Tsai, Eva & Hyunjoon Shin 2013 Strumming A Place of One's Own

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Strummingaplaceofone'sown:gender,independence
andtheEastAsianpoprockscreen
EvaTsaiandHyunjoonShin
PopularMusic/Volume32/SpecialIssue01/January2013,pp722
DOI:10.1017/S0261143012000517,Publishedonline:06February2013
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Strumming a place of ones own:
gender, independence and the
East Asian pop-rock screen
E VA T S AI a n d HY UNJ OON S HI N
Graduate Institute of Mass Communication, National Taiwan Normal University, 162 Heping E. Road, Sec. 1,
Taipei 106, Taiwan
E-mail: etsai@ntnu.edu.tw
Institute for East Asian Studies, Sungkonghoe University, Hang-dong 1-1, Guro-gu, Seoul 152-716, Korea
E-mail: homey81@gmail.com
Abstract
The first decade of the 21st century has seen a concurrent rise of pop-rock screen productions in
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, particularly feature films, documentaries and TV series informed
by the guitar and/or band culture. This paper probes the popularisation of pop-rock in the region and
asks what gender and sexual expressions have been mobilised in such productions and represen-
tations. The paper juxtaposes dominant gender tropes, such as the failing male rocker in search of
rebirth (Korea), romantic youth pursuing authenticity (Japan), dazzling but also bedazzled rocker-
girl on stage (Japan), indie music goddess in control of subdued femininity (Korea) and peripheral
girl-with-acoustic-guitar who chronicles boys sorrow (Taiwan). Responding to the familiar myth
of rebellion in pop-rock discourses, our inter-referential analysis suggests that East Asian pop-rock
screen is about the making of heterotopias rather than utopias.
Pop-rock screen in East Asia
In the 2000s a flurry of East Asian films, TV series and documentaries featuring
singer/band characters began to hit the markets in Japan, South Korea (hereafter
Korea) and Taiwan. In these sound-meet-screen commodities, local and domestic
pop-rock
1
music culture became the subject of the storytelling, asserted its identity-
shaping aesthetics and marketed stars and utopian lifestyles. While guitar, bands and
their accompanying aesthetics have not been so visible in the world of mainstream
popular music in the region, they have become an important element in these screen
products. How do we make sense of this phenomenon, occurring amid a regionalis-
ing traffic of popular culture as well as media convergence?
Let us contextualise these screen narratives from Japan, Korea and Taiwan in the
regional market and cultural conditions. In all three East Asian locations, pop-rock
screen products have targeted youth markets by making pop music activities the
means through which young people seek revolt, dreams and romance. Despite the the-
matic similarity, the prolific 2000s was animated by dissimilar cultural conditions.
To start off, the energetic release of pop-rock films and TV drama in Japan was
enabled by the gendered production and consumption of popular culture,
Popular Music (2013) Volume 32/1. Cambridge University Press 2013, pp. 722
doi:10.1017/S0261143012000517
7
particularly in pop music, manga
2
and TV. Films about the rise and fall of all-male
rock bands Rockers (2003), Iden & Tity (2003), The Brass Knuckle Boys (2008) and
Bandage (2010) strive to conjure up the radical spirit underwriting the punk and
rock movements of the 1970s and 1980s.
3
Unwilling to yield to the divulging J-pop
industry, central band characters struggle to retain their authenticity. Detroit Metal
City (2008) satirises this logic by featuring a successful death metal band hero
whose true love is pop. Adapted from shonen manga (comic books marketed to a
young male audience), Solanin (2008) and Beck (2010) also privilege the experience
of young men playing the guitar and forming bands, though with less interest in
referencing the history of Japanese pop music.
The mid-2000s saw a robust output of girl-centred pop-rock stories across film,
TV and manga in Japan. Swing Girls (2004) and Linda! Linda! Linda! (2005) situate
girls music activities in the amateur, rural and everyday school setting, while
Nana (2005), Tokyo Friends (2006) and A Song to the Sun (2006) cast real J-pop artists
as aspiring musicians in urban settings. Products of heavy cross-marketing, the latter
group was also informed by the feminine sensibility of J-pop, which has sustained
the creative output and network of cultural workers across related media fields
since the 1990s (Tsai 2004; Toth 2008).
The relentless entertainment industries and the question of artist survival have
been two recurring themes in Korean pop-rock films since the late 1990s: Jungle Story
(1996), Rush (1999), Waikiki Brothers (2001), Radio Star (2006), 200 Pounds Beauty
(2006), Happy Life (2007), Highway Star (2007) and Just Kidding (2010). Sunny (2008)
and Gogo 70 (2008) offer spectacular interpretations of two key moments in the his-
tory of Korean rock/pop music: the Vietnam War and the repressive 1970s.
4
These
mainstream productions were followed by a wave of independent feature and docu-
mentary films drawing on the intimacy of the indie music scene. The documentaries
Workers Band (2007) and Turning It Up to 11 (2010) illustrate the preferred work ethic
required for bands to succeed in this seemingly all-inclusive scene. Nowhere to Turn
(2007), Dancing Zoo (2010), Come, Closer (2010), Acoustic (2010) and Sogyumo Accacia
Bands Story (2008) are the fruit of indie marketing and consumption. Casting suc-
cessful female indie artists as ordinary heroines who happen to be musicians,
these films cater to a niche fan base consisting of Internet-savvy young women
and male otaku
5
drawn to the feminine sensibilities of the indie artists.
Possibly due to Taiwans pivotal role in the decentralised production and dis-
tribution of Chinese pop music, pop-rock screen narratives from Taiwan have
acquired an elusive character. There was little interest in creating reflexive accounts
of the music industry, fan communities and local popular music history.
6
Love til the
End (2004)
7
a TV series about the rise of a five-piece, self-starring pop band, Shin
could be regarded as an attempt to tell a story about the music industry. But the rea-
lity was that in order to survive, band musicians must invest their labour in the enter-
tainment and promotional industries. The Secret (2007) and Love in Disguise (2010)
exemplified star-branding vehicles for the two reigning Mandarin pop kings, Jay
Chou and Leehom Wang.
As in Japan and South Korea, Taiwan experienced a parallel surge of films and
TV featuring pop-rock protagonists in the late 2000s, notably Cape No.7 (2008), A
Place of Ones Own (2009) and Gangster Rock (2010). Their pop-rock component was
contingent upon the absorption of musician labour into the small-scale, flexible
screen industry sustained by state subsidy and regional co-production investment.
As a result, reflection on music stories takes a back seat to the primary concerns of
8 Eva Tsai and Hyunjoon Shin
the film-makers. Yet it is also in this production situation that a compassionate
female subjectivity embodied in the girl-playing-guitar figure could emerge in
the feature film, Summers Tail (2007), and two miniseries commissioned by the
Public Television Station: Rock Baby (2010) and Days We Stared at the Sun (2010).
Pushing the inter-frame
Rather than a comparison between three East Asian locations, we hope the pro-
duction contexts can help to further inter-referential discussion on recent pop-rock
screen works in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Clearly, the rise of pop-rock films and
TV in the region was animated by the trans-border consumption, collaboration, mar-
keting and distribution of popular culture commodities (Davis and Yeh 2008). Shunji
Iwais Swallowtail Butterfly (1996) and All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) are widely
known to have drawn on Japans integration with Asia in the 1990s. Love of May
(2004), a youth romance set against the backdrop of pop band Maydays popularity
in Taiwan and China, and Love You for 10000 Years (2010), a romantic comedy casting
former F4 idol Vic Chou as a rock band vocal/guitarist,
8
were both produced by Arc
Light Pictures, a pan-Asian packager founded by Taiwanese producer/critic Peggy
Hsiung-ping Chiao in 1996. Lastly, though not promoted as an inter-Asian
co-production, the Japanese film Linda! Linda! Linda! and Taiwanese film Exit 6
both cast Korean actresses in major roles.
The dynamic reality of media culture and regional convergence prompted us to
adopt the integrative term screen products in this paper. However, we dont want to
lose sight of the distinctive cultural-industrial arrangement and aesthetics behind
each pop-rock screen product. The modes of production and promotion help to illu-
minate the nationalising desire, market forces and alternative spaces of inter-Asian
dialogues. Examples of mutual referencing are still insubstantial in our sample. In
light of Japan being a common cultural reference for Korean and Taiwanese cultural
industries, Korean and Taiwanese pop-rock screen creators seem especially in need
of interaction.
9
Hence, our paper is not about exemplary pop-rock stories embodying
a coherent East Asian consciousness. We want to set a mutually referencing move-
ment within persisting disjunctures.
10
For the rest of this paper, we would like to mobilise the gender inter-frame from
our post-2000 sample of pop-rock screen narratives in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. We
wish to explore some his-stories and her-stories to challenge the industrial and
national definition of pop and rock. As performance, audiences, production prin-
ciples and representation, pop and rock have provided a frame of gendered and sex-
ual expression and control (McRobbie and Frith 1991/2000, p. 139). In a similar vein,
Sheila Whiteley has said that rock music that grew out of the 1960s counterculture
positioned womens roles as either romanticised fantasy figures, subservient earth
mothers or easy lays (Whiteley 2000, p. 23).
The problematic raised by McRobbie, Frith and Whiteley is relevant in the East
Asian context, though in need of reconsideration. In the current cultural atmosphere
in Korea, Japan and Taiwan, fluid expressions of gender and sexuality are met with a
complex apparatus of social control operating along lines of class, family, generation
and locality. We will examine the representations of male and female musician char-
acters in terms of their experiences and stakes in music making and professionalisa-
tion. The relative modes of pop-rock production and consumption (e.g. major, indie)
Strumming a place of ones own: the East Asian pop-rock screen 9
are also gendering signposts, yielding subtle and persistent notions of masculinities
and femininities.
Failing male rocker in search of a happy life
If rocknroll in the West has largely been inscribed in gender division and identity poli-
tics, such as the male rocker vs. the female groupie, East Asian pop-rock screen in the
2000s has both upheld and reconfigured such gender mediation. We frequently encoun-
ter a tormented middle-aged male rocker, typically a band vocalist and guitarist. He
faces the difficult consequences of living his dream and his belief in rock music. If he
turns professional, he risks it all in the competitive entertainment industry. Should he
choose the rebel lifestyle, the question of livelihood eventually catches up. If he joins
the mundane world outside music, he longs to return to a utopian happy life.
Although his crisis of masculinity is usually explained in a back story, such a
figure in Korean pop-rock films in the 2000s vividly defines a male subject position
shaped by particular socio-political experiences and economic realities. The 1970s
and 1980s were marked by harsh cultural control that gave rise to heroic rock artists.
Along with the post-IMF crisis which had restructured the society since the late
1990s, they shaped a nostalgic good old time for male-centred rocknroll. For the pre-
dominantly male filmmakers and music directors, these periods resonated with their
more agentive past. As they found themselves toiling on the frontline of neoliberal
capitalism, the past became artistic inspiration.
11
Below, we will consider the compas-
sionate and contrasting representations of middle-aged rock musicians in two films.
In Soon-Rye Lim (a.k.a Sun-Rye Im)s Waikiki Brothers (2001), our undramatic,
middle-aged protagonist is the leader of a burnt-out band, the Waikiki Brothers.
The band members live in miserable conditions, playing at any odd occasions
where music is needed a hotel nightclub, a sales event, a private party, etc. In flash-
back, we learn about the band leaders exuberant youth as a guitar player/singer in a
high school boy band and his crush on the singer of a girl band from a neighbouring
school. In an ambiance of decay (bygone youth, rural decay and illusion of rock), the
reunion between the hero and the heroine, now a lone widow, triggers little sparks.
The heroine eventually joins the thinning band and sings melancholic trot
12
while the
hero plays the guitar satisfyingly. By embracing the feminine and marginal power
associated with trot (as opposed to rock), the film seems to question hegemonic mas-
culine definitions of rock.
If Waikiki Brothers provides an ambiguous resolution for the crisis of masculinity
a signature quality often attributed to Soon-Rye Lims compassionate treatment of mar-
ginal characters throughout her other films the reference to trot is unlikely to appeal to
the younger generation. Joon-Ik Lees Happy Life (2007) has a better chance, given its
metropolitan location (Seoul/Hongdae), the critical input of the young generation and
satisfying depiction of middle-aged mens renewal of their rock religion. In a precarious
employment and family relations situation, the men team up with the son of a dead
member and try to break into various live performances including the indie scene.
The film ends with a euphoric, family-friendly performance that evoked the boom of
office workers bands.
In this film, rock is rechristened as an outlet for frustrated men in the period of
mass unemployment and social disintegration. Unfortunately, rocks liberating
power in the film comes precisely from male bonding and the exclusion of
women. While the wives of the band members dismiss the dream of their husbands,
the son of the ex-member becomes an important link to the bands reunion and con-
tinuation. Such a close-knit homosocial world was already heavily thematised in
director Joon-Ik Lees and screenwriter Seok-hwan Chois previous hit pop-rock
film, Radio Star (2006).
13
Sunny (2008), the last of Lees pop-rock trilogy set in the
Vietnam War, depicts a young rural womans unlikely journey to becoming a rock
band singer on the battlefield. However, her feminine desirability and virtues threa-
ten to break up the male band members camaraderie as well as Korean male solidar-
ity in yet another treacherous engagement with the West.
We are not suggesting that these mainstream Korean films should have rep-
resented womens participation in pop-rock music in a more just but unrealistic
way. Rather, the desire to imagine a rock band in a more hegemonic position in
the history of Korean popular music is a kind of historytelling by certain cultural
vanguards who have grown discontented with the transformation of the Korean
music industry and the advent of K-pop. Their experiences and memories of state
repression in the 1970s and 1980s are likely to have motivated them to favour a
mythology of Korean rock, where womens roles are still ambivalent.
Sexually pent-up guitar boys and mysterious girls
In Japanese pop-rock films, we find a similar nostalgic projection of a more pristine
past of popular music, particularly the 1980s. But rather than focusing on what
remained 20 years after the boom as was the case in Korean pop-rock films,
Japanese pop-rock films featuring male rock heroes deal with what could have hap-
pened in those days. As a result, the male subject is a young, often adolescent person
eager to prove his manhood. His desire to play the guitar and form rock bands
directly impacts on the formation of his gender and sexual identity. We will comment
on several relevant films, paying special attention to the mutual construction of the
creative young man and mysterious and useful girls.
Based on the manga of the multitalented Jun Miura, Iden & Tity (2003) and
Shikisoku Generation (2009) are both coming-of-age stories in which the young male
protagonist in both cases a Bob Dylan follower struggles to create his identity
through guitar-playing and songwriting. Directed by Tomorowo Taguchi, a former
singer of a punk band, Iden & Tity follows the career of a popular band whose gui-
tarist (Kazunobu Mineta of the band Ging Nang Boyz) grew discontented with the
over-commercialised rock music scene of the late 1980s, despite its plentiful sex. A
ghostly Bob Dylan figure listens compassionately to his identity blues. However, it
would be the heros once-girlfriend an ordinary office worker who introduced
Bob Dylan to him in their college days who helps him write Iden & Tity, a
song that embodies his successful arrival at an authentic self. Within this gendered
self, Tity (his muse and rescuer) keeps him real. According to him: Tity is the artist
here. So shes always free, owned by no one. The man cannot do anything without
her approval.
While the guitar as a phallic symbol has been discussed in Western scholarship
on gender and rocknroll (McRobbie and Frith 1991/2000), guitar-playing in many
Japanese and other Asian pop-rock texts is more likely to be associated with romantic
love. The young protagonists in Miuras work never hide their desire for sex with
girls. Set in 1974 in an all-boys high school run by Buddhists, Shikisoku Generation
fully exploits the hormonal tension.
14
The protagonist a shy boy who likes to play
the guitar and write songs in private is eager to lose his virginity during a trip to a
rumoured sex paradise on an island. The trip is packed with sexual tension. First, his
buddies accuse him of playing unfairly when he shows up with a guitar. Then upon
meeting an older, full-figured girl on a boat, he throws up on her, yielding a visual
pun with the bodily fluid spill.
However, our sex-obsessed boy hero who becomes known as free sex is in
for a more serious identity struggle. While not yet available, sex can be explored in
his songs.
15
Love, however, is more unattainable. An older young man (played by
Iden & Titys protagonist) demonstrates how this dilemma can be resolved by playing
the guitar, recording rock music and choosing love over sex. Once the boy becomes
upfront about his own creative language by doing a one-man guitar show at the
school cultural festival, he gets an unexpected response from his dream girl. The
power of the girls femininity continues to fascinate him. As he says in the film:
Why are girls full of mystery?
In some ways, the nebulous fascination with girl power in certain male
pop-rock narratives comes from placing women outside the know his art, his bud-
dies and the pop music industry. If the woman becomes part of the pop music indus-
try machine, she becomes a caricature, such as the dominatrix manager (Yasuko
Matsuyuki) in Detroit Metal City. Of course, such male fantasy is but one kind of gen-
der text in a highly segmented market of Japanese popular culture. For example,
adapted from boys comics by Harold Sakuishi, Beck (2010) paints a boys world
(albeit with one girl) fascinated with canonical rock history, legendary guitar virtuo-
sos and equipment specs. The Brass Knuckle Boys (2008) features a young female
manager-employee (Aoi Miyazaki) who helps revive the career of an esoteric punk
band. Unimpressed with the punk history or band boom and completely repulsed
by the uncle-type band members who insist on remaining true to their unkempt
and cynical lifestyle, she eventually becomes their ally. In the manga-based pop-rock
film, Solanin (2010), Miyazaki (again) plays an office lady who throws both econ-
omic and affective support behind her boyfriends band dream. When her boyfriend
dies in a traffic accident, she even learns to play the guitar and perform in his place.
Still, the basic narratives of these screen texts are centred on men making a
scene (Cohen 1997). In addition, while punk was associated with the demystification
of rock mythology, several studies have confirmed the persistence of homosociality
and white masculinity in the indie rock scene followed by punk and post-punk in
the UK and the US (Cohen 1997; Hesmondhalgh 1999; Bannister 2006). Then
where is an alternative place for girls in the rock scene? How is this place produced?
On what division of labour is it based? How do narratives about girls playing the
guitar, singing and forming bands reframe the pop-rock mythology? In the following
sections, we will examine and inter-reference gender and sexual relations inscribed in
girl-based pop-rock screen.
Disorienting desire under the glamorous sky
Of the three East Asian locations under focus, Japan has produced the most girl-
centred and girl-targeted pop-rock media and cultural texts. Specifically, since the
1990s, J-pops wide media application and tie-in businesses have brought together
a network of Japanese cultural creators (e.g. manga artists, singers, scriptwriters,
music producers, filmmakers and TV drama directors) whose work depends on tap-
ping the feminine mystique and creating affinity with women.
Filmmaker Shunji Iwai and music producer Takeshi Kobayashi represent one
such collaborative synergy that initiated intriguing feminine intervention in their
pop-rock films: Swallowtail Butterfly, All About Lily Chou-chou and Bandage. In particu-
lar, Bandage (2010), a film set in the early 1990s, suggests complicated gender roles
and relations. A high school girl who becomes a fan and later the girlfriend of a pop-
ular bands vocalist/guitarist, the heroine cannot be more stereotypical at first
especially when she becomes the cause of the bands breakup. But after a short
stint as the bands interim manager, she works towards becoming the manager of
an indie girl band fronted by the friend who introduced her to the band years
ago. The film creates dynamic female-to-female relations and depicts the interaction
between different pop music spheres (e.g. fandom, mainstream industry, indie
scene). It also acknowledges girls non-dramatic activities as musicians in the indie
music scene through a roundabout, backgrounding technique.
In addition to film, TV and manga are important media platforms through
which popular music themes have been routinely woven into the female-centred nar-
ratives and commodities. Featuring actual female musicians in band vocalist/guitarist
roles, Nana (manga-turned-two-movies) and Tokyo Friends (miniseries and film) both
present a similar paradox of young talented female musicians aspiring to become
professional. The basic setup of the heroines music background is almost identical
in Nana and Tokyo Friends: she is in a band with the hero-guitarist in their rural home-
town until he leaves for Tokyo and joins a major band in the industry. Both stories
follow the heroines aspiration to succeed in Tokyo. In both cases, her new band
enters complicated personal and professional relationships with a rival band to
which the hero-guitarist belongs. Despite the similar setup, the particular production
culture and marketing consideration underwriting the small screen and manga
industry yielded different gender representations.
By placing the vocal-heroine among three other female friends each pursuing
their dreams in Tokyo, Tokyo Friends inherits the romantic narrative and aesthetics
of the women-targeted trendy TV drama established in the 1990s (Tsai 2004). The
confident heroine, played by pop singer Ai tsuka, actually encounters few career
problems in the niche indie scene. The career of the hero-guitarist under the major
label, however, is interrupted due to other band members drug use. The heroine
chases after the self-exiled hero to New York, where he longs to return to the humble
roots of indie music. Tokyo Friends offers a picture-perfect female pop musician who
can have it all friendship, romance and a successful career.
Nana, on the other hand, leaves the musician-heroines agency more open-
ended, even chaotic. Central to this chaos is the ambiguous relationship between
her band, Blackstone, and her boyfriends band, Trapnest. The two bands have
worked rivalry and romance rumour to the benefit of mutual promotion.
Moreover, Nanas relationship with a twin character of the same name is crucial.
Renamed Hachi after the most faithful dog in Japanese culture, she symbolises a
loyal fan and typifies an ordinary girl who dreams of living the trendy, romantic
and fashionable Tokyo life. Nana and Hachi form a homoerotic bond in which
each has struggled with their possessive desire. Hachi, for instance, competes with
other female fans who know more about Blackstones history. Nana expresses jea-
lousy when Hachi becomes pregnant by Trapnests bass player, protesting that
Trapnest took away the two most important people in her life.
Packed with glamorous and trendy fashion details, the manga and the sub-
sequent films constitute a glittering visual world. It facilitated numerous cross-
promotional opportunities for the singer Mika Nakashima and other visual-kei
bands.
16
Although visual-kei fandom has allowed fluid gender performances by
young women, front-women in visual-kei bands are still rare (Koizumi 2002;
Hashimoto 2007). Thus, what sort of gendered and pop-rock reality can we take
away from Nana?
The heroines identity seems forever fragmenting and collapsing with the
desires flowing between different spheres the professional, the sexual and the bio-
logical. Unlike the patriarchal resolution mentioned in the previous section
you-complete-me her identity-formation is contingent with no guarantee.
Nanas all fluxed-up state resonates with a classical conundrum facing girls and
women in contemporary societies:
17
Can she have it all?
18
Or is the glamorous
sky Nanas title song and dominant imagery too dazzling to look at? Manga artist
Ai Yazawas discipline in serialising Nana and her suffering health which caused
the series to be on a hiatus since 2009 (Yazawa 2008) suggests that this is a common
problem facing independent women stimulated by creative and productive labour.
Of course, the reality in the professional scene of East Asian popular music can-
not be overlooked. Monique Bourdage has argued that aspiring female electric gui-
tarists face a scarcity of role models, lack of access to music, and the masculinisation
of prestigious technologies (Bourdage 2010, p. 12). The barriers are not that different
in East Asian societies despite the construction of indie as a separate-but-equal fem-
inine space in Tokyo Friends.
19
The rise of indie pop-rock in Korea around 2010 will
allow further dialogue on the subject.
Just an indie girl? Stabilising femininity and the chemistry of everyday
life
What meaning is there in this repetitive day after day?
Ah, I shout . . .
Get out there. Go
In the worn-out rocking shoes
Leap over the puddle
Glamorous Sky, theme song from the movie, Nana
I do like
Coffee Latte that is not too sweet,
A walk to the street after it stops raining,
Watching over and over the romantic comedy
I Like You by Yozoh, feat. Jinpyo Kim
If Japanese pop-rock storytelling suggests that rock is an extraordinary escape for
girls, the burgeoning South Korean indie scene suggests that indie-pop and
indie-rock storytelling help settle people into the mundane everyday life. Since the
mid-2000s, indie artists from the clustered Hongdae area in Seoul have found new
opportunities to take on key acting roles in pop-rock feature films and documen-
taries. Among them, girl(s)-with-acoustic-guitar(s) have been the most welcome per-
sonae and can be seen in films such as Dancing Zoo (2010), Acoustic (2010), Come,
Closer (2010), Caf Noir (2010) as well as a documentary, Sogyumo Accacia Bands
Story (2008). The niche role of girl-with-acoustic-guitar evolved with the Hongdae
goddesses fandom, initiated by otaku fans and later capitalised on by indie labels
such as Pastel Music and Happy Robot. Since then, the soft and folk-tinged sound
of artists like Heejeong Han, Yozoh and Taru could be heard not only on the internet
and mobile phones, but also in commercial, TV drama and film soundtracks. Thanks
to the vibrant indie film screenings at cinema houses and film festivals all year long
and in different parts of the country, the indie pop-rock films featuring the goddess
icons or heroines are becoming tie-in strategies for some of the indie music artists.
In Dancing Zoo and the omnibus film, Come, Closer, respectively, the heroines are
both independent-minded women committed to making pop music and meaningful
personal relationships in everyday life. Unlike the mainstream Korean pop-rock films
or Japanese girl pop-rock screen narratives mentioned in previous sections, the
movies do not showcase dramatic storytelling of hard-working pop-star wannabes
or miserable has-beens. The stories unfold along the heroines stream of conscious-
ness. For example, in Come, Closer, Yozoh is seen mostly walking and talking some-
times quarrelling like lovers with her music partner, a male guitarist, about their
opinions on love and passion. In one instance, she yells at him: How foolish you
are! For women, feeling stability itself is the passion.
Upon first glance, the transgressiveness of these indie music film heroines
seems questionable. They do not challenge the dominant gender roles in the music
industry. They often depend on male session players. Packed with references to mun-
dane objects of daily life like caff latte, crackers, chocolate, mint, cats and dogs, their
music serves an aestheticising purpose which conforms to the traditional feminine
role. Worse, their commercial affinity with the beauty industry as well as with the
successful indie label sometimes attracts a criticism of selling out.
However, the Korean indie music films show that the rhetoric of rebellion
endorsed by the rock protagonists until the early 2000s is in need of reworking. It
can even be said that the Asian girls/women in these films stand in direct opposition
to that of the conventional rock films where the desire and fantasy of male heroes dom-
inate the scenes and the narratives.
20
The indie heroines do not advocate escape from
boring everyday life in collective ways (e.g. forming a band). They become musicians
in full awareness of the difficulties of being independent. Sometimes, the experience is
devastating, as in Nowhere to Turn (2008). The heroine, a keyboardist, opts to withdraw
from an important contest even though she is prepared to showcase her repertoire, cre-
ated from her everyday life with a boyfriend/musician. Yet the benevolent comment
from a male guitarist/judge who treats her as both a protg and an easy lay serves
as a sober reminder that she could not take credit for independence.
With no climax in sight, everyday life is the destination where personal meanings
crystallise. Aestheticising even facilitates new desiring subjectivities. In Acoustic, the
indie musician heroine has a rare disease so that the only food she can have is cup noo-
dles (ramen). This quirky setup and subsequent visual elaboration in the story provide
solidarity with otaku young men as well as labouring musicians, whose very way of life
and fantasies are often stigmatised. Looking sweet, innocent and uninterested in sex,
the young female indie artists are in control of a subdued language of sexuality
which is differentiated from an overt, in-your-face manipulation of sexuality and fem-
ininity in the K-pop scene. For example, Yozoh sings the lyrics, Give me your banana,
let me taste your banana and ends with yum, yum, yum, frankly acknowledging the
reference to male genitalia and singing it in her usual infantile, cute voice.
If everyday life is neither utopian nor dystopian, does it signal a politics of het-
erotopia based on the microcosm of the everyday life?
21
We now turn to examine
whether the same can be said about the girl-with-acoustic-guitar figures in Taiwans
pop-rock screen.
Ally on the outfield: girl-with-acoustic-guitar
While Taiwan has also produced many pop-rock films in the 2000s, the majority of
products in this category are quite accidental in the sense that they rarely reference
local pop music histories, cultural industries practices or the fan communities. Cape
No. 7, the most successful domestic film of 2008, is a case in point. It opens with an
angry young man a band vocalist/guitarist returning home to the rural south after
an unsuccessful bid at a pop music career in Taipei. The story revolves around how
the local residents put together a rock band to perform at a hotels opening cer-
emony. The guitarist, who becomes romantically involved with the Japanese booking
agent, chances upon a bundle of undelivered love letters from a Japanese teacher liv-
ing in colonial Taiwan to a local resident. The cast features numerous non-major,
amateur as well as indie musicians.
22
Yet the overwhelming public debate in
Taiwan focused on the films colonial and postcolonial subtext, not on its pop
music connection (Chen 2008; Hsu 2008).
The absence of discussion from the pop music perspective is, in a sense, a lost
opportunity to tell stories about smaller subjectivities, from marginal gender, youth
or labour positions. Even the diverse rock band in Cape No. 7 is mainly a mens
game. In the Japanese and Korean pop-rock films, mutual referencing between
pop music tastes in the storytelling has helped to create music culture identities. In
Taiwans pop-rock films, the resulting choice of pop music represented seems to
serve the state and populist fantasy of reconciliation between families, generations
and ethnicities. Thus it is common to see an ideological juxtaposition of traditional
and contemporary music in pop-rock performances in the film.
23
In the Taiwanese pop-rock stories, gender and other cultural identities have
been displaced consistently by the preoccupation with a national imagined commu-
nity.
24
Despite the reality, the representation of successful female musicians is rare.
25
But outside the urban centre and the normative, professional world of adults, the
girl-with-acoustic-guitar becomes a symbol of female agency.
In contrast to the semi-autonomous, self-supported everyday in the Korean
indie music films, the girl-with-acoustic-guitar figure in Taiwans pop-rock screen
inhabits an everyday setting heavily intervened in by adults. In the film Summers
Tail, two high school heroines observe and accompany two boys in trouble one
gets expelled for falling in love with a female teacher, and the other, a soccer
lover, is forever criticised for poor grades. The TV miniseries, Days We Stared at the
Sun, also situates a guitar-girl heroine in the desperate lives of three peers a
good student who grows disillusioned with his teacher and father, a bad student
with a juvenile record who struggles to be responsible in an unassisted world and a
sexually confused girl who becomes further exploited by adults. In both works,
guitar-playing is not so much a spectacular performance as a soothing daily practice.
It not only allows young people a voice against adults omnipresence, but also keeps
the troubled boys and girls company.
Through different techniques, the two works construct compassionate female
agency from the societys margin and underside. This is seen in the guitar heroine
in Summers Tail, who stays out of school because of a heart condition. Yet, precisely
because she is an exception, she encounters other marginalised characters and pro-
vides unintended support at key moments. For example, while playing the guitar on
a bridge over a creek day in and day out, she picks up origami boats from a mother-
less little boy who has been seen stealing food in the town. When the little boy and
his younger sister seek shelter from their drunk father, the young heroine bands
together with her grandmother and mother to protect them.
In keeping with the extracurricular culture in Taiwan, both films depict girls
learning and practising the guitar as legitimate activities with adult support. In
Days We Stared at the Sun, the heroine is president of re yin she (the popular music
club). The hero also plays the guitar quite well a natural knowledge passed on
from his unemployed father. Yet he is not encouraged to develop his musical interest.
This representation seems to be a stark contrast to the boys-with-acoustic-guitar in Jun
Miuras pop-rock texts, in which playing the acoustic guitar leads to an assured and
independent definition of manhood. Free from this gendered expectation, the guitar
heroines in the Taiwanese films constitute the hope of independent heterotopia.
Unlike utopia, which corresponds to sites with no real place, the Foucauldian
use of heterotopias refers to sites that could animate reflection on the principle of
social and individual existence (Foucault 1986). Often in real geographical locations
in society, heterotopias are founded on joint as well as partitioned experiences, tem-
poralities and relations. Producing bard-like, transient, frail girl-with-acoustic-guitar,
the Taiwan pop-rock tales reveal the allure of a heterotopic imagination based on the
paradox of emplacement and place-making. On the one hand, the girls genuine
relation with place is distrusted; the female indie musicians association with the poli-
tics of place in A Place of Ones Own is constructed as a tainted branding ploy. On the
other hand, the girl-with-acoustic-guitar in many pop-rock screen narratives is short-
lived and on the verge of disappearing.
26
Although connoting the ethos of individu-
alism and self-expression, acoustic guitar heroines in Taiwanese pop-rock screen
have been reinscribed in the discourses of nation and gender.
Conclusion
In summary, this paper is a comparative analysis of East Asian pop-rock films, TV
series and documentaries that feature musicians, band characters and everyday
music players. The rise of pop-rock screen products in the recent decade in South
Korea, Japan and Taiwan could be seen as a response to the dynamic regional
music and media industries. Interestingly, as K-pop reaches regional and global suc-
cess, Korean filmmakers harked back to the alternative power of rocknroll anchored
during Koreas tumultuous 1970s and 1980s. In a different taste community, the
thriving Korean indie scenes yielded off-beat documentaries spotlighting indie
musician-goddess figures. Embedded in complicated inter-industry interactions
(pop music, manga, anime and TV), Japanese pop-rock movies and TV dramas
had diverse stakes in creating pop-rock storytelling. Some upheld the rock religion
while others transformed the crossover music styles into new material for romanticis-
ing music making. In Taiwan, the relatively small-scaled film and TV industries took
pop-rock storytelling in two directions. The first kind branding vehicles for pop
stars acknowledges the indispensable cross-strait markets. 3DNA, a 3D concert
film that samples Taiwanese pop band May Days 10-year concert footage and blends
it with fictional stories in Taipei, Shanghai and Guangzhou, is the latest addition to
such entertainment products. The second kind of storytelling mines the ordinary and
everyday practices of pop music in Taiwan, such as guitar-playing.
Our East Asian pop-rock screen samples are predominantly mainstream media
productions aimed at attracting young audiences. One might wonder: where are the
more serious, hardcore and realist rock texts in East Asia? They have been made and
are still being made and shown on niche networks. Yet the notion of a singular,
orthodox narrative of popular music is something we wish to problematise in this
paper. As Jeroen De Kloets (2010) research on Chinese rock bands and urban youths
indicates, gender politics are inherent in the genre labelling. While the hyphenated
pop-rock is frequently feminised for its loose principles, it opens up an exchange
of pop music experiences.
Admittedly, many of our samples simplify and idealise the history, business
and experiences of the music industries and band lives. Still, rock mythology is
gently dispelled in the productions we considered. In place of rock, a flexible and
accessible pop-rock and indie-pop experience becomes authenticated through roman-
tic storytelling. The cultural hold of pop-rock music in East Asian societies, we
believe, is about the pursuit of independence in everyday realities and relationships.
The lure of pop-rock narratives in particular speaks through gender and sexual
expressions.
As our analysis has shown, notions of femininity and masculinity are the build-
ing blocks of the East Asian pop-rock narratives and representations. The gender and
sexual expressions are fluid, though not free from the conventional social and market
codes. Korean pop-rock films question hegemonic masculinity through the figure of
sympathetic male rockers. Korean indie documentaries mobilise a different gendered
spectatorship. In Korean and Japanese pop-rock texts, we found familiar tenets of
pop feminism, such as the celebration of independence and girl power. The
inter-Asian comparison affords us a perspective on the different techniques of con-
struction. At times, femininity in Japanese pop-rock films demonstrates consistency
with mainstream girl comic aesthetics, but the register of femininity can quickly plur-
alise as pop-rock finds new markets, such as the otaku-targeted K-On! franchise.
Girl-with-guitar figures can convey maternal power, but in the bigger promotional
culture, such as in Korea and Taiwan, they can also be fashioned into cosmetic
cover girls donning luxury brand goods.
By inter-referencing between three East Asian locations, we discovered multiple
East Asian subjectivities engaged with a variety of pop-rock-indie cultural practices
some in the constructed present, some in an idealised past, some as racing youth, and
some as soothing everyday rhythm. Why do boys, girls, men and women strum on
guitars, form bands and sing? If the answer isnt a straight promise of a utopia, and if
we find it hard to generalise across the East Asian region, perhaps we have finally
begun to strum out a definition of independence by feeling, observing and joining
in the tempos and temporalities of disparate lives.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and con-
structive comments. The authors also appreciate the helpful responses from the par-
ticipants at The Current Issues of Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies workshop held
by Sungkonghoe University on 30 April 2011, where an earlier draft was presented.
This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant Fund by the
Korean Government (MEST) (KRF-2007-361-AM0005). The authors are indebted to
the following individuals affiliated to National Taiwan Normal University who pro-
vided assistance to this project during its various stages: Yi-way Yang, Kai-ling
Huang, Vincent Chih-kai Chung and Yu-ling Shen.
Notes on East Asian names
This paper follows the conventional romanisation in South Korea, Japan and
Taiwan, except in cases where the individual has adopted and has since become
known as a different chosen name (e.g. Harold Sakuishi). All personal names
mentioned in the paper follow the given namesurname order and the required
academic citation style.
Endnotes
1. Our use of pop-rock follows Motti Regevs argu-
ment (2007, 2008, 2011) that pop-rock is a cat-
egory of cultural production defined by electric
instrument and recording technologies. From
early on in many parts of the world, pop-rock
has been a world model for musicians, audi-
ences, critics and the music industry. It has been
legitimised further as an ethno-national cultural
form with a clear sense of cultural ownership.
2. Manga is the Japanese term for comics books.
Shonen manga is targeted at boys, while shojo
manga caters for girls.
3. Sogo Ishii has been a forerunner in documenting
Japanese punk scenes of the late 1970s in concert
documentaries and action films like Burst City
(1982) (Mes 2001a, b, c).
4. Although not explicitly about music groups, some
Korean blockbuster (e.g. Friends, Once Upon a
Time in High School) and art house successes
(e.g. Peppermint Candy, Low Class Life) have refer-
enced subcultures of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s
and have featured local pop-rock music in the
soundtracks.
5. Otaku, literally house or family, is a Japanese term
used to designate those who are obsessed with
knowledge, hobbies or technology that are often
regarded as trivial.
6. An earlier film, Edward Yangs A Brighter Summer
Day (1991), offers a reflective and historicised
interpretation of rock in Taiwans political and
social context. A film about Taiwanese youth in
turf wars of the 1970s, it sets up several youth
rock incidents in the context of Taiwans ethnic
and class tension during the Cold War era (Yeh
2000). While Taiwan is often argued as being
the hub of Mandarin pop music, the first
Chinese-language film to portray the workings
of the popular music industry would come from
Hong Kong: actor Daniel Wus directorial debut,
The Heavenly Kings (2006). The film title pays tri-
bute to the four biggest Chinese pop stars of the
1990s Andy Lau, Leon Lai, Jacky Cheung and
Aaron Kwok. The film is shot in a mocumentary
style, depicting the rise and fall of a four-piece
boy-band.
7. The official English title for Sile Doyou Ai is Died
Has All Had to Love.
8. F4 is a four-piece boy group from Taiwan who
shot into fame in the early 2000s via Meteor
Garden, an idol drama that acquired popularity
in East and Southeast Asia.
9. Almost all of the post-2000 Japanese pop-rock
films have received theatrical release in Taiwan,
mainly through cultural hipsters circles (Daizu
2010).
10. Our research has been inspired by numerous
studies (e.g. Niranjana 2006; Siriyuvasak and
Shin 2007) that reference within Asia in order to
generate creative and liberatory knowledge
about regional and local lives.
11. Rainbow, an independent film about a mother
who tries to write her first film script, vividly illus-
trates cut-throat competition between women
and men.
12. The residual status of trot is important in Highway
Star, which is about an aspiring rocker (My Sassy
Girls Tae-Hyun Cha) who becomes a popular
trot singer against his will. Trot can be simply
defined as a Korean version of Japanese enka,
whose origin dates back to the colonial 1920s
and 1930s. It still has commercial appeal to the
less educated, rural adult population in East
Asia, including Korea.
13. Gogo 70, the work of a music enthusiast in the
film industry, captures the early rock/soul scene
from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.
Structured around the male bonding of a soul
group, the story features a major heroine who is
part-groupie, part-backing dancer and part-
costume designer for the group.
14. The title and story reference a Buddhist
expression, shikisoku zekuu, meaning everything
with a material shape is also bound to
disappear.
15. Early in the film the boy plays a song on his guitar
called What the hell is sex?. To get the attention
of the hot-blooded high school boy audience, he
sings Eroticism Blue at the school cultural festi-
val, and claims he wrote it while watching a
porn flick.
16. Visual kei (visual system) is a musical movement
initiated by some Japanese rock bands in the
mid-1980s. The bands style is characterised by
glitzy and elaborate make-up, hair and dress. It
is believed that the term visual originated from
the slogan of a pioneering visual-kei band
X-Japan: psychedelic violence crime of visual
shock.
17. We borrowed all fluxed-up from Simon
Reynolds and Joy Presss The Sex Revolts (1995,
p. 354), particularly the last chapter, in which
the term refers to the in-process, little and torn
subjectivities of female rock artists.
18. Adjarian and Orenstein (2011) have pointed out
that the rock star is fast becoming an add-on fan-
tasy identity for little girls in American popular
culture even for the self-assured Dora the
Explorer.
19. Cheer Chen and Deserts Chang are two notable
Taiwanese female indie artists who perform with
guitars. Sang-a Nam, front-woman of veteran
indie band Third Line Butterfly played the role
of an indie musician in the film Rush (1999) and
TV drama Ruler of the World (2002).
Unfortunately, the former failed both commer-
cially and artistically and the latter rendered her
role minimal.
20. Gayle Walds analysis of Japanese girl rockers in
the US media culture has illustrated the fact that
girl power when encoded through Asian fem-
ininity is often compromised in the dominant
gender, class and race discourses (Wald 2002).
21. The precious and settling chemistry of everyday
life may be one reason why some of the female
indie artists became involved in politics, particu-
larly in cases where the current regime threatens
to destroy the lived spaces for their daily routines.
Taru is an active campaigner against major con-
struction policies such as the Four Big Rivers
Project. Han Heejeong has performed at
Duriban, a building in the Hongdae area orig-
inally due to be demolished to make way for a
railway line for the airport express train (which
opened in 2011). What was significant was that
they sang love songs rather than protest
songs at the concert. In the contexts of social
movements in Korea, it was a big break.
22. Musicians in the cast included singer Van Fan,
Hsiao-Ying from alternative rock band The
Clippers Band, Nian-Hsien Ma from former
band Sticky Rice (19942004), Min-Hsiung and
veteran pub singer Shino, Million Star winner
Wen-Ying Lian, and Japanese singer K osuke
Atari. In the directors audio commentary on the
DVD, Wei said he discovered that shooting the
final performance first really helped warm up
these beginner actors.
23. The juxtaposition of traditional vs. modern music
or instruments can be found in Cape No. 7,
Gangster Rock, Rock Baby and Goodbye May.
24. Splendid Afloat may be an exception, in which
human connection is forged around marginal life-
styles and fluid sexualities. However, the music
featured is a blend of local torch songs rather
than rock.
25. In Love til the End, the TV drama based on the
true story of the Shin band, there was originally
a female vocal (Sonia Sui). Despite her serious
aspiration to become a professional musician,
her behaviour and gender morality were con-
stantly questioned. Eventually, the band debuted
without her. The bands biography confirmed
her membership of the band (Shin Band 2003).
26. In the Japanese film A Song to the Sun, singer-
songwriter Yui plays a similar heroine type. She
is a talented young woman with a rare skin dis-
ease that prohibits her from exposure to the
sun. Her day begins after sunset and she plays
the acoustic guitar and sings her own songs
around town.
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A Brighter Summer Day. Director: Edward Yang. Central Motion Pictures Company, Taiwan. 1991
A Place of Ones Own. Director: Yi-an Lou. 3rd Vision Films, Taiwan. 2009
A Song to the Sun [Taiy o no Uta]. Director: Norihiro Koizumi. TBS, Japan. 2006
Acoustic. Director: Sang-hun Yoo. Yeonghwabalmyeong Gongjakso/Kinoeye DMC, Korea. 2010
All About Lily Chou-Chou. Director: Shunji Iwai. Rockwell Eyes, Japan. 2001
Backdancers! Director: Kozo Nagayama. Studio 3 Co., Japan. 2006
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