10-07-21
‘For success, it is not about how long you last but how high you can climb. ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’ Can Mirror last long?
In 2018, ViuTV in Hong Kong formed the biggest vocal and dance pop group in the history of Hong Kong, consisting of 12 young male performers, in the history of the city. The boy band is called ‘Mirror’. They are mostly in their twenties, including Keung To, Ian, Edan, Jer, Anson Kong, Stanley, Lokman, Alton, Frankie, Anson Lo, Tiger and Jeremy. They act, sing and dance. Their pop performances, highly choreographed, which target young girls but also unbelievably capture a lot of midlife women and ‘cougars’. The ‘business model’ follows that of Korea and Japan.
There is now an observable fact in Hong Kong called ‘Mirror Craze’: thousands of girls follow the group wherever and whenever they go. Mirror now plays an important role in the idol re-boom of the city. Various newspapers and magazines, online or otherwise, give us daily information about the 12 men. Not knowing Mirror has become a symbol of ignorance. We all fall prey to this hurricane.
Stumped by the question of Mirror phenomenon, sociologists are eager to study the social behaviour behind this craze.
First of all, COVID-19 helps create the Mirror phenomenon. For the recent 10 years, teenagers in Hong Kong have been carried away by ‘K-pop’. K-pop, making use of melodies including catchy hooks and sing-along lyrics, are instantly stuck in the head. The creative use of costumes, outfits, makeup and effects in music videos are always in service to the hungry young souls. Boy and girl groups appeal to Hong Kong fans. The virus outbreak since 2020 has led to lockdowns and quarantines being imposed throughout Hong Kong. K-pop bands cannot come to Hong Kong and fans here cannot fly to Korea to watch concerts. Korean music concerts online are unable to reduce hunger for boy idols and so some turn to ‘home consumption’. The domestic support gave rise to the sudden rise in popularity of Mirror in Hong Kong.
TV all over the world is declining but it still plays an impactful role in the overall awareness of a new thing. TV stations now cleverly upload their programs to the internet and in fact their contents thus become more noticeable online than inside the ‘idiot box’. Increased online traffic will in return raise interest and sales for what TV wants to promote. In Hong Kong, TV stations are allowed to run artist management business and Mirror is the boy band managed by ViuTV. Mirror Craze is not an accident. It is the hatching and rearing result of intelligent and well-planned efforts of a big institution of mass communication that can reach and influence many people. ViuTV, behind the success of Mirror, is the resourceful manipulator who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.
Hong Kong women, especially the singletons, are in peak when they are in their 30s, 40s and 50s. A lot of them are well-educated, with a stable job and do not have a family to worry about. Some love young idols and the fever of first love strikes back. The pure and innocent feelings, as romantic as a poetry book, turn them into ardent zealots for boy idols. They are called ‘cougars’ and the word may not be offensive. Wild animals are not meant to be owned by a man and a woman has the free will to love younger men, even 20 years younger. Age difference does not exist when it comes to love, or rather, the feeling of love; and it is all about power levels of a woman.
Apart from the above, 2 factors also go well behind the Mirror Craze. ViuTV sent an able and sensible manager Faa Tse(花姐) to take care of the Mirror members like a mother. She wisely chose the Mirror members from a reality show packaged in the form of a TV singing contest which continued for a few months. The boys became familiar to the audience like relatives and many started to love their icons before the group Mirror was formed. Mirror’s members are felt like brothers. Faa Tse is now a celebrity in Hong Kong.
Everyone of these 12 young men has different talent. Every soul of the fans can be satisfied by the individual charm of at least one member. Some are great singers and dancers. Some are good actors. Some are handsome but fragile. Some are street boys. Some are muscular men who are ready to take shirt off. Some admit they are metrosexuals who are happy to be associated with men or women. Mirror is like a great buffet table, where you can take a bit of something and then return to try the next dish.
There is no excuse to be bored in Hong Kong. Not good taste, may be. But it is a wonderful time that the pop music scene in Hong Kong revives and is now very energetic. Nobody will care whether it is the semblance of normalcy to another crazy world! Girls just want to have fun!
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