Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
IU has made everybody’s wishes come true and has apologized for the controversies regarding her entire album, from allegedly being a pedophile to glorifying child sex to ripping off Britney Spears.
“Hello. This is IU. Though I knew that there were a lot of opinions about my lyrics recently, it took longer than I thought to get the nerve to speak up. I apologize for being late. I sincerely apologize to everyone who was hurt by my lyrics.
This recent album is about what’s happened to the 23-year-old IU, and it’s filled with songs inspired by characters from novels. ‘Zeze’ is one of those songs. ‘My Sweet Orange Tree’ is a really precious novel to me. I didn’t write the lyrics with the intention of inferring anything sexual about a 5-year-old child. The Zeze in the lyrics is written in third person using the novel’s story as a motive. However, I understand that the people who listen to the song could be angered by my lyrics, and many people were hurt because of it. It’s because of my immaturity as a lyricist.
I also know that many people were surprised by what I said in one interview. In that interview I said, ‘It’s not something the young Zeze is saying, but I felt that Zeze’s temper was sexy.’ It’s not about the 5-year-old child, but the ambiguity of the temper. However, I believe that it’s my negligence for using the word ‘sexy’ in a discussion about a child.
To add, it’s my fault that I didn’t carefully look into the sources that the producer who arranged the track used for samples in the bonus track. We’ve currently requested that Britney Spears’ side look into it, and following that, we’ll go into getting clearance for the sampling. It’s the first time I’ve acted as producer for an album, and I think I was too excited and selfish about wanting to receive praise. Because of this, there’s been a lot of mistakes. I apologize once again to those who were hurt by this and those who were disappointed in me. I’ll work hard to reflect on myself, and I’ll show you a more mature side of myself. I apologize.”
So basically exactly what I figured she was doing then?
She explained that the album was self-referential as a whole, that she didn’t intend to sexualize the child in “Zeze“, and that her use of “sexy” was not about the child but in reference to duality as a personality trait. Oh yeah, also she has to check with the actual arranger of the bonus track from an OST because of course she didn’t arrange an OST track herself.
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In terms of my article — and because maybe now people are willing to listen and not just bitch at me for having the audacity to see it a different way from the herd — the primary point of it was not to lecture people about how they wanted to interpret the “Zeze” lyrics. For those asking why I didn’t tackle those lyrics more in-depth in the article, it’s because they were indeed open to interpretation like IU said.
The article was actually attempting to clarify that IU was framing everything in the album as part of a self-referential concept, like she alluded to. I saw people genuinely not understanding basic concepts and references to her rejecting images, feeling confused, and feeling hypocritical. Thus, I wanted to shine a light on that fact because most of the criticism seemed to completely miss the point.
However, if you saw the “Zeze” lyrics differently, then fine, but I just didn’t agree.
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As far as the subsequent update to my article, the thing that started some kind of war at Netizen Buzz was my insistence that she was not trying to sexualize the child, and that her usage of the word “sexy” was not referring to romantic thoughts about the child.
As she said, the “sexy” description was not talking about the kid, but rather her finding common ground in a trait with “Zeze” that was thus appealing and fit her duality motif. Furthermore, and this is the important point, if she had used “sexy” referring to “Zeze” all the time and/or if the context surrounding her explanation of the lyrics in interviews involved the sexualization of “Zeze”, I would probably not have supported her.
https://youtu.be/wmOpqJCTqt4?t=42m35s
But once again, I don’t think people actually watched the V app video I posted in the original article of her explaining the “Zeze” concept live, in which to me it clearly came off like she had no thought of sexuality-related lyrics at all.
This is further supported by the fact that the chorus of her lyrics is taken directly from the book, even though it was the main thing people were talking about in terms of her allegedly sexualizing the kid.
https://twitter.com/isonjing/status/662456093201813504
https://twitter.com/asianjunkiecom/status/662575084159152133
So … yeah.
my opinion about 'zezé' (part. 1) pic.twitter.com/wI7QwaKbxn
— milo | closed (@Iedapple) November 5, 2015
my opinion about 'zezé' (part. 3) pic.twitter.com/QTw52L4mZ1
— milo | closed (@Iedapple) November 5, 2015
I also believe that’s a valid outlook from somebody who has actually read the book and is not just going off online summaries like 99% of the people who are flipping out on her.
As far as the picture goes, here’s how IU drew it up.
That doesn’t look all that ominous to me.
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So in light of all that, I’m gonna maintain my original stance.
You can see “Zeze” in whatever way you want … just like IU can. Nobody owns what people feel from reading a book or watching a movie or seeing a play. Nobody is automatically right just because they’re a teacher or a publisher or (yes) even the original author (New Criticism).
Probably the weirdest thing to come out of all this is those who did understand what I was saying in terms of her self-referential theme, duality motif, and the satirization of her lolita image, but still said they should be off limits. If one truly felt that way about any art, I find it hard to believe one could enjoy anything that’s not straightforward or able to be taken at face value. But that’s just me.
Additionally, as I think has been shown, there’s plenty of evidence to support that IU didn’t have any intention to sexualize the child and wrote the lyrics because they fit the theme of her album. The fact that this coincides with what I wrote about it does not mean there’s a conspiracy theory as some say…
…but just that people have different ways of looking at literature.
Note: Betsy, you may want to do that article about how G-Dragon doesn’t actually hand-draw all his album art after all, I don’t think people get it. Or they’re being purposefully obtuse.
Most importantly, I still think the actual point of my original article is valid because people are still bringing up the lolita shit. The fact that they are still harping on that shows why I wrote that article to being with: because they have indeed missed the entire point.
There are even more Pann articles now talking about IU’s past lolita concept and using that to bash her, whereas even a semi-intelligent human could see the evidences of past lolita concepts and connect the dots to exactly what she’s doing in this album. Once again, for all the people who argued with me that she was too vague, I don’t understand how she could be much more obvious about it, but it’s still not enough for people. Like they are literally finding all the evidence that connects the dots but can’t add 1+1 together to make 2. If they lack the intelligence and awareness to do even that, it’s not on the artist at that point as to why people don’t get it. At that point, they are all either remarkably stupid or they are purposefully not getting it because it is indeed a witch hunt. You decide.
Going forward, obviously you can enjoy what you enjoy in K-pop. But if you’re gonna criticize IU for trying to show you the mirror in regards to her past lolita concepts, and you truly feel this strongly about lolita concepts, then I better not see the same people clapping their hands like seals to innocent and pure concepts by boy and girl groups.
Wouldn’t want to be hypocritical and miss the point, right?
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On a less mature note, shoutout to the people who attacked me personally and called me a pervert, pedophile, and for breaking out the thesaurus on different ways to say “disgusting”. It’s too bad that in reality, I wasn’t the one out in the K-pop world actively hunting for a child seduction song.
https://twitter.com/asianjunkiecom/status/662575255156748289
Cleanse your brain, because you all disgust me for having such things on your mind. Never take a college-level literature class, and please save a potential teacher the trouble by avoiding creative writing as well.
@asianjunkiecom everyone who uses Romeo & Juliet as a motif is now engaging in pederasty.
— Risu the Immortal Crab (@maybeRisu) November 6, 2015
https://twitter.com/asianjunkiecom/status/662578290696196097
Also, somebody criticized me for having nuance on issues like this. You know why I have nuance on issues like this? Because they require it.
