[Culture Op-Ed] Idols Are Not Artists, Only Entertainers?

This is not just some outdated perception from long ago; it remains one of the widely prevalent perceptions even now. The fact that it has such a long life probably means that its “grounds,” in one form or another, have been made to seem fairly solid. And if we were to sort them out, we could pick out a few frequently mentioned justifications. Roughly, they are as follows.

(1) Artists make their own music and express their own world, whereas idols merely carry out what others tell them to do.

(2) Artists come together organically to form a team, or work alone of their own volition, whereas idols simply work in teams assembled by their companies.

(3) Artists exist for musical activity, whereas idols have many other side activities.

(4) Artists try to show their true selves, whereas idols show only fabricated images.

There are more, but I will explain the rest in due course. In any case, among those who at least accept the idea that “idols and artists are different,” there are probably few who have any particular objection to the above grounds. But these are not really grounds at all. Strictly speaking, they are closer to straw-man attacks—attacks on an illusory concept. Let us look at them one by one.

If that is the standard, then are the Rolling Stones idols rather than artists?

First, let us examine the claim that “artists make their own music and express their own world, whereas idols merely carry out what others tell them to do.” These days, no popular music fan really says this anymore. Even 10 years ago, it won a certain amount of sympathy, but a great deal has changed over those 10 years. For one thing, there are now so many idols who write and compose their own songs. Ten years ago, BigBang was treated as something of an exception, but now idol groups that do not write and compose are closer to the exception.

At present, BTS, the boy group said to stand at the very top of K-pop, has been well known since debut as a team in which all members have participated in producing, including composing. Naturally, there are many others as well. For example, the boy group Seventeen is similar to BTS. Member Woozi has participated in nearly every Seventeen song released so far, and members such as Jun, Hoshi, The8, and Dino also directly take part in choreography and other aspects of performance. In the boy group Pentagon, member Hui has confidently said that he “has enough self-written songs to release a new album every week.” JYP Entertainment’s boy group Stray Kids is also well known for having members participate in writing and composing across entire albums.

Even among girl groups, often said to “compete through mass appeal,” the atmosphere is not very different. More and more teams are competing with self-written songs, from Jeon Soyeon of (G)I-DLE to Sunmi, who had already been trying out self-composed songs as far back as her Wonder Girls days. Even project groups such as IZ*ONE, at the very least, have members participate in writing lyrics. And during team activities, they work hard saying they want to learn composition as well.

In the end, the perception that “idols merely carry out what others tell them to do” has, in practical terms, become something that no longer works in the 2010s. In fact, if one were to be strict about it, even before the 2010s there were clearly exceptions, so it was never really something one could strongly “assert” in the first place. It is a hollow argument.

Next is the point that “artists come together organically to form a team, or work alone of their own volition, whereas idols simply work in teams assembled by their companies.” It is certainly hard to deny that the overwhelming majority of idol teams have been formed in “that way,” and still are. But whether, in the history of modern popular music, only products called “idols” have been formed in “that way” is highly questionable in many respects.

What about a group like the Rolling Stones, legendary figures in world rock music who are still active today? They began as a blues band in 1963, then transformed into a Beatles-style rock and roll band, and when producer-manager Giorgio Gomelsky was replaced by Andrew Oldham, the character of the group itself changed dramatically. By Oldham’s strategy, they adopted a completely different concept from the Beatles—that of “rebellious bad boys”—and their musical orientation changed as well. He also replaced members by his own authority. In fact, he ousted pianist Ian Stewart, who had played the biggest role in the group’s original blues-band character, on the grounds that “his jutting jaw made him look like a miner.”

After that, the group’s clothing and stage manners were also mostly shaped by Oldham’s instructions. A tough and decadent image, differentiated from the Beatles, was imposed on them. There was even a member whose name was changed to a stage name because Oldham disliked his real one. In short, judging by the process of formation and activity, there is almost no difference from a typical Korean idol group of the 2000s—or rather, the Rolling Stones show aspects that are even more overtly “non-organic.”

Then is the Rolling Stones, a rock group forever enshrined in 20th-century world popular music history, “not an artist but an idol”? Of course no one calls them that. If you ask why, the awkward answer is: because they write and compose. But what if one replies that Korean idols already do that too? After that, there is effectively no answer left. Nor does this apply only to the Rolling Stones. The same goes from the days of the Beatles and the Beach Boys through alternative rock and into the present age of hip-hop. This only proves either that people do not properly understand the concept of the “artist,” or that they have never once seriously thought about what an “idol” is.

If doing more than music means you cannot be a “true artist”... then what about Queen?

Now let us look at the other “grounds” as well. “Artists exist for musical activity, whereas idols have many other side activities.” I do not know what kind of argument this is, when in both Hollywood and Korea, how many entertainers are there who do not work in multiple fields, including acting? Jennifer Lopez, for instance, one of the leading Latin pop artists, is currently being tipped for a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hustlers, which is also in theaters in Korea. Last year, Lady Gaga was nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. And what about Lenny Kravitz, who appeared in a blockbuster franchise like The Hunger Games? Or Björk? Or Mick Jagger?

And not just actors. Among famous music artists, there are people who have been ordained as ministers and pursue that in parallel, people who work as chefs, people who farm, and even people like Brian May, the guitarist of Queen—the group featured in last year’s smash-hit film Bohemian Rhapsody—who is also active as an astrophysicist with a doctorate.

In fact, the side activity most commonly pursued by music artists is not acting but writing. Most artists publish one or two books of their own, and among them are many works of fiction, including novels. The very idea that “side activities” can serve as a criterion for dividing people is itself something that effectively belonged to the entertainment world of “before the 20th century.” Perhaps not even then. Strictly speaking, William Shakespeare, one of the world’s greatest literary giants, was also a “professional actor and writer.”

As for the claim that “artists try to show their true selves, whereas idols show only fabricated images,” by this point it only seems as though one harbors some tremendous prejudice against the entertainment industry itself, or is simply desperate to attack idols somehow. At a time when even Nobel Prize-winning authors increasingly adopt carefully managed mystique for the sake of their public image, it is hard to understand what exactly this argument is even trying to say.

There is more. Some take the position that if a fan club is not formed organically but is instead organized and monetized by the artist side, then that person is not an artist but an idol. They must not know much music history: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also managed a kind of fan club made up of aristocratic women who sponsored him, and secured their support through services akin to romantic letters. There is also the absurd claim that “if you make music that can sell in the market, you are an idol; if you make music that seems unlikely to sell, you are an artist.” This ignores the fact that even disco, in its own time, was an experimental musical form whose commercial prospects were uncertain.

In the worst case, there are even people who say, “If you made a lot of money, you are an idol; if you did not, you are an artist.” That is an utterly reckless argument. Even classical musicians, if they were well known enough to be recognized by the general public, were all artists who made a great deal of money. In some cases, such as Mozart, they suffered financial hardship simply because they “spent faster than they earned.” If one insists on making exceptions, perhaps Johann Sebastian Bach would be one, since he worked mainly in churches rather than royal courts and therefore did not handle vast sums.

Ultimately, all of the above grounds for saying “artists and idols are different” become, at the very least at the present moment, entirely nonsensical. All of them fall outside the logic of popular culture, pop culture, which operates together with the free market economy; and even if one goes back far earlier than that, they still make little sense. We can only conclude that a deep popular prejudice and dogma hangs over the very context of culture and art.

In the end, is the cause envy and wariness toward those who “have it all”?

To begin with, “idol” was not originally a term used in the popular music world the way it is now. In Korea, the term began to be used around 2007, during the second idol boom, but in fact its history is much longer. It originally arose in the United States around the 1950s. It was a generational market term referring to artists explosively popular among teenagers and people in their 20s, while also provoking considerable rejection from older age groups—“artists for the younger generation only,” so to speak. Around the time of Elvis Presley, people began calling him an “idol.” By the 1960s, the label “idol” had also attached itself to bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

In Korea, the term was imported directly from the meaning it had acquired in Japan since the 1980s. It referred to artist-products who debuted at a young age, often in their teens, and functioned as comprehensive entertainment packages of various kinds. Particular emphasis was placed on dance music. That meant a stronger focus on performances centered on synchronized group dancing. As a result, the group format became the norm. In that way, the type of artists that had been called “dance groups” or “teen groups” until the 1990s came to be called “idol groups,” and the term “idol” became generalized.

What is notable, however, is that in Japan, Korean-style idols are in fact mostly regarded as “artists.” At the very least, they are generally viewed as boundary products situated on the line between “idol” and “artist.” In Japan, an idol is closer to “a multi-field talent who is not truly specialized in any one area.” That is, a figure lightly consumed across various fields. Korean-style idols, however, first undergo years of training to display highly specialized performances, and even when they move into other fields such as acting, they often show outstanding performances and are at times even mentioned in connection with acting awards. In that sense, they have departed even from the Japanese concept of the idol. Some even argue that, in a certain sense, they are products that should not be called “idols” at all.

Nevertheless, disparagement of idols continues. Even now, on portal sites such as Naver, commenters continue to disparage people “simply because they are idols.” At the same time, there is a countervailing tendency to praise indie bands active around Hongdae and the like. Even the ballad singers recently embroiled in controversy over alleged chart manipulation use, as a shield, the logic that “in this age of idol supremacy, are you really so upset to see serious artists become popular?” Strictly speaking, idols also almost invariably include several ballad tracks on their albums, and in many cases those songs are actually more polished than the songs of such ballad singers.

Various explanations are offered for the source of this mysterious mood. At its core, one key point is that it reflects the public’s envy and wariness toward those who “have it all.”

Envy and wariness toward a class of artists who are highly popular, who accordingly make a great deal of money, and who in this appearance-obsessed society are also exceptionally attractive. This is also evident in the fact that most disparagement of idols is linked with praise for indie bands and the like, which project an atmosphere opposite to that of idols and “do not possess” most of what idols have. Perhaps an old dogma in the world of culture and the arts is still at work—the notion that “a true artist is a poor artist.” If that were the standard, the number of “true artists,” such as Vincent van Gogh, who never sold a single painting in his lifetime, would inevitably shrink drastically.

Another possibility is that this reflects the persistence of an old perspective that viewed culture and art as a form of so-called “technique” or “craft.” The very word “art,” which forms “artist,” can itself mean “skill,” and that suggests quite a lot. It means that art, too, was simply one among many occupations involving the possession and sale of exceptional techniques. Thus, there was an atmosphere in which only those who stood out as extraordinarily gifted in singing, dancing, and other such abilities at a level others could not match were acknowledged as artists.

Compared with that, idols are closer to a kind of “comprehensive artist.” Their dancing may not surpass that of professional dancers, and their singing may not display the overwhelming vocal power or emotional force of trained vocalists, but they have achieved at least a certain level across all elements of aesthetic pleasure, including appearance, and all those elements work together in an integrated way to convey a special kind of emotional effect. Under a popular perception that values only technical prowess in a specific field—something “ordinary people cannot imitate”—such figures may appear to be “pseudo-artists” with nothing especially worthy of evaluation.

It may be a social pathology signaling the birth of a “new kind of classism”

Yet among the various explanations, the most troubling possibility is that the public may be trying to suppress its many forms of envy toward idols by assigning them a kind of “class.” In other words: you may earn a lot of money and be impressive, but that has nothing to do with social “class” and the “authority” that comes with it. The public often grants this kind of “class” even to chaebol families. Narratives about being descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators during the colonial period almost automatically follow them around. The same goes for their private lives. And then people claim that “true nobility” consists of people completely different from these “successful people.”

At that point, this becomes a kind of “classism that seeks to escape classism”—a new form of classism. It is especially noteworthy that people are not trying to deny the concept of class itself; rather, the public itself “creates” other people’s class positions in order to compensate for its own various inferiority complexes and sense of victimhood. This may be a more serious social pathology than it appears.

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Original title: [문화칼럼] 아이돌은 아티스트가 아니라 엔터테이너일 뿐이다?

Author: Moon-won Lee

Date: 2019-12-17

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=11&idx=22165