Blackpink: Light Up the Sky

[osprey_archer]

Blackpink: Light Up the Sky is a documentary about the extremely popular K-pop girl group Blackpink, which I watched on a whim and found unexpectedly fascinating for the glimpse that it offered into the K-pop industry and the way that South Korean record labels prepare prospective stars for stardom.

The big labels put prospective stars through intensive training programs: all four members of Blackpink had at least five years of training, fourteen hours a day, with one day off every two weeks. (Just thinking about it makes me want to lie down on the floor and die of exhaustion.) Their label originally envisioned a larger group, but eventually decided that the four girls who became Blackpink had the best dynamic and cut the others loose. (littlerhymes tells me that at least one of those performers ended up in another girl group with a different label.)

It occurred to me that I don’t know anything, really, about the analogous process in the US. I’ve always vaguely believed that pop stars just appear, like Venus rising from the sea - doubtless because the US pop star machine works hard to make me believe it. It was fascinating to see a documentary about a pop group that bluntly acknowledges the label’s overriding influence: they trained the girls, picked the group, and shaped their images as they sent them out to debut.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

The big labels put prospective stars through intensive training programs

Not kpop, but did you hear about the guy who accidentally joined a Chinese reality show about competing to form a boy band, and kept begging to be voted off?

“The director saw that I am fluent in Mandarin and they thought I’m good-looking, so they asked if I’d like to have a try and experience a new lifestyle,” he said in one backstage interview. “Dancing and singing every day, I’m really exhausted and now starting to regret my decision.”

[osprey_archer]

YES, I did see! Did that poor guy finally get voted off? He keeps begging to be allowed to leave and his devoted fans keep making him stay...

[troisoiseaux]

Yes, he was saved! The article I linked was from when he finally got voted off.

[osprey_archer]

Thank God! Escape to freedom, Ivanov!

[littlerhymes]

That was one thing I found really fascinating in kpop vs western pop, that the apparatus and the machinery is so transparent. Whereas in western pop they often try to cling to the feel-good origin stories that are like "these are just five guys who are really good friends and liked singing together" LOL.

[osprey_archer]

The foundational myth of western boybands seems to be that they are all the Beatles, who came together organically and just naturally clicked and THEN they found a manager and the music industry got involved etc. I think there's a fear that if fans saw the machinery putting the groups together, they would turn away in disgust... and to a certain extent I think that's true (I remember I felt crushed when I learned the A*Teens had not come together organically, but were cynically formed into a band by money-grubbing music industry tycoons!), but it's a danger the western music industry has basically created for itself by fomenting the whole storyline of "oh they're just a bunch of friends who were discovered when an agent just happened to be walking by as they rocked out in their garage."

[littlerhymes]

I can understand the appeal of both having been in both western and kpop fandoms. Like, the appeal of the homespun garage band childhood friends narrative vs the these are the ones who stuck it out and were chosen to be the best fit with each other. In kpop there's a lot of very popular survival tv shows which directly build on that idea of whittling down a big group of trainees to the best/most popular ones who get to form the group. Which is also similar to how One Direction was formed - a bunch of reality tv wannabes who had never met before they were lumped together by a manager - so the narrative can work in western fandom too.

[calandrahunter]

Yeah, we've seen One Direction and Little Mix and so on get put together, and there you get the competitive aspect of One Direction against other groups and solo singers, and obviously plenty behind the scenes stuff of how well the lads are all getting along!

[littlerhymes]

The behind the scenes stuff is the crucial stuff, you can form the band any which way as long as you can convince us afterwards that it's a happy family!

[osprey_archer]

They may have met through their manager, but NOW they are all fast friends until death, by God! Certainly not coworkers thrown together by circumstance who might or might not like each other.

[calandrahunter]

There are several rules for the boys in a boyband, as per Take That's 2006 performance that's part pisstake and part catharsis, "they must never become to close to one another, they must never become real friends" is one of them! Keep up those pretences, lads, and sacrifice that privacy!

[lokifan]

Yeah, that element of bands etc being very openly manufactured is really interesting I think!

I feel so bad for them honestly, in terms of the training and then the level of openness and being constantly available - streaming and documentaries and stuff, kpop stars seem to be filmed all the time!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I did feel that the documentary was soft-pedaling the downsides of the kpop star life. I envision a sequel, twenty years from now, called Blackpink: Descent into the Darkness where they open up about the miseries of stardom.

[calandrahunter]

If you're interested in documentaries on Western boybands:

Take That - For The Record - Ten years after their split in the 90s, the band members get interviewed about their time before, during, and after being in a massively successful boyband. There's a lot of personal issues that come up, including but not limited to addiction and body/food issues.

Take That - Look Back Don't Stare - from 2011, so about five/six years after For The Record. After For The Record, Take That minus Robbie reunited, did several successful tours and released new albums. The situation with Robbie Williams was tense and complicated between 2006 and 2010, and this documentary is both about the other four patching things up with Robbie, Robbie dealing with his own issues, and the five of them dealing with their own issues, including but not limmited to Mark Owen going to rehab for sex addiction issues. This one's a little less about how they were put together, but makes a good sequel to For The Record.

Backstreet Boys did Show 'Em What You're Made Of, which I haven't seen, but going by the summary I expect another dive into how they were put together, what the 90s was like for them, and their personal issues.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you!

[asakiyume]

Little Springtime was (is?) into K-pop, and she learned all about the process of how bands are formed. It sounds intense.

[osprey_archer]

The fourteen hours of daily training during the band creation period sounds SO EXHAUSTING. Of course, this might be partly because I am twice the age of the average K-pop trainee... but STILL.