The very first time I heard Gangnam Style by Psy was on 93.7 KLBJ’s morning show, the Dudley and Bob show. They have used a clip of this song as one of their song beds. It’s a pretty goofy show, so I have always associated the song with the show. Recently, my boyfriend kept telling me that he had a video he desperately needed me to watch because I “would instantly be obsessed.” He showed me the video and I was absolutely entranced; I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen because of how spectacular the videography for this song is. I find myself repeatedly complimenting the video on its fantastic production, but why? What about this video is so enthralling and captivating and noticeable?
Perhaps it is this bizarre and insane mixture of 2 cultures. Psy articulates the lyrics in a very westernized fashion, a very casual yet aggressive tone, and I was actually initially convinced that the whole song was in English, which, it is in fact not. The absolute absence of sense is also another major arena of success with this video. There is very little consistency with the settings and many times, the objects in the scene almost heavily contradict with what we expect to find in the surrounding settings (e.g. why is Psy wearing a vest and trousers while tanning next to a playground? Why is he wearing a tuxedo in a horse stable? Why is he and 2 women, all of whom are dressed in very nice and formal attire, walking through an alley enduring a windy trash storm?) I think what I like most about this video is that it seems to scream that beauty is confidence and confidence is beauty. Everybody involved in this video seems to be engaging in incredibly goofy dances and bizarre acts (but it is also important to note that this is the point we could be facing a misunderstanding of cultures), yet every one of them seem to know exactly what they are doing and couldn’t give less of a care what one single viewer thinks. I love it, this music video is high energy eccentricity at its finest: the neon accents in every scene, the consistency of sunglasses on the characters, the grade-A wardrobe decisions, the repeated 60s throwbacks.
A group of students at the University of Texas here in Austin created a parody of Gangnam Style, but in the context of a football tailgating party. Everything about this version rubbed me the wrong way. The biggest downfall of the parody is that it tries to give the music video context. The original version of the video makes zero sense, at least to my American mind. This version attempts to create somewhat of a plot and a sequence of events (for the most part), which honestly makes the video make a lot less sense because the viewer is trying to keep track of what is happening and what just happened and what should happen next but which didn’t happen next. I had trouble making the connection between this style of music (not to mention this particular song) and college football. It’s confusing and not to mention the parody makes UT look like a joke.
City Whitty 512 