POP CULTURE SEMIOTICS 101

(Or...A modest explanation for the success of Gangnam Style)

Seeing as Gangnam Style is everywhere at the moment, I thought I'd humbly suggest a reason for its runaway viral success, and a suggest its implications.

You could try to explain the sheer magnitude of its global cultural domination by citing the goofy charisma of its chubby rap-protagonist, Psy, and the song's eminently imitable dance moves. Perhaps the bright colours, sense of humour and catchy tune are to blame. Maybe its the loving and uniquely South Korean homage to the visual tropes of bling hip-hop culture.

But those things are mainly just signifiers: the elements that strike you on first viewing. It's not the text that matters; it's the subtext and the context.

And the context of the hip-hop / bling / rap music video seems key to me.

Now I'm no expert, but it seems to me that there's an undercurrent of Western cultural condescension here, because there is a disconnect between the the message that Psy is intending to send and the way the message is being received.

Gangnam Style is actually a satire on the pretension of Seoul's wealthy citizens. To use the technical term, it's a pisstake.

It's irony proof already because Psy knows what he is doing.

But of course, stripped of that context and subtext, we in the West try to understand it within our own cultural parameters. And that means bringing forth our patronising Western colonial attitudes to Far Eastern culture. If you don't know any better, Gangnam Style is a bad photocopy of American youth culture, a Chinese whisper of hip hop swagger that sounds like “hey, sexy lady!”.

Even in these super-connected times, to us, the East is still peculiarly foreign, particularly other. But, of course, they still want to be Western right? Or more exactly: American.

So the ignorant West condescends to their assumed innocence.

Like watching a four year-old being Joseph in a nativity play, “ah bless, how sweet! Look how hard he's trying!”.

I've done something similar to this myself.

For the 2002 World Cup, I was entranced by the mass-orchestrated, cherry-red clad hordes of South Koreans watching their team's extraordinary run to the semi-finals on giant screens in public squares. What a fabulously biddable, pliant and obedient race, I thought. For them to – all of a sudden – really really like football now, when heretofore they were completely ambivalent.

I pictured them each being summoned individually to an oak-lined government office, where a stern apparatchik sat each one of them down and said: “You really really like football, now. Goodbye.” And then ink-stamped their hand to make it official.

Having had South Koreans as clients, let me tell you: they are not biddable. And they are not at all pliant. Very into their heirarchies though.

In fact, Gangnam Style's success is a symptom of something much more interesting. It's a sign that South Korean pop culture products can achieve global success, and as such it's a sign that South Korea has come of age as a major cultural player in the global entertainment economy.

Economics at school taught me that every nation has three industry sectors: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. Primary industry covers mineral extraction and food¹, Secondary is mainly manufacturing stuff, and Tertiary is the service sector. The social, people-focused industries. The kind of job where you sit in pointless meetings all day, tell your friends that you're really busy and go home at the end of day feeling empty, having achieved nothing. Mature, modern countries create the majority of their wealth in the Tertiary sector.

Well, entertainment products are in that third sector, too. And after Britain's empire gave the world its sports and the American empire its popular music, suddenly there's a gap in the market, or rather a vast swathe of global niches to be filled.

Japan blazed the trail in the 1980s with anime, manga, Transformers, Nintendo and lots more. After Sony spent thirty years creating the best electronic devices, the West was ready to accept, and to love, and to buy, what the Japanese created for those devices.

Now the global village is ready for South Korea. Sure, there have been some great South Korean cult horror and action movies and K-Pop has a growing fanbase, but now they have truly arrived.

And by the way, the South Korea is light years ahead of the West in mobile technology. They've had 3G and 100% ownership of mobile phones for a decade. They have the fastest broadband connections on earth. Behaviours they consider second nature, and skills they have developed for over a decade, are emerging here in the West, and likely to dominate all kinds of tertiary economic sectors for the foreseeable future.

We are going to learn a lot more about them than just how they like to dance.

1Yes, all these descriptions are very simplified, but really, you want to read 500 words on Definitions of Economics terminology? Thought not.