Tag: k pop songs

ITZY Blitzy Part 2 – Dress Like You’re Icy

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This is Part 2 of a multi-part series. Please check out part 1 [here.]

Fashion is one of the most effective tools in all of filmmaking – in fact, one of the most effective tools for communication in general. Fashion tells a person your personality, your background, and your artistry. Fashion can be used to create a character. It can be used to make a good impression. It can even be used in diplomatic relations, to communicate an idea. Fashion is one of the most useful things in the world, because it ultimately is a form of communication. In film, there are a lot of variables that change what the costume designer will choose. While that may seem like something that everyone would agree with, the decisions behind costumes are not intuitive ones. One swatch of material can alter the entire film.

What makes K-Pop so fascinating is how fashion is used to communicate a group aesthetic. Girls wear matching skirts and heels, while boys wear baggy pants and oversized shirts. Of course, there are a number of reasons K-Pop group fashion is the way it is. Everything has to give enough freedom of movement for the idol to dance. There needs to be cohesion so that no one looks out of place. And each member still needs to look individualized enough to be identifiable so that you can pick a clear favorite.

In addition to these principles of K-Pop fashion, there are also elements directly affected by the music video or song. The genre of the music video dictates whether you dress in an edgy or cutesy or creepy way. If the music video takes place in a different time period than the present, all the outfits have to be period as well. If there is a story arc, then the outfits must reflect the individual characters – what their interests are, what their past is, what their eventual fate might be. If anything feels askew to the audience then the spirit of the video is lost.

ITZY has only had two major music videos as of the writing this article, but their awareness for fashion is incredibly acute. While everything is eye-popping and beautiful, there is a level of harshness that makes it all the more wonderful to watch. I don’t mean harshness in that their fashion is bad – I mean that in the sense that it goes against the grain of what most K-Pop girl groups are doing, and therefore shatters expectations. It doesn’t capitalize on its weirdness, but it capitalizes on its difference. What makes it harsh is how it is used and what it communicates.

In this exploration, we’re going to cover “Dalla Dalla” and “Icy” at the same time, and we are not going to split it up by members. Instead, we’re going to cover four themes: cohesion, branding, makeup, and message. There will also references to other bands or works of art. None of this is meant to insinuate that ITZY is stealing their fashion from anybody – rather, it’s to provide a frame of reference so as to clearly illustrate the impact these girls have. The only way to make art is to learn from the artists that came before you.

Cohesion (or lack thereof)

As stated before, there is this tendency for K-Pop bands to have extremely coordinated outfits. Bands like AOA are good examples of this, where everyone wears the same outfit. I find this extremely frustrating in videos, unless it’s a video like gugudan’s “Chococo” where the plot kind of relies on everyone being dressed the way. It just feels a little lazy to me. K-Pop relies heavily on people being able to choose their favorite member, so when everyone is dressed the same my first question is “but why?”

A lot of boy bands manage to get away by the seat of their pants by having everyone dressed in the same style. BTS, SHINee, and EXO all do this – and they are not the only ones. So many sport coats or various forms of jacket, tight pants that are weirdly wide at the crotch (so as to maximize dance movement) and minimal difference between outfits. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it always tends to be the same kinds of outfits that get this treatment. It’s usually done to create a sense of unity between members so that they all look like they’re part of a group. The thing is, some bands take the same basic outfit and manage to do a fantastic job of differentiating members with subtle features as opposed to just “here have a scarf” (see my articles on EXID’s “L.I.E” and Dreamcatcher’s “PIRI”).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are times when bands just don’t care about cohesion at all and do whatever they want. Again, this is usually a guy group – BIGBANG and BTS specifically. I plan on doing an article on BIGBANG’s “Fantastic Baby” sometime soon (Burning Sun ruined them for me as I’m sure it did for many people, so I’ve been apprehensive about writing one) but one of the things that has always stood out to me is how different everyone looks. No one is wearing a matching outfit until the final moments of the video. Then of course we have BTS’s “Dope” which relies almost entirely on everyone wearing outfits for different professions. Girl bands also do this, but usually when they’re isolated, not in fully choreographed parts of videos. Boy bands have less restrictions in this respect.

ITZY leans into individuality more than cohesion which is incredibly refreshing. This largely has to do with the fact that the band relies on its message rather than typical K-Pop group creation. Their fashion largely reflects their “I don’t care” disposition and as a result, they aren’t relying on looking like each other.

Take for instance, “Dalla Dalla”. Their are two elements that tie all the outfits in together – the color black and the occasional splash of glitter. At one point they all wear fur but it’s only for a brief moment. But their styles are wildly varied. Their accent colors are also widely varied. Their jewelry and hairstyles are varied. They also don’t have an overabundance of pencil skirts – I mean pants are more comfortable for dancing. And walking. And everything else.

In “Icy”, they almost completely do away with coordinating styles except for white accents on some of the outfits and some branding in one choreography section. The styles are even more varied than before, akin to something like a BIGBANG video. This does have to do in part with the plot, but not very much. The plot of “Icy” is girls not caring what other people think of them, so they get placed in a number of situations where they are clearly outsiders. So they are simply meant to look “different”. I actually think that this is fairly effective here, more so than it would be in “Dalla Dalla” where there is not much plot. What we get in “Icy” is a fully realized version of that idea.

Screenshot from “Dalla Dalla”
Screenshot from “Dalla Dalla”
Screenshot from “Icy”

Branding

Branding in fashion has been an interesting component. It’s been a major part of fashion since the 1960s that has phased in and out of style over time. It used mainly to flaunt a brand, and was adopted tenfold by the black community in the late 20th century to the point where brands such as Chanel began to copy black designers and their use of logos. Our current century of fashion doesn’t really advocate for “branding”. If anything I’d say the retro album t-shirt has replaced the designer logo among millennials and Gen Z. Furthermore, modern fashion emphasizes people combining different pieces however they decide so as to turn it into a form of expression. You may notice certain groups claim different fashion trends – but very specific ones, so as to let you combine whatever you like and express yourself, how you choose. (For anyone who is interested, I recommend watching the CNN docuseries “American Style” to learn more.)

Brands in K-Pop, however, have generally been sparse until recently. Logos and designs have been common, but in a genre that generally relies on the coordination of its idols, it can be distracting for everyone to have a logo. As a result, virtually nobody has a logo on their jacket – unless it’s a hip hop style boy band which, again, pulls influence from African-American fashion.

ITZY, however, leans into the branding completely. Precisely 38 seconds into their first video, “Dalla Dalla”, we get a glimpse at a brand name. Again at 1:06, and again at 1:10 (this time more than one, as all five members are there). They’re peppered throughout the rest of the video. It’s usually a belt buckle, or something on the shirt. “Icy” goes all out – when we first see all five girls together, four of them have logos on their shirts – largely because they’re wearing athletic wear, something that has an abundance of logos. In one of the other dance sequences, the band has matching outfits, all from the same brand, with matching logos. But, it’s all very different pieces from this brand (Iceberg, in case you’re wondering.)

“Icy” is branded content but not in the way most people would understand it. There is a lot of promotion of different fashion labels – Versace, Iceberg, Chanel, Sportmax, DSquared, and many others – the promotion is centered around the members themselves and the labels do not get explicitly mentioned. The pieces are used to build the personalities of the members, not distract from them. Furthermore, these are all luxury brands, and I find it unlikely that most fans would have the means to buy them. Not implausible, but not likely, since most younger fans are probably going to be dependent on their parents and parents are not typically willing to spend that much. I find it much more likely that they’re used to depict ITZY as a band that’s indulgent and takes care of themselves, which is at the core of their message. Obviously, it’s unlikely that the members chose these outfits themselves since JYP probably has an army of stylists. But ITZY appears to be a brand promoting self-indulgence, self-care, and a general “Screw the rules” attitude.

In essence, they’re the embodiment of the “Treat Yo Self” principle.

Makeup

When I was ten years old, I went to a birthday party. A bunch of my female classmates were there already, and they were being treated to manicures and makeovers. All of the girls went straight to picking their favorite colors for eyeshadow – glittery greens and blues that looked extremely gaudy. I ended up surprising the makeup artist when my fourth grade self asked for brown. I had been reading fashion magazines, and I had light olive skin, I knew that warmer colors looked good on me and my brown eyes would look even bigger if I had brown eyeshadow on. I was super proud of my choice, and the makeup artist seemed to like it too. I remember getting a bunch of blank stares from all my classmates, but in the end it didn’t matter. I looked damn good, and went home feeling like I made a good fashion choice.

I don’t wear a lot of makeup now, but I always take great pride in it. I love experimenting with tons of different colors, brands, etc. One of the reasons I love cosplay is because makeup is such a beautiful and powerful component to it. I used to spend a lot of time filming videos for theater in my high school, and my favorite thing to film was always the makeup room, because you could see a person transform into someone else.

Makeup is always interesting in K-Pop because it’s used by everyone. Men use it. Women use it. It can be over the top and it can be bareface, which means that you don’t want people to think you’re wearing anything, but secretly you are. It’s extremely transformative, but it affects how you see the idol. From G-Dragon’s glitter covered face in Bang Bang Bang, to his lip art in Fantastic Baby, to his sunken eyes in Coup D’Etat…basically, everything G-Dragon has done to his face is worth an article.

The point is, makeup is a transformative tool that no one should ever take for granted. So it’s interesting to me how so many female groups are minimalist in their makeup choices. They actively avoid overwhelming you, the audience. ITZY is no different in this respect, but I think it’s done for a different reason. Most girl groups go for bareface makeup with small bits of color. This is largely done to emphasize innocence. But ITZY is actively against that textbook innocent message. So what does the minimalist makeup do?

It’s actually pretty simple.

It makes them look good.

ITZY’s entire core is about making you feel good about yourself. Live vicariously through them and learn their lesson of not giving a f*** about what other people think about them. So when they wear makeup, they’re not doing it to be eye catching. They’re doing it to look good. Take, for instance, “Dalla Dalla”. Most of the eye shadow is smokey brown or black, but it’s not overt. It does just enough to highlight their eyes. Their lips are generally neutral tones, warmer glosses or nude lipstick, neither of which makes them look artificially pretty. There’s a little bit of shine/strobing but it’s actually very tastefully done.

Screenshot from “Dalla Dalla”

It gives you a reason to pay attention to their face. Similarly, there is minimal hair dye in this – their hair is dark, either brown or black, which makes it look much more natural. The styles are varied, and there are colored accents, but it keeps them from feeling doctored.

The concept changes somewhat in “Icy”, but it still makes them look natural. The whole theme of “Icy” is inserting girls in situations that don’t match their personality types, so the makeup reflects that. As such, Ryujin has a cat eye going, because she is surrounded by prudes at her job interview. Lia has deep red lipstick because she’s wearing a formal outfit in a restaurant that is not. Yeji has glitter under her eyes, but her outfit is ostentatious and she’s in a grocery store, so it absolutely works. I’d also like to point out her aesthetic is incredibly similar to that of Jolyne from the Japanese manga Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – a character who exudes “I don’t give a crap what you think of me.”

Jolyne from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (source: Pintrest)
Jolyne from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (source: Pintrest)

Yuna has similar makeup to what she had in “Dalla Dalla”, but it’s actually much less overt – not smokey, a little more pink. Chaeryeong is wearing pretty much the same kind of makeup as in “Dalla Dalla” but like Yuna, not as overt. This largely has to do with the fact that she’s just casually on the street, looking cool and doing street performance – which is considered a natural, genuine form of art.

But the fact of the matter is the makeup never distracts from the members themselves. Because they make it work. They look great, it’s not done to make all the members look the same or be part of some major theme. It’s instead emphasizes their core message. I will say that the hair is a bit distracting, but what’s a summer K-Pop release without bleaching your hair.

ITZY’s makeup is all about making the members seem individual. They are a band, but they have lives, independent hobbies, and so on. JYP wants you to be aware of that. So, when it comes to the most beautiful expressive and beautiful of the human body, the face, they want you to see the members as beautiful on their own terms.

Message

As evident by everything I’ve said so far, Itzy’s image revolves heavily on them seeming organic and unabridged. Nothing is done specifically to shock you as the viewer, nor is anything done to make them seem copy-pasted. Each member is unique. This is not just evident in their songs and videos, but in their fashion as well.

What this ultimately tells the fans who are watching is that it’s okay to be yourself. These idols are young adults in the modern age, where young people are struggling to find a balance between image and authenticity, being present online and being present in the real world. This is a loaded thought when it comes to K-Pop, an industry that is extremely manufactured – however, something about ITZY’s combination of fashion, music, and video work makes them feel more alive than many idol groups do.

ITZY wants its viewers – particularly its young female viewers – to feel heard. Having this seemingly random combination of logos, a relatively minimalist style of makeup, and a lack of cohesion between members makes them feel all the more like a unit. But it also makes us feel like we can relate to them. JYP Entertainment, as I’ve said before, has always been good about finding a hole in the market and filling it. When BTS went into a more pop direction, the hole they left behind for edgy social commentary got filled by Stray Kids. As Red Velvet has teetered the line between vibrant colors and vaguely disturbing imagery (“Peekaboo”), we got Twice, a band that uses its cheerfulness as a way to subvert expectations. And now we have ITZY, which fits both markets, but simultaneously represents the group that fits in neither.

So if you fit in ITZY’s demographic – even if you don’t – take some lessons from the way they dress. No I don’t mean dress in Versace all the time. But dress to make yourself feel good, and confident. If that means wearing overalls and sparkly makeup in the middle of a bustling city, go for it. If you don’t want to wear much makeup and dress in all black, do it. If you like dressing like a character from a manga, I am in full support. But the point is that you need to dress the way that makes you feel good, the way that makes you stand out. It’s not that wearing brands will make you stand out – your confidence will do that for you. So when you wake up tomorrow, make sure you feel good about yourself.

Or at least, dress like you’re Icy.

ITZY Blitzy Part 1 – How ITZY Speaks to its Audience

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This is the first in a series of articles covering JYP’s newest girl group ITZY.

I tend to jump all over the place with the K-Pop bands I listen to, whether they’re male or female, pop or rap, OG or 4th generation. As of late though, it’s been hard to keep up with all the new groups. There are so many, from many companies, all of varying degrees of quality, as well as an over-saturation of the long-standing top bands, such as BTS.

As a result, I didn’t get around to listening to ITZY until a few weeks ago, but I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by how high quality they were. I’ve heard them referred to as JYP Entertainment’s version of Blackpink, but I honestly don’t think that’s doing them justice. I think that they’re a response to Blackpink, or at least the type of band Blackpink is. At the same time, I think they’re a response to Twice, JYP’s biggest group. It combines elements of both, and yet it’s neither.

There are three camps of girl groups right now. There are the extremely girly bands, like Saturday, Momoland, and Twice. Then there are bands that take a more “mature” approach, like Blackpink or EXID. There are benefits to either approach, often revolving around what age group the fan base consists of. Then there are bands that try to be antithetical to both of these. Dreamcatcher would be the best example of that: it’s a band meant to be totally unique in a genre where it’s very easy to fall into a trap.

ITZY is, in my opinion, in the third camp because of how it incorporates elements of the first two, but the band has other unique qualities that make it stand out. First off, their title tracks have been hooky and electronic, but also relatively upbeat without crossing into the territory of being too procedural.

Secondly, they have sharp dance moves that require full body like GFRIEND, as opposed to a band like AOA where their choreography is mostly small movements. But it’s the sharpness that makes them stand out – it’s something guy groups tend to embody more than girl groups.

Thirdly, their songs have a message of loving yourself, but not watered down like BTS’s new catchphrase “Love Yourself” is. It’s much more about people viewing you negatively for the way you are and not caring, as opposed to the simple act of loving yourself because you’re special – in short, it’s not a superficial self-love, it’s anger and vehemence at a system that tries to pigeonhole you. (Ironically, this message was most prevalent in BTS’s early content, particularly “N.O” and Rap Monster’s single “Do You”.)

Lastly, they have an intriguing use of fashion and branding in their videos. It’s very much meant to enhance the members as opposed to rope them into a concept.

If we look at these qualities, it becomes clear: ITZY is a girl group handled exactly the same way a boy group is. They’re a band with good songs, sharp dance moves, and clothing that enhances their personality as opposed to distracts, who’s also allowed to be angry. These are all qualities you’d see in a big name guy group like BIGBANG or SHINee. I mentioned in my article on Twice’s “Like OOH-AHH” that Twice is given guy group-style songs that have more punch, and called them a cinnamon bubblegum band. If Twice is cinnamon, then ITZY is a ghost pepper. They don’t hit – they bite.

I think that this makes them antithetical to many other girl groups because it’s in direct opposition to the way most girl groups are conceived. JYP has always been good about finding an opening in the market and making a band that exactly embodies this. I think that Itzy is the closest thing we have to a representation of what a modern late teenage, early twenties aged girl is like. They have more depth than that, as well as charm. They’re not a stereotype in any particular way, they just kind of exist. None of them are typecast into particular roles.

This movement away from typecasting probably started around 2010, as people generally speaking prefer chemistry between idols. I talked about this a bit in my Super Junior article, but the status quo of creating a group still held until at least 2010, perhaps even later. That status quo: you need a cute member, a mature member, a funny member, a cool member, and a stereotypical maknae. I would not say that ITZY has that – ITZY does have a member that’s more extraverted than the others but I would not say that a personality type is necessarily a role. From watching ITZY on weekly idol I would venture to say that they seem more like a friend group and less like an idol group. Perhaps that is a carefully constructed image, but it is an effective one. I do believe that ITZY more clearly represents young girls than most idol groups do.

ITZY has an innate connectivity to its audience of young girls that I think is really important. They don’t seem over the top happy all the time, and their songs are sassy and angry. They carry themselves with confidence and yet seem relatively calm and humble. There is less visible pressure on them to act like a stereotype, and that is something that audiences can clue into. I am not saying that their lives are devoid of pressure – they are idols, that unfortunately comes with the industry. But it’s clear that the pressure we normally see – bright smiles and constantly playing is not there. Perhaps the pressure is to seem more calm and reserved, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. In any event we’ll likely never know – it is, however, an image that can reach a wider audience.

I think ITZY is a group we need to think about more. They have a lot of positive qualities that I think other girl groups should have. I think the takeaway should be that idol companies should not be trying to create what is currently popular, but find the gaps in the market where people need more. K-Pop should ultimately be about giving people what they want, not telling people what they should want.

Twice’s “Like OOH-AHH” – Cinnamon Bubblegum Part 1

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When a group becomes particularly popular in K-Pop, it’s for one of three reasons. One is that they take another group’s concept and do it (arguably) better – many boy groups tend to be offshoots of each other for this reason. The second reason is that they’re marketed really well to specific demographics. BTS’s popularity in particular largely lends itself to the brilliant marketing by Bighit Entertainment and the American label handling their US distribution, Columbia Records. But then of course there’s the third option: that the band is doing something unique, that hasn’t been done before.

Now that we have a couple of generations of K-Pop stars to look up to, not to mention a massive amount of younger groups, it’s a lot harder to find that one, unique idol that speaks to you personally. A lot of it boils down to personal preference – how you relate to the singer and the art matters just as much as what the company is trying to market. For me personally, I try to find artists that have something to say. Usually this translates either into the artist is in control of their writing or they have a spin on something we already are accustomed to. I tend to quantify that as combining different “concepts”, changing “concepts” frequently, or using their platform as a way to subvert expectations in some way. I don’t like it when groups get too comfortable in something safe – when I see a group do something challenging, that’s when I get interested.

I was regrettably a bit late to the Twice train, but I must say I’m on board now. It’s honestly hard for me to quantify what makes them unique because, like Super Junior upon their 2005 debut, they’re a bit of a perfect storm. A series of seemingly incidental things that seem to line up perfectly. Twice was formed through a TV show called Sixteen, similar to I.O.I, Wanna One, and VIXX. The nice thing about TV shows is that, while edited, they do expose an organic side to a person, particularly young artists. Often, this organic nature is revealed when the person is under pressure, for example some sort of singing challenge or test, or when people are interacting with each other in a somewhat private situation. Therefore, fans got to see the group form in real time based on relationships formed between members. This is easily one of the better ways to form a group.

Twice’s popularity has been rapidly increasing. Their most recent videos, “Fancy” and “Breakthrough”, have been doing incredibly well – “Fancy”, which came out 2 months ago as of this article’s posting, now has 143 million views, while “Breakthrough”, which came out on their Japanese channel three weeks ago, has 25 million. Their older videos, “Like OOH-AHH”, “Cheer Up”, and “Signal” all have 309 million, 342 million, and 180 million views, respectively. They’ve maintained a TV presence, they’ve been on tour in the US and abroad, they’ve done multiple commercials and had many endorsements: they are the biggest asset to JYP Entertainment overall.

If you ask me, the reason behind this success lies in Twice’s music and approach to videos and concepts. Their musical style evolves not in broad strokes, but smaller, more subtle ways. They generally maintain a bubblegum pop style, but even that is a bit unfair to the band. I’d say they have a cinnamon bubblegum pop style – that is to say, their music has a bit more kick to it. The underlying beats actually sound more like songs that would be in a boy group’s musical repertoire while the overall melody is an uplifting, sweet style quintessential to most K-Pop girl groups. It’s an interesting mix that isn’t common in K-Pop anymore – generally you either go hard and fast, or you go soft and sparkly. But why not have sparkles moving at the speed of light? That’s effectively what Twice is.

Visually their videos emulate this complicated nature in a lot of interesting ways. This article will be part of a series on Twice’s videos – specifically “Like OOH-AHH”, “Cheer Up”, and “Likey”. “Like OOH-AHH” because it’s the first music video, “Cheer Up” because it’s a perfect example of what I want to share, and “Likey” because…well I really like “Likey”. Don’t judge.

“Like OOH-AHH” has a number of different styles going on. The verses generally are fast paced pop bits mixed with slower, higher, melodic elements. Korean words are mixed with English throughout, in fact less so in the chorus than other parts of the song. The bridge is comprised of one incredibly soft and slow singing bit to recalibrate and then an incredibly fast and vibrant dance break. In layman’s terms, this song is an absolute bop.

Ironically, Twice’s “Like OOH-AHH” has a video based entirely around a duality. The video takes place in a zombie apocalypse while all of the girls are wearing girly, clean, adorably fashionable outfits and not showing any fear or sense of self preservation. Zombies have been done before in K-Pop. T-ARA’s “Lovey Dovey” featured a zombie apocalypse breaking down in a dance club with a number of references to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”; Cross Gene made an entire zombie movie called ZEDD to promote their song “Billion Dolla”. But Twice taking two entirely opposite concepts made for something surprisingly fun. Whatever your expectations are going into the MV, you have none by the end. That’s what makes it so entertaining.

Looking at the intro sequence in particular, it’s clear we’re not dealing with something normal. We see a number of zombies walking around an abandoned helicopter and what appears to be an abandoned hospital. But the colors are saturated – particularly gold and rose colors, as opposed to blue like in most zombie films. Twice’s logo is in pink. The song itself is starting happy. We know we’re not in for anything normal.

Suddenly Nayeon pops out of the bed with perfect makeup in an adorable white shirt and yellow, red, and black plaid skirt, fishnet pantyhose and wedge heels and even a choker.

So already the tone of the video is set and it’s basically about as “normal” as a 40 minute movie to promote one song. But in many ways that’s a good thing. Twice doing something so different right out of the gate set the stage for what the band would be like in the future. This theme of changing expectations is rampant throughout the first half of the video – Jihyo walking past zombies on red treadmills, Tzuyu reaching for the screen while the zombies reach ahead, cutesy dancing in a building that’s actually crumbling around them, all of which makes the girls in particular seem like they radiate all that is well in the world.

Weirdly enough, the song is about something directly opposite that. Rather than the lyrics being about a girl who is a shining beacon around people who don’t care, the girl is the one who doesn’t care, and the people around her are trying to get her to feel something. It’s about a girl who wants to fall in love but just can’t, so she needs someone to prove to her that they’re worthy so that she can open up to them. So to see a video that deliberately turns this concept on its head makes a very interesting video.

Costume-wise, this bizarre rift becomes obvious with the way the girls are dressed versus how the zombies are. All of the zombies are wearing tattered clothes, more in dark tones, whereas all of the girls wear bright, clean clothes that has no rips, whether for style or for aesthetic. The girls’ outfits are mostly reds, pinks, blacks, and whites, in a variety of styles to bring out the character/personality of each member. The leader, Jihyo, wears athletic wear while Tzuyu, the youngest, wears a schoolgirl uniform. Sana dresses like a cheerleader while Momo dresses in tighter, more mature clothes. Each member has a particular way of dressing to make sure you can immediately know them.

There are also moments throughout the video that allow you to immediately remember the members. We see Mina and Momo doing stretches like trained ballet dancers while Sana struggles to get her foot up but tries to impress whoever the viewer is. This scene on its own establishes Sana as a funny optimistic person – aligned with her reputation in the K-Pop community and online profiles — and Mina and Momo as the trained dancers they are (Mina trained as a ballerina for 11 years and Momo was brought back after elimination during Sixteen because of her superior dancing ability.) That one moment in the video lets us into what kind of people we’re dealing with, both on screen and in real life.

As the video progresses, the girls dance in front of zombies in a small cement lot and inside a school bus while the zombies slowly descend upon them. This eventually turns into dancing with the zombies, who then dance with them – at first in a spastic way, but then in a more fluid way. The girls don’t care at all about the zombies being undead and have fun with each other, ultimately this leads to the zombies becoming human, as we see in the tail end of the video.

“Like OOH-AHH” is a surprisingly exciting video, with a lot of twists right from the first few seconds. Twice ultimately tapped into something that K-Pop has lacked in many respects – combining concepts and subversion of the typical tropes associated with idols. While they’re still very much a popular group, with accolades and endorsements to boot, they have an angle that’s been missing from K-Pop for a while. They’re aware that they’re popular but they also have a level of risk-taking that very few groups have had in the past fifteen years. I think what we need to keep looking for in the future with Twice is if this is maintained – but as we’ll see with “Cheer Up” next time, cinnamon bubblegum pop is definitely very much a successful endeavor.

ANNOUNCEMENT – The Neverland Project

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This week I’m doing something a little different, and updating you all on a project I’ve been working on for a while. Before we do, however, I feel compelled to tell you all a story.

Like many artists, I have anxiety and ADHD. I choose to treat them like assets. ADHD allows me to be a perfectionist and tackle multiple projects from different angles. Anxiety acts like a motivator. However, while I am better adjusted now, throughout middle and high school I had difficulties with them. I usually expressed my anxieties through art, as it was what allowed me to connect with others – it didn’t matter whether or not someone had the same experiences I did exactly, but so long as the feelings could get across to my audience, I felt a sense of victory. Unsurprisingly, I became attached to K-Pop because of its unique way of expressing emotion.

My film teacher in high school gave me a great environment to work in, one in which I could escape from everything else that stressed me out. My freshman year I started editing with K-Pop music videos, particularly BIGBANG, for assignments. One of my videos took a month of work, a video art piece comprised of a number of pop culture references talking explicitly about my anxiety. Looking back on it, it was by far not my best work, but it was an important piece for me in my artistic development.

For the rest of high school I had a safe and secure outlet for everything happening in my life. I spent a lot of time editing K-Pop videos, molding them to match messages I wanted to communicate. My sophomore year, I made a two-part video art piece about the two sides of the K-Pop industry. One was emblematic of the poppy, bright, and happy side we were all accustomed to, the other was a darker piece that was explicitly about artists who either evolved in different ways or struggled to get to where they are (particularly BIGBANG and Super Junior, but with a lot of VIXX mixed in for their Error and Voodoo Doll concepts.) I ended up posting it under the pseudonym Romana Pond, one that I’ve had since I was fourteen to conceal my identity to avoid people finding my location online (there aren’t exactly a lot of people with the last name O’Hop in the United States.)

My anxiety hit its worst point when I was seventeen, for reasons best reserved for another day. However, my friends at the time were very protective me, and I entered therapy. At the same time, BTS was in their Most Beautiful Moment in Life phase. “Run” had just came out, and I sat with a friend at school and started running through all of the connections between that, “I Need U”, and “Prologue”. I watched a couple of theory videos online about what the plot may be, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the stories that were being told. Not that there was anything wrong with them, I just didn’t connect with the fan interpretations in the same way I connected with the music videos.

Thus, Neverland was born.

Neverland was one of my first experiments in narrative filmmaking. I wanted to build a cohesive, concise narrative and tell the story I wanted to tell. Obviously, that’s hard with nonlinear music videos, all of which have different aesthetics. Not only did I have to base my story off of the existing motifs, I had to create my own. One of them turned out to be subtitling – I synced some subtitles with the music in the background or dragged them out longer for maximum impact.

The second motif, however, was much harder. I wanted color to be an important storytelling element, as a way of justifying and connecting the different aesthetics. This required me to go frame by frame and cut certain people out, making them grayscale to explain certain plot elements – particularly, deaths. I had tried a similar effect in my video art pieces before, but it’s a different situation when you have a 40 minute short film as opposed to a 6 and a half minute art piece. However, in spite of the difficulties, I enjoyed working on it. I ended up using this effect in another experimental piece in college, using clips from the K-Drama Blood to depict the relationship between the two main characters. I recommend watching it, but there are spoilers for the show, so if you do want to watch a vampire doctor crime show with an adorable romance…maybe save this video for later.

The editing process ended around the time BTS’s Wings came out. I spent a month trying to get support for the video at my high school, so I could have a screening. Finally, I got permission from the school to show it at a small lunchtime screening in early December. It got fairly good reception from my peers at my small high school. To get a wider audience, I posted it on my pseudonym account. Anyone who met me would know that I was the person behind it, but I was careful not to release that information elsewhere. Besides, I didn’t really care about glory or anything, the satisfaction of other people’s enjoyment was enough. The full movie is below.

Fast forward almost three years later. I’m about to start my third year at NYU Tisch School of the Arts as a Film and Television major. I’m not much of a BTS fan anymore – I just don’t particularly like their new music, and after seeing BIGBANG fall apart from one night to the next, I’m always skeptical when a band becomes that famous. This isn’t out of dislike for the members themselves, I have a lot of respect for them. It’s more about personal taste.

That said, I rewatched Neverland recently. I was still proud of everything I had accomplished, but I realized there was so much I had learned in two years of NYU Film that I felt I could do much better. The story still means a lot to me, and BTS’s music from 2 Cool 4 Skool through You Never Walk Alone will always be among my favorite K-Pop songs. I am still enough of a fan at heart to appreciate what they created.

I still have other projects: a documentary that will be officially announced shortly, and a number of scripts and commissions, not to mention updating Reel K-Pop. But there is a feeling of satisfaction that comes from K-Pop editing that I have honestly missed, since schoolwork tends to pull me away from the personal projects I want to work on. Now that I have time over the summer, even with summer internships, I wanted to get back to what I love: writing and editing.

Which brings us to The Neverland Project. The Neverland Project is a remaster of Neverland, this time in 1080p with (hopefully) better editing. I plan on doing it in episodes as opposed to one full movie, and updating this website on my progress. I’ll also give mini analyses on what my thought process was in how I edited the final product. I plan on uploading a teaser in the very near future, but again, since I have other projects going on and articles to write, that might not be for a while.

My aim with this work is not to take anything away from BTS – instead, I want to show where the heart of BTS’s work was, and where my heart is. I want to show people what K-Pop is, and also what it can be. I want to be an educational resource for film students and enthusiasts. And with any luck, my experience in creating this work will be useful to others who want to find their own voices.

Leo’s “Romanticism” – Principles of Filmmaking

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Before we start, I just want to apologize for the lack of uploads these past months. School took a lot out of me and since I’m on vacation, I have a number of personal projects that I’ve been working on, one of which will be announced soon. Also, because of the event in April, K-Pop for Filmmakers, I had the most historical case of burnout, and it took a long time to get my creative juices flowing again. So here we are, two months later, finally with an article. In order to prevent this kind of burnout from happening again, I’m going to stop with the regimented schedule, but also add more personal updates. I will also write smaller articles so that they can come more often.

I talk about VIXX way too much in this blog but here we are again, with another solo – instead of Ravi, though, we have Leo. Leo, or Jung Taekwoon, is the second eldest member of VIXX, as well as one of the band’s primary vocalists. He’s a fan favorite for a number of reasons – early in his career he was quiet and reserved. Members would play games like “make Leo laugh” to try to get him to break under pressure, usually by blowing balloons in his face or doing aegyo and whatnot.

As VIXX evolved so did Leo. He became much more outgoing and lively on screen, and his quietness turned into something more artistic. Silent cuteness turned into an ethereal beauty. This is a transformation that all of the VIXX members went through. I remember seeing VIXX live when I was a teenager, and my dad commented that in their dance routines, they moved like paintings. Every move was a work of art.

Leo in particular tends to embody this artistic sensibility. While the other members of VIXX definitely do (I spoke a lot about this in my article on Ravi’s “NIRVANA + Alcohol”) they also tend to delve into comedy a lot and while Leo does do that, he has a different angle for it. Rather than making jokes he usually comes at comedy from a more serious angle. This is likely because he’s an actor as well as a singer (most members of VIXX are) but he prefers to adopt characters rather than make gags. As a result, most of what you get with him is subtle and flowing as opposed to handed to you outright.

All this in mind, Leo’s song “Romanticism” is in turn about someone he views as a work of art (to quote, “a pervading and perfect masterpiece”.) The song is all about sensuality. It’s very provocative while still classy. It’s very smooth, mostly electronic sounds, kind of like listening to music through dream. It’s not very “hooky” but it’s still a nice song to listen to on a warm day or on a date night. It’s not meant to be powerful, it’s meant to be sweet and romantic.

The video is almost purely visual, and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. A lack of story is not a detriment to a music video. What pieces we have of a story are a woman running away, lights flashing, both Leo and the woman falling through the air with Leo reaching, and some scenes of them whispering and caressing each other.

The video ends with them sitting across a dining room table, staring blankly at each other, transitioning to Leo sitting at the end of the table alone. If we take what we see at face value (which we kind of have to considering the lack of story overall) is just a sensual relationship, but if the last scene is any indicator, there is probably not a lot of conversation between the two parties. This is a fallback of an overly physical relationship.

“Romanticism”, as an MV, is incredibly simple, which creates some brilliant uses of space to drive a mood forward. There are only five sets throughout the MV – a hallway, a bedroom, a dining room, a beach, and a studio. However, these locations turn out to be incredibly versatile. Bedrooms lend themselves well to close-ups and more creative angles, whereas hallways and long dining rooms generally require more consistent perspectives, usually focusing only on one or two points. Outdoor scenes give a sense of openness that’s hard to get – in fact nearly impossible – to get from a room of any kind, except maybe a cathedral. Studios are the most versatile sets, with lighting from all sorts of angles and the ability to change the lighting setup when necessary.

The color scheme of the video is mostly warm colors – golds, pinks, blues, and browns. Of course there’s white and black to offset both. However, the beach scene is very cool-toned, which we’ll come back to later. In fact, despite the warm colors, there are also plenty of times where the same colors are cool toned as opposed to warm toned. Cool tones give a sense of calm while warm tones give the feeling of passion. I feel like this is a pretty accurate description of Leo himself – a quietly crackling fire of musical and artistic spirit.

Let’s focus on what this fire is wearing. Stylists for K-Pop are always able to isolate the idol visually so that you are immediately able to identify them. Often, this is done by hair color, but the entire outfit needs to be able to highlight personality traits about the singer, and then the outfits of the dancers need to highlight the singer while underscoring those same traits. Leo’s style is generally large, thin shirts and tight pants. Big jackets are always a thing, and rarely are those jackets zipped up. It’s a very polished look but it’s also very free looking. He wears black and white, with occasional blue and gold accents.

While dancers wear these colors too in this video, often they will wear white while Leo wears black, or a different style of clothes so that it’s obvious who’s the centerpiece. The girlfriend character wears pink, light and dark, and is the only person in the video who does this, so she is immediately recognizable. She also wears dresses, skirts, etc. which gives her a unique silhouette. As stated before, hair is also a big factor. Leo’s hair is blonde, unlike anyone else, and he has some nice angular side bangs going on. Likewise, his girlfriend in the video is the only girl with short hair.

Ultimately though – this is all well and good, but the video stands out in one powerful way. Lighting. The video is lit in very clever ways, since most of it was filmed indoors, on sound stages. For example, the studio I mentioned earlier was lit in different ways – with a diffuse light behind that changes color, face and fill lighting in the front, and LED lighting on top of the awning. This allows for a number of different lighting options and since it’s easy to change the colors of those lights with gels (or even via computer) you can construct a wide variety of moods.

In other shots, there is a significant use of “practical” lighting. Practical lighting is when a lighting fixture in the scene is visible to the audience. When you see a lamp in a movie, that’s practical lighting. In this case, there are candles, ceiling lamps, and table lamps. At certain points throughout the video the lamps in the hallway flicker.

But what makes this lighting interesting is that it lends itself to surrealism. The combination of the practical lights, something we are all very familiar with, and diffused background lights make the space feel like it’s glowing. The combination of the two is somewhat otherworldly.

The most interesting use of lighting though is in the beach scenes. They’re filmed after the “golden hour”, which is when the sun is about to set and the light is intense. These shots, instead, are much softer. Clouds streak across the horizon but there is still plenty of sky to see. It’s a nice soft blue, with gold from the little bit of sun we can see. But what makes it fascinating is they still brought face lights for Leo. The face lights are pink, putting him in a stark contrast to the background. While everything else is cold and somewhat gentle, he is a bright highlight, like a posh firework.

What makes “Romanticism” special is its simple understanding of the principles of filmmaking. It doesn’t require fancy hair or masks or high heels to make an experience worthwhile. I think the lesson Leo gives us is not to let extravagance get in the way of the soul of the art – and this music video is a clear example of that.

VIXX’s “Voodoo Doll” – Heart Imitates Strife

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Trigger warning: Violence, Gore, and Mention of Abuse.

Clean version of music video here

Looking back onto my childhood, I remember other kids thinking it was odd that I liked horror. I mean, I was a girl who liked pastel dresses, pretty hair, dolls, and fairies. But then, around the time I stopped believing in fairies – a bit late, admittedly – I was enraptured by stories of vampires, demons, and the underworld. At the time, I much preferred reading it than I did writing it, but that wasn’t to say I didn’t experiment with the genre as best as a middle schooler could. When I was in high school, taking one of my first film classes, we did a unit on horror. My fascination with the genre expanded, as I was introduced to how creators designed fear.

So, you can imagine my delight when I found VIXX’s “Voodoo Doll” for the first time.

I’d seen a cosplayer – FadingForest on Deviantart – do a design based on the visual of VIXX, Hongbin, and his character in “Voodoo Doll”. I decided to go exploring on my own. So there I was, watching one of the craziest K-Pop videos ever, and absolutely in love with it. It mixed the gothic and the modern, body horror and psychological horror, hot guys and black eyeliner.

It was never the gore factor about horror that I enjoyed. In fact generally speaking, I dislike gore. Body horror has never been something I could really stomach. But when it came to horror, I enjoyed observing the extremes of the human condition. It was never about the literal story, it was all about the underlying intentions. A vampire story is about the loss of humanity when you reject the one thing that all humans have in common – death.  A possession story centers around a person who shares a body with an entity completely opposite them. A story of the underworld, the afterlife, addresses what we don’t know about our own souls, and how much that makes us scared.

And voodoo stories encapsulate our fear of losing free will.

VIXX is one of my favorite bands for a reason. Their heart and soul goes into everything they do. They all have an insane talent for the stage that allows them to take on any persona for any song. When they dance, they don’t dance just to move, they dance to make you feel something. Everything right down to their facial expressions is done to make you feel something. They are among the select few that do that for every comeback. Some bands will put a lot of care into one comeback and not in another, others will kind of rock one persona throughout their career and never change it up, even others will try to intentionally avoid having a persona so that they seem authentic.

But I wouldn’t say VIXX has a persona, at least not in the way we would associate a K-Pop band with a concept. They are artists first and foremost, and that’s what they make their careers out of. Not being pretty, not being funny, not being sexy. They do it by shocking you. VIXX also stands out in part because it’s well known that they are actors, well known that they are dancing talents, and well known for being down to earth and not pretentious. Building off what I said in my article on Ravi, VIXX’s rapper, while they were inspired by older, more famous idols, VIXX has a unique voice in their understanding of K-Pop and their enigmatic take on it.

In 2012, the year before “Voodoo Doll” came out, (which is also the year that VIXX debuted) we were awarded with many K-Pop videos, but many of them were lacking in substance. Those that weren’t lacking, for example BIGBANG’s “Fantastic Baby”, were written off by American audiences as crazy videos with men and women with weird hair. While there was a niche market for K-Pop videos that had a creative edge to them, no one really cared at the time. And that’s not to say that creative K-Pop videos weren’t being made – they were. But American audiences were neither attuned to them nor intending to seek them out. It was ultimately tragic, as we see the ripple effects now in how most American media portrays K-Pop.

VIXX ultimately started like most other K-Pop bands – on a pink soundstage with terrible hair. As endearing as “Super Hero”, their debut song, was, it was nothing compared to what they would ultimately become. They went through a number of phases, mostly hovering around the cutesy concepts, before eventually finding a voice in “On and On” in early 2013. On and On featured a story about vampires in space, which…okay yeah the premise sucked. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

Afterwards, VIXX came out with Jekyll and Hyde, two albums that intentionally mirrored each other. One was light and happy, one was dark and…well, had eyeliner spilled all over it. Both were excellent. Hyde’s music video featured some fascinatingly eerie imagery, though it was really crazy and not subtle enough for my liking. It’s a good watch though.

“Voodoo Doll”, though, is what put VIXX on the map. Shockingly vivid imagery, violence, and magic that pushed beyond aesthetics or a simple story – all this was missing from K-Pop until 2013. While gore has not been revisited by VIXX, the shock value and the idea of high concept certainly has. VIXX’s video quality is incredibly consistent, and they’re constantly pushing their own limits.

“Voodoo Doll” itself is hard to unpack. It seems at first glance that the video is about a girl torturing boys with magic, and that they’re trying to escape. On repeated watches however, it’s a little more indirect. For one thing the song is about a sort of magical servant who is even willing to kill for their master. In a broader sense, it’s about a somewhat toxic relationship where the person is willing to take the pain of someone else onto them, regardless of the damage this does to their own personal well being.

Visually, this is exemplified by the way each member is imprisoned within a cell surrounding a hexagonal room. At first I thought that they were trying to escape while the girl was mocking them and torturing them with her powers. But then the more I watched, the more I realized – the members don’t have identities when she’s not around. If you look closely at the cells, Leo wanders aimlessly in his cell, with his back hunched or fully arched. Ken dangles from the ceiling. N lies limp like a doll. Hyuk stares outside of the cell, watching the girl. Ravi does…something, it’s hard to tell because all we see is his hand. They don’t animate until she gives them purpose.

She’s toying with their love for her.

It’s all about a toxic relationship between these boys and a “master”. Now toxic relationships are something that many artists talk about, but it’s usually from a place of posthumous anger or depression in the moment. Sometimes a singer will go even so far as to make it seem like everything’s okay, and have a cheerful edge to the song in spite of dark material. VIXX doesn’t do any of that. VIXX mixes passion and rage and uses voodoo dolls as a means of explaining power dynamics in such a relationship.

Let’s break down a few of the features of an abusive relationship, and how VIXX addresses them:

Intimidation: I think this one is obvious. There is a lot of physical violence in this music video. Hongbin has pieces of glass stuck to his arms and is inside a box, Hyuk, Leo, Ken, and N all have piercings all over their body that bind them to the ceiling, and Ravi is physically restrained with ropes. Throughout the music video the girl repeatedly stabs voodoo dolls that control all of them, and we see her cutting up and stitching members while they bleed. There’s a lot of physical intimidation.

Isolation: again, this one clearly shows itself. Each of the members is in a cell of sorts, and each of the members has been restrained. They aren’t able to go far enough forward to see the other members or reach them – in Hongbin’s case he can hardly move at all. Even when the members escape, they don’t see each other. There is never a moment where they are all physically together, beyond the dance sequences.

Coercion: Coercion is a little harder to pin down since there is no dialogue. But we can see the girl clearly go up to the members and seemingly tempt them. Not sexually, just by her presence alone. That’s enough to drive them crazy. Furthermore in the actual song, Ken sings:

“웃는 너의 얼굴 한번이면 족해/내가 대신 다 해 네가 바라는 것들” (“utneun neoui eolgul hanbeonimyeon jokhae/naega daesin da hae nega baraneun geotdeul”)

“If you smile just once I’m satisfied/I’ll do everything instead, everything you wish for”

https://colorcodedlyrics.com/2013/11/vixx-voodoo-doll

The whole point of the song is that this girl is degrading the members and using them for entertainment. They want to help her, give her everything even if it makes their own lives hell.

Minimization: again, difficult to really get to the bottom of when the only words are in the song. But we can see how the different members are dehumanized by the girl. She objectifies them physically with promiscuous outfits and then she also treats them like toys. When she stabs her doll she laughs at them even as they’re in clear, visible pain. They’re less than puppets to her, they’re surrogates for whatever emotion she wants them to feel.

Visually this turmoil between partners is made clear through a number of visual cues. The colors are all vibrant and angry – reds, blacks, oranges, greens. It is brighter than the color scheme of most horror movies but I think it suits this video. It’s also overly sharpened – many K-Pop videos in 2012-2014 were sharpened to extreme lengths. I don’t normally like this, but I think in VIXX’s case it actually is advantageous to the gruesome nature of the video. It makes the gore feel grittier, like it’s less supernatural and more serial killer story. The costumes give each character a personality while still seeming relatively uniform.

N’s character is almost like a twisted version of his actual personality. He’s known for being a very sweet, soft person, and I would say loose turtleneck sweaters and couches are indications of someone very sweet. But the torn clothes, being tied to the ceiling, painted mannequins and the covered abandoned couch, all show a person with a kind heart that’s been twisted by this process.

Leo’s room looks almost like an underground chamber, like a subway covered in crinkled metal. His clothing is basically rags, as if he’s been cut on everything, but unlike the other members the only physical wounds he has are the piercings that tie him to the ceiling. But he’s a member that does some of the most expression with his body.

Ken is trapped in a box that is almost like an elevator. He’s covered in burns and tied to the ceiling. His outfit is probably most like a K-Pop idol, thin shirt and pants, but like everything else it’s all ripped. I’d say the outfit he wears is the sleekest, cleanest one, in spite of the whole video.

Ravi is in a kitchen of sorts, with food that appears rotted on the table. The window in front of him is covered with equations, chemistry diagrams, and all sorts of weird things. His own body is covered in tattoos, including one of his skin ripped open and his heart underneath. His eyes are Xs, which has become an icon of this story. The way he grits his teeth at the girl and stares her down, it’s all fairly on brand for Ravi – as I’ve said before, he’s so enigmatic in his embracing of the arts and sciences, as well as the typical hip-hop persona. This very much fits into that dichotomy.

Hyuk is in a room with a tree, with a shattered window in front of him. He’s wearing leather and thick eyeliner like a typical bad boy. He’s covered with stab wounds. The most interesting thing though is that there is bark coming off of his arms. If I had to guess as to why this is the case I imagine he’s undergone so much abuse that he’s become a part of this world that the girl has created – to escape would be to lose himself.

That leaves Hongbin – ultimately the focal point of the video. The normally cute visual is twitching, scratching, contorting inside a box. His arms and chest are covered with glass. He still has piercings in his shoulders, but they’re not attached to anything. His clothes are in actual tatters. He has the iconic Xs in his eyes. He acts like a terrifying, insane creation, less human than a corpse. It’s scary but it’s admirable how amazing he’s able to act.

Hongbin is the only character we see in the end after all is said and done. The girl comes back to her room to find all the boys have escaped, and are trying to find their way back to, presumably, our world. The girl angrily starts stabbing the doll, still bound to all of them. They all get hurt and eventually float, as they are forced into various positions. Eventually we see Hongbin fall, and get pulled back into the room.

The girl puts the glass back in his arms, restores him, and stitches him. He blinks, unfeeling, not even looking at her. She got her doll back.

A lot of people have assumed that this means the other members escaped. I don’t think this is true. If you watch closely, Ken falls too – it cuts off right before he does. This means to me that he didn’t escape either. And it seems unfair to think that just the two of them were taken back. I think that the girl is focusing individual attention on each of them, as part of her intentional control of them. She likes to play with these boys and make them completely codependent. And, judging from Hongbin’s reaction, this costs him everything that he is.

The song ends on a relatively somber note:

누가 됐든 잘 봐 그녈 울리지 마 (nuga dwaetdeun jal bwa geunyeol ulliji ma)

더 이상 잃을 무엇도 없는 나 (deo isang irheul mueotdo eomneun na)

그 누구도 모르는 내 가슴속의 슬픔은 (geu nugudo moreuneun nae gaseumsogui seulpeumeun)

째깍 째깍 다 사라지리라 (jjaekkak jjaekkak da sarajirira)

Whoever this becomes watch carefully, don’t make her cry

I don’t have anything else to give up

That person doesn’t know me, the pain in my heart

Tick tock tick tock everything will disappear

https://colorcodedlyrics.com/2013/11/vixx-voodoo-doll

VIXX’s “Voodoo Doll” will ultimately go down in history as one of the greatest K-Pop Mvs of all time. It’s overdone as far as budget is concerned. It’s just incredibly tight in terms of all the things that count – plot, editing, and the music. The singers themselves are what make this music video so amazing. It set a course for a number of K-Pop bands to come, allowing bands like Dreamcatcher to go full on horror for almost every comeback and bands like Cross Gene to do incredibly graphic music videos like “Black or White”.

While I do believe that this video is about an abusive relationship, there is some ambiguity. But I believe that is intentional here. I don’t think a good K-Pop video is meant to tell you how to feel, or what you should think of it. I think it’s supposed to guide you in a direction and allow you to figure it out for yourself. There are a number of interpretations that can come from “Voodoo Doll”, some literal and some not. But one thing’s for sure, VIXX has something. And it’s not something that is easily recreated.

Read more about K-Pop and Horror here!

Listen to Francesca O’Hop talk about VIXX’s “Voodoo Doll” on the Kindergeist Podcast!

EXID’s “L.I.E” – A Complete Deconstruction

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EXID’s one of those girl groups that everyone knows and everyone likes no matter what. Even if you don’t love them, there’s always one or two songs you can’t stop listening to. While I am not quite a big enough fan to necessarily consider myself a part of the fandom, I always thought their dance routines were on point and they had a very natural chemistry. The songs were great, their voices were all distinct…there has always been a lot to like about them. Not only that, a number of people around me are big fans of theirs, so I have a pretty consistent exposure to them. Heck, my dad’s bias is Solji.

I definitely wanted to do an article on EXID at some point, it was really a matter of figuring out what to write about. Yes, “Up and Down” is iconic, but I wanted to start with something different. “Ah Yeah” was a great choice too, but I felt like that had been picked apart already by everybody. “I Love You” is on my list, but I didn’t want to go with something too recent. EXID’s had a lot of hits after all.

I finally figured out what video I wanted to write about when making the pre-show playlist for an event I’ve been preparing at university on K-Pop. I asked my girlfriend for help, as I didn’t want to have videos from groups I already was covering, I wanted to show the diversity of K-Pop as a genre. I knew I wanted to show an EXID video, and my girlfriend suggested I watch “L.I.E”. I watched it and fell in love with the video quickly, and added it to the lineup.

So there we had it. I had the perfect choice for a music video to write about.

In 2016, K-Pop was getting increasingly popular. Blackpink, Momoland, I.O.I, Pentagon, and KNK all debuted. VIXX had their Conception trilogy. BTS had “Young Forever” and “Blood Sweat and Tears”. SHINee sold out of their “1 of 1” cassette tape in twenty four hours, and not because everyone with a cassette player suddenly started listening to SHINee. 4minute broke up, but HyunA continued making music. Jessica Jung made her solo debut after leaving Girls Generation. It was not the biggest year K-Pop would ever have, but it was by no means their worst year, and the journey would be far from over.

2016 was also the year that we found out about Solji’s hiatus from the group to take care of her life-threatening hyperthyroidism. As a result, L.I.E would be the last song in two years we would see a five-member EXID. EXID was also at major popularity – not the peak that they got from “Up and Down”, but the consistent kind of popularity that comes from when a group is genuinely good at what they do. As for the music video, it’s a creative little video, with a high production value and gorgeous colors.

Everything sports a pink hue, with purples a a secondary color, and red as a tertiary color. We also get teals and blues that are positively gorgeous, and the occasional black accents – a dress, painted doors, and so on. Oh, and don’t forget the sparkly gold embroidery on the uniforms. And yet, there is something about it that feels distinctly not cheery. It hides something behind its own cuteness and suggestiveness. There seems to be a quiet anger – sometimes an overt one – and a distinct sadness to a number of elements. But still, it doesn’t stop cheering you up. If anything, the misplaced melancholy makes it almost more fun to watch, because it’s hard to understand why it’s there in the first place.

Which brings us to the Five Stages of Grief.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a 20th century psychiatrist from Zurich, Switzerland, wrote a book in 1969 called On Death and Dying. As near-death studies were her focus, she proposed a theory about how people deal with the end, or any tragedy. She broke it up into five parts – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. This was the birth of the Five Stages of Grief.

So, naturally, I’m going to connect a theory from the late 60s to a music video about sexy Korean girls in hotel uniforms.

Kübler-Ross proposed the stages as a way to understand the way people deal with death, but they can apply to any other kind of tragedy. For instance, let’s say a breakup. Where on earth would we get this notion? Perhaps, I don’t know, from the mysterious man at the beginning of the video, in a mask?

Keep in mind, there has been a fair amount of fan discussion to this end. Looking at the comments of “L.I.E”, people have noticed that it appears that each girl represents something. It’s just a question as to what that something is. Some people think that the story is very literal and that the girls are about to go murder the guy who checks into the hotel. Some even go as far to say that it’s a revenge kill on behalf of Jeonghwa, who we see lying in the elevator. Other people have a different theory entirely and say that the girls are representative of different ways of dealing with anger. I think that both of those theories have merit, but I personally disagree with both.

I think that to say that all K-Pop videos have a cut and dry story, especially when there’s craziness and weirdness going on, is kind of undercutting what the music videos try to do. As a filmmaker I can tell you that many K-Pop videos are trying to challenge the viewer, not just be aesthetic. In fact I would go as far to say that aesthetic is a secondary component to most videos – the difference between K-Pop and Western music is that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive in K-Pop. You can have a video that challenges you while still being visually pleasing. I’ll cover a number of videos I think that do a good job of that, but let’s keep the focus here, on EXID.

The reason I think that the girls represent the five stages of grief is because there’s five of them, for one thing, but they’re all in very different, isolated situations. They all behave differently and even though they generally speaking wear the same uniforms, they all have different color schemes attached to them and different ways of wearing those uniforms. Because of this we can more easily split them up and try to figure out what each member signifies. It’s kind of like tarot, each card has a different meaning. So let’s see what we can read here.

MUSIC

The song is a pop song, but I would say more of a classic pop song. Electronic music is mixed with some solid drum beats and some easy guitar parts. It has a clear build to the chorus and the bridge is still playfully climbing. There’s a rap break, and two electronic dance breaks – which I would say is more of a feature of K-Pop than it is of anything else. It’s a product of the fact that the members have to dance as part of training. Very few K-Pop groups can get away with not having this training (unless you’re in YG Entertainment).

All of the line distribution is fairly reasonable, so each girl has a chance to shine. I’ve mentioned this in other articles as something that bothers me heavily about K-Pop is when bands give certain members all of the lines and then ignore other members. This song by and large avoids that pitfall. I’d say there’s always an issue when you have a member who does mostly rap, because they will likely only do the bridge or one verse. But in spite of that the band generally keeps things even between members.

SETS

The set really leans into the hotel concept, with everything taking place on a sound stage that’s made to look like different parts of a hotel. We have the front lawn, the front desk, a hallway, an elevator, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. However, as is a pitfall of having a video shot on a sound stage, it’s hard to make things look realistic.

EXID and the production company August Frogs lean into the lack of realism. The colors are bright and vibrant and there is no attempt at making you feel like you’re really there. If you get immersed you get immersed because of the beauty. Frankly, I don’t know of many hotels that are a single story but also have at least six floors represented by their room numbers, and two elevators, one red and one pink. I also don’t know of many hotels that have such vibrant reds and purples…except maybe The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I’ll cover these set designs more with each individual member and show pictures accordingly, so as not to be redundant.

MEMBERS

Instead of uncovering each member in chronological order, like I did with “PIRI”, or doing it with a criteria of how much screen time each member gets, like I did for “Fly High”, I am going to instead do it in order of the five stages of grief, and what each member inherently represents. Again, the five stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Anxiety. Therefore, that is the order I shall do this in. For each member, I’m breaking this up into two parts, production design and story. This isn’t an act of laziness, to group up the costumes, colors, and sets in this way – I just think those three things, such as they appear, are inextricably linked in this video. The symbolism will ultimately arise from discussion of each member.

Before we do that though, I just want to take a moment and highlight the outfits that the band wears in the dance sequence. There is no particular significance to these, but they are sexy and powerful in heels and I love them for it. I also like the silver accents and how each member manages to stand out. Each member looks good in their own special way. The long socks really highlight Solji’s height. The high neck on Jeonghwa’s shirt and the silver accents on the waist draw your eyes to Jeonghwa’s long torso in a really pretty way. Hani’s got the short sporty sleeves and a nice V-neck which gives her figure a lot of dimension. Hyerin is tiny so the off-the-shoulder look is perfect for her. And LE…well LE just looks great. High ponies and long sleeves are a good look for her. Then again I’m biased.

Solji – Denial

Part 1: Production Design

Solji spends the majority of her time in the hallway, which is lit coolly with fluorescents and small ornate lamps. The deep turquoise is more unfeeling than it is for any of the other members, largely due to this lighting. This is further exacerbated by the black doors, but undercut by the red carpeting. Blue hues usually indicate sadness or calm but red indicates nearly the opposite – rage and passion. She also appears in the red elevator. The red elevator is gilded with gold and is smooth and pristine, with a lighter red carpet below.

Of course we can’t talk about color without talking about Solji herself. Solji is a paler person so she looks good in cool tones, and she can also pull off orange hair. Anyone who looks good in orange gets points in my book. Her hotel uniform is white and a cool, bright purple, with a red streak on the side, a small red bow tie, and black heels. The shirt is open in the back, and the skirt is long but tight – she’s tall, she can pull this off. Of course, don’t forget her hotel EXID hat and her “KILL X” name tag. Her makeup is also cooler, with pink lipstick and eyes that are smokey enough to grab you, but also not smokey enough to be distracting.

She also wears a black dress, when she’s in the red elevator. This stood out to me because it seemed so out of place against the red and gold. Black, gold, and red is a weird combination. But I think this has to do with what Solji is intended to represent in this story. Either way – not gonna lie, this dress is gorgeous. It’s something I’d definitely wear for myself.

Part 2: Story

As stated before, Solji spends most of her time in the hallway, the shots of her in the elevator appear to just be inserts (though that’s not to say they’re not important in understanding her character). We see her lying on a room service cart, holding a room key and looking at it. This happens to be the room key for the aformentioned masked man, which happens to be 690. I don’t know if this is inherently a “69” joke but judging from the inherent sex appeal of the MV, I wouldn’t put it past the filmmakers.

Solji also sits on or in front of the cart on her knees, singing to herself or looking at the camera. Then of course, there are the numerous shots of her carrying a tray of food, knocking on doors, etc. Typical room service actions. There is something weird about the way she acts though – as we’ll see in later segments, she is basically the only member who is completely calm. Everyone else is kind of losing their minds but she’s somehow managing to keep it entirely together.

Why?

It’s simple, she’s in denial.

It’s pretty clear that the guy at the beginning of the video is meant to represent a generic boyfriend, not necessarily anyone’s in particular. Solji is the one member who doesn’t seem angry with him even as she is probably fully aware that he has another girl with him. The doors are closed, so she can’t see it – maybe it doesn’t exist if she just ignores it.

I also think that this makes sense when we consider this weird framed shot of a peach over Solji’s rear – again, this is mostly a sex joke because EXID does that a lot. They’re one of those girl bands where sex and attractiveness are kind of linked to their humor. Usually they do this by subverting expectations, and this random peach is no exception. But it’s kind of fitting if you consider the themes of denial surrounding Solji. Solji turns around to look at it/the camera, as if to be like “What are you doing?” If we consider that Solji represents the Denial stage of grief, she probably is only just now coming to the realization of her own objectification and lack of importance in the relationship.

Or it could just be a peach that’s meant to represent a butt for the hell of it.

Hyerin – Anger

Part One: Production Design

Hyerin spends half her time in the hallway and the other half in a hotel room. The hotel room is turquoise with wooden floors and a blue comforter on the bed, with white and black accents all over. There is a distinct mix of cool and warm lights – cool coming from the window but warm coming from the lamps. It’s very theatrical. This is further exemplified by the way the hall looks in all of Hyerin’s scenes – more often than not, the doors are open and light is pouring in, likely because she’s supposed to be a maid. But this creates a disorienting mix of lights that leads to a chaotic feeling for Hyerin’s character.

This chaos is brought to light in the form of Hyerin’s clothing. Hyerin’s maid outfit is practically made of weird fancy textures. There’s a frilly apron, a frilly trim along the skirt, lace around her neck, and bows along her chest. And of course there’s the hat, the black heels, and the KILL X name tag. However, she disregards the hat and heels quickly. Her hair is also short, and quickly becomes a mess after the hat’s off. When she’s in the hotel room she’s dressed similarly – while it is a fancy black dress, the cut of the top and the choker are still reminiscent of her maid outfit, and her hair is curled more.

Part Two: Story

If the outfit and lights weren’t enough to convince you that Hyerin is representative of anger, how about the fact that half the video is spent depicting her throwing things. When we first see her, she’s staring at a Ken doll in her room, before ripping his head off and singing to it. She seems almost drunk, but I feel like she’s more disoriented than intoxicated. The rest of her scenes in that room are spent with her ripping flower petals off of some roses and throwing the petals around, before lying on the ground next to her Ken doll surrounded by the petals.

This then brings us to her scenes in the hallway, where she’s dressed as a maid. She pushes her cart down the hall, seemingly polished, before hitting the door of room 690 with her duster. The duration of the time spent in this hallway is spent with Hyerin throwing towels and pillows, playing with her duster, hitting everything with her duster, ruffling her own hair, and even singing into her shoe. You could argue that this is Acceptance and not Anger, but I feel like she’s being happy to intentionally spite someone. I mean hitting doors is not indicative of someone who’s particularly level headed.

Hani – Bargaining

Part 1: Production Design

Hani spends a lot of time at the front desk, and in the kitchen. The front desk room is red with blue in the foreground, light colored wood making up the desk and key wall. The entire room is cool toned, from the black trim to the pink bells on the desk, but Hani herself isn’t – in fact, in this room, she looks particularly vibrant and radiant. Yes her skin is pale but her uniform is not.

We then get to the kitchen, where the production design is fairly different to that of the front desk – or really, any other room in this video. It is a small, confined space – low ceilings and thin walls, and the camera always shoots downwards to make sure you see Hani and the room as small. Even the lamps dangle low around her head. The walls are an unmemorable pink and the furniture is a distinctly bland teal with brown accenting. There is a weird spread of food on the table, including lemons, meat, and three different pepper shakers. There are also oranges across the room and flowers all over the place. But again, it’s alright, because Hani seems to take all the color that the walls and furniture left behind. She looks like she’s not meant to be there.

She is also the only member lacking in a costume change. She has a coat on top that has ruffles, and a skirt on the bottom. There is red trim along everything and gold buttons along the front. She also keeps her hat on until the end. And let’s not forget the Kill X on her name tag.

Part 2: Story

We begin Hani’s story at the front desk, where a mildly upset Hani hands the key off the wall and gives it to our masked boyfriend. She doesn’t even touch him, just drops the key in his hand. When the boyfriend takes his new girlfriend’s hand, he doesn’t seem to notice how Hani is reacting – she’s watching their hands with a blank, yet seemingly angry facial expression. She turns to the camera and smirks when the two leave.

The immediate next time we see her, she’s in the kitchen, preparing to cook. She tenderizes the meet with mallets and also examines one of her several pepper shakers. She also spends a bit of time looking at one of the oranges, which has been cut but not fully lengthwise – which makes me wonder if this has to do with the peach scene and my theory about objectification. But oranges do symbolize fertility, luxury, and even good luck in some cultures. So I think the orange is more about what you read into it as opposed to having a concrete meaning. Plus, she is cooking. So maybe it just has to do with that.

Interspersed with this are inserts of Hani sitting on the front desk, or just abesntly pressing the buttons on the front desk. She seems bored but also expectant. Something is clearly supposed to happen, but it hasn’t yet. Eventually though, Hani has clearly had enough. Her lyrics in the bridge consist of her singing “go to hell”, and after this point, Hani throws the pepper shaker, rips her hat off, starts drinking champagne, even going so far as to pour some of it on her head. The room seems to start moving as the lamps begin rotating and the camera tilts.

There’s a lot to get into here. The main reason I think Hani is representative of Bargaining is because she seems to be forcing herself to ignore things. It doesn’t feel like willful ignorance the way Solji’s acting does. Instead it seems like she’s trying really really hard to not pay attention to things. She’s also the only memeber who doesn’t change uniform, as if she’s trying really hard to be a good hotel employee and good chef at the same time. Or, perhaps more accurately, trying to balance her own interests and the interests of this guy. That could also explain the boredom she feels at the desk – she’s probably thinking “If I do all of this right, he’ll come back to me.” Of course, this doesn’t happen. Hani eventually gives up and gives into some pettiness and starts overdoing the pepper, likely just to irritate and anger her (former) boyfriend.

Jeonghwa – Depression

Part 1: Production Design

Jeonghwa has three sets – the hallway, which is lit the same way it is in Solji’s scenes, and both elevators. The pink elevator and the red elevator, as far as I can tell, are actually the same elevator, but the shots are colored so wildly differently that I will refer to them separately. Nonetheless, the pink elevator has fluorescent lighting from the top, whereas the red elevator has a spotlight that’s a much warmer hue.

In both elevators, Jeonghwa is wearing her uniform, which has a grayish mauve piece underneath a shrug, and let’s not forget the red trim and gold buttons, and the KILL X name tag. But Jeonghwa also wears a police uniform and ankle boots, an outfit that seems to come out of nowhere. It’s a dark blue, as police uniforms often are, with a belt and a V neck so her chest is shown off – your typical sexy police uniform fare.

Part 2: Story

The biggest indicator I have for why Jeonghwa represents depression is the fact that she’s lying on the floor for most of the video. This is one of the reasons many people have actually speculated that she’s supposed to be dead, especially since she has her body in that typical murder outline shape. But the thing, is lying down and doing absolutely nothing is a typical symptom of depression. In a way the fact that she’s lying in a presumably moving elevator (while her shoe floats through the air no less) is likely indicative of the fact that the world is moving without her.

The biggest hitch in that analysis is why she’s dressed in a police uniform for part of the video. My best guess is that she is meant to be channeling a sort of “what else has he done” attitude, and trying to figure out the extent she should be upset at all. It’s a fairly defeatist attitude, but it’s the best I’ve got.

It also strikes me as odd that the man presumably comes into the elevator while she’s in there. There are two possibilities for this that would give somewhat of a justification to this. One, maybe the guy is coming to beat her down even further in her state. Two, maybe it’s not the same guy, and some sort of rescuer. I mean we only see his shadow, it’s not so far fetched that this could be the case.

LE – Acceptance

Part 1: Production design

LE’s sets are the front lawn and the bathroom, but two different parts of the bathroom. There’s a lot of hot pink in her sets, mostly in the lights. Her blue bathroom has pink lighting (and a cactus for reasons I can’t even begin to explain) while a cold spotlight shines down on her. When we have close ups of her in the bathroom, by the mirror, the light on top is pink, causing the light blue tiles to look pink, and the mirror is the color of bubblegum. While the lawn has almost no bright pink, there is still a soft pink that makes everything glow a bit against the blue bricks and white columns.

LE’s costumes are among the more provocative. Her uniform is short shorts and jacket with her stomach exposed. She mostly rocks a curly ponytail, sometimes high sometimes low, and her makeup is mostly neutral, which makes her bright red nails stand out. She also wears a silky bathrobe for a number of scenes, and is naked in the bathtub for the rest. Everything about her character is confident and relaxed. Oh and the KILL X name tag. Let’s not forget that.

Part 2: Story

LE has minimal story, but it strikes me as interesting that she’s the first member we see. She’s the valet of this hotel – the boyfriend drives his car up, gets out with his girlfriend, and LE apathetically takes the keys while the boyfriend is chummy with his girlfriend. The rest of her shots are all inserts – her in the bathtub, her looking in the mirror, her lounging in the car. It’s pretty black and white here.

The biggest reason that I believe LE represents acceptance comes down ultimately to the fact that she has no story. She mostly lies surrounded by floating rubber ducks. But I think that’s the point – she’s apathetic to the guy, and has moved on from whatever pain she felt. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. She just doesn’t care. And that’s the important thing here.

Analysis

There is, of course, one character I have omitted from this analysis: the boyfriend.

The X referred to on the KILL X name tag is probably the boyfriend. He looks like a dopey guy in suspenders and he’s also wearing floral print and a mask. Everything about him just seems ridiculous. It begs the question what they saw in him in the first place – but I think that’s the key here. People have 20/20 hindsight about relationships and we see here, the attraction that these girls feel is inherently misplaced. At the end of the video, he stumbles out of the hotel room, looks around, and explodes into yellow foam. I don’t think the yellow is of any particular symbolism, it’s just an opposite color to turquoise and a primary color alongside red. So it’s a visual technique. But why would he stumble out of the room? He probably got kicked out by his new girlfriend, and explodes when he realizes he can’t keep cheating but still doesn’t want to take responsibility. Or maybe he just explodes in the minds of the girls as they officially move on.

I love “L.I.E”. I really love it. It’s so gorgeous and playful but also has plenty to uncover. It’s a good song, and each member has a moment to be the star. It’s a fun romp with an uplifting message: screw boys who wrong you, they don’t matter.

At the end of the video we see the girls running through the halls together, laughing, having fun. Everything is on their terms now, and they don’t need some adulterer to validate them. With such a milked topic, it’s interesting to me that EXID and August Frogs could do something so unique. Any and all K-Pop fans should watch this video, to learn how to mix the crazy and the symbolic. The joy in this MV is trying to understand, after all.

Read about how (G)I-DLE uses the language of film homages here!

Sunmi’s “24 Hours” – Strength and Intimacy

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WARNING: THIS ARTICLE WILL DISCUSS TOPICS THAT MAY BE CONSIDERED INAPPROPRIATE, INCLUDING SEXUAL THEMES. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Originally this article was going to be about Sunmi’s “Gashina”, if I’m being totally honest. But in the process of organizing a K-Pop presentation for my university, I ended up hung up on “24 Hours”. You know how you get little voice nagging at you to do something? It kinda eats away at you and pokes at your mind, trying to get you to pay attention, to listen. Well, here I stood, caught between two beautiful music videos. While I definitely want to talk about “Gashina” soon, I think my efforts are best served talking about “24 Hours” while these thoughts are fresh in my mind.

Sunmi is part of a new wave of positive female role models in K-Pop. What started with bands like 2NE1 and SNSD/Girls’ Generation has now come full force. Bands like Brown Eyed Girls and Mamamoo show strong women; younger girl groups like PRISTIN, gugudan, and Red Velvet show girls as being forces in their own right; soloists like Ga-In, Yezi, CL, and Kahi show what it means to be a woman in K-Pop. Girl groups like TWICE and BLACKPINK dominate the charts. MOMOLAND skyrocketed to fame in the course of a month. K-Pop is no longer a man’s playground.

Sunmi’s transformation from a member of Wonder Girls to a powerful artist all on her own is indicative of this change. She has an incredible presence onstage and translating that into a music video leads something innately addicting. Her style is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s no denying that she’s very talented.

Which brings us back to “24 Hours”. The song was part of Sunmi’s reintroduction into K-Pop after leaving Wonder Girls in 2010 to pursue her academics. Sunmi would go on to resume promotions with Wonder Girls in 2015 before their quiet disbandment several years later. Sunmi is now at MakeUs Entertainment, becoming incredibly successful as a solo artist. She’s been composing much of her music on her own now, which is why it sounds so different from her early solo works (largely composed by JYP himself). Yet the seeds are planted in “24 Hours” for what Sunmi would ultimately become. Just as 2NE1 would not have been what they became without “Fire”, I feel as though Sunmi needed to do “Full Moon” and “24 Hours” to experiment as an artist before turning into the megalith she is now.

I must say, this is one of those music videos I should probably avoid watching on a loop on the quiet car of the train going home, but who cares when it’s just that drop dead gorgeous? And it’s probably better than watching something like AOA – not that AOA is bad. On the contrary, AOA is very good. But that’s not what we’re arguing here, is it? The point is, it’s a very intimate video, the kind that hath earned a 15+ rating back in the simpler times of 2013.

The song itself is fantastic, but its subject matter is something that has been tried many times before. The verses and chorus are all about how time is finite and “24 hours is not enough”, wrapped in a healthy dose of sexual implications. The beat is pop but very percussive, and yet the vocals remind me almost of a tango. The bridge is even reminiscent of that. There’s also the prevailing use of clocks ticking, especially at the very beginning – it feels like you’re listening to a time bomb.

Color-wise, this is a testament to the incredible use of color that K-Pop has. Everything is very soft, but implies sensuality. Sunmi’s hair is mauve, and it’s the only thing that’s pink in the entire music video that isn’t a lens flare. Whites and blacks are paired with faded golds, reds, and indigos. Even purple makes an appearance. There’s also a great use of metallics, off-whites, browns, and grays, particularly in the background. Sunmi’s skin is also gold-hued, which is very different from the pale skin she had in “Full Moon”. Her boyfriend for the MV is also gold-skinned. As my mother calls it, it looks like they were dipped in honey.

The story seems fairly simple at first glance. Girl meets guy, girl has sexual relationship with guy, guy stops reciprocating. But what’s interesting is that at the end of the video, after all is said and done, the entire video starts rewinding. This is probably tied to the lyric about how 24 hours are not enough time, and Sunmi is rewinding time to spend more time with her new squeeze. However, it’s possible to see this in a more melancholy way – perhaps Sunmi and her boyfriend broke up when her boyfriend stopped reciprocating, and she’s rewinding time to undo her past transgressions, or try to win him back.

The video likes to play mind games. With the time changing and the motion blurs, combined with clever cutting, the entire music video becomes a sort of dreamlike experience. I mentioned in my article on Ravi’s “NIRVANA + Alcohol” that movement is important in making a K-Pop video. That is evident here. Much of the edits revolve around how Sunmi herself moves. Keep this in mind with the dance sequences, as the cuts help you follow how she moves.

Let’s keep that in mind when analyzing the dance. The camera starts at her eye level and generally speaking stays on the ground, going up. This is commonplace in a lot of K-Pop videos, done in part to highlight the complex dance movements, also in part to emphasize the sexiness of idols (which we’ll get to in a minute). I noticed though that Sunmi is not always in the center of the shots. This actually ended up being beneficial in some cases, because we get shots of Sunmi from the side that look spectacular. There’s only so many center shots you can get from an MV.

I remember watching this video again for who knows how many times and freaking out over an incredible scene. At the very beginning we see her get lifted by her boyfriend, gently put against a wall, then rolled into a bed in a seamless transition. It looks like she’s outside at night for one minute, then suddenly in the apartment, then on the bed.

It looks like one shot, but how did they make this work? They can’t have made her do the exact same poses, that’s physically not possible (unless you’re Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black and can do LITERALLY ANYTHING). After watching the video too many times while writing this article, I can tell you how they did it, and it’s actually pretty interesting.

There is only one transition in this clip, going from the initial dance sequence to the apartment scene. The dance sequence, which involves the initial part of choreography in the rain, is done in a studio, and I would assume that the apartment scene is done in a studio as well. When the light flickers on beat with the music as it turns into the very first verse, you may notice the rain machine stops. As the camera pans to the right, keeping the focus on Sunmi’s face, we see that one of the walls has neon lights on the back as well as other assorted lights. The other assorted lights are in fact fairy lights against a curtain. The orange light from the first dance sequence fades out so it looks like they’re really outside. When Sunmi is lifted up, a deep gold light turns on and the camera moves behind a curtain of fairy lights. Since the camera isn’t focusing on them, it looks like outdoor bokeh. The couple spins and there’s a crossfade to a pitch black screen.

Not a moment too soon, we’re introduced to the apartment. If you notice however, we only ever see two walls in this scene, forming a corner. The light keeps on Sunmi and is meant to loo like moonlight, but it’s really a spotlight. Sunmi’s boyfriend rolls her to the side, in front of the camera, and onto the bed. How does this work? Well, for those of you who are familiar with BBC’s Sherlock, you may be familiar with this scene from A Scandal in Belgravia.

In this scene, the bed is pushed up with springs, and Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t move. He’s holding a bedsheets in his hands, and pulls it up to his chin. There’s a similar thing happening here. The bed is vertical. The pillows are pinned to it, as are the sheets. It’s meant to look like a horizontal bed but that’s just a trick of a change in camera angle – you can see it if you slow down the frames and watch in slow motion. The camera shifts 90 degrees to the right, but does it in a subtle way. You can also tell because Sunmi’s hair is somehow floating above her head, which wouldn’t make sense unless you saw the entire screen from a different angle.

This moment is one of brilliance. It’s cut nearly seamlessly. If you’re not paying attention, you might not have realized anything was changing at all. It’s meant to fool you. I think the fact that this whole sequence has evaded me for so long is a testament to how well it fools you. (Except the bed thing, that took me maybe three or four watches to get because I’ve seen Sherlock).

One of the things I always look for in a music video where women are the artists is how many men there are at the center of the story, and whether or not their faces are shown. When women are objectified the focus is always on their bodies, so my curiosity is always drawn to whether or not the same treatment is applied to men. A good example of this is “Kill Bill” by Brown Eyed Girls. The entire music video revolves around the original Tarantino films, but to keep the women at the center, men are either facing away from the camera, or they have a cowboy hat pulled low over their faces.

Sunmi’s video, while not going to that level of reverse objectification, does a good job of putting the focus on Sunmi herself. The camera is always facing her face in story sequences. When it isn’t, the man in the music video has his face bowed down or looking away from the camera. Sometimes his back will be to you, while Sunmi runs hands over his muscles. But more often than not, she’s looking at you.

We also get no uncomfortable shots of her body. The only ones that come close to me are her feet at the beginning of the video, when she’s sitting on the bed, and the one scene where she takes off the shirt she’s wearing, and you don’t even see her do that in full. You could make an argument that the thumb over her lip is inherently sultry but I wouldn’t necessarily qualify that as complete objectification.

There is of course the nature of wearing a men’s shirt and her shorts, something that’s considered inherently sexualized. My personal take on this is that just because something is sexy does not make it objectification. Sunmi dresses similarly in later videos, and even has undressing sequences. Furthermore, we were recently introduced to girl group Laysha, which literally revolves around being sexy, even going so far as to have a flashing scene in one of their MVs (facing away from the camera, of course), so clearly the bar for what counts as exploitation or objectification has risen significantly. I do want to talk about that more in this context but for now I’m just going to leave this screenshot of Laysha’s music video “Party Tonight” to make my point.

Laysha’s “Party Tonight”

Before we go on, let me just say I have no problem with sexy girls in videos as a general rule – I listen to AOA and Laysha and any other sexy girl band. But I do think it’s important to understand what the limits of what society at large deems appropriate. As far as I’m concerned, Sunmi’s video “24 Hours” falls within the realm of what I consider okay, if pushing it somewhat. That said, I fully acknowledge that many people would consider this kind of content inappropriate, and that is for you to determine and grapple with on your own. I am here to provide an analysis but I cannot dictate what your morals should be, only state what my morals are.

With all this in mind, it’s interesting how the video depicts intimacy. Some of it is overt, for example Sunmi lying in the bed with her supposed boyfriend, or her crawling on top of the table. But it also depicts intimacy in subtler ways. A hand going over Sunmi’s face, her sitting on the bed with her knees up, the transition into an a modern tango. Furthermore, the video uses shots that are mostly out of focus, so Sunmi and her boyfriend are the ones your eyes go to. It also uses a number of very clever transitions so that you barely notice anything but the two of them and their dances and sexual escapades.

Overall, this video does a great job of depicting Sunmi as a strong idol in her own right, but it lacks the power and punch that later videos of hers have. In those videos she’s powerful, but in this one, she’s eye catching. I think that without “24 Hours” we wouldn’t have the Sunmi we have today, just as without those early Madonna songs we wouldn’t have the Madonna we have now. While Sunmi is very different from the Sunmi of “Gashina”, “Heroine”, or “Siren”, we can appreciate who she was in “24 Hours”, and appreciate this beautiful art.

Read about how (G)I-DLE EmPOWERS WOMEN HERE!

Read about sunmi’s “noir” here!

Ravi’s “NIRVANA + ALCOHOL REMIX” – Beauty in Motion

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Warning: this song contains a fair amount of swearing. Swears are censored in the article, but I can’t say the same for the music.

This may be a K-Pop blog, which in other words means we’re talking about Korean, but today, let’s start with a different language. In Sanskrit, nirvana means “becoming extinguished.” In Buddhism, this means to “blow out” your desires and hatred in order to achieve a complete absence of suffering. It has been westernized to just mean heavenly, blissful, without care. Achieving Nirvana means that you’ve become enlightened. You’re blessed. You’re free.

Now let’s do another vocabulary lesson. Alcohol. A controlled substance, recreationally used in some cases, medically used in others. It is known for lowering inhibitions, relaxing the mind, inducing depression, and in many cases, causing fatal accidents. Ancient cultures worshipped it, and many people still do. It’s one of the oldest drugs on earth, and it’s definitely one of the most addictive. And yet, despite its destructiveness, no one can seem to pull away from it.

Kim Wonsik, known more colloquially by his stage name “Ravi”, released his mixtape NIRVANA in early 2018. Ravi has been doing mixtures for several years now in conjunction with his promotions alongside boyband VIXX. VIXX is known for two things primarily – their horror music video “Voodoo Doll”, which I’ve mentioned multiple times in my articles on Dreamcatcher, and for being invited to a private concert for the International Olympic Committee by the President of South Korea to perform their traditional Korean-style dance “Shangri-La”. Even so, each of the members has a career in their own right. Until recently, all six of them still lived together in a dorm by choice – I say until recently just because the leader decided to move into his own place right before military service – and yet, they continue doing music together as a whole. To me, that’s the mark of artists who enjoy working together.

But Ravi is an interesting case. He’s been writing for the band for years, mainly his own raps so he can keep his own tempo and intonation. You’ll see this a lot with artists, particularly in K-Pop. One of his favorite artists is G-Dragon, so we can consider him a spiritual successor thereof. But his style is unique, as his voice. Intelligent and fundamentally educational concepts are interspersed with “f***in” and other swear words. A bad*ss rap riff will be cut short by him jumping at the sight of a fly. He’ll wear rugged clothing in one shot and a full three piece suit in another. He’ll be surrounded by half-naked women in one music video and then in the next mixtape say that men who disrespect women should “eat their d***s like candy”. That is an actual lyric of his. One thing’s for sure, in an industry where there are tons of rappers, all of different walks of life and different perspectives, Ravi is enigmatic.

The music video for “NIRVANA”, however, isn’t solely for the one song. Towards the end, the entire video makes a sharp turn to something tonally different. It ends with his song “Alcohol”. The transition is so seamless, I didn’t realize they were two different songs. Nevertheless, the content of those songs is very different. “NIRVANA” is about someone who is content with himself. Alcohol is about someone who drinks to distract from his problems. It’s strange, but it’s revealing about the kind of person Ravi is. He’s someone who doesn’t see contentedness and depression as mutually exclusive subjects for an artist. It’s oddly refreshing.

The video, filmed by Brainshock Pictures, is oddly surrealist – doesn’t surprise me from the perspective of a fan of Ravi, but it’s still unlike other K-Pop videos. It does something most K-Pop videos don’t try to do. It doesn’t try to distract you. Instead it makes you calm. It makes you relaxed. You can sit back and actually enjoy his voice – and the video mimics his voice. Not the other way around. You’re not just experiencing a performance artist – you’re experiencing a musical artist.

Ravi’s voice is perfect for this kind of filmmaking because he’s very percussive in his speech and he has a good range. His songwriting is almost like painting a picture. Even I, someone who doesn’t understand Korean fluently, can feel his intention just from the way he raps. He paints pictures with his voice. Combine that with superb sound mixing on the part of Ravi, PUFF, and Park Jimin, the guest singer on the album and you have something masterful. Whether or not you like rap, you can tell it’s handled with care – therefore the video must be handled the same way.

NIRVANA

“NIRVANA” as a song is an experience in of itself. It starts out with static that faintly sounds like the outdoors, then moves into chimes with a very soft melody behind them, and a woman speaking in what I believe is French. What’s interesting is what the video does in these opening notes: the first shot, during the static, is of Ravi standing in what appears to be a desert of some kind, flipped upside down. The next shots are of Ravi sitting on top of a rock, Ravi blindfolded standing with the phases of the moon, two Ravis mirrored across the sky, and Ravi standing with the blindfold, Ravi standing in the desert again, and a sunset.

What’s incredible is how these shots are colored and edited to match the music. The music has hardly begun, and yet we have something that works with it perfectly visually. The entire music video goes along these lines, making something with very little story and instead, aesthetics. It’s made to make you feel good, and that’s what it does.

Let’s talk about the editing for a hot minute. When editing music videos, you have to keep one eye on the sound waves and another on the viewport. You also have to be mindful of how the visuals themselves capture the sound – you don’t need to edit a clip if you have visual components already that indicate rhythm. The screen is going to be your friend and your enemy.

The movement that already exists on screen is mostly Ravi’s movements. He’s by himself for most of these shots, and when he’s with someone, he’s with himself. So how do you make more movement, more beats, out of his movements? Well you follow his hands. With almost every sweep, every gesture, some effect makes the video pulse, or glitch. If there isn’t, there will likely be a cut in the video, or a beat drop in the song to capture that movement.

The filmmakers aren’t content to just let him be by himself and let that be a continuous uninterrupted shot. There might be a prism glitch, or it might be colored such that it’s clearly edited. The thing is, it feels like he’s running through a parallel dimension more than it feels like there are effects layered on top. There are moments where it feels unreal – but it’s also not really meant to feel real. It’s meant more to capture the mood.

Some of the effects are a sort of scrubbing, as if you’re messing with a record player. Others are retiming, giving the same effect. Pictures will be played on reverse and then played again forward. Sometimes you see Ravi and you’ll see other versions of him superimposed over him. Sometimes the screen moves almost like a liquid, as if the visuals themselves are rolling off Ravi’s tongue. Even if you see the same effect twice, it never feels like the same effect.

The colors are very bold and deeply saturated, and yet it’s constantly changing. Ravi runs through pink fields, dances in purple ones, hovers under turquoise skies and runs alongside an orange ocean. It feels like they went to Home Depot and plucked the prettiest, boldest colors off a wall, regardless of what they were. And yet the colors are picked for specific reasons – blue is associated with peace, purple invokes romanticism, pink invokes playfulness, sunset orange catches the eye, and the spots of red create a sense of boldness. Combine that with he prevailing black in the clothing and shadows and you have this ambiguous calm. It’s a miniature Nirvana.

Symbolically I’m not 100% sure what the video is meant to convey other than an emotion, but I have a guess. I think part of it is meant to inherently be about wonderment. We see numerous times a moon that’s almost pulled to Earth. It’s like a lite Majora’s Mask.

However there also appears to be a theme of solitude, as well as mirroring. Mirroring in particular seems to be a theme as we see Ravi interact with himself. If we combine all the motifs (wonderment, solitude, and mirroring) we can assume that it’s meant to be about someone accepting themselves and seeing themselves in the same cosmic way we see the moon.

ALCOHOL

Let’s juxtapose this with “ALCOHOL” – the song “ALCOHOL” is about someone actively trying to avoid their problems. The video features a lot of typical hip-hop imagery (dancing and cars mostly) but it has a different feeling to it. The dancing seems less like happy dancing and more like people trying to bury their problems.

Ravi barely smiles in this video but his expression isn’t calm, it’s aggressive. It’s like he’s pushing you back with his face. He wants you to not feel bad for him.

Red is a prevailing theme in this one – red, the color of boldness and passion. But there is an inherent darkness to it. It’s the color of blood, and it’s the color of a siren. It is a color that can be both cold and harsh as well as warm and inviting. This entire part of the music video is a lit fire, of neon lights and underground dance clubs – a welcoming and yet toxic environment. Dance clubs thrive on physical human connection and yet omit verbal connection. And verbal connection is the entirety of Ravi’s medium.

We see Ravi in the video under lights, drinking and rapping, moving between people, looking around as if trying to look for people he could know. There’s an inherent nihilism to it. It’s like he’s not searching for a person, but for a purpose.

We sometimes see people look at the camera and make eye contact with it, as if they’re looking at him, or perhaps through him.

I’m going to go out on limb that Ravi isn’t literally an alcoholic but instead is trying to draw on the cultural understanding of alcohol in Korea. Drinking is not only a pastime in Korea – it’s a staple of how people interact. It’s prevalent in dramas regardless of the kind. Being drunk is not okay and yet you’re expected to keep drinking. Combine that with the high suicide rate in Korea and you have a recipe for a number of problems. Further mixing in the pressures of idol culture, and Ravi seems not to be talking about alcohol itself – he’s talking about pain.

Why did he choose to put “NIRVANA” and “ALCOHOL” together? I mean you could argue that it’s done for solely the music, but there’s something special about pairing up a song about loving yourself with a song about your sorrows. It sounds like someone who loves himself but is still trying to search for something in his life that he can’t really tell is missing. It could also be someone who only learns to move past their heartache by loving themselves. That would mean that from a story perspective, “Alcohol” is before “NIRVANA” but that said – I don’t think that there is meant to be a story here. If anything, the complete music video is a character study. We see someone navigating a world and learning to love himself while still finding himself trapped in this endless cycle of harm.

And yet, in spite of all this, the video is peaceful. It wants you to get pulled into a catharsis that the visuals create, and feel what it’s trying to get you to feel. You want to reach out, you want to know, and you want to understand. But you also want to be relaxed. You don’t want to want anything. In a way, there’s no video more perfect for a song called “NIRVANA”. It lulls you into a state of bliss and yet is aware of all of the agony it tries to communicate.

Ravi is an incredible artist. There is no question about it. He puts his thoughts there for you. More than that – he puts his heart in front of you. He wants you to feel something. And you feel it from he vibration of his voice to the stares off camera. “NIRVANA + ALCOHOL” is composed of both visual and auditory craftsmanship. And in a time where we’re oversaturated by boy groups under technicolor lights, it’s nice to see an artist who has a mind beyond the stage.

Dreamcatcher’s “PIRI” – A Complete Deconstruction

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Blending styles. Splitting personalities. Looking into a mirror. Welcome to the magnificent world of Dreamcatcher’s music video, “PIRI”.

Since I’ve spent the last five weeks talking about Dreamcatcher, I want to touch on their newest release, “PIRI”, before moving onto other bands. “PIRI” blew me away the first time I saw it for a number of reasons. Everything about it kept me on the edge of my seat. The Korean word piri (Hangul: 비리) means “pipe”, thus the chorus means “play the pipe”. This invokes a pied piper image – the story of a pied piper being that of a super that led children into a cave with his music, never to be seen again. Thus “play the pipe” is probably a lyric indicating a summoning of some kind, as in “summon me to you, even if it means I lose myself in you.”

Why is “PIRI” important? Well the song and video are blends. Everything is a blend of styles, aesthetics, and it doesn’t hover over a particular aesthetic for you to get bored of it or find it overly predictable. Even within the genre of horror/thriller that the video has, it has a variety of aesthetic elements and subgenres represented. Even within the costuming, a number of different styles are at play. Even still, there are these divergences of aesthetics – pink juxtaposed with deep red, white juxtaposed with black, harshness juxtaposed with softness. Even on top of all of this, there is this consistent motif of mirroring, of doubling. Even within the chorus, “피리를 불어라,” or “pirireul bureora” (the aforementioned “play the pipe”) there is this beautiful repetition to the letters and sounds. So we have this blending, breaking, and reflecting. It’s like looking at a prism that refracts light into beautiful colors.

Let’s start with blending. K-Pop is a genre known for blending aesthetics together. Whether it’s in the music, or it’s in the music videos, it’s constantly mixing ideas. Even the languages are constantly being mixed – English hooks, Korean verses, Chinese and Japanese versions, sometimes even pieces of other languages like French or Spanish. Some would argue that this muddles the work, others would argue that taking pieces from other genres or cultures is stealing, but as someone who was born into a mix of cultures – my mother is Chilean and my father is Polish-American – I find this to be an admirable quality of the genre. It indicates that it’s constantly changing and bettering itself. It’s something I want to cover in greater detail in more articles, particularly with Super Junior’s push for more Spanish-language songs and the genre’s push as a whole to Tropical House and Latin beats in its music.

In my earlier articles, I grouped everything I analyzed into different components – music, color and costuming, story, and actual technical aspects of the film. For this article, though, we need to get a little more detailed. I will analyze the music and general technical aspects of the music video first, the color schemes, then move into each member’s individual costumes and inserts.

MUSIC

The song consists of three styles: pop, rock, and trap. “PIRI” starts with an electronic siren-like sound and has some loops of claps, clicks, and beats that are used in a lot of pop songs as of recently. However, there are also these electric guitar and drum pieces, particularly in the lead up to the chorus and the chorus. Thus it still fits squarely in the rock aesthetic that Dreamcatcher has. As for the trap part of the genre, the rap breaks in the song with Gahyeon and Dami are trap. It’s highly punctuated and aspirated – Korean is a language that lends itself well to rap in general because it is very percussive but also has no auditory spaces in running speech. But Gahyeon and Dami also have the right vocal quality for it – Dami has a lower register and a very fast voice, whereas Gahyeon also has the power and punch necessary to make this work while still having a moderately high voice.

Vocally speaking, most of the vocals are pop style. Unlike many K-Pop songs, there isn’t an attempt at making the singers sound more mature with vocal fry. For those of you who don’t know, vocal fry is the popping sound you’ll often hear at the end of sentences. In some dialects of English it’s considered standard, and in some languages it’s considered a tonal change that’s meant to differentiate words and vowel sounds. But if you speak American English or Korean, this is not a standard vocalic feature – older generations associate it with an attempt to be cool and thus failing, younger generations associate it with maturity or sultriness. Even though both sexes use this at equal levels of frequency, it’s most often associated with (and owned by) women. In K-Pop, I’ve noticed that this is frequently used to sound sexy (Hani from EXID, I’m looking at you; you used this A LOT in “I Love You”.) Dreamcatcher, on the other hand, doesn’t add this quality to their voices, which means to me that they’re working hard on keeping their pitch together as opposed to going for a specific aesthetic in their voices.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

Following up on “What”, this music video is shot on a sound stage, most of the rooms made to look like stone tunnels and rooms. There is an exception, of course – the heavenly white room with the large windows that’s meant to look like the inside of a large atrium or ballroom. The white room is two stories tall, approximately, while the stone rooms are one story with an occasional space that’s taller for aesthetic purposes. There is also one stone room with a red curtain in the background to give some color and maintain continuity.

Camerawork in this is done well, but it’s not extravagant. It usually maintains motion, with some shots that are static so that the motion of members or other objects isn’t distracted from. The biggest place you notice this in “PIRI” is the dance parts, particularly at the beginning. When the members all move away from JiU in the first moments of the film, the camera is stationary to get a sense of motion. Then when the camera is pulled out to see the elaborate opening dance moves, it barely moves until the members do this move here.

This is done to underscore the motion of the dance as opposed to taking away from it. Then as the beat ramps up, so does the camera in most cases. It’s also important to note that most K-Pop MVs have a distinct lack of close-ups, but this MV has plenty.

In story scenes, stationary camera is more common, but there’s a reason for that. Stationary cam and one point perspective are considered horror staples. Dreamcatcher’s only non-horror MV so far has been “What”, so it makes sense that “PIRI” would follow horror since that has been what’s given Dreamcatcher the most success. Even in areas where you’d expect a lack of motion, however, the shots do maintain consistent zooms or slight shakiness.

Transitions and effects appear at multiple times in this video, but in subtle instances. It’s not usually done to distract but instead to enhance what’s happening on film. I did notice a lot of slow motion and doubling to give a sense of otherworldliness. Sometimes clips are even sped up for rhythm. The most off-putting effects for me were the TV effects and the “luma keying”. Keying is the process by which you remove a color from a film – effectively, the technical term for green screen effects. Luma keying is an effect used to cut out either black or white in a film – luma is the color correction term for shades of black and white. Think of luma as referring to luminescence. Anyway, those two effects were the worst for me (I’m a notorious user of the luma keyer myself but I use it either consistently or sparingly, it’s not really something you can “kind of” do without going all in.)

I actually found the most evident use of effects, the mirroring, to be the least intrusive. The best effects are the ones where you don’t notice they’re being used.

Lighting in general consists of pseudo-natural lighting, spot lighting, and strobes. I say pseudo because lighting is never natural on a sound stage, but it’s possible to make it appear natural. In the heavenly room, this is done likely with diffused pancake lights behind the window, then some more diffused lights inside the room to make sure the shadows are not overtly dramatic. At this point in my school career I have worked with those lights on a sound stage, and that’s the best way I can approximate that look. I would imagine the exposure on the camera is also brought up so as to make the room seem brighter. The darker bolder colors would be, as you say in the industry, “fixed in post.”

In the other dance sequences, the lighting is fairly dramatic and from the front, with consistent strobing and no backlights. The rest of the film is done with cinematic lighting, often golds and blues, and often simultaneously. It is meant to look like it’s underground, at least partially. Beams of light are shot from above, angled to imitate sunset.

COLOR

As stated before, the white room is colored white with very few pops of color, but bold ones. When we see Yoohyeon in it, the entire room has a warm sheen, and her hair and skin are pink and gold hued, respectively. However, in the dance sequences, the room has a much cooler look to it. This is likely done to differentiate the two scenes and also bring out the red and black. Some of the members maintain a gold hues in their skin while others have cooler hues – I would imagine that this is representative of their actual skin tone. Even when there are attempts at whitewashing idols (N from VIXX and Yuri from SNSD/Girls’ Generation being among the victims of it) you can still see hues of their actual skin tone below all the “corrections”.

The second dance scene, the underground one, has very cool tones. The biggest pop of color is the mauve/pink of their dresses. The background is a greenish blue, and the strobe lights are a blue light. The floor seems to be brown, either wood or a wood-like flooring, but since it’s a stage floor it’s whitened by use and dust. This isn’t a bad thing, actually – it makes the film seem more theatrical and, when done right, that can be beneficial. It reminds me personally of my days doing theater videos. (Completely unrelated: if you’re ever in the Washington, DC area, check Georgetown Day School’s high school theater program and see if they have any shows – you will not be disappointed. My first real music videos were for that program and there will always be a soft spot in my heart for that time they did the Odyssey when I was a kid and had a stage that was an actual swimming pool covered in plexiglass.)

The cinematic shots are either very warm toned or cool toned. However, those are not mutually exclusive. Shots like Siyeon’s are mostly dark blue and with blue undertones. Gahyeon’s, on the other hand, is very warm. It’s still eerie and gives the underground feel, but it is definitely differentiating. Then you have parts like Handong’s, where it’s mostly cold but the foreground has some warm reds and yellows, or JiU’s, where there’s a warm room but the fill lighting is cool. In juxtaposition to JiU’s main scene, the TV sequence where she sees herself on the television mirrored is done in very cool tones with some off-white – this is the only time in the entire video where the color grading just did not work for me.

INDIVIDUALS

From here, we will move into individual shots, and what the costumes and plot says about each member. The members are evenly spaced: I would argue that Siyeon and Yoohyeon are the only ones with slightly more content than the others visually. Unlike my article on “Fly High”, where I uncovered every member in order of who has more, I will cover each member in order of appearance in the MV.

Yoohyeon

Yoohyeon’s inserts have her in two similar outfits, but both giving off very different vibes due to the colors. She mainly sports a short double-breasted coat with long translucent fabric around the waist and the buttons and opening in the front. Her shoes are combat boots. She has dangling earrings and short nails alternating in white and black. When her outfit is colored red and black in the white room, the body of the coat is black, the fabric around the waist is red, the combat boots are black, and her hair is in a ponytail. In the darker dance scene, the body of the coat is pink, boots are white, her hair again down, and she also sports a black tie. In the cinematic sequences, she wears a white gown, and her hair is in a half-pony.

The costumes, as well as context from earlier mvs, can give us insight into the kind of character that Yoohyeon is getting us to see. Pink is a softer color generally associated with innocence, but the tie indicates to me masculinity or maturity. So her pink outfit gives the impression of someone of a softer disposition. The half pony reminds me of the hairstyle she had in “Fly High”. However, she looks like a queen practically in the red and black outfit. It’s a commanding appearance. I might be reading too much into the subtler details, but the alternating nails might indicate duality.

Yoohyeon starts us off in the MV walking into the white room, where there is a single brown chair. She seems confused as to her surroundings, and finds what appears to be a horn on top of the chair. She examines it before seeing something that shocks her, then runs towards it. When the horn falls on the ground it starts leaking black fluid – black liquid is considered a typical horror image, usually leaking out of the eyes or something else that shouldn’t be.

Yoohyeon’s final shot is of her looking up towards the ceiling to see a mirror image of herself looking down.

Siyeon

Siyeon’s costuming is very mature, and I don’t mean in the sexy way (although yes, also in the sexy way). She mostly wears a suit for her inserts, one that shows her midriff. Her eyeliner is smokey and her lips are very light pink, and her hair is often pulled back in a ponytail. She does have a black scarf tucked into her side as well. With the pink she looks more effeminate while still being mature-looking, but the red and black makes her look much more adult and fierce.

Her inserts mainly take place in the underground rooms, where she’s wearing a nightgown similar to Yoohyeon’s, if not identical. It does fit her differently though; she looks less like a young girl and more like a woman in a retro time period. Her hair is in a side braid, which furthers a timeless look.

During her inserts, she keeps running through doorways, only coming back through a different doorway into the same room. She does this multiple times, before leaning against a wall and clutching her head.

This scene reminds me of Reimi’s alleyway in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable. In Jojo, the alleyway is haunted by a ghost, and you could get caught running through it and looping around no matter how many times you try to get out. Only Reimi, the ghost of a murdered 15 year old who haunts the alley, knows the way out, but she warns you that if you turn around to look over your shoulder, your soul will get ripped from your body and you’ll be dragged into hell. I don’t necessarily think this is a reference, especially since Jojo is Japanese and Dreamcatcher is Korean. But since Dreamcatcher’s motifs surround ghosts and magic, I wanted to note this comparison.

Siyeon is leaning against the wall when suddenly a hand reaches out from a doorway across from her. She stares in horror, covering her mouth and seemingly about to cry. She runs out of the room before it cuts away to Handong.

Siyeon gets one more series of inserts towards the end, where she is in the white room and sees a series of white ladders. She climbs them and sits on the top few rungs, waiting for something, before clasping her hands together. We’ll come back to this.

Her nails are long and a blue-gray, coming into points, which makes me think she’s even fiercer.

Handong

Handong wears a thinner dress with a tulle-style skirt. The front is ruffled, almost like it was clasped together, and she has a scarf tied around one of her arms. The red gives a more artistic vibe when she is seen in it, something a bit more edgy and contemporary, but the pink gives off a whimsical vibe even with the combat boots.

Yes, I spend a lot of time on the colors each girl is wearing, but there’s good reason for that – the way each is used emphasizes something different about their personality. Her nails are also clear or white, it’s hard to tell, but it gives the impression of someone who isn’t pretentious. It does bother me that visually speaking she gets less attention than any of the other members, but as we’ve seen from “Fly High” and “What”, this is fairly normal for Dreamcatcher’s company.

She enters a room with a bunch of clocks on the wall, and two sets of candles in the foreground. Like the other girls, she’s wearing a nightgown. The clocks are all from different time periods, and all set to different times. She seems confused but not to the extent that Yoohyeon was.

Suddenly all the clocks start ringing, causing her to clutch her head like it’s pounding. She rips one off the wall and throws it, before running off.

We get one last insert of her at the end. In this, she sees a series of broken mirror pieces refracting light, before looking at the camera.

Gahyeon

Gahyeon is the maknae but they manage to nail something more mature for her while still making her accessible for the younger audience. She has a coat on, along with a sash over her chest and a cap in the heavenly area. In the underground area her hair is tied back. Her makeup is noticeably sparkly, with sparkly eyeliner under the eyes and lips that are mostly pink, but red on the interior.

Unlike the other girls, her outfit in the heavenly area is predominantly black, with a red sash – probably done to differentiate her from the other girls, but it shows that she’s moving in a more mature direction after earlier videos pigeonholed her into schoolgirl outfits. Her nails are also long and sparkly red. Her nightgown outfit has her hair down, which, combined with the nails and makeup, is a more eye-catching look than Handong had.

Gahyeon has a room similar to Handong’s, where there are a number of phones on the wall. One of them rings – we can know this from a similar effect used to indicate noise for Handong’s clocks – and Gahyeon picks up, clearly afraid of what’s going to be on the line. Her eyes go wide and someone covers her mouth, stifling what I assume is a scream, before she drops the phone. I actually thought this was her own hand at first, until I realized that the hand had no manicure and Gahyeon’s nails are bright red.

Her final shot is her in one of the dark underground rooms, with a light coming from outside, as if she found her way out.

JiU

JiU has my favorite outfit out of anyone in the music video. She has a dress with a tulle skirt and a train behind it, and a corset around the center. It works really well in both the pink and the red, but I’d like to note that the red dress almost looks like her stomach is exposed through the corset (it’s actually white but since she’s relatively pale skin and no one else is wearing white, it creates a sort of optical illusion), which is meant to draw attention to her physical appeal without being overtly sexualizing in any way.

The full picture does make her look like a leader, though I must say I don’t find that the pink hair really matches the boldness of her outfit. I didn’t get a good look at her nails, but from what I could tell they looked clear. Her makeup is very similar to Gahyeon’s. It’s meant to draw attention to her but still make her look sweet. I don’t think I have to reiterate the thing about the nightgowns at this point but yes, she does have one too.

JiU walks through a darkened hallway, filled with lamps and furniture. She finds a TV playing a video of herself sitting next to a woman in a veil. She takes off the veil in the video, and it’s herself duplicated. Both of them look at the camera, and JiU runs away in shock and horror. We notice later that both versions of the girl look at each other when they think the other isn’t looking. It’s surprisingly less than most MVs give JiU, but considering how other members have been shafted in her favor in the past, I’ll take it.

SuA

SuA has an outfit similar to Yoohyeon’s, but only with a train on one side. Her hair is down in both zones. I don’t have a whole lot to say about her costuming, but her hair is up in her nightgown scenes. I actually do like the dark red for her, I don’t think it’s overdone. If I have to differentiate the pink and red outfits in any particular way, I would say that the pink seems almost more wintery on her, whereas the red and black outfit makes her seem more artsy and modern.

SuA runs through the underground rooms before stopping by a cabinet and a few chairs covered with scary horror dolls. She examines one of them, which is wearing a red dress and some lace on the hair, before the other dolls slowly turn to look at her. As someone who was afraid of her Madame Alexander dolls as a kid, I got chills when I first saw this. SuA jumps and drops the doll, caught off guard completely.

Her final shots are of her standing in front of a mirror – when she reaches out to it, it ripples out from her hand like she’s in the Matrix.

Dami

Dami has a full suit as well, but unlike Siyeon, it doesn’t intentionally accentuate any particular features of her body. It seems like they just wanted to go for a bad*ss look for her. This translates very well in both colors, particularly because the top is completed with a cape and her hair looks like Ga-In’s circa Sixth Sense or Paradise Lost. Her nails are short and patterned. It’s cutting edge, it’s aggressive, I love it.

Dami’s inserts consist one again of her running through the hallway similar to the one that we see Siyeon running through, only this time it’s lit very differently. It seems less like Dami is running through the same hallway several times but instead like she’s trapped in a labyrinth. She sees a door on the end of the hallway with a lamp in front of it. She walks up to it and goes to open the door, only to get yanked inside.

Her final shots we see her walking through hallways in what looks like the heavenly room, though lit almost like it’s at dusk. She runs her hands over the walls before clasping them together and looking at the camera, like she’s in the midst of praying.

Analysis

At this point this has been my longest article yet, but with good reason. There’s so much happening and so many small details. It took me two train rides to and from Washington, DC to write this. As a result, I’ll keep my final analysis brief. I discussed at the beginning how mixing aesthetics, sounds, etc. is a feature of K-Pop, but let’s branch out into actual themes of the work itself.

The album that “PIRI” is on is called “End of Nightmare”, which would initially leave you to believe that “PIRI” seems to be the amalgamation of the individual nightmares of each of the girls. But nothing is so simple with Dreamcatcher. Nothing ever is. The recurring themes of fear and running permeate throughout, but so do themes of duality and changing. If we are to take the song’s title, “PIRI”, for what it literally means, the girls are probably answering some sort of call. I don’t necessarily think this is a literal call like playing a pipe would lead you to believe, but luring them somehow. The thing is the pied piper, which I assume is where the song derives its meaning, is both written as a malevolent figure and a benevolent figure. Some say he leads children to their death, others say to their protection. So right away, we have a duality in understanding whether the call is good or bad.

I’m fairly certain most, if not all Dreamcatcher MVs take place in a connected universe of some kind, and if we are to believe that, it seems that there is some sort of mirror world, alternate dimension. I’ve compared this idea to Niel Gaiman’s Coraline in the past – a mirror world where the physics are different and it’s meant to lure you in and keep you there forever. I definitely think there’s something to that analysis, but not completely – I mean, if you saw the entire MV with women with button eyes, it would be ten times more horrifying. I actually think this is meant to be something closer to something like the original Silent Hill franchise, where it doesn’t really matter why something is happening but what it means. In which case,  we don’t need an explanation for how they’re trapped in the mirror world. They just are.

I think that the mirror world is meant to be some sort of purgatory state and the girls are all trying to break out of it. They were trapped against their will with their fears and/or sins. However, if SuA’s final insert is any indication, they learn to manipulate it to their will. I have a theory for why they can manipulate it, but that’s an article for another time.

The thing that struck me as most odd was Siyeon climbing the ladder. She’s definitely in the heavenly room for some reason, but she sits on the ladder and waits. The hand clasping is also odd too – and Dami does it as well. So what does it mean? My assumption is that Siyeon found a way to get to heaven, but didn’t want to leave her friends behind. So instead, she waits for them at the ladder.

The video overall is immensely powerful. Everything down to the tiniest detail is constructed. Yes, I do have my criticism. But the video was so beautiful that even those criticisms are dwarfed in comparison to the magnitude of the wonder that one gets from watching this. I kept noticing new things as I watched. And yet, my work with this is not done. I still have much to uncover. I want to move onto other bands, but there’s more I have to say.

In the final scenes of the MV, we see all seven girls and their faces overlayed, before seeing Yoohyeon standing in front of a table with a number of candles on it. This invokes a sort of last-supper imagery, but I don’t think Yoohyeon is Jesus. That would be weird. Anyway, other girls all appear, and clasp hands together. The camera pulls out and the room goes dark, with a film filter over them.

I think this means all the girls choose to stay in this dimension – they’ve come to terms with their situation, could very well leave at any point, but have new power…and unfinished business.

What could this unfinished business be?

Well. I’ll leave you here, with this.