Cultural Products

How amazing it is to see so Americans dancing to the Gangnam Style without knowing the meaning of its lyrics. It's probably not surprising to see pop stars like Britney Spears to imitate PSY, her Korean counterpart's; but now every one - politicians, scholars and artists, etc is dancing to the song and sharing the videos online. A few weeks ago, I saw a MTV called "Romney Style", later I found a similar one called "Obama style", and finally Romney did dance to the Gangnam Style in one of his campaigns, which was taken as a strategy to attract young voters. Yesterday I found a video on Youtube about PhDs and professors at MIT, and business students at Stanford dancing to Gangnam Style. It looks like you're out of fashion if you're not dancing to the Gangnam Style. Why? Because every one else is doing that.

I have no idea why this song is so popular, and I'm even more confused at why people enjoy it so much without knowing the meaning of the song. But the popularity of Gangnam Style seems to imply a potential global market for Asian cultural products in spite of the differences in languages, traditions and culture. Hollywood movies and American sitcoms already become popular with young audiences in Asia, thanks to the universal English education and values; and a few Asian movies are shown in the US too. But some ideas are hard to translate. Take a Chinese movie for example. Farewell My Concubine, the Golden Globe Awards winner in 1993, tells a story of Peking Opera actors from early 1920s to the end of Cultural Revolution. The film narrative seems prosaic in lack of climax, and a feeling of melancholy runs through the entire movie, which is in sharp contrast to the turbulent era in China and the dramatic Peking Opera. However for audience without the knowledge of Chinese history or Peking Opera, it's difficult to see this artistic expression.

To make cultural products popular in a different cultural setting, a shortcut is to keep it simple and stupid. Gangnam Style is a song mocking at rick people in Soul, but no one cares about what it says, they only like the few dancing movements and shouting "oppa gangnam style!" when doing them. Many Hollywood movies find the best way of selling their movies in overseas markets is to show fancy pictures like The Lord of the Rings, or glaring CG stunts like Transformers, not trying to explore profound themes in 2 hours. This proves to be a very wise strategy. Why is Avatar such a success? Stories are old, but people went there to enjoy an unprecedented imax 3D movie. Most audiences probably can't recall the story, but they will always remember flying with avatars on the back of that big bird. Because of the big gap in technology, it is always easy for American movies to take Asian markets, not vice verse.

But it may come to the point that people's utility curve from fancy movie technologies flat out, and their demand for something else starts to increase. Then the challenge to cultural products is how to convey ideas instead of pictures, and that will be a real headache.

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