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This has been going around the Korean American internet. I just got it in my box this morning.
More than just the support for Obama himself, I was moved with how, in the US, it's possible for anyone to not only become a citizen on mere paper, but to truly feel oneself a part of the political process, even across the barriers of language, race, or national origin.
To me, that lady is America, and is a sign of all the good parts of what that means.
환영합니다, 한국인 독자들! 여기 미국, 또 한국 사회비판을 많이 하는데 여기서 영어로만 블로깅합니다. 근데 다른 제가 운영하는 사이트에서는 많은 스트리트패션 사진들이 있고 다른 사진들이 있습니다. 한국말로 제 블로그도 있고요. 들어와주셔서 감사합니다!
Whoa. My former student just IM-ed me the fact that my Hangyeoreh story is at the TOP of Daum's news page. She found out about the story not because of me, but because she just clicked on it, and there was my name as she read it.
THAT is totally tripping me out.
Right there at the top. A pic I took. Whoa.
The article's title reads: "Fellow Koreans, does this subject make you uncomfortable?"
I think I'm feeling just how good a title it was, and I'm liking what that writer (although she's a photographer by trade) did with the story. It wasn't just that it was positive -- it was fair. She took notes, asked follow-up questions, confirmed dates and names, and even pushed for as exact dates as possible on the pictures, which I have written on the negatives, but forgot in the long time it's been since I took them.
It's my first positive interaction with the Korean media -- well, actually the second, to be fair -- and I'm pretty jazzed about that. I'm still quite wary of them, but you know what? Good for them, and I'm glad to have been part of an interaction that is both positive for me personally, as well as a positive portrayal of a foreigner out there doing something besides being the 'usual suspect' that has tended to dominate Korean newspapers for the past few years.
I'm more jazzed up and inspired these days, especially because things are going well photographically. And I'm happy to see one of my major assumptions coming true -- that Koreans actually CAN BE and ARE interested in foreign folks doing stuff in the news besides what certain people think sells newspapers, if good reporters bother to get the story out. It was harder for her to sit down with me, get the details right, deal with getting the images at high-rez, etc. But it made for a better story, right? And it "sells," right?
Anyway. I'm babbling now. I'm just very happy personally, as well as to be a positive story on the Internet news, especially since the only other stories about foreigners with cameras, in particular, were the ones about the South Asian guys snapping beach pics this past summer, and the Japanese guy who got arrested for trying to make pornos and doing upskirt shots here a few years back.
Dammit! I know that many of my friends who hate her will be disappointed, and I've held my tongue many a time when people have bagged on her for basically becoming this big figure based on "nothing." But, for me, that's the beauty of it her, and the basis of her appeal.
Basically, I think that given where she's come from -- which isn't as the heiress to the Hilton fortune or anything, by the way, as her branch of the family has been squarely out of good graces of the other "better" Hiltons -- she's a master of PR and quite an American success story.
Yeah. She got her start in an amateur porn video. But what's a more American story than that?
Well, it's almost European, except for the fact that we actually considered such things scandalous or embarrassing. Hence, American. Remember, we weren't as cynical as we are now about the celebrity sex video, because now they're not such a big deal. Partially (largely?) due to Paris Hilton.
And she turned what would have been a humiliating firestorm into a brilliant opportunity to actually do something with her (actually, mostly meaningless) name and blonde ambition. Somehow, she became famous for -- going to parties? Getting drunk at them? Being seen in social circles? Making appearances?
Yet, it always struck me how she seems...*CHOKING*...ahem...kinda...royal.
I'm being serious. She comes off as kinda...classy.
OK -- please don't roll your eyes and surf off in disgust now. Please!
I think that Paris just kind of has a certain air about her that's hard to explain. It's what the French call a "certain thing that I do not know." Hehe. But seriously -- even from that first sex video (come on, now, ya'll know you seen it), I was expecting some embarrassing romp on videotape where I would be wincing all the way, fast-forwarding to all the "good parts." Yet, even in low-quality video made worse by file-transfer-size compression, she seemed somehow fabulous. She actually looked GOOD on the screen, and seemed genuine and funny.
It was like you were a fly on the wall of someone semi-famous whom you actually wanted to know, instead of a videotape that was giving you the inside track as to why you actually WOULDN'T want to know someone whom you thought you liked.
Knowhuddamean?
But people point to her embarrassing escapades and shake their heads in disgust. Yet, I wonder how good I would have come across had every mistake I made in my early 20's been broadcast across the world. Getting drunk at a party. Hanging with a questionable crowd. Or even drunk driving and getting arrested.
Not that I've done the latter, nor do I think it's OK -- but in the litany of celebrity escapades, that's not so bad. I mean, Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg was once an inch from being a real thug, was sent to juvie more times than most of us have been to summer camp, and once beat up an Asian kid for being...Asian. Hate crime! But as non-PC as that is, the guy was just a kid.
Put in similar terms, how many of us guys who went to high school before the gay-rights-aware recent years aren't anything more than reformed homophobes? I mean, I doubt I'd want some of my words or actions from when I was 16 brought up and played at my Senate confirmation hearings. Nor would that video me and my dorm buddies made in high school, full of immature and asinine sex, poop, and semen jokes, be impressive to watch 20 years later. Which reminds me -- I have a VHS videotape in a box in my parents' attic I need to go home and incinerate when I get the chance.
Point is, I think that yeah, Paris in her early 20's was no paragon of ladylike virtue. Yet, she still came off as ladylike, especially after the jail thing, which I thought she handled with remarkable aplomb.
And she leveraged it, all those who either hated her or loved her hung on her every move, and we bought it hook, line, and sinker. And from the overzealous judge who put her in the clink to make a point, the people who high-fived each other and really enjoyed seeing a kind of poetic justice be served, to those who thought it unfair -- we were all just adding to her bottom line, which is purely social capital.
But OK. To that point, I hadn't really become a Paris Hilton fan. Really. I wasn't. I'd never watched one of those inane movies she was in, nor did I really keep track of her in the news. Let me tell you how she got me.
It was on the Dave Letterman show.
I mean, I LOOOOOVE Dave. But that day, in one of her first appearances after coming out of the big house, Dave just lit into her. I mean he tried to rip her a new one, as in real public humiliation on national television. Basically, Dave was just plain MEAN, as those who watch a lot of him know he can sometimes get. But in this interview, you can smell his disdain for her, and he was just a dick. Interestingly, in the official CBS version of this interview on YouTube, they edit his dickery OUT completely. I mean, it was still kinda funny, but he WAS a dick. Watch the whole thing.
And I know what he was trying to get her to do -- cry. And after the barrage, you could see that's exactly what she ALMOST did -- but she didn't. You saw it RIGHT THERE on her face. She kept her composure, smiled graciously, and finished that fucking interview, because that's what she had come to do. And one of the things she promoted was her fragrance, which Dave TASTED and DRANK as he tried to belittle her and never let up with the jail jokes. But she kept on, and also mentioned her upcoming film, "Repo: The Genetic Opera", which is a science-fiction musical, which also drew some laughs. But I'll get to that later.
Since then, she's been on a roll. The Harvard Lampoon named her Woman of the Year, and she actually showed up to ACCEPT it. Some of the less charitable fantasized that she was too stupid to understand that it was tongue-in-cheek -- but her speech makes it obvious that she's having fun and ADDING to her bottom line. She took the Harvard boys out to party, and she got more props.
Who would pass up a PR opportunity like that? That would be the difference between some blonde bimbo starlet and a blonde bimbo worldwide superstar -- And I only use the word "bimbo" twice to keep the comparison going.
I said to a few friends, when she was getting bagged on in conversation as she came up around that time, that we'd be seeing a LOT of Paris Hilton in her 30's, when she had grown up, fully leveraged her momentum, and found her stride. Everyone thought I was crazy, and doubly surprised to "hear that from me." But I never thought so -- and now that "Repo: The Genetic Opera" is almost upon us, I think that Paris is already headed in that direction. Just like many of us start to do in our latter 20's.
Early reviews say it's gonna rock out with its cock out. Another set of them continues the consensus that more than just being decent, Paris is actually REALLY good. I just saw the trailer -- I don't know whether it'll be a classic or not, but it definitely looks crazy creative and has piqued my interest. A horror, sci-fi musical? With Paris Hilton and Paulie?!
No matter how the film performs, people are already saying that Paris did a great job. Perhaps it's because a role that actually pushes her to be a lot further away than who she actually is -- Paris Hilton? Hmm. That's usually how it works with acting, as with life. We get older, higher expectations are placed upon us, and we rise to meet them.
I suspect that people will be talking about, and paying more serious attention to Paris Hilton for a long, long time. Dang -- she even looks good in a hanbok. What IS is about that woman? Again, even the French do not know. But give her 10 years, and we'll all have forgotten about her actually not-all-too-unusual youthful bumps in the road, as she gives a new definition to the empire of Hilton and does more than simply lay claim to her name. I think she's gonna totally earn it.
Isn't that the very definition of an American kind of royalty?
I just have to say that no movie I've seen in recent years has so hilariously both navigated and accurately charted the cultural landscape of 2008 America as Harold and Kumar Go to Guantanamo Bay, which I recently watched on bootleg, since of course it would never be premiered here in Korea.
Do you know Dorothy Nam? You know, the cute lady on TV with the hat! She had her first fashion show last Friday, September 19th, in the Seoul Finance Center in City Hall. Yes, she's also a designer!
I had a chance to attend her first show, and was impressed! Here's a bit from the press release:
An Exhibition of 20~23 artists who are members of a stART-ing artists up on the rise made up of Korean artists with Korean artworks. In Collaboration with a Korean-American, well known as the "EBS/Arirang English teacher" debuting her first designs and Fashion show. Going from English to Designing! Dorothy Nam whom you may have recognized on English television with her smart bright red/ pink berets has collaborated with many Korean artists and have taken their artworks and designed them into fashion~ thus ART2wear!
클릭하면 모든 사진이 원파일의 큰 사이즈로 확대됩니다.
All pictures can enlarged to the large, original resolution by clicking.
Dorothy says that, "Anyone who has a beautiful or a petite figure will look good in anything they put on, but the serious CHALLENGE was living a life here in Korea and being beyond the regular petite size and now that is where the research and challenge began!~ so, in the long run, I don't mind being a bit chubby, there is just more of me! The true challenge and test was being on television and being a bit chunkier than most females on TV -- almost every producer and writer and coordinator has hoped for me to lose weight. Except in radio. But there seems to always be a slight frown being a Korean female and a bit chunkier in this industry. This has challenged me to great lengths and I want to wear pretty and beautiful clothes as well and also I LOVE colors!"
Wow -- didn't even know this was coming out, nor that this was Bernie Mac's last role (my favorite comedian). I also didn't know that it was also Isaac Hayes' apparent last as well -- you'll see he shows up in the trailer. And all with Sam Jackson? Awesome.
It doesn't look like the pinnacle of either comedy or drama, but it does look like a pleasant little flick that should have some fun moments. And Sam Jackson and Bernie Mac together should be a great pairing and a fun way to see Bernie Mac for the last time.
And why does he seem like such a good used car salesman? (In both this movie and "The Transformers.")
Before you say this site is "anti-Korean" or bashing Korea – read this: "Why Be Critical?" Chances are, if you're simply angry because I am a social critic in Korea but not actually Korean, see if your argument isn't just a kneejerk response that follows these patterns.
Session 1: Just the Basics
Dealing with the basic operations and functions of your DSLR, explaining each function, button, and doo-hickey. The bulk of the session is likely going to stick around the relationship between aperture and shutter, as well as depth-of-field. Basically everything on your camera has something to do with this relationship.
Session 2: Composition and Shooting (Shooting Session 1)
We'll take those examples and look at them on the big screen, while also answering the concrete questions that will pop up about the stuff we learned before. Then we'll talk about composition and other framing issues, including lens lengths and why some lenses are worth $100 bucks and some are worth $10,000.
Session 3: Flashes and Advanced Exposure (Shooting Session 2)
Dealing with flash, in terms of compensating above and below exposure levels (bracketing), as well as other bracketing techniques in general.
Session 4: Final Session/Critiques
Keeping it open, determined by the class.
Four 3-hour sessions, as well as shooting sessions, photo discussions, and critiques. An individual photo essay will also be done as part of the ongoing class assignments. Inquire at the email address at the top right of this page.
As for my photo book (now in limbo due to editorial differences with the publisher), you can see the representative chapters from the "Seoul Essays" posts below. Note that Chapter 3 remains undone and in limbo on my computer:
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