PSY-ched Out, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #193 | @MDWorld

August 21, 2012 Arthur Tebbel 4 Comments

Dear Art,
What a fascinating 10 days in politics.  Mitt Romney announced his running mate, Joe Biden drew the ire of political commentators when he told an audience that the Romney/Ryan ticket would put people back in chains, a Missouri senate candidate said some of the least science-based medical commentary anyone has ever heard.  Certainly you must have something to say about one or all of these hot topics.  Please tell us your thoughts on theses important issues of the day in this crucial election year.  What are your wise words on these matters?
-The American People

America,
I’m sorry.  I can’t write about any of those things this week.  I care but not enough to be passionate this week.  This isn’t the result of some soul-crushing ennui or anything like that.  I’ve just discovered something that makes all other things pale in comparison.  American politics are like a floodlight but this is the midday sun.  I’m referring, of course, to Korean rap star PSY and his amazing music video for his international smash hit Gangnam Style.

I’m hardly on the cutting edge of this phenomenon.  The music video is over a month old and has over 42 million hits on YouTube (although I think at least five million of those hits are from me watching the video over the last three days).  It’s been the number one song on the Korean charts for four straight weeks.  I am probably past the crest of this song and there are almost certainly K-pop hipsters out there looking down their noses at me.  I don’t care at all.

It’s a completely transcendent video and I just can’t get over it.  There’s so much going on in every shot and it probably has three times as many shots as the average American video.  There are cameo appearances from people I am assured are prominent Korean comedians and television personalities and they really know how to bust a move.  If Jerry Seinfeld can dance like the kid in the yellow suit he’s been doing us all a great disservice by hiding it from us for all these years.

Then there’s the dancing the actual dancers do.  I am stunned that it took so long for us to make a quality dance out of riding a horse.  We have driving a car dances and cars are so much newer than horses.  All those years riding horses from place to place with no TV or movies to distract us and we never came up with this?  Completely shameful.  It’s one thing to have Koreans be better than us at developing consumer electronics or making mid-size sedans but for them to be so far ahead of us in choreography and music video direction should be a cause of great concern.  Whatever happened to American exceptionalism indeed.