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The year’s not even half past and have you noticed we’re certainly not lacking, of late, for food related celebrity scandals?
--The annoying ingénue whose acting talents are every bit as abundant as the vowels in her first name, Gwyneth Paltrow, is denying a ghostwriter penned her 2011 cookbook, My Father’s Daughter.
--Fellow putative thespian Ashton Kutcher thought it’d be a good career move to don brownface and adopt a cheesy Punjabi accent, playing a Bollywood producer named Raj for a Popchips commercial. (Rumor has it Mr. Kutcher’s next commercial appearance will be a tribute to Al Jolson, advertising for Blackie brand shoe polish.)
--Paula Deen? Turns out Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding and Deep-fried Twinkie Pie had consequences. In between bites, she's been battling diabetes.
--And then there's Steven Tyler on the telly, hawking chicken strips for Burger King, 30 full seconds of abomination. Your nausea will last far longer. The only way it could get worse is if the Preparation H people call his people.
Occasionally, though, comes along on the international scene a public outrage combining celebrities and food that puts our relatively puny domestic dramas in perspective.
Here’s a hint: Chances are Roly-Poly gets a pretty steady rotation on your iTunes playlist, right? And while you insist the pre-chorus of Geojitmal exudes a peculiar neo-duality dissolving into a head-bobbing soundscape, the quasi-opposites of Norabollae? are simultaneously high-concept and uniquely unassuming.
(Note to local music scene bloggers: Yeah, your stuff really does sound that asinine.)
Yes, we’re talking about T-Ara.
For those few readers who aren’t conversant in the world of Asian pop music, a little background:
T-Ara is currently among the very hottest of girl groups in Japan. It’s seven of them (at right), South Koreans, who became mega-hits in their own country, then branched out to Japanese audiences. T-Ara’s Roly-Poly was 2011’s top grossing song worldwide. Girl groups in Japan are the musical equivalent of a “The Twilight of Harry Potter in 3-D” trilogy. To give you some idea of just how big T-Ara is, consider this: On Korea Forbes’ “Top Forty List of Power Celebrities,” T-Ara’s holding down the #17 position.
And naturally, they’re in enormous demand as spokesmaidens for advertisers. T-Ara got wrangled to shill for Shin Ramyun. It’s a kickier version of the familiar ramen. You can buy it individually or by the case at most local Asian groceries. It’s got a reasonably spicy bite, desiccated vegetables that spring to life, somewhat, along with the noodles when boiling water’s added to the paper cup the dry ingredients come in. A steaming cup of Shin Ramyun is also an effective way to get your month’s supply of sodium in one tasty lunch.
As part of the campaign for Shin Ramyun, all seven girls made commercials, demonstrating their favorite recipes for the stuff. Park Jiyeon, one of the T-Ara Seven, likes hers with a raw egg stirred in. And some chopped green onions. You can watch her preparation here.
You’re wondering about the whole scandal thing. Well, it’s right there on the video. In South Korea, eating food off an upturned pot lid is informal. It’s like eating Chinese take-out directly from the paper boxes. In Japan, though, it’s a lot like tossing the noodles on the floor and digging in.
Arguably as gauche by Japanese standards, Jiyeon, as you can see, proceeds to bang the end of her chopsticks into the table to even them out. She does it a couple of times. We were asked not long ago if there are table manners in Japan for using chopsticks. There are. Big time. Most Americans, many of whom fancy themselves quite sophisticated, by the standards of Japanese table manners look like Koko the chimp playing “Operation!” And bouncing your chopsticks off the table to even them up in your grip is pretty high up on Emily Post-san’s etiquette no-nos.
So okay, a cute little girl singer adorably mixes up some instant noodles and makes a little faux pas, a couple, that are really more cultural than anything else. What’s so bad about that? Scroll down on the Youtube video and you’ll see more than 30 pages and counting that will spell it out, in no uncertain terms. The majority are angry denunciations of Jiyeon’s “actions” from Japanese.
“Barbaric,” one commenter wrote. “Nauseating,” wrote another. One opined that “eating directly off the pot lid is worse than beggars lining up for their food rations.” Ouch.
Japanese anger at the commercial has caused Jiyeon to issue a formal apology for her despicable behavior. And the group’s announced they’ll give a “guerrilla concert” in Tokyo as a way of thanking Japanese fans if the sales of their newest album (and the first in Japanese), Jewelry Box, reaches half a million in sales by the first week of June. They're also sponsoring a scholarship fund for poor students who otherwise couldn’t afford college. Stay tuned to see if all this will make the Japanese fans of T-Ara forgive their singer.
In more news, T-Ara’s also announced they’ll be touring and performing in Italy later this summer. Good luck, Jiyeon. And here’s a hint. For Heaven’s sake, don’t use a knife to cut the fettuccine.
