Category: Entertainment Files

IU Criticized for Lyrics that Sexualize a Children’s Book

| November 10, 2015

Maybe in Korean the lyrics sound worse than what it sounds in English because after reading this article I don’t see what the big deal is:

A Brazilian novel first published more than 40 years ago has unexpectedly become a highly sought-after read, after the Korean pop star IU was accused of sexualising the story of its five-year-old protagonist in one of her songs.

José Mauro de Vasconcelos’s My Sweet Orange Tree, first published in Portuguese in 1968 and in English in 1970, is set in Rio de Janeiro and follows the life of the boy Zeze, as he gets up to mischief and is mistreated. “Everyone beats him. If you look softhearted he will tell you it’s revolting the way they beat on a little kid. Can you believe him when he says he’s only six? No! The boy is a liar. He is five years old,” runs the copy on the first UK edition.

My Sweet Orange Tree has been out of print in English for years, but Abebooks.com has reported that the novel became its most searched-for title late last week after controversy enveloped IU’s pop song Zeze, which is based on the story. The bookseller’s Richard Davies said that My Sweet Orange Tree was “a much-loved book in South Korea and often studied in schools”.

According to the Korea Times, the book’s Korean publisher has issued a statement saying that: “We regret the way the five-year-old character is portrayed as a sexual object.”

The paper quotes lines from IU’s song which run: “Zeze, come on up the tree quick and kiss the leaves, don’t be naughty and don’t hurt the tree, come up the tree and get the youngest leaf … you are innocent but shrewd, transparent but dirty and there is no way of knowing what’s living inside.”  [The Guardian]

You can read the rest at the link, but IU has since apologized for the lyrics, but says she had no intention of sexualizing Zeze.

K-Pop Girl Falls Eight Times During One Performance, But Keeps Dancing

| September 9, 2015

It was a tough day at work for the K-Pop group GFriend which saw band member Yuju fall eight times during the course of a song.  Another singer also wiped out during the performance as well.  It looks like someone needs to get some traction on that stage:

During a performance Saturday in South Korea, one of the members of girlband GFriend took a number of painful looking falls onstage.

Yuju, easily identified by a white knee guard, fell eight times over the course of one song, and another member SinB took a big spill in the middle of the stage.  [Mashable]

You can read more at the link.

 

Girls Generation Launches New Reality TV Program

| July 22, 2015

Just when you thought reality TV could not get any worse:

K-pop group Girls’ Generation is set to show “a side of them never before shown on TV” in the pilot episode of their new reality program later Tuesday.

“Channel Girls’ Generation” — to be aired on South Korean cable channel OnStyle at 9 p.m. on Tuesday — isn’t the band’s first attempt at reality TV by any means.

Previously, some members have appeared as guests or had permanent roles in shows like “The Taetiseo,” which chronicled the lives of Taeyeon, Tiffany and Seohyeon on the same channel last year.

“Channel Girls’ Generation” is the first to feature all eight current members after the exit of Jessica last year, with each of them directing her own segment, or “channel” in the program’s vernacular.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Will Hollywood Ever Change Its Stereotypical Views Of Veterans ?

| May 24, 2015

I don’t see Hollywood changing their stereotype of military veterans any time soon even with this film festival:

My stepbrother is in the military, and he always wishes that the movies would be a better advocate for the American soldier,” actor Ethan Hawke said during an interview to promote “Good Kill,” a new drama about drone warfare. “Hollywood has a bad habit of either being so nationalistic and flag-waving that it kind of dehumanizes everybody and makes it a recruitment tool, or being so left-wing with conspiracy theories that project all of this negativity. Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle.”

The GI Film Festival opens in Washington this week in its ninth year as a corrective to the one-dimensional portrayals that many observers fear have influenced how the public sees the military. The festival runs May 18 through May 24 and features 60 movies, including shorts, documentaries, comedies and dramas. All are either made by veterans or feature military characters.

At a time when only 0.5 percent of the population is on active duty, many in the military community argue that even the cinema offerings that attempt to give a sympathetic portrayal of soldiers and veterans — such as the acclaimed “American Sniper” — end up breeding harmful stereotypes.

Recent films have also portrayed vets as murderers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“In the Valley of Elah,” “Redacted”); as deserters suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“Stop-Loss”); and as mavericks so addicted to combat that they can’t reintegrate into American society (“The Hurt Locker”).

“People believe what they see in the movies,” said Laura Law-Millett, a veteran who founded the GI Film Festival with her civilian husband, Brandon Millett. “If someone had seen some of these films who had never met anyone in the military, prior to about 2007, they would say, ‘Oh, so everyone who joins the Army becomes a drug dealer or a rapist or a murderer?'”  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but with Bush out of office the amount of movies and documentaries depicting troops as murderers and rapists seems to have decreased.  It seems now they focus more on veterans being heroic or broken from PTSD.