K-pop Live by Suk-Young Kim

Author:Suk-Young Kim [Kim, Suk-Young]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781503605992
Google: rohnDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 35804407
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2018-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 10. Entrance to SM TOWN in Gangnam District in Seoul. Photo by Kim Suk-Young.

On the third floor is SMTOWN studio, or what the SMTOWN website calls an “EDUtainment studio where visitors can experience the life of the artist with the assistance of a professional staff.” Here visitors can get a total K-pop makeover, record their own music, or shoot music videos like the idols themselves. While SUM is a place where visitors are able to consume idol-related merchandise, the studio is where they can simulate the idols themselves. SMTOWN provides a fantasy of imitating them at various prices.

The idea of total consumption continues on with the LIVEary Café on the fourth floor, which, again, is a space of combined functions: “café,” “music,” “media,” “books,” and “special goods” appear as subtitles to this café. Indeed LIVEary functions as an SM artists’ music archive where visitors can make their own CD by arranging SM artists’ songs in a specific order or can treat themselves to overpriced, idol-themed baked goods. Cupcakes with baseball-hat toppings displaying idol logos in pastel hues, so irresistibly adorable as to justify their exorbitant prices, go well with equally overpriced soda water in transparent bottles named after SM Entertainment idols: lemon “BoA” water, hot pink “Girls’ Generation” water, aqua blue “SHINee” water, deep violet “f(x)” water, bloody garnet “TVXQ” water—impeccably displayed on snow-white melamine shelves—lure fans who are thirsty to consume the idols of their pursuit.

As the visitors travel between floors on escalators, they are treated to photo panels of SM artists, museum-like displays of trophies, and expert installations of costumes worn by various idols in their music videos (figure 11). Larchiveum, a compound word standing for a library, an archive, and a museum describes the multiple purposes that SMTOWN fulfills, and if the word could be hyphenated with storine, a compound word I devised to stand for “store” and “shrine,” it could be coming close to capturing the entire range of functions the place has come to perform.

Just like Klive in the previous section, SMTOWN can be another destination for lay tourists, but for die-hard fans of SM idols it can signify much more; it is a place designed for religious pilgrimage where commodity-idol worship is openly professed. What sustains SMTOWN’s authority as a place of adulation is its ability to convey the aura of stars’ live presence, much as religious temples can be regarded as sacred spaces where the object of worship is believed to be authentically present. As emphasized in the café’s name, LIVEary, the notion of “live” very much signals multiple possibilities: live music, authentic presence of the idols, and most significantly, live interaction between absent stars and present audiences. The last meaning of “live” is especially crucial for understanding hologram musicals performed at a theater on the top floor of SMTOWN.

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