There I was in a 7-Eleven a week or two ago, buying some shrimp chips and minding my own business. I try to make convenience store ventures brief, as a few minutes of exposure to the pop music they play gradually saps my will to live. But the woman in front of me had a year's worth of unpaid utilities. So I waited.
And thus came about my first full-length encounter with the girl band S.H.E. The song I was subjected to, Chinese Language, has stirred up a bit of controversy of late. It's been accused of brown-nosing Chinese consumers with lyrics like:
How smart are the Chinese people
How beautiful is the Chinese language
and
As kids we practiced English pronunciation and grammar
Now it's their turn to curl their tongues and learn Chinese language.
("Curl their tongues"? To emit that enchanting Beijing rrrrhhh noise, presumably.)
As the "melody" hammered my skull, I managed to drag myself out the door with my last ounce of strength. I awoke some hours later being licked by a stray dog. My chips were gone.
Reporting by the Liberty Times on S.H.E's little ditty was scathing enough to get it barred from S.H.E promotional events, a drastic step for a music industry whose survival depends on whoring artists out for every last scrap of media coverage and endorsing anything from plasma TVs to hemorrhoid cream.
Indeed, at the peak of their marketability, S.H.E had their good girl schtick plastered across everything except ordnance catalogs. According to Wikipedia, S.H.E has endorsed or been spokespeople for 74 products and events. Seventy-four. They have acted in seven TV dramas and hosted two TV shows. Even model Lin Chi-ling (
I'm not so concerned about the political implications. The Chicoms will think S.H.E is just more double agent propaganda. I think everyone is losing sight of the bigger issue.
And that is that, despite the gloss and marketing prowess, S.H.E sucks. I mean, really, really, really sucks. Really. And that means something when you're in the same pot as the likes of Rainie Yang (
In an industry that bases value almost entirely on looks, S.H.E is sub-par. Two of them, Selina and Hebe, are moderately attractive in that "I'm a pasty white, ditzy, anorexic xiaojie who has never worked a day in my life" kind of way, while the purpose of the third, Ella, is to be a goofy backdrop endearing the other two to confused straight boys while giving a dykey frisson to girls who haven't quite surrendered to their heterosexual doom.
Then there's the music. Oh dear. Although many artists cover songs these days, S.H.E concentrates on covering washed-up bands from a couple of years ago, notably the Backstreet Boys, Destiny's Child and Britney Spears. I'm still waiting breathlessly for them to do the Spice Girls' Wannabe.
But there is another misconception. Some criticize S.H.E for selling their souls for red yuan. Ah, how naive to believe that they ever had souls to sell.
When the latest controversy broke, S.H.E seemed genuinely surprised that they had been personally attacked. The music was a corporate decision by the record company, they said, and not their responsibility. While most entertainers, no matter how vapid, would have at least been ashamed to admit that they had no artistic integrity and were merely mindless tools of their employer, S.H.E seems not to understand that the concept of artistic integrity exists at all.
But S.H.E isn't the only band to bow to corporate demands and kiss China's pinky ring. Jay Chou's (
Listen to your mother
Don't ever hurt her
Try to grow up quickly
So that you can protect her.
I worry, friends, I worry. But not just about the China hugging. No, I'm worried about a generation of youth raised on entertainers who tell them to listen to their parents. I'm concerned about a generation that doesn't know how to rock out and break the law. I fear for youths who don't know how to do something as fundamental as stick it to The Man.
What is a rebellious teen supposed to do today with bands like these? Jay is the closest we have to a bad ass, and he's telling us to obey our elders. All the other pretenders blub on TV after getting caught out on drug tests.
Is there no rebellious spirit? Are there no singers with the artistic integrity to tell their labels to shove it? Are they all too nice, too filial and too ke'ai (
Isn't there a critical mass of ke'ai at which all the artists and music are so drenched with manufactured cutsieness that the whole system implodes?
There are some warning signs. For example, Rainie's ke'ai-ness has peaked. If she becomes any more ke'ai it will destroy her. Witness her latest TV ad in which she hawks some sort of Swiss hot chocolate. As she poses with the package at the end of the clip, she becomes so overcome by her own ke'ai-ness that she squints her eyes and starts puffing her cheeks in and out like a deranged squirrel on crack.
"Hao ke'ai," trilled the xiaojie next to me as I dropped my beverage and recoiled from the screen in horror.
How can Rainie possibly top that? Perhaps for her next endorsement, she will become so ke'ai that she will spontaneously combust. I will then immediately buy whatever product she was peddling.
It would be one thing if China were bombarding us with music about how fantastic China is and how Taiwanese are bumpkins who should do as they're told. But it's depressing for us to willingly export such drivel. How are Taiwanese supposed to resist the Chicoms if they don't even know how to fight The Man right here?
But perhaps all is not lost. That same 7-Eleven is staffed at night by a young man who turns up the Judas Priest and AC/DC during the night shift. I didn't know 7-Eleven muzak receivers could even pick up that channel, but he found it. And he plays it loud. It's against company policy, but he doesn't care.
He'll be damned before he's their corporate tool. Instead of being cheerful, he looks indignant that he has to work this crummy job. He scans my items resentfully. Occasionally he mutters a "Thank you," but he never stoops to yelling "Huanying guanglin!!!" (歡迎光臨, "welcome") at customers.
I smile thinking about how one day he will rip off his name tag, throw it at his manager and tell him precisely where he can stick his lousy job.
Maybe some ass-kicking foreign bands could help. Maybe they could warn everyone about The Man.
But the last major foreign imports that I recall were Olivia ("Stay strong, you can do it") Newton-John and Kenny ("...") G.
Abandon all hope.
Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under