Back in 2010, I won free chicken wings for singing all the words to Girls Generation’s “Gee” at a karaoke spot and getting higher than a 97 (I got a 99).
A karaoke place in K-Town had this random promotion on Wednesdays or Thursdays where you could come in and sing a song in Korean (there was a list of 20 songs to choose from), and if you scored high enough, you got a free order of wings. “Gee” was on there so I showed out one night and got my wings. I’m just dropping that little bit of personal lore up top to let y’all know that Me and K-Pop Go Way Back.
Back in 2005, Miss Judi (best friend) and I were very into Making the Band, even though the first two bands (O-Town and Da Band) were kinda flops. The third iteration was much more appealing to us a human beings because it was a pop girl group, and we watched every episode like it was prestige television. We were so invested we learned Laurieann’s choreography to “1, 2 Step” and even today, almost 20 years later, I still remember the first half of it and will embarrass myself in public anytime that song comes on so I can relive my youth.
(This video won’t embed because the owner is annoying, but you can go watch it on Youtube.)
I’m just dropping that little bit of personal lore up top to let y’all know that Me and Girl Groups Also Go Way Back.
So when I saw that Netflix was coming out with a Making the Band-esque show about the creation of a K-Pop girl group, I was all in. And now that I know how the sauce is made, maybe I’m all out.
Popstar Academy is part Making the Band and part documentary about Making the Band. On one side, you have the interviews with the girls, their backstories, the rehearsals, the judges sitting together to determine who will go home, and the drama of seeing who is eliminated. On the other side, you have a documentary about how a show like this is made and the reality TV hijinks that go into making the show more irresistible to viewers. This was the part that really left a bad taste in my mouth as it seemed unnecessary to lie to these young girls in order to make a television show “better” that people were already going to watch.
The set-up is pretty straight forward. Girls from around the world auditioned, sent in tapes, or were scouted to participate in a training program modeled after South Korea’s pop idol conveyor belt of shiny young performers. They all made their way to Los Angeles where they honed their skills and received evaluations each month that either lead to new rankings or being eliminated. These executives are not putting together the next En Vogue or Destiny’s Child. The girls who can sing really do have great voices, but it’s clear that the focus is on Dancing and Image because K-Pop is known for its visual presentations before its vocal prowess. Some of the girls make it into (and excel at!) the program solely on the strength of their dance ability, which is the first line in the sand between Pop Star Academy and Making the Band (or even Popstars with Eden’s Crush). In those older shows, even the weakest singers being kept week to week could stand up to the best vocalists on this show. There’s even a dark horse who can’t sing or dance and is brought in solely because she’s pretty. The show keeps referring to this as “star quality” or “vibe” but what they mean is pretty (I’ll come back to it in the spoilers section).
There are only 8 episodes in the series, but it takes place over the course of almost two years, so it’s a very brisk pace for the viewer. Midway through the season, about a year has gone by, and the producers are in a mad dash to find enough girls to bring the cast to twenty because, unbeknownst to the contestants, they’re about to enter a Survival Show. In the US, we don’t have a name for this genre of competition television, but we do have the shows: American Idol, The Masked Singer, The X Factor, etc. Contestants compete week to week and are eliminated based on a combination of fan votes and judges critiques.
This is the first crack in the show. The girls didn’t know they were signing up for this. They thought they were going to a Korean idol bootcamp essentially, not a competition show where they need to curry favor with the public by generating content that their future fans will connect to in order to shore up a fanbase before the group debuts. Some of the girls came into the show with huge followings that aren’t proportional to their actual talent. Others are from countries that are more invested in and familiar with the style of television show. So while some it becomes glaringly obvious that certain girls are a sure lock to stay week to week (from the Philippines), others who had done well throughout the competition suddenly found themselves at the bottom of the pack (from the USA).
This also exposed some of the girls to criticism that they weren’t prepared for. Social media has been around for a long time now and there are more than enough studies showing an unhealthy link between the self-image of teenage girls and how invested they are in social media. A 16-year-old girl who isn’t as pretty as the rest of the cast is suddenly thrown into public competition where her status is based, not on how talented she is, but how much people like her on a tiny screen. It made me so incredibly uncomfortable for her and the other girls.
The second crack came when the producers outright lied to the girls. You could argue that they all signed up for the show so they did sign up to be public figures. Therefore, not telling them they were going to end up in public competition with each other is more an omission of detail rather than an outright lie.
Toward the end of the season, they outright lied to the girls.
The contestants were all forced to name who they would want to be in a group with, and they were all told that this information would be private. And then at an elimination, they all found out, together, who had been picked by their castmates and who had not. Honestly, I pretty much checked out of the show at that point. I’m not a stranger to reality TV or the weird production goings on behind the scenes, but this seemed an unnecessary way to create drama where the show was already providing enough tension. This isn’t RuPaul’s Drag Race where they all know they will be asked this question on stage at some point in the competition. These are young girls being told “no one will see this.”
Very nasty, I’m very not into that.
Throughout the show we learn that some of them don’t like K-Pop, some of them don’t like hanging around girls, and some of them would rather be solo than in a group. This does not bode well for the sustained future of a K-Pop girl group! The group is barely off the ground and I can already see the end of it, but that’s okay. Most pop is temporary rather than a long-lasting institution, so even though the girls in the finale say “we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together!” and I know that’s not the truth, they’re at least living their dream for moment. As a man who is hurtling faster and faster toward middle age, this is teen girl business that I don’t need to be in anyway, so I’m not super invested in the drama surrounding the girls. I just like a shiny little earworm from time to time and KATSEYE is poised to give me a few of those.
SUPER SPOILERS
I wanna talk about some of the girls! First off…
Angelina
Who is this?
She was in the rankings for the first two episodes and we literally never saw her? I’m so curious to know what her deal was. I did actually find her on Instagram and she posted about the show, but she hasn’t given any explanation as to why none of her footage was used.
Naisha
I was on the fence about Naisha when she was eliminated for leaking a song online. When Missy, the Program Manger, said Naisha had more followers outside of just the girls on the show and Naisha denied it, I believed Missy. A few episodes in, after seeing that these people would outright lie to these girls to make a television show, I started to think maybe Naisha was telling the truth and it was just a convenient way to get her off the show. She was scouted because of her dance ability, but when she couldn’t (wouldn’t?) adjust her style to fit what the group was going for, they needed to craft her exit. I’m not saying they were wrong (Naisha would have looked so out of place doing the choreography for “Touch”) but I don’t think they were honest about her exit.
Also, as soon as Manon showed up in the house with braids, I’m sure Naisha saw the writing on the wall — they were not going to take two brown-skinned Black girls for this group anyway, so one of them was going to have to go.
Ezrela
Speaking of a quota, Ezrela said the quiet part out loud in the final episode. She knew, in a competition between her and Lara, they were not going to accept two Indian girls. The fact that we all knew that was the case is so disappointing in 2024. The producers and managers kept stressing that they were not creating a K-pop group, but in the end, they picked three girls that look like they were torn out of a page of a K-Pop catalog. Regardless of the fact that one of the three is Chinese and one is Filipino, they’re not going to stand out in the landscape of K-Pop the way an Indian girl will, so they were only prepared to take one (at most).
Samara
We can see that same quota with Samara. I’m not even sure why they even brought her in to compete other than to be cannon fodder for Manon. From the very first episode Manon appears in, Manon was making it into the group. They sent private instructors to Switzerland to get her up to par with the other girls. She missed practices, rehearsals, and even curfew so many times that they kicked her out of the house and she got to spend the rest of training at her rich aunt’s crib lounging by a fabulous pool. All of that, and she was still never in danger of going home. So bringing in a carbon copy of her from Brazil at the 11th hour was a waste of that little girl’s time. There was no world where this group was going to take two Black girls — with the same height, same complexion, and same braids — into a K-Pop group.
Emily
That quota is why I thought Emily had a shot. Coming down to the wire, I felt like they wanted one of “everything” in a Black girl, a white girl, an East Asian girl, a Latina, a South Asian, and an American Asian. I felt they had that lineup in mind with Manon, Lexie, Nayoung*, Daniela, Lara, and Megan. Once Lexie dropped out, the white girl spot was wide open for Emily — and she’s blonde! Not only is she blonde, but she was by far the best dancer on the show for the entire series (the only dancer to make it to Level A), and her singing improved more than I thought anyone’s singing capable of improving. By the end of the series, she sounded just as good as Manon, so I thought she was a lock. Honestly, I thought the real competition was between Megan and Sophia, because even though Sophia is from the Philippines, her English feels very American and she could fill that same “type” that Megan can.
Unfortunately, Emily was always at the bottom of the ranking because she’s not as pretty as the other girls. I’m not sure how to say that in a diplomatic way. Beauty is subjective and everyone is beautiful in their own way, but I think it’s silly to pretend that we can’t see differences in people. We know what pretty is because we can see Naomi Campbell stand next to people who are not as pretty. Emily is such a cute girl and I hope she has a long career in entertainment, but on a show where Manon was picked for being pretty, on a show where Emily was reading negative comments about herself to the camera, there is no doubt in my mind that she would have been The Caucasian Girl in the group if she fit in with the rest of them aesthetically.
(*Nayoung ultimately didn’t make the group, but the way they brought in 4 (I’m not sure how many?) East Asian girls at the last minute and gave them NO screen time was wild. They made Hinari, Ua, Nyhoung, and Yoonchae so interchangeable — but you knew at least one of them was making it into the group.)
Daniela
Also, one other note on aesthetics. I like how, in the makeover, they took Daniella from blonde to dark brown, to make her look “more like herself,” ie more Latina. And then, when there was no white girl to put in the group, they took her even blonder than she was before so she could fill that slot before they officially debuted.
They are not slick! I know what the game is!
Manon
Lastly, let’s talk about Manon.
Manon, Manon, Manon. She is so clearly and obviously the It Girl and Breakout Star of KATSEYE it’s not even funny. Before she was even in the group, the choreographer centered her, gave her the closing dance moves, and gave her shots to pull focus. The fans reacted so strongly to her, despite her lack of singing and dancing ability, that it was absolutely impossible not to put her in the group. Even though she hated going to rehearsal and the girls hated her in kind, the label pushed a business decision to make money in the short term over stability in the long term.
When this group splits, it will be because they’re tired of working with Manon, the jealousy will eat the group from the inside out, or Manon quits entirely after her first film role. She is very obviously the Aubrey O’Day of the group, but perhaps without the wild streak, so I don’t doubt that we will see her bopping around the industry for much longer than the group is an entity.
And frankly, I don’t really mind that she got picked for being pretty. In my old age, I have come to accept that different people have different gifts and life is also not fair. I have a great job, and I have worked extremely hard to get here. There are other people in my office that have cruised their way to the same spot without breaking a sweat. This is not fair, but what am I going to do about it? Stop working hard? You play the hand that you have been dealt and coveting someone else’s cards is just an exercise in futility. When the girls had a Dump on Manon therapy session to bemoan her lack of work ethic while still progressing through the program, I thought:
“So what? Someone else’s efforts or lack thereof have no bearing on what you need to be doing, so just focus on the work that you are prepared to do to get where you want to go. Manon was given a gift of beauty and charisma that may make the path smoother for her. It is what it is. Just do your job and don’t worry about hers.”
KATSEYE
So far, I haven’t seen anything from the group that would lead me to believe that they will usher in a new renaissance of girl groups in the US, and I also haven’t seen anything that would seriously distinguish them from the other girl groups in the K-Pop market. Even though they have two seriously excellent vocalists in Lara and Sophia, the fact that none of the two-minute tracks on their EP are giving range, power, dynamics, or agility says to me that they are just aiming for the middle of the mass market hoping for TikTok virality. All five songs on their EP are pretty good, but the only one that has staying power feels like a PinkPantheress B-side, which is not a great way to launch a career.
“Touch”
Also, they’re down to five members for their first big promotional pushes (Megan is out, possibly sick if Reddit is to be believed) which may account for some of the nerves and unsteadiness live. They went on Good Morning America and gave a performance that Danity Kane would have been fired over.
Katseye on Good Morning America
But they’re babies and they have time to grow. I’m not invested enough to follow them like I did Danity Kane, but I usually have an ear halfway pointed toward the K-Pop sphere, so if they make a big enough splash, I’m down to investigate.
At any rate, I just need to give up the hope that anybody will actually give me a performance like DK did by the Brooklyn Birdge to debut as a group, so I might as well just keep living in that moment instead of waiting for these children to make me a new one.
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