BY: Leng Hubag
leolette@gmail.com
Note: This essay was written in June 2021. This November, BTS has broken the glass ceiling by being the first Asian to win the Artist of the Year in the American Music Awards and performing live twice – “My Universe” (a collab with Coldplay) and the grand finale, “Butter”. They made their US debut on the same stage in 2017.
Part 2
Why Yellow
Ellen Meloy writes that “Within every color lies a story, and stories are the binding agent of culture.” This part of the analysis educated me. Aside from the obvious reason that butter is associated with the color yellow, I wanted to get my hands on unpacking its other meanings as BTS “Butter” heavily used “yellow in its concept and promotion. My initial reaction was, oh, they are playing the race card? I understood that “yellow” is used as an ethnic slur – a stereotypical description of Asians but this was exacerbated by the series of Asian hate crimes in the U.S. fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic.
This led me to read up more on the subject – the origin of “yellow” as an ethnophaulism (ethnic slur). Michael Keevak wrote a book, “Becoming Yellow” and in it he says that Europeans referred to East Asians as “white” before the 18th century. It was in the latter part of the 17th century that “white” was reserved for Europeans only. I also came across an enlightening article by Kate Chow entitled, “If We Called Ourselves Yellow” (If We Called Ourselves Yellow : Code Switch : NPR) that referenced the Keevak’s book where it explains that Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, separated humans into four categories. He already assigned white for the European, black for African and red for American and was searching for a distinguishing color for the Asian. Eventually, he established the color “luridus” which means lurid or pale yellow to Asians. The xenophobic allusions crept its way into pop culture by way of images of the “Yellow Peril” and comic book villains like the “Yellow Claw”.
Then the “Yellow Power” movement happened in America in the 1960’s and because of it there was a cultural shift in meaning and identity of being “yellow”. The article further posits that there came a sense of empowerment and thus, may be reclaiming the power of the “yellow”. It gets more current and relevant by citing how Jon Chu, director of the All-Asian cast Crazy Rich Asians, wrote an earnest letter to Coldplay stating his plea to use their song, “Yellow” in one of the pivotal scenes of his movie. He writes, “If we’re going to be called yellow…we’re going to make it beautiful.” This letter has been widely circulated online and if you watched the film, you would know that he was greenlighted by the band and we, in turn, got one of the most heartwarming and romantic scenes in cinematic history and a long overdue breakthrough in representation and unpacking stories about Asians in Hollywood. Chu was right. Coldplay’s “Yellow” in Mandarin was perfect and it was beautiful. I’ve been schooled.
So why yellow? It is significant to note that yellow is the color of the year 2021 and hyper lemon is the accent color of HYBE which signifies a forward-facing and challenge-welcoming mindset. It is exciting to note that we are only halfway through the year and BTS has already made milestones and record-breaking feats in music (Hello, Grammy performance and Billboard No. 1 for the 4th time) and brand collaboration (the worldwide hype about the BTS Meal offered by America’s No. 1 fastfood chain McDonalds). It’s a pretty good time to be BTS. As they break more glass ceilings, I only hope that more will be schooled and realize that music can change us – whether it would be for us to learn to love ourselves better or cross lines that have alienated us from each other by the color of our skin or our ideologies. George Bernard Shaw probably asks it best: There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Personally, their music is helping me get through this pandemic one day at a time with my favorite line from Suga’s “So Far Away” – may your trials end in full bloom.
So, why Butter?
With a hand over my purple heart, why not? /PN
