of his songs be proofread by a professor of Women’s Studies. In their later music they tried to limit the use of the Korean word ‘naega’ because it sounds too much like the slur and they want to be respectful towards international fans. Which is not something I can say about the journalist who used it freely while writing an article about Kanye West.
BTS regularly donates to charities in South Korea and they have an anti-violence campaign with UNICEF.
Just because they don’t have an opinion on U.S. politics that they want to share with a journalist, doesn’t mean that they don’t care. Not every public figure needs to have a public opinion.
Contracts
For some reason, anytime K-pop is brought up, the contracts are always mentioned. Is the system perfect, no definitely not. Is it improving, I’d say so. The fact that BTS and other groups like Girls’ Generation, Stray Kids, Twice, Monsta X, Red Velvet and NCT are spreading the love and joy that is Korean music to the world, puts a spotlight on that system. Which is exactly why it will continue to improve.
The fact that Jonghyun from SHINee was brought up, seems horribly irrelevant to the focus of the article. It feels like a very cheap way to denigrate K-pop. The way his passing was even mentioned seems quite disrespectful. It happened almost 2 years ago and most fans still heavily feel that loss. There’s also no certainty that his suicide was the result of the industry. This entire part in the article quite frankly baffles me.
Music
Here’s the thing; if you have this amazing opportunity to interview such bright and talented young musicians, why on earth would you spend more time explaining how you eat dinner than asking intelligent questions about their music. There were only a handful of quotes, most of which make the members sound like obnoxious people.
For an article that could have been great but ended up being extremely disappointing and frankly disrespectful to the artists and the fans, I find no patience. It feels like most of it was written to reach the word count rather than being informative.
If you want to read proper articles, I’d like to recommend journalist Jae-Ha Kim. Here’s her Twitter handle, feel free to give her a follow because she’s brilliant and actually knows what she’s talking about.
P.S. When you give gifts to the people you interview, maybe don’t give them tourist pins from places they’ve already been countless times.
