Doomsday was supposed to come on the first day of winter, according to certain readings of the Mayan calendar. The world didn’t end, but December 21 marked an epoch nonetheless. Psy, the stage name of 34-year-old Park Jae-sang, became the first artist to get 1bn views on YouTube, with Gangnam Style , a dance video about the fashion-conscious haute bourgeoisie of Seoul that is manic, funny, raunchy and surprising.
What is most surprising, perhaps, is that Gangnam Style is not American and not even sung in English. Every culture has its dance crazes and its pop idioms. Korean, or K-Pop, groups are in vogue now. But global blockbuster hits, in whatever genre, have come to seem a US niche market. It was Michael Jackson’s popularity in the 1980s that started this global style in pop culture. In contrast to, say, The Beatles, who had an unmistakably English style that became globally popular, Jackson’s music, an ingenious collection of disco rhythms and nonsense phrases, didn’t seem to come from any culture. Justin Bieber’s Baby, a similar global product, seemed the best bet to reach 1bn YouTube views until Gangnam Style came along.
Why have Americans so dominated the globalised part of popular culture up till now? Despite complaints from France and elsewhere, it was not a matter of “cultural imperialism”. The US has little in the way of cultural infrastructure abroad, like Germany’s Goethe Institutes or the British Council. And that should not matter because, to repeat, the culture we are talking about is not American culture – it is an international culture in which Americans have played the leading role.