I Don’t Know Anymore. I Just Don’t.
Posted in Hathos.
29 Responses to I Don’t Know Anymore. I Just Don’t.
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Peterk says:
slow nite on the bayou?
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Rob says:
I just watched this. Surely the end of the world is near. We can’t get any dumber….can we?
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B. Minich says:
I see your KPop (or JPop) and raise you some Bollywood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smoKy6ZV7WQ
Cowboys, Michael Jackson costumes, Samurai getups . . . its all a reminder we live in a strange strange world.
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Luke Bailey says:
I was about to say something critical of South Korean culture, then I remembered American culture is just as indefensible.
In fact, it’s mostly our fault.
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Nate says:
Dan, well said.
I’m torn. On one hand, it is crass, banal, exploitive, coarse, and more than a little annoying.
On the other hand, it is seriously hilarious. -
JoeMerl says:
What.
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Sean Nelson says:
Heh. A friend posted this to facebook yesterday, calling it “One of the best things to have ever existed. The Higgs-Boson of music, without which all artistic creation is impossible and meaningless.”
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James C. says:
I see your Bollywood, and I raise you Chinese “Bad Romance”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF5WYaoWXI4
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Sigh, America pollutes the world with far more than greenhouse gases!
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Chris Jones says:
Mr Dreher, I am holding you responsible for the four minutes and thirteen seconds of my life that I will never get back.
What were you thinking?
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Andrew says:
If you want to continue down the rabbit hole watch Eat Your Kimch’s review of Psy’s video
I’ve been hooked since watching SNSD’s Gee. K-pop is fascinating to observe from 9 time zones away. The big entertainment conglomerates trying to develop the next hit group while trying to keep their current groups on the top of the charts. K-pop idols cast in endless reality tv shows providing the networks with cheap programing. Companies pay to have the idols promote their product because sales will increase 30%. Then one finds out some of the performers are Christians, posting photos from their Bible study and writing Phil 4:13 with their autograph. Like I said it’s fascinating to observe
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Sands says:
Now that’s a real playa.
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I will see your don’t know, make it my ringtone, and add this little gem of wtf called Endirhan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yBnl_krN_U
Tamil robot weirdness at its finest.
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bbarker says:
Where does a middle-aged man find such a thing? And more pressing, why?
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Rod Dreher says:
Where does a middle-aged man find such a thing? And more pressing, why?
I contain multitudes. Plus, you wouldn’t believe what my correspondents pass on.
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Nick K. says:
Gangnam is a stylish business and shopping district in Seoul. I’m sorry, that’s all I’ve got. I also feel bad about myself right now because I found parts of the video to be funny.
I think this guy may have actually been lampooning the increasingly bizarre excesses of K-Pop in this video. Hard to say.
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Lord Karth says:
I could feel brain cells dying as I was watching this.
My head is going to hurt for the rest of the day on account of this, Mr. Dreher. And it’s All Your Fault.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
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Ok, so I ran this by my Korean fiancee, and gained a little insight into the spectacle of Psy (Psycho, Psy, get it?). First off, there is no real sense of parody in this video, but there is a hint of irony. Koreans, like most Asian peoples, tend me be very concerned with outward appearance and with maintaining decorum. Psy, clearly, not so much.
He is unabashedly presenting himself as a “Gangnam style” kind of guy- rich, flashy, liberated, and on the prowl. But he is not presenting himself within usual aesthetic or behavioral bounds. That is, he isn’t trying to look handsome or beautiful or sauve. He’s wearing dopey clothes, dancing like a retarded kid on meth, and putting himself in situations with other men that are- shall we say- a bit undignified, and certainly not macho (the elavator, with his friend). In a soft (and humorous) kind of way, Psy is transgressing norms not only for a megastar performer within the world of K-Pop, but also for normal Korean men. Whereas normal Korean men are obligated to keep it all inside, to stay “buttoned down”, Psy is letting it all hang out. He’s flashing his money, his style, and showing a degree of devil may care individuality.
My fiancee said something that gets to the heart of the matter when she said that Korean people like to watch Psy because they feel “kind of free” when they do. In Psy’s bufoonery and comically glam Gangnam macho lies a bit of catharsis for a society which is still relatively repressed (at least by the overly liberated standards of the US).
Oh, and the melody is catchy.
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Jake Elwood XVI says:
“I Don’t Know Anymore. I Just Don’t.”
If there’s a God?
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Or if we should have been fighting South Korea rather then then the North?
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MH - Secular Misanthropist says:
I saw a link to this about four days ago on Reddit. I can’t tell if I was brain damaged after the first viewing, or it gets better on subsequent views.
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James says:
It would be great as satire…but is it?
I couldn’t help but think this could double as a Kim Jung home movie.
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Ethan C. says:
James, everybody knows that Psy is Kim Jong-Un’s secret identity. That’s why you never see the two of them together.
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Brian says:
That is ten million different kinds of awesome. And I absolutely love this from the album notes below the video: “The album’s weighty title song ‘Gangnam Style’ is composed solely by PSY himself from lyrics to choreography.” Surely that answers the “is this satire” question, no?
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Helen says:
So what is he saying? Anyone know?
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I didn’t see all the video, but heard the music. Good beat. You can dance to it. Pop culture, because it transgresses national boundaries, is probably the reason the world has been relatively peaceful for the last 60 years. It shouldn’t be denigrated, but celebrated.
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Ken K says:
Check out what the Wall Street Journal has to say about this video:
They seem to like it.
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DanW says:
Well, this is now officially HUGE at our teenagers school. I am looking forward to the moment when I tell them, why, I saw that old thing six weeks ago on The American Conservative!
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Mark D. says:
..and you were ***73*** days ahead of NPR. Well-played, sir.
This video represents everything I love and loathe about the free market.