“As You Wish” MV Analysis

An image of a futuristic space station greets the watcher, which changes to glowing lanterns, then the camera captures a line of beautiful girls who are wearing riding outfits. The girls of WJSN encapsulate girl group idol-pop. In this essay, I argue that WJSN’s song “As You Wish” reinforces already existing idol-pop tropes such as English usage, lyrics, and outfits.

The English in WSJN’s “As You Wish” lends itself to a deeper analysis. The song opens with the words, “As you wish. Everything you wanted,” before transitioning to singing in Korean. Scholars Dal Yong Jin and Woonjae Ryoo highlight how the “hybridization process” of “mixing two different cultures,” is often used for foreign appeal (Jin 2014, 122). However, full English sentences do not appear anywhere else in the song. While the beginning of the song draws upon foreign audiences, the rest of the song’s incorporation of English has a more practical reason: rhyming. Most of the English in the song is located at the end of lines, such as the words, “La,” and “Luv ya” in the chorus. These words aren’t made to be grammatically correct; their purpose is to make the Korean phrases rhyme. Scholars Dal Yong Jin and Woongjae Ryoo reiterate that “contemporary Korean popular music has been standardized” and “pop artists try to maximize melody lines with easy English lyrics” (Ibid.,120). These words aren’t difficult to pronounce and help the song flow. Therefore, the words are less for foreigner’s benefit, and more for Korean listeners.

The lyrics in “As You Wish” strongly reflect expectations of womanhood in Korean society. Based on a version of the translated lyrics, much of what is sung is about granting wishes, such as “I’ll make them all come true,” and “I’ll only stay with you” (“Cosmic Girls (WJSN/우주소녀) – As You Wish (이루리)”). This exemplifies what authors Xi Lin and Robert Rudolf consider, “ lyrical content in girl groups’ music” reveal “female idol’s femininity in order to meet socially prescribed role expectations in a male-dominated society” (Lin 2017, 28). The girls only sing about making someone else’s wish come true, not their own, which has heavy social implications. The idea that females exist to support and work on a man is deeply rooted in heteronormative views of how women should act in society.

Like the lyrics, the costumes the girls wear reaffirm Korean expectations of females. The camera zooms in and out on very feminine outfits and accessories including large bows, laced gloves, pink dresses, and glittery rhinestones. These costumes serve to remind viewers of these girls’ “conventional femininity, which prioritizes submissiveness, fragility, pureness, and cuteness to conform to the patriarchal expectation” (Lin 2017, 31). The members of WSJN look the part of innocent young girls, juxtaposed by their tight-fitting riding outfits. Still, their short, feminine outfits emphasize what scholars Stephen J. Epstein and Rachael M. Joo consider “exposed legs thus operate as consumer fetish, encouraging desires to both gaze at and possess the ‘perfect’ body” (Epstein 2012, 6). While these characteristics of females and their femininity may appeal to foreign watchers, they are rooted in Korean ideas of what the female body should look like, and how it should be decorated to show submission to the patriarchy. The viewer may notice that the idols are not necessarily doing any difficult jobs. They can be seen making phone calls, stamping letters, filing binders, and working assistant style positions. As Stephen Epstein and James Turnbull note in their commentary about girl groups say, “Korean girl group music videos and lyrics… reinforce a dichotomization of male and female” (Epstein 2014, 318). Jobs like these do in fact limit the scope of what is acceptable as a female.

The music video “As You Wish,” reinforces Korean expectations of what K-pop should be through the use of English, lyrics, and costumes. Although the song attempts to reach a global fanbase, it is still geared towards a Korean audience.

Works Cited

“Cosmic Girls (WJSN/우주소녀) – As You Wish (이루리).” Color-Coded Lyrics. https://colorcodedlyrics.com/2019/11/cosmic-girls-wjsn-ujusonyeo-as-you-wish-iluli/ (accessed 12/16/2019).

Epstein, Stephen and James Turnbull. “Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment, and K-pop.” In The Korean Popular Culture Reader, edited by Kyung Kyun and Youngmin Choe. 314-336. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

Epstein, Stephen and Rachael M. Joo. "Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the Transnational Imagination." The Asia-Pacific Journal 10, no. 1 (2012): 1-17.

Jin, Dal-Yong, and Woonjae Ryoo. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics.” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 2 (2014): 113-131.

Lin, Xi and Robert Rudolf. “Does K-pop Reinforce Gender Inequalities? Empirical Evidence from a New Data Set.” Asian Women 33, no. 4 (2017): 27-54.