Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Identity Consumerism Reigns

I smile every time I see this. I think it's hilarious as well as crazy fucking interesting to see traditional arts be so readily subsumed into identity consumerism. This commercial is as funny as was Im Kwon taek's horrid sequel to Sopyonje was an insult to that film's legacy. Pansori fits into Korean society now as a cheeky cellphone commercial--- no more. It's a mere punchline now, a snarky sales pitch. This is where traditional culture goes to die. And it's not KT's fault. They're just the messenger.

어 어 -어머 아이구야....

I'm not laughing about the fall per se, I am snickering at the folks represented by these three snide students who cornered me after a conference presentation, who couldn't stomach my claim that the Korean media was completely unprofessional and were still the lackeys of the government and kissed the Blue House's ass. 

What y'all think now? Obviously, this is my fantasy rebuttal, since I highly doubt they read my blog. Apparently, the Korean public is getting all pissed again at the government's heavy-handed attempts to corral in the local media.

Well, don't just blame the present president, but the entire relationship between government and the press, and the socio-legal structure that keeps the press' tail between its legs like an abused dog that's been beaten one too many times and Massa raises his hand in a moment of spite but doesn't hit. What's the dog do? cowers and whimpers, like the Korean media. 

In that kind of environment, you don't need much to embargo a video of your president tripping over her hanbok. 

If you want a healthy environment for critical journalis, there needs to be an undergirding culture of criticism, which is still pooh-poohed and derided here. Gotta have the social room to guffaw when your president trips. And not think "Our nation has fallen on its face before the entire worlf!" But rather that somebody tripped, which is...admittedly...kinda funny. 

 

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Move Over, Harajuku! Hongdae's Here!

My  latest post on The Huffington Post.Took forever to get this up.

One of my Hongdae students at Seoul Fashion Week .

Of course, after pulling aside these two young ladies who simply begging to have their pictures taken by stnding right in front of the building, the one on the right turned out to my student! And she's a student from my photo class. And it just turns out that the moment I called her over was actually during the class time we would've normally had this week. So she felt doubly compelled to pose as I then asked her if she was enjoying her break from class this week. Of course she nodded very eagerly in the affirmative. I knew I knew her from somewhere, but there are so many random people floating around at SFW from many different contexts that they all get mixed up, especially if it's just one of many faces from a new semester.

Both she and I seem to get a kick out of the fact that I would run into her and shoot her street fashion style during our class time!

Apparently, I'm a "Fauxtographer"

This dumbass article just came across my Facebook feed. So like someone is a little bit too invested in making the dividing line between the so-called “real” and fake photographer, a telltale sign of being An amateur oneself. I find that amateur photographers are generally concerned with what kind of camera body or lens one has or how expensive your equipment is, which is a way of compensating for the fact that one is not confident about the actual photography. a telltale sign that this article was written by an extremely knowledgeable hobbyist who doesn't do anything with photography professionally is the 1st rule in the article, which is that if you're not using RAW mode, you're not a professional.

Apparently, shooting runway JPEG and submitting CNN the JPEGs means
I am not a professional. I'm a "fauxtographer."

Apparently, that makes pretty much every central runway photographer or anybody producing large amounts of images doing a wedding very much not a professional. best because almost no one shooting large amounts of images is shooting RAW. one of the main reasons is that if you're shooting for example runway, there is essentially no room for error as clothing comes out, so you adjust the shutter speed in manual mode based on the brightness of the clothing, which if you are shooting in JPEG mode, you're going to get a spot on every time, and the problem with RAW is the prohibitive file size and the fact that the average runway show produces anywhere from 1200 to 1500 pictures. and in order to get the proper stance and position in the step, you got to be shooting on a still camera that lets you do continuous shutter operation at about 5-10 fps, the faster the better. since you are aiming to hit each article of clothing at each point in the runway completely accurately in terms of exposure because overexposure of the highlights means that detail is lost no matter what mode you're shooting in.

Shoot it right the first time and you don't need post-processing.
And if you blow the highlights with poor flash technique,
RAW won't save you.

And this idgit doesn't even know that you have abouyt the same exposure latitude in JPEG as you did with film negatives. Anyone coming from film to digital knows that you can fix even JPEGs quite a bit as long as it's somewhat properly exposed, as long as you were pretty close. I shot on film, where if you bonked it, you just bonked it. So to me, JPEG ain't too different. I shoot right the firdt time, not worrying about saving it in RAW unless you've got the time and card space and low output of numbers of images. A studio shoot would be a good choice for RAW. A professional photographer knows that there are no hard and set rules that makes one a "pro" versus "faux" shooter. Anyone shooting RAW on the runway is a crack smoker, just because that's like taking a bazooka to a knife fight.And if you fucked up a set of clothes or an entire show because your color temperature was off, you don't have time to edit 1500 pics, do you? Cause shooting it all in RAW and saying "I'll fix it in post -- white balance and exposure can be fixed after the fact" is about as ghetto-ass amateur hour as you can get. -- No, you, author of this article, are the FAUXtograpgher. What the hell is youarenotaphotographer.com? Overcompensating much?

Try this: You're house photographer for a designer and the rehearsal is all done in tungsten light. You're set and prepped, but then the show starts with a spotlight. WTF?! What do you do? Know your shit and switch from 3400K to 5600K and know that yes, that's a "bright" dress in my internal scale, and despite the fact that black was 1/400 of a second, which would normally make this bright two shutter stops higher at 1/800, you guesstimate that this is +2 stops higher than even that since she's closer and at the end of the runway, and since she's in a spot, she gets brighter the closer she gets, which would make black 1/800 and bright at end of runway in spotlight 1/1250. You either get it right or go home. RAW ain't gonna do shit but eat up card and buffer memory. You blow that dress out, and it's gone, JPEG or not. So real shooters aren't wasting their time with "Am I a Pro or Faux?" silliness.  Real shooters ain't got time for that.

Korean Waving...

This isn't my first rodeo -- I've been saying the same thing for a long time.

Did a short opinion piece for tyhe Korea Times, wish I had been more careful about how
I talked about the origins of the term "Korean Wave," since that's become a bigger sticking point than the greater point of my argument that it's not about a sudden recognition of Korea in the West -- 'cause let's face it, that's what most important to the "Wave's" boosters -- it's about more, better Korean cultural products coming out in general, which is awesome, and I'm all for cheering that.

Good criticisms, factual errors on points taken.

In short, the point I'm making comes from sitting on that Branding Council watching the self-congratulatory back slapping in the media about how the "Korean Wave" was moving across the world. I should've reigned it in by saying "Sure, it's a trend in Asia, but the world? The chest thumping and boastiung, quite frankly, happens when something Korean comes out in Europe or America, not China or Japan as much. For the latter two countries, it's like "Yeah, we know." But if GG comes on Letterman or Psy makes it onto Ellen, it's a big deal that further adds to this idea oof there being a concrete "wave. Perhaps my point would have been better served with a food example, where Korean food is yes -- pretty well known compared to the old days. But people like it because it's goood, not because it's Korean. Hence, this goies against the idea that there is some active recognition -- especially in the West, which is where it's most valued as coming from -- of Korean culture for its own sake. The example of structural push-pull factors -- akin to immigration theory -- would be better explicated through rtalking about soon tubu on the Bay Area, which was pretty popular in Oakland Koreatown for a minute because it was there, good, and cheap , and because there are a lot of health-conscious and vegetaroian consumers in the Bay Area who astumbled across the dish and it snowballed in the local press because it's hard to find vegetarian food that is hearty and has a spicy punch. So non-Koreans were coming in hordes for a while. 

Structural and demographic factors align and we get trends and ideas becoming more popular. My point is that Korean things -- from sundubu to Psy -- are getting out there because they're good and WORTHY of the attention, and with Korea being a developed economy now, there's a lot more of that -- and there will be more. Hence my point about Korean cultural products showing up around the world stage more often is that it's commensurate with the increase in quality of Korean cultural products in general, and is to be expected. It;s not a fantastric phenomenon if you look at the structural factors, and which is why the "Han River Miracle" indeed ISN'T -- if you look at all the capital inflow and military protection that Korea received after the Korean War. It's a perfectly logical and foreseeable ouitcome, given the circumstances -- that's the point, and lesson to take from Korean history. Or in thjs case, the "Korean Wave."

The thing that bothers me about the term is that it encourages a very top-down, centrally-controlled,, Korean-style management relex that zctually stiflesthe production and dissemination of good aspects of Korean culture for international consumption. 

My whole thing is that if you let Korean cultural products alone, they'll speak for themsleves. THe Korean government has already done a good job at doing what governments can and should do to encourage the growth of so-called "culture industries" -- some of them quite by accident. Lifting government ceonsoship on films did more for Korean cinema than any other specfic policydesigned to suport the industry, just as not implementing upload caps on the broadband network the Korean government essenttially built from scratch in one of its many multi-year development plans helpeed create the possibility for a thriving gaming environment. Psy got big, in the end, not as the esult of government initiatives, or big production companies pushing him, but because he's amazing and because of Youtube. And by comparison, where are the much-vaunted Wonder Girls and Girls' Generation these days? Did any of the nationalist -- and frankly, somewhat dishonest boosterism ever help spread Korean culture abroad? The biggest cases of Korean cultural product success took place outside of the "Korean Wave" government-industry machine model, and are often products the government wouldn't want to support, or weren't popular back home, or are just things nationalists want to push for no reasons other than their own:

FOOD
"Korean Wave" booster favorite: Royal Korean court food, bibimbap
Real world winners, by dint of just being unequivocally awesome: Korean fried chicken, sundubu, galbi. 

FILM
"Korean Wave" booster favorite: Chunhyang and other crap like this
Real world winners, by dint of just being unequivocally awesome: Old Boy, The King and the Clown, The Host

MUSIC
"Korean Wave" booster favorite: The Wonder Girls and other slightly pervy, real-talentless dancing girl acts ad nauseum, Rain
Real world winners, by dint of just being unequivocally awesome: 2ne1, Psy

FASHION
"Korean Wave" booster favorite: Seoul Fashion Week (no one cares, yet)
Real world winners, by dint of just being unequivocally awesome: Korean street fashion, certain cool-ass, individual designers with crazy talent