The Gaudy World of Gangnam

Gangnam style galloped into Chinese mainstream culture long before the Spring Festival and by the CCTV gala, several companies had uploaded videos of employees straddling in place to the South Korean musical phenomenon. With a song, South Korea gained the attention of the world as a vibrant cultural and artistic center.

In East Asia, the video offered a spot-on shot of pop machismo with a line of gangster-types wiggling, thighs splayed, glaring straight ahead with a vulgar expression in their eyes. The "sexy ladies" of the video give out shouts of joy at the men. And yet the irony embedded in Gangnam style is ambiguous at best, and in some instances, images in the video can be read as the blatant glorification of the very symbols it attempts to attack. Instead, traditional notions of East Asian male identity are reaffirmed.