I doubt there are many people that know or care that Randy Newman has a new album out. Surely he’s aware of that fact as well. But he’s popped up — amidst a little controversy — on a couple of my regular Korean/Asian blog stops due to one of the songs on the album called “Korean Parents,” which takes a stab at race relations as played out in the American public education system.
The gist of the song is that American kids have bad study habits. The narrator of the song wonders why Korean kids are getting such high test scores. Study habits, he guesses. So what’s his solution? He decides to sell Korean parents to the public, to train the children of American parents in order to better compete with the Koreans.
Some Jewish kids still trying
Some white kids trying too
But millions of real American kids don’t have a clue
Right here on the lot
We got the answer
A product guaranteed to satisfy …
Korean parents for sale
You say you need a little discipline
Someone to whip you into shape
They’ll be strict but they’ll be fair
You can listen to the song here.
I should be up front about the fact that I think Randy Newman is a genius. For me, he fits alongside Bob Dylan and Tom Waits as one of the great American singer/songwriters of our time. I know his material pretty well, and had the pleasure of doing a phone interview him when I wrote for the Oakland Tribune. For a time I couldn’t get enough of him.
I think if taken at face value the lyrics to “Korean Parents” could be interpreted as a negative stereotype. This kind of uncompromising stance is one of the “problems” Newman has had throughout his career. It’s the reason he’s not a household name outside of the parents that bother to look at their kid’s Disney soundtrack CD cases. Really, “Korean Parents” is pretty tame compared to his other work, which I’ll get into below.
The two blogs I saw this on, Korea Beat and Angry Asian Man, were more perplexed than angry. Others are offended. Check out some of the comments on these LA Times blog posts here and here.
Personally, I think a negative reaction to “Korean Parents” is better example of political correctness (in the pejorative sense) than negative stereotyping. I doubt many Koreans living in Korea would be offended by this, if asked privately. I explained it to my wife and she liked it. She went so far as to say it’s probably true. Of course, if you are offended my small survey of one person won’t do much for you. So lets take a closer look at the song itself…
The music itself is Orientalist (again, pejorative). A few months ago I linked to a tremendous article by Peter Micic on Danwei, about the origins of the melodic phrases that came to represent Asia, or better The Orient, in Western popular music. One of the major links in the evolution of the Orientalist riff occurs in Tin Pan Alley songwriting, of which Newman (age 64) is undoubtedly a product of.
Again, this isn’t to excuse its use. I excuse it because I think he’s a genius and know he’s being ironic. But to people who don’t like Newman or aren’t as familiar with him, I can see how it could be offensive. My guess is that Newman has little idea of what Korean music sounds like. Clearly the music in “Korean Parents” bears no resemblance to Korean music. It’s about as stereotypically Orientalist as Western music can be. It’s meant to be over the top.
Here’s another, much more offensive (and in my opinion, brilliant) example of Newman adopting Orientalist sounds and lyrics. This is “Yellow Man,” from a 1979 performance on Dutch TV.
Here are the lyrics in full:
Very far away in a foreign land
Live the yellow woman and the yellow man
He’s been around for many-a-year
They say they were there
before we were here
Eatin’ rice all day
While the children play
You see he believes
In the family
Just like you and me
Oh, yellow man, oh, yellow man
We understand, you know we understand
He keeps his money tight in his hand
With his yellow woman he’s a yellow man
Got to have a yellow woman
When you’re a yellow man
Yup. Pretty offensive. As a Westerner living in an Asian country, married to an Asian woman, I should probably be more offended than I am. But one of Newman’s signature devices is to write from the perspective of a bastard. An unreliable narrator. He interchanges this freely with his other characters — the bigot, the sentimental lover, the real Randy Newman, the politician, the failed husband and a number of others. One song, “Suzanne,” is about a man who randomly finds a woman’s name in a telephone book and stalks her (”I’m gonna wait in the shadows/For you to come by”).
But probably Newman’s most controversial lyric comes in his notorious “Rednecks”:
Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart-ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well, he may be a fool but he’s our fool
If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that’s where I made this song
We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We’re too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we’re keepin’ the niggers down
We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol’ boys from Tennessee
And college men from LSU
Went in dumb - come out dumb too
Hustlin’ ’round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin’ drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they’re keepin’ the niggers down
We’re rednecks, rednecks
And we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we’re keeping the niggers down
The album, titled “Good Old Boys,” is a themed album mostly about the dog-chases-own-tail politics of Louisiana during the 1920 and 30s. One of the songs features words written by Huey P. Long, a radical populist (and many would argue, great) governor of the state assassinated in 1935, set to music. Another song, “The Kingfish,” which was Long’s nickname, is also included. The album is decidedly anti-racism in sentiment and its target is much more clear than most of the albums that would follow.
I don’t think “Korean Parents” is any sort of attempt by Newman to grab attention, as one of the comments on the LA Times blog suggests. Newman has no illusions about his popularity as a pop artist and surely his royalties doing Disney songs (he admitted to me in our interview that he rarely watches the films the whole way through when composing for them) have made him a fortune.
The way I see it anything that turns more people on to Newman’s work is a good thing, even if it ruffles a few feathers along the way. He’ll be appreciated someday, but not likely during his or many of our lifetimes.
17 responses so far ↓
1 Susan // Aug 11, 2008 at 12:58 pm
If you haven’t watched the Nonesuch video in which Newman discusses “Korean Parents,” I think it would interest you. You defend him even better than he does himself!
http://www.nonesuch.com/media/videos/randy-newman-making-the-case-korean-parents
I enjoyed your post, btw. I think he’s a genius, too.
2 Joel // Aug 11, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Ah yes…it all comes back to Randy Newman doesn’t it ol Shinsano?
As you already know I’m not a fan, but I have to agree with you here. It would be one thing if he was writing about Korean men beating their wives (a topic that one commenter on this site would probably enjoy), but the language here is very unoffensive (whipping).
But still I can see why it draws the ire of some folk. No one wants to be accused of beating their kids. And selling people basedon race is never a popular song topic. But this is pretty funny I have to admit.
3 Andrew // Aug 11, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I’m sure he is well aware of what Korean music sounds like, and equally aware that most people hearing the sound would not recognise it if he put it in there, whereas they would instantly respond to the cod-oriental sounds he does make. And this is also what his ‘unreliable narrator’ would think too.
4 Westbaystars // Aug 11, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I find the subject matter of parents pushing their children in education to be interesting. Go to a typical public school in Asia and you’ll find kids who want to be rock stars, sports stars, taxi drivers, etc. when they grow up. You only ever hear about those on the Ivy League course, but those are the minority!
What I find really amusing is when teachers say things like “ã•ã™ãŒã‚¢ãƒ¡ãƒªã‚«äºº” (”It’s just like an American”) when we explain how we focus a great deal of home time on study, so our children are doing “very well” in school. It’s as though in the Japanese public educational system that the teachers see our family as American teachers see Asian families in the U.S. I’m wondering if it’s typical of immigrant parents anywhere to push their children to take education seriously.
5 Emory // Aug 12, 2008 at 12:38 am
Thank you for this. I’m with you. I think Randy Newman is a bonafide genius type, and I regularly tell all my ignorant people to check him out. I tell ‘em “this is a chance to uplift yourself, to rise up and be somebody in the knowing of something.” But they don’t listen. They never listen. Maybe, being Korean and all, they’ll listen to you - but I doubt it. That’s just the way people are around here. Where is my angry young man?!
6 arno // Aug 14, 2008 at 11:37 am
randy newman is an anti asian bigot advocating the enslavement of Korean’s to the white man.
7 Travis // Aug 16, 2008 at 4:36 am
I don’t think you quite get the concept of writing songs in character, or basic irony. This blog reads like someone being angry and Robert DeNiro for being mean to his wife in Raging Bull.
Stop being offended at shit, just to make yourself feel important or relevant. It’s clearly a humorous, ironic song and it’s not even negative toward Koreans.
8 Shinsano // Aug 16, 2008 at 11:30 am
Um, yeah I do and I was never offended. I cited a couple of examples of people that were on the fence as to whether they were offended or not and if you read the LA Times blog entry you would read several comments by people that were offended. One comment on here as well.
Try reading before you start typing. You might also want to reread what you do type, but that’s another matter.
9 Travis // Aug 16, 2008 at 11:41 pm
You said you felt like you should be offended. Whatever. It’s still lending validity to that kind of thinking.
10 korenan // Sep 24, 2008 at 10:27 pm
i’m korean and enjoys all study except english.
but i am not student in seoul.
i heard there is hell of study
11 강천재님 // Sep 25, 2008 at 5:22 pm
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12 JaeYong // Sep 25, 2008 at 11:12 pm
personally, I’m not offended as a all as a korean but I’m sure many koreans would be. Since we are called “emotional” by many people here.
13 JaeYong // Sep 25, 2008 at 11:18 pm
oops, a typo on the previou comment. Anyways, to be frank, my parents are not what you would expect from a korean parent and i dont “work my asses off” like Randy Newman said in his song. I really don’t like the reputation of Koreans right now in an American School like a sentence that one of my friends said, “if i wanted to win something, I could find a random korean in the street and he could help me with it”
I mean seriously can you americans come to sense that we’re normal humans too?
14 Shinsano // Sep 26, 2008 at 7:18 am
I see where you’re coming from JaeYong, although I think it’s better to have a reputation as a hardworking, studious race than as a lazy one. Nobody likes to be stereotyped. However, on that point I’m mention the Koreans I’ve known and met during my five years of living here stereotype people based on race much more than what I ever heard living in America.
15 Ashley // Sep 27, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Well, this song is kinda….. full of misconceptions
Although Korean students in the world seem to be quite “enthusiastic” with their studies, but not all of them. It’s a good thing that Randy Newman pointed out some social issues with Asian students, but this song is too generalized….Maybe this song might arouse massive misunderstandings between ppl 
16 Joeunbee // Sep 28, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I’m a Korean but I think what you said in your song is right.
however, can’t you just see this situation more easily?
We are working hard in order that we can be a better person not by our parent but by ourselves.
it would be rude on my part, as a mere middle school student, I can understand our country’s social situation. thanks.
17 Gala // Nov 10, 2008 at 8:31 am
Why didn’t you quote the rest of “Rednecks?”
Here it is:
Now your northern nigger’s a Negro
You see he’s got his dignity
Down here we’re too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he’s free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he’s free to be put in a cage in the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They’re gatherin’ ‘em up from miles around
Keepin’ the niggers down
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