MUSINGS Never mind the K-Pops

Never mind the K-Pops


Fin Keegan

Time was when I operated under a punk haircut replete with bondage trousers and an existential scowl designed to incinerate anyone over 30. Music was my Religion in the 1980s and so I would regularly make the pilgrimage to London to scour the city for albums unavailable here. Of course now, thanks to globalisation, we can buy South Korean pop music (‘K-Pop’) without leaving the house.
Globalisation, which used to sound like an abstraction, has become a concrete fact of life, the reason our kids pick up slang from the Bronx faster than new phrases from two counties away. Somebody somewhere comes up with a fresh wheeze, from Zumba workouts to fish pedicures, and the next thing the idea is replicated in thousands of towns and cities throughout the world. Little did our grandparents imagine as they went about their errands, picking up the milk here and the papers there, dropping into the church or the bookies, that one day they could also avail of a Body Oil Ceremony on their daily round.
A paradoxical feature of globalisation is the multi-national drive towards ‘localisation’: corporations like Google and Apple are intensely curious about what exactly we like or dislike and where exactly, to the nearest few metres, we are located at any given moment. Do you belong to that subpopulation dancing Gangnam Style while planning to redecorate the house? That’s a mighty useful profile to Silicon Valley. Whichever way you slice, they’ve got you diced.
This is quite different from moguls of the 20th century who wanted us all to behave similarly and buy their wares in a uniform, predictable way. Henry Ford built his company on this notion, brought to life as a Model T automobile. But now big companies snap up any opportunity for targeted selling: In town we might be interested in this nightlife app or that discount sale; away from home, we might need a hotel room and so on.
On top of that, global companies are now disguising themselves behind a localised appearance. In recent years, Starbucks have been opening new coffee shops in the US that have all the trappings of a neighbourhood business with nary a corporate logo in sight. But, in fact, these ‘local’ cafés are anything but, with everything from the music played to the beverages served decided by executives thousands of miles away.
In time, we will find more of our retail chains simulating old-time, traditional interiors. Probably, if developments in IT are anything to go by, as you cross their threshold they will cloak the premises in an appearance of your choice: whatever it takes to get money out of you. So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to meet some comely Gaelic maidens at the crossroads for a spot of K-pop dancercise – or am I really at the supermarket picking up some cornflakes?

Fin Keegan is a writer based in Westport. This column is based on his weekly radio essay, heard on WRFM and CRC radio, and online at thecirclingfin.com.