By: Indra Dalaisaikhan
Edited by: Lina Gallo
Chinese characters, wasabi, ninja, and a woman in an Indian veil practicing martial arts. Visually and musically, Kpop Idol Lim Kim’s “YELLOW” is a satirical blend of ignorant stereotypes against Asian cultures into one red, explosive music video. Through the eyes of an Asian, the video comes across grotesque and fallacious; whereas in the eyes of a non-Asian, with a narrow-minded view of the diversity in Asia, it’s “oriental” and “exotic”.
The Artist, Lim Kim
Lim Kim rose to fame when competing in 2011’s SuperStar K3, the equivalent to the American Idol in the US, and signed into Mystic Story in 2012. She mostly performed youthful romantic love songs in contrast to her own creative vision. Kim felt as though the music she was pursuing wasn’t made in her eyes, the music was made in someone else’s eyes and was given to her; she believed that it was more important to what the artist had to say instead of the forced image the company wanted. Korean entertainment companies are all the same in a sense of structure, most idols feel like it’s impossible to draw their own vision into their music, nothing too controversial or too niche for the public, leaving many idols feeling stuck and trapped in the saying “Public Image is Everything”.
“When it comes to my identity as a woman, I started thinking about it ever since I debuted in the industry. There is a clear image of what a female singer should be in K-pop. What people care about is appearance. I was uncomfortable with that at some point. I felt that I was locked up in a small box that prioritizes being a good-looking performer above all else and as if I should live in that box forever.”
-i-D interview
Ultimately, Kim left Mystic in 2016 and vanished for four years until debuting her own crowd-funded EP, Generation, and title track “YELLOW”. In a sense, Kim had bloomed from K-pop Idol into a liberating artist, she had found her vision.
Orientalism Reinvented by Asians
Orientalism is what the West perceives and thus defines the East. It has been argued to be one of the three pillars of White supremacy by Andrea Smith in her paper “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy”, alongside Slavery/Capitalism and Genocide/Colonialism and it seemed that Orientalism is the least talked about of the three. Lim Kim wanted the message of “YELLOW” to empower Asians to reinvent the definition of Orientalism by their own standards, not Westerners. She pushes ideas that Asia isn’t only limited to China and Japan but a proud continent of thousands of languages, cultures, and people. The notion that Asians are not “mysterious” and “exotic” people; as citizens of other countries, they have their own personalities and different cultures, not for one to fetishize and create fantasies about.
Yell Out
The chorus of “YELLOW” is a brilliant play of diction; with “YELLOW” repeatedly vocalized, it starts to sound like “YELL OUT”, yelling out of the oppressed
“YELLOW” uses various stereotypes to point out the very stereotypes that fuel ignorant fantasies people have of Asians, especially Asian women. The stereotypes in the video are satire from traditional Chinese fan dancers wearing Japanese Geisha makeup, to Chinese folk music instrumentals, to a woman practicing martial arts in Indian traditional garments, to lyrics such as:
“my flavor’s like wasabi
It’s not your typical taste, our style lookin’ so kawaii”
All those stereotypes are to poke fun at the generalization that Asia has become, the birthplace of thousands of cultures, languages, and religions has been narrowed down to wasabi and kawaii.
In an interview, Kim describes Asian womens’ voices as “Quiet in society. Various races have their own voices; among them, however, the voice of an Asian woman seems to be the least heard”. To break free from stereotypes such as the “submissive” and “quiet” Asian woman, Kim exudes aggressiveness and explicit empowerment in “YELLOW” which only adds to the impact of her message.
Sources:
Andrea Smith’s “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy”
https://loveharder.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/andrea-smith.pdf
Orientalism
http://reappropriate.co/2014/04/what-is-orientalism-and-how-is-it-also-racism/
Interviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8nefWOQb7A&ab_channel=LIMKIM
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwe7kz/lim-kim-generasian-interview
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2020/11/732_286862.html
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