Boompala

First of all, I already made a comeback post (this blog's comeback, not Le Sserafim's) but it's in draft and may be posted one day in the future. I wanna talk about Le Sserafim's new song, Boompala! I LOVE the song. When I first saw teasers, I was kinda neutral. It got a lot of hate for being another "Gnarly" clone where they say something weird, so I was probably a bit more positive out of defensiveness. I didn't immediately listen when it came out; I never do for new music from anyone I like. But it came up on autoplay, and I watched it. The music video was a bit funny. It was all good, but the golden statues that came out of the sand were quite ridiculous. People are also criticising the intro, where a phone using Google's Gemini AI is shown. That's pretty fair. As for the song (and dance!) though, I ADORE it. It feels very personal to me. I'm about to sound really white, but as someone who's always felt a connection to East and South Asian philosophy and spirituality, and as someone whose interest in it has very recently deepened, the song feels perfect for me. I saw a few critiques that the song was mocking, and I can understand a bit. The mushing of several Asian spiritualities could be seen as orientalist. But I do think we should acknowledge how intertwined Asian spirituality is. That doesn't mean it's 100% not offensive, but mentioning chakras, namaste, and yoga (Hinduism) and zen (Buddhism)... actually, as I'm looking, it seems the only mixing of cultures is the use of the word "zen". But zen colloquially just refers to peacefulness, so... The theme of impermanence is also seen in both Buddhism and Hinduism, so I don't see how it could be called orientalist. Mocking, however, I could entertain... but it seems like a positive way of incorporating parts of spirituality into your life in ways that benefit you. I mean, that's my whole religion as a polytheist pagan; taking figures from mythology who speak to me and adapting them and their mythology to my life. Maybe that's whiter than being obsessed with Chinese religion, and sometimes I find it hard to justify my almost colonial way of practicing religion, but many people do it and I've never seen anyone else make this criticism so it's probably just me thinking too hard. Anyway, the recent girlboss-ification of Buddhism is something that really irritates me, but I don't think this is an example of it. I think it's perfectly okay for people who aren't strictly practicing a religion to interpret and adapt parts of it to their life. I guess the most egregiously offensive parts of Boompala I can think of are the use of a Buddhist statue in the MV, which I kind of raised an eyebrow at (but, again, using a symbol of a religion while literally honoring it in a song is fine to me), and the lyrics "Namaste, namaste, I'mma stay up" because it kind of... simplifies it? Like I can imagine someone being upset with that. But for the millionth time, I think taking a spiritual concept and adapting it to your life is fine. Overall, the song is a mantra of positivity that encourages us to embrace aspects of Eastern spirituality to improve our lives. It's also really catchy. I feel like an opinion on the song is that it's HYBE slop and just made to be viral on TikTok, but I feel that the song is very Le Sserafim. It's very Unforgiven, very Fearless, and very Crazy. I'd say Spaghetti was more off-brand than Boompala. Anyway, that's my opinion.