Meet Me at the APT.
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #182. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
———
Interfacing in the millennium.
———
If you’re not on the parts of the internet where people do little dances to catchy songs or where rabid fans ruthlessly promote their fave’s recent release to the chagrin of everyone else on their timeline, you might not know that Rosé, one of the members of K-pop megagroup Blackpink, has released her first solo album. I’m a longtime fan, but to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from it – Blackpink’s music has never been the selling point, and normally all I need from it is a good beat to be happy. So, when I saw the music video for “APT.” (feat. Bruno Mars) pop up on YouTube, I thought: Huh! That’s interesting!
Listen. I cannot overstate how overwhelming it felt to watch this music video after years of only getting to see this girl in the middle of the K-pop machinery. I was screaming at my phone. It’s not like it’s an elaborate video! It’s her and Bruno hopping around on a bare set dancing! But Jesus, the difference between it and what I was expecting after years of the K-pop scheme is striking. There was no complicated, sexy yet ugly roster of outfits, no demanding choreography, no dizzying procession of visually impressive and totally meaningless sets. The plot of the video is “Park Chaeyoung and her friend Bruno Mars have fun.” She’s just bopping around! She’s playing! She seems happy!
I enjoyed the two-ish years I spent being really into K-pop. I defend a lot of the music and parts of the industry still. But after a few years, I became far too aware of the falsity of it, especially how much of it hinges on the parasocial relationships you’re encouraged to have with idols. Keeping a sense of separation from a group like Blackpink is easy enough, sure, because they’re so massively fucking obscenely ridiculously famous, but at the end of the day I like them because they remind me of myself. I watched the little web series they did where they’re just a couple of girls alone in a house in the big city away from their families trying to figure out their life and I felt deeply connected with them. I felt, more than anything, that I understood them because I had been an exchange student, which is to this day the most unreal and heavily defining experience of my life. You’re alone in a foreign country, but you’re not alone; you’re a kid, but you’re given independence in a way kids don’t really traditionally get; you’re doing something exciting that is also frightening and inescapable, something you literally cannot get away from; you’re probably dealing with some combination of culture shock and homesickness; you don’t speak the language; someone is taking care of you but you don’t belong to them; you’re constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated; you’re acutely aware of how lucky you are, what an incredible thing it is that you’re doing and how the majority of people never get an opportunity like this.
When I was abroad, I was one of a huge group of exchange students from all around the world scattered across northwestern Germany that spent a lot of time together, so there was also this sense of unity that came from our isolation and the uniqueness of our situation. There is no quicker or stronger bond than a bunch of shitty teenagers from five different continents drinking outside a train station in a foreign country at midnight, wondering how they got there. That’s the bond I felt like I saw in Blackpink – Korean, Thai, Korean-New Zealander and Aussie, thrown together through the incomprehensible forces of the YG machine, fumbling around and figuring it out. I felt great sympathy for those girls that seemed mostly happy but a little lost.
After a while, how close I felt to them got to be too much. I was getting older and trying to be more aware of how I engaged with things, and it got harder and harder to ignore that I was being marketed these young women, sold them like they were a product or a friend or a chatbot that loves you back. Aspects of the industry that used to be exciting or engaging instead became hard for me to handle. I didn’t like how aware I was of the demanding exposure of these people’s lives, how it all came back to that artificial reassurance between idol and fan, that you love them, and they love you. It got very unpleasant to look at Rosé, a girl my age who could have easily been my friend in a different life, and to be so aware of the gilded cage she lived in. It’s the same way I feel about many athletes; they choose these careers so young that I don’t know if I really consider them to have actually chosen at all. Yeah, you want to be a singer or a soccer player or what have you, but when you’re thirteen do you really know what you’re signing away? Does anyone tell you, if you make it, what you’re giving up? I’d guess not. The people who make it are such a small fraction of trainees, and they’re paid such ridiculous amounts of money, that it does seem a bit absurd to pity them. But I do! I looked at Rosé and her international performance schedule and her endless roster of ugly outfits and her painfully skinny arms and I pitied her.
I feel extremely relieved to be able to look at her these days and see the change in her expression. I like getting to hear her talk in interviews where she’s not parroting soundbites, where she doesn’t sound neutered by the limited amount of personal expression you’re allowed as an idol who has an image to maintain. After a decade-long career in music, she’s finally getting to make music that has something to do with her actual life and getting to perform it in a way that seems enriching, not exhausting. It seems to me like it must be freeing to not be bound to the same few shapes you can create with a quartet. I still kinda feel like I know her; I still feel like my affection for her is fundamentally rooted in that false idea that if I tried, I could reach out and touch her. The flip side of that, though, is that seeing her finally reach a more healthy, honest part of her career feels like watching someone I’ve loved for a long time finally catch a break. I’m happy for her – I hope she’s happy too.
———
Maddi Chilton is an internet artifact from St. Louis, Missouri. Follow her on Twitter @allpalaces.
