Although K-pop, or Korean pop music, sensation Park Jaesang (PSY) has been widely acclaimed in his home nation native South Korea, for several music records, concerts and some music videos, did not gain international recognition until his hit music video "Gangnam Style" was released on YouTube in 2012. The quirky satirical video it became the most viewed video in YouTube history, reaching one billion views on December 21, 2012, just over five months after its release. Then, in June 2014, “Gangnam Style” reached two billion views in just under two years after its release. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original EssayPSY may be short for "psychopath," but according to Billboard he's certainly savvy enough in the business world, as well as what his audience is interested in, to "make his own decisions without micromanaging labels." Having a leading role in the development of "Gangnam Style", PSY co-directed the video and choreographed the infamous horse dance used throughout. Although PSY had not released many music videos before "Gangnam Style", he managed to top several music charts in Korea six times over the course of his twelve-year career, a story that perhaps predicted the immediate success of "Gangnam Style". " in the country. As for international success, PSY told Reuters: "The YouTube video never targeted foreign countries. It was for the local fans." The lyrics that play in the video are mostly in Korean, and there are some nuances in both the lyrics and the videography that only those fluent in Korean culture, especially K-pop, would pick up on. A prominent example of this is that PSY chose to include several Korean celebrities in its music video, such as five-year-old dancer Hwang Min Woo from "Korea's Got Talent", PSY's Korean comedian friend Noh Hong-cheol, and Hyun - Ah, a K-pop singer from the group 4Minute Viewers outside Korea who don't have much experience with Korean popular culture may not recognize any of these celebrities, whose guest appearances are something of a K-pop tradition. Since "Gangnam Style" was released on YouTube, it could easily be shared outside of Korea and then spread internationally to those viewers outside of Korea in a rather short period of time. It did not become very popular worldwide immediately after its release. but once it started to spread, it did so very quickly. Although the music video was primarily released on YouTube (and available for purchase on websites like iTunes), it went viral very easily thanks to its initial, and eventually exponential, fan base. As Billboard explains, "the biggest contributing factor to the success of 'Gangnam Style' was fans creating covers and sharing the songs with friends." So, not only was PSY's hit video released in its original form, but many fan-made parody videos with their (typically comedic) interpretation helped popularize the "Gangnam Style" phenomenon. Although PSY banked on the success of “Gangnam Style,” both he and his label, YG Entertainment, strategically produced the video. As mentioned above, the music video features several big-name Korean celebrities, each with their own base of fans that the video automatically appeals to PSY is already considered a part of K-pop, so many fansKoreans would watch the video and, attracted by the catchy song and new choreography that PSY developed, would share it with friends both locally and internationally. They used a "topical talking point", the Gangnam District, and the stereotypical, materialistic lifestyle it invokes to attract the attention of the Korean public, which then spread internationally. One specific scene that extremely illustrates the satirical nature of "Gangnam Style" is a mockery of a stereotypical American music video scene in which a rapper walks down a confetti-strewn red carpet. In his version, PSY imitates this while walking in a parking lot with two models at his side, getting excessively hit by pieces of trash: a commentary on the overly materialistic social context surrounding the release of "Gangnam Style". This scene also serves as an example of the cultural hybridity evident in the video's production and reception methods, blending American and Korean cultures. In this article, I argue that PSY's "Gangnam Style" music video is an exemplary outcome of today's globalization. world that functions within its structure. The video reflects cultural hybridity, described by Kraidy's intercontextual theory of hybridity. Because of this element of hybridity, the text appeals to many people in our current world of Tomlinson's complex connectivity, where it is able to reach many people and thus gain rapid global popularity. In postcolonial theory, the concept of hybridity has lent itself to “many areas of cultural research, theory, and criticism.” As Kraidy uses the term, “hybridity” is primarily about culture, but it also insinuates meanings between topics of race, language, and ethnicity. In examining today's cultural globalization, Kraidy identifies hybridity as a defining characteristic. The notion of hybridity is controversial due to its wide variety of uses, initiating a debate over its "meaning, implications and utility". In postcolonial thought, it would make sense from a historical perspective that hybridity is sometimes contested due to the historical apprehension towards sociocultural change, which hybridity represents. In any case, according to Kraidy, hybridity has recently become more relevant and visible in international media and communication studies. At a basic and more common level, hybridity has been used to describe “mixed genders and identities”, while on a more prolonged, but rare front, it has been theorized as a real communicative space or practice. Kraidy rejects the use of hybridity as a descriptive statement, suggesting instead that it should be considered a communicative practice “constitutive of and constituted by sociopolitical and economic arrangements,” using context as a driving force. Hybrid media texts, as I will argue exemplified by “Gangnam style,” are the product of “a variety of historical, economic, and cultural forces whose mutual entanglements are as manifest locally, nationally, and regionally as they are visible.” globally." Hybridity is at the heart of Kraidy's theory of critical transculturalism, which he defines as "a new framework of international communication". This framework sees cultural hybridity as cultures interacting in both the production and reception of media texts, where global and local are not a dichotomy. but mutually constitutive, and where globalization is the site of cultural hybridization. Therefore, in today's globalized world, it should come as no surprise that hybrid media texts are becoming increasingly widespread and popular. Largely due to their hybridity, they are able to reach a broader audience “with investment and riskminimum". Furthermore, Kraidy states that “hybrid cultural forms are not anomalies in media globalization.” He explains that the omnipresence of hybridity marks “the increasing synchronization of world markets.” In essence, hybrid media texts have been popular to create largely because of the economic incentive involved. In a globalized world, hybrid media can be distributed on a wider basis, which means greater visibility and therefore greater profits. Instead of producing texts that address only one culture, it would make more economic sense to produce culturally hybrid texts that address a multitude of cultures. This also includes cultures other than those represented in the media object. For example, some American media become very popular abroad among cultures with which they have little similarity. If audiences appreciate the media for its insight into American life, they may identify with certain aspects, or even be entertained by the stark differences that the media portrays. . Overall, it is an economic advantage to produce a text that can be received in multiple cultures. According to The Atlantic, in South Korea, “The emphasis on heavy spending, combined with the country's truly astonishing two-generation growth from agrarian poverty to poverty-stricken economic power, have given life to the country with an emphasis on hard work and 'aspiration, as well as on the materialism that can sometimes follow." Gangnam, a neighborhood in Seoul, is the symbol of this materialism, holding 7% of South Korea's GDP in just fifteen square miles. Adrian Hong, a Korean-American consultant, told The Atlantic: “Koreans have kind of been caught up in this expense of looking rich, and Gangnam has really been the vanguard of that.” “Gangnam Style” is the version PSY's satirical commentary on this materialism, making fun of these people involved in spending, hoping to make "laugh like crazy even in the midst of all this global economic slowdown. Therefore, its music video shows that the content of the same media lyrics can." be shaped by the status of the economy, formerly produced for economic gain At the same time, the power of the economy is not the only influence on the production of a hybrid Kraidy proposes an intercontextual theory of hybridity, which cites the idea of. García-Cancilini that power does not only work vertically, rather power relations are intertwined and therefore Kraidy provides his definition of the intercontextual theory of hybridity as focused “on the mutual”. constitutive interaction and overlap of cultural, economic and political forces in international communication processes. Much of this article's discussion centers on this aspect of hybridity in "Gangnam Style," analyzing how the text incorporates cultures: intentionally, as interpreted by the viewer, and simply as a result of the context in which it was produced. What Kraidy describes as hybridity is a characteristic of much of the media produced in today's world, which Tomlinson describes as fraught with “complex connectivity.” His notion of complex connectivity is a theory of globalization that explains how people have recently begun to communicate and interact in the global village, doing so differently than before. Now, Tomlinson argues, the proximity in time and space created by global modernity (particularly technology) has brought together people who would never have had the opportunity to communicate before, “causing distant events and powers to penetrate our experience local".[25] Although globalization “dissolves the certainties of locality, it offers new understandings – ultimately, in global terms. "Tomlinson argues that the complex connectivity ofglobalization disrupts the feeling of "local", which in some cases can make it more difficult for people to identify some media texts, for example, as entirely national. Kraidy's theory of hybridity fits into Tomlinson's discourse here, since the globalized world gives hybridity to the media. Due to the nature of complex connectivity, where interactions across time and space are inevitable, it has become nearly impossible to designate a text as influenced exclusively by a specific culture. Cultures themselves have been hybridized to some extent through the structure of complex connectivity. Both the volume and content of information and interactions that people can now exchange across time and space “affect people's sense of identity, experience of place and of self in relation to place”.[27] These are all aspects of culture, presupposing the definition of culture as anything or any way in which people make sense of the world. The deterritorialization that occurs in cultural globalization leads to this transformation of culture, as it can travel through Tomlinson's global network of communicative connections and be continually formed and reformed. An example of a phenomenon made possible by Tomlinson's network of connections and inscribed in Kraidy's hybridity is the Korea Wave, of which “Gangnam Style” is a product. Originating in the 1990s in Asia, the “Korean wave,” or hallyu, is the term initially used by the Chinese press to describe the widespread popularity of Korean popular culture outside of Korea. This is a phenomenon that was initiated and is still used by the Korean government as a tool to revitalize the economy. A 7% loss of GDP resulting from the 1998 financial crisis prompted President Kim Dae-Jung to issue his Presidential Proclamation on Culture, which established both the Korea Institute of Design Promotion and the Korea Creative Content Agency.[29] His Basic Law for the Promotion of the Cultural Industry in 1999 was supported by $148.5 million from the government. In 2002, 1.15% of the Korean government's budget was set aside for cultural production, nearly double that of 1998 (0.60%), marking a greater investment in Korea's economic and cultural future under Dae- Jung. Although the Korean wave originated and is still influenced by government economic purposes, it has recently evolved from production financing through government budget support and financing subsidies through joint ventures with foreign entities and independent producers, such as PSY. “The Second Wave,” or hallyu 2.0, has become known as the development of the original Korean wave from television dramas to music. Korean pop music singers, or "K-pop" singers, produce hybrid media that is popular both domestically and internationally. Chuyun Oh describes this hybridity as “multicultural mutant Koreanness,” while some Western viewers criticize K-pop hybridity for imitating American culture. Japanese popular culture has also managed to spread internationally, but manufacturers focus on making universal products. Korean producers, in contrast, focus on hybrid media production. Hybrid Korean popular culture, such as PSY's “Gangnam Style,” is successful on the international front and has global appeal due to its “Koreanness.”[33] The content is local, but also adapts to the “needs and demands of local markets”. abroad. “Gangnam Style,” as I argue, does this largely through its parodies. This concept reflects glocalization, a 1990s term that is a blend of global and localization, defined as "adapting products orservices that are available everywhere in the world to adapt them to local needs”. Doobo Shim equates this idea with the practice of hybridity, providing an example of the hybridity expressed when local people “inscribe their everyday meaning” into global goods, conventions, and styles. This reflects Kraidy's description of hybridity as a cultural interaction involved in both the production and reception of a text. Once again, largely through its "redaction" lyrics (new fan-produced material that uses but modifies existing content), "Gangnam Style" establishes itself as a hybrid. To be successfully distributed internationally, Korean pop culture hybrid media is created with international audiences in mind, which can be done both intentionally and unintentionally. This links to Tomlinson's notion of complex connectivity; without the newly developed closeness with others outside the domestic sphere, Korean music videos like “Gangnam Style” would not even be accessible to international audiences, let alone appealing. This proximity “which derives from the network of social relationships across large periods of time-space, causing distant events and powers to penetrate our local experience” has been made increasingly relevant through the development of Internet platforms and social media. One such platform is YouTube, on which Korean music videos such as “Gangnam Style” are distributed to an international audience. The digital age has offered innovative and effective avenues through which Korean popular culture media is distributed, which has been critical to hallyu's global success. Dal Yong Jin and Kyong Yook refer to the success of hallyu 2.0, which is characterized by both Korean popular culture, the culture's growing popularity and its global reach, being determined largely by its integration into a “socially driven cultural landscape media,” today's social media landscape.[40] They cite "Gangnam Style" as the most important and appropriate example of the importance of technology for hallyu 2.0, YouTube and Twitter are the main platforms through which its success has increased exponentially. An initial spark that seemed to kick off the PSY phenomenon were two tweets mentioning the video, one from @WeLoveDara, an overseas K-pop fan, and Scooter Braun, the famous entertainment manager who discovered Justin Bieber.Once "Gangnam Style" found success on social media, mainstream media outlets such as NBC's Today Show began featuring PSY. Both new and old media combined “accelerated the global sensation.”[42] Therefore, not only does the social media landscape initially influence fans in itself, but its influence is compounded by diffusion through traditional media. The social media landscape has also given fans the means to participate and interact with the media. In a study conducted by Jin and Yoon on fans of Korean popular culture, many respondents became fans primarily through user-generated content, particularly those who do not speak Korean. Most Korean popular culture, including “Gangnam Style,” is produced and distributed in Korean. This means that peer-produced translations and subtitles were necessary in the spread of the Korean wave. In addition to these media text supplements, information, opinions and feelings about it were also shared by users, promoting the Korean wave and making other users of the culture aware. One respondent in Jin and Yoon's study, a 20-year-old Canadian, said: "Korean things get shared and that changes what I'm exposed to and what I might like in the future... Social mediaare completely changing my experience." through my peers." Users share and rework lyrics that appeal to them. This is exemplified in the case of "Gangnam Style," of which fans have created many parodies that have further popularized the video Doobo Shim and Sun Jung conducted a study among Indonesian K-pop fans, in which YouTube was found to be the most desirable platform for accessing K-pop, followed closely by Twitter.[45] In recent years, YouTube has rapidly gained ground in terms of professionalized content that generates revenue for both the site and the producer. It is no longer a social distribution that exclusively provides user-generated content; YouTube where advertising revenues are split. Major record companies have their own channels on YouTube where their content is published and can subsequently be viewed by YouTube users, in order to "create synergies in production and distribution". As Shim and Jung note, "Gangnam Style" was released on the official YouTube channel of PSY's management company (YG Entertainment), on which advertising revenue is shared between YouTube and YG Entertainment. Along with YouTube, on Facebook and Twitter "Gangnam Style" was released and spread among K-pop fan networks. This notably included YG's other music artist networks, which provided an effective distribution platform for the music video. These Asian fan networks then helped spread PSY's video to a broader, international audience.[48] "Gangnam Style" has been exposed to the mainstream, especially through fans' "redaction", their parodies and interpretations, which add more value and meaning to the style.original lyrics. This makes the text more relatable, accessible and “interesting and fun to consume”. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, the three main social platforms on which pieces of Korean pop culture are distributed and shared, are “mutually and organically associated in their improvement. of transnational flows of pop content across the global market." Essentially, all three networks complement and assist each other in the transnational dissemination of cultural material, accelerating the overall success and popularization of texts like “Gangnam Style.” These transnational flows of hybrid content through social media connections are highly representative of Tomlinson's notion of complex connectivity in today's globalized world. Another newspaper article, by Jung and Li, analyzes “Gangnam Style” specifically in the context of globalization. They argue that its success was driven by the cooperation of traditional and new media, "the active participation of global audiences, the video's spreadable hooks, a laissez-faire copyright policy, and the marketing strategies of musician PSY." They reference the beginning of the transnational spread of "Gangnam Style" attributed to translations provided by global K-pop fans and the Korean diaspora, as well as fan-created content such as reaction videos, parodies, and blogs explaining some of the specific culture korean behind the video. In their “second phase” of transnational diffusion, Shim and Jung note that mentions of the video by celebrities, primarily on Twitter, and videos related to “Gangnam Style” created by professional entertainers and directors both marked a “turning point ” due to its popularity. The "third phase" is characterized by mass media approval and a large increase in the production of parody videos, especially by YouTube celebrities, users who have millions of channel subscribers andtherefore a large audience. Shim and Jung's final "fourth phase", which continues to the date of publication (2014), notes the continuation of the cultural phenomenon's momentum, with more PSY concert videos continually uploaded and views of "PSY" increasing exponentially. Gangnam Style". count.Jung and Li state that "Gangnam Style" is "different from the typical K-pop music video", attributing its differences mainly to the rugged old PSY as a singer, as well as its humor, parody and bizarreness. They explain that PSY was successful in creating his video because it fit into "class B culture", which highlights lowbrow taste, a "thug" spirit and rebels against the "mainstream", popular in South Korea due of a growing sense of individuality. Most YouTube users belong to class B cultures, which means they can use "Gangnam Style" as an escape and social criticism during the global economic recession, as predicted by PSY. PSY was also successful due to its decision with YG Entertainment not to enforce copyright infringement. . This has been instrumental in allowing parodies and user-generated content to thrive and therefore serve as a marketing tool for their original production, resulting in financial benefits. Overall, Jung and Li's analysis of "Gangnam Style" offers an objective view of how "Gangnam Style" achieved its global popularity and status as a phenomenon. Including that of Jung and Li, there are several analyzes of the success of "Gangnam Style", particularly in light of the digital age, and there are many established communication theories related to the PSY phenomenon that have been widely studied and developed. However, scholars have yet to interpret the music video as exemplifying a few selected communication theories that have been established. In my analysis, I enter into both the “Gangnam Style” dialogue and that of globalization theory and attempt to use the creation of PSY as an example to connect the two on a nuanced level that writers before me have not done. “Gangnam Style” exemplifies Kraidy's theory of hybridity and, therefore, critical transculturalism. The use of media in Korean popular culture, as described by Kuwahara, Shim, Jin, and Yoon, is the main impetus that exposed the videos to such a large and supportive international audience. I believe this is representative of a concept that Tomlinson described in 1999, albeit before most social media existed, as “complex connectivity.” Through the above discussion of different literatures, I have linked “Gangnam Style” to scholars' established communication theories and ideas. The remainder of this article will serve as a more in-depth and detailed discussion of the connections made between PSY's music video and communication theory. The entire plot and themes running through "Gangnam Style" were formulated as PSY's response to the social context. surrounding the production of the video. PSY produced its music video to include social commentary, satirizing the rampant materialism prominent in South Korea's Gangnam District. Korean blogger Jea Kim explained further to The Atlantic, describing the video as "about how people outside Gangnam pursue They dream of being one of those residents of Gangnam without even realizing what that really means." According to her, Koreans are starting to realize that they may not want to follow Gangnam's example, and these growing ambivalent feelings are reflected in PSY's music video. As an earlier quote in this article states, he intended it to be for his fans. in Korea. This explains why some very specific cultural aspects of the video,.”