You know, I don’t think anyone expected one of the most iconic videos of 2024 to be a minimalist dance version, let alone one that came out in January. That said, (G)I-DLE, also known as i-dle, never ceases to surprise us.
“WIFE” is minimalist filmmaking at its best. There is no wasted detail, from the costumes to the color grading to the dance to the (lack of) lip-sync singing. The entire music video is shot on a white sound-stage, lit and color graded so brightly that you can barely see the white trainers, outfits, or wigs. The palette is limited to white and then either a bold, jewel-toned turquoise or an-almost pastel green – but never at the same time. The members all wear uniform wigs and baggy clothes – so big they’re almost drowning in them – with white sneakers and limited jewelry.
Most importantly, though, they’re not speaking. There is almost no lip syncing in this music video, but it’s shot like there should be. There are long shots centered around specific members who are singing in the background track, but their mouths don’t move – in fact, they more often than not are synced to the background vocals if anything.
The only part of the video in which the members sing the song they’re supposed to be singing is when they sing the following outro:
Wife, I make you feel so high
I make you feel like lie
But I don’t wanna
(Wife, wife, wife, wife)
Notably, the members don’t actually look at the camera when they say the word “wife” at the start of outro – they look away. They also don’t sing the repeated “wife” sung by the background voice. Their refusal to sing the title of the song tells us everything we need to know about the music video’s thesis.
To get to that thesis, though, let’s look at the lyrics. When this song came out, there was a lot of discourse around how the lyrics were “bad English”, but I disagree. The English lyrics are almost purposefully infantile – “I cook cream soup” and “it’s so twinkle twinkle” – until the end when the members say “I make you feel so high”. This is clearly intentional when you consider that the latter are the first words that the members actually lip sync to. We know Soyeon’s English skills are not subpar, but in boiling down the words to their barest form, there’s actually a statement being made – the essence is more important than the grammar. Therefore, what we need to focus on is the essence of what’s being said in the chorus:
I cook cream soup, taste is Coco Loco
Want me your wife, but she is mm, mm, mm
I clean your room, it’s so twinkle, twinkle
Want me your wife, but she is mm, mm, mm
The entirety of the song “WIFE” is about deconstructing the expectation of women to be homemakers, while also being “playthings” or their husbands. There is a consistent dissonance between “suggestive” and “palatable” – they do provocative dance moves while wearing baggy clothing and chin-length wigs, and the lyrics switch from innuendo to talking about cleaning. “Want me your wife, but she is…” could be referring to both a literal wife – as in, the man being sung about has a wife already – or a figurative wife, as in the role that’s established for women. The only “complete” English sentence is “I make you feel so high” – as in, the only complete thought in English is that the women singing understand that their presence is beneficial to the man. Similarly, the line “But I don’t wanna / (Wife, wife, wife, wife)” is intriguing because “But I don’t wanna” is a complete part of a sentence, but what they don’t want to do is an incomplete thought – “wife”, being used as a verb here as opposed to noun.
In short, (G)I-DLE is saying that men want everything in a woman, irrespective of whether or not that’s possible or wanted by the woman.
The music video as a whole does everything it can to further this point. It doesn’t work separately from the lyrics, but with the lyrics. The song is incomplete without the video, and the video is incomplete without the song. This is Korean Pop at its finest – purposeful, intelligent, and interdisciplinary.