Hollywood is considered the biggest entertainment industry in the world, while also having the largest music industry. Many people think Hollywood is diverse and accepting of new acts stepping into the industry, and to some extent they are, but what happens when these new acts aren’t from America? Over the past couple of years, Hollywood has shown blatant disrespect and even animosity towards foreign musicians.
Throughout the past few years, I’ve noticed the rise of foreign media in America. During the pandemic, people were stuck inside and were on their phones constantly. The rise of TikTok helped expand things that were considered nerdy or weird. I saw this a lot with anime, k-pop, and just East Asian culture in general. Many people would still consider anime or k-pop nerdy today, but I think it’s become more normalized nowadays.
With TikTok exploding in popularity it also showed Americans different types of music. Many songs that weren’t in English went viral on the app such as “Alibi” by Sevdaliza and “Magnetic” by Ill’It. K-pop has become one of the most popular foreign music genres in America along with J-pop.
Many of these foreign musicians that are popular in America at the moment are Tyla, BTS, and BlackPink. I remember many critics in the industry questioning their talent to survive in the United States. It’s a goal for all music artists to become popular and gain popularity, specifically in America. It’s really hard if not almost impossible for any artist to gain fame in Hollywood, but it gets harder if you’re not from the States.
We’ve seen foreign artists in the past become popular in America such as Shakira, Rihanna, One Direction, and The Spice Girls. It’s a rare occurrence, and only a few can do it. Hollywood eats people up and spits them out if they don’t fit their expectations which is what many foreign artists have to figure out.
When Tyla was first starting to break into the West with her song “Water”, which won her a Grammy, she faced much skepticism from critics who picked at her ethnicity and talent. People accused her of being an industry plant because to some she just came out of nowhere, when in reality she’s been reeling music for a while up to that point. They also mocked her desires to achieve similar success to her role model, Rihanna.
Hollywood has also shown their subtle racism. As much as it seems Hollywood has become more welcoming to people of color, they haven’t. I think they’re just better at hiding it compared to the past.
On the topic of Tyla, like I said earlier critics picked apart her ethnicity. Tyla was born and raised in South Africa and is one of the first to break into Hollywood. I saw many African Americans have weird expectations for Tyla, thinking that she should understand American culture. Tyla had never been to America before she started becoming popular. The common misconception about Tyla is her ethnicity and after the VMAs, she was called an “Uppity African” because she couldn’t hold her award for “Water”. You can’t expect to hold her to the same standards as someone who’s from the States.
Moving onto the K-pop side of racism, I believe that K-pop still has a long way to go in breaking into the West. When BTS was starting to blow up over here, they were treated as a curiosity in Hollywood. We haven’t had a major boy group in America since One Direction, even though they weren’t our creation. BTS brought more attention to K-pop (along with BlackPink) which would become more of a curse than a blessing.
Interviewers assumed that none of the members could speak any English and didn’t bother to learn the member’s names. This became a common theme with other K-pop groups promoting their music as well.
In conclusion, I’m not sure if Hollywood will ever accept foreign music artists. If Hollywood doesn’t stop treating foreigners as a curiosity and actually take them seriously as artists then the cycle will keep repeating itself. Just to be an artist trying to become big in Hollywood is hard, but even harder if you’re not from America.
