BTS’s WINGS: Lie (Video Analysis)
Attention: This post is done in 8 parts! Please read them in order!
Intro | Begin | Lie | Stigma | First Love | Reflection | Mama | Awake
#2 LIE – Jimin
“My parents’ house made up one realm…This realm was familiar to me in almost every way–mother and father, love and strictness, model behavior, and school.”
This quote comes right after the quote from Jungkook’s video. It’s in the same chapter. There’s actually some of the quote excluded. This establishes a precedent to take what’s relevant and leave out the rest. This isn’t supposed to exactly match the book. At first reading, I don’t think it’s immediately obvious how this quote relates to the video. There’s no one else in the video besides Jimin. No mother and father. No school. As well, there aren’t any home settings. What I think this quote is getting at, is that all these things create an environment where it is impossible to be genuine in. Conform to who your parents want you to be. Match this strict ideal. Always exhibit model behavior. Behave yourself and excel in school. There are so many expectations placed on you that it’s easier to pretend, easy to fall into lies.
In that V broadcast Rap Monster did, he talked a little bit about this lies concept. He said that there were many things about lies and truth. This lies/truth dichotomy also matches the illusion/truth duality other videos touch on. He also said that Jimin would blame himself for his mistakes, always dwelling on what he did wrong. He would drive himself into a corner, always running and yet trapped in lies. He blamed himself regardless of the truth.
The inability to meet expectations and trying to keep up images inevitably leads to mistakes. Trying and lying gets more tangled and more complicated. And you can’t keep it up. This is what leads eventually to Jimin’s fall.
Another thing to note about the video is that the transitions are uncomfortably fluid. They reveal things we didn’t realize were there, things we didn’t expect to happen. For example, at one point, Jimin falls backwards and the wall opens behind him to reveal him sitting on a bed. There are many other instances, as well. I think the overall effect is to show how one lie leads into another. Everything flows into something else, hiding truth and creating unexpected results.
The video begins with a shot of the forest. It at first appears to show an actual forest. However, the camera zooms out and reveals that it’s only a picture/painting. It’s a representation masquerading as reality. It’s a lie.
The painting appears to be suspended in air. In contrast to the rest of the videos, Jimin’s has a white background rather than a black one or a room setting. The only other member with a white setting is J-Hope, who is Jimin’s previous partner. This picture/painting is also shown in J-Hope’s video. I think the image of nature also contrasts the highly artificial white setting. Though the image is a lie, it is still more real than this setting. The white background, as well, gives off asylum vibes. The pajama-like clothing that both of them wear also contributes to this. Both Jimin and J-Hope will touch with ideas of sanity and insanity.
There’s a camera pointed at Jimin, as if his progress at an asylum is being documented. There’s a mannequin arm on the table. The mannequin stands in for an actual human presence. There are a few things that this means. First, I believe the human it substitutes are adults. An adult would be the one documenting him and testing him like this. So, Jimin considers the adults in his life to be not genuine. Second, it could mean that he has sociopathic tendencies as he’s unable to connect to others emotionally. To him, they are more objects than flesh and blood. Third, the mannequin arm is a fabricated thing. It suggests that maybe Jimin is the only real thing in this whole place. He literally inhabits a lie.
This is a pretty obvious reference to the psychiatric ink blot test. Psychology was also a huge influence on Hermann Hesse as he was writing Demian. The image on the card is Jungkook’s circle. I’m not sure if the reference to Jungkook is supposed to mean anything, other than a simple reference to the video that came before it.
In response to the ink blot test, Jimin exhibits some sociopathic tendencies. Some examples of these traits are: glibness and superficial charm, manipulative and conning, grandiose sense of self, pathological lying, lack of remorse, shallow emotions, incapacity for love, need for stimulation, lack of empathy, and a lack of a realistic life plan. Pathological lying goes without saying as the video is titled lies, and I already hinted at a lack of empathy. Here he also shows a glibness and superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self, and a lack of remorse. He’s in an asylum setting. His sanity is being tested. And yet he in no way appears to be taking this seriously. He smiles arrogantly, doesn’t really cooperate. He gives off the sense that he’s only here for his own amusement. He lacks remorse, and puts forth a glib and arrogant facade.
Here is a shot of Jimin dancing in front of a rot iron bed. Again, it ties into the asylum theme. The dance involves a choking motion, as if he’s choking on lies. As well, there’s an inversion of colors–the same thing viewed in a drastically different light.
This is Jimin’s circle. It has a bite taken out of it, like an apple. Throughout this concept, we’ll see apples, especially in association with Jimin. I think apples most famously recall the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is often represented as an apple. As a result, they fall from grace and into sin. So the apple can represent temptation. Apples also appear in Demian. At some point in the novel, Sinclair fabricates a story about stealing some apples. In this context, apples represent lies.
More arrogant Jimin. Also note that the time on the screen is the same as the time of the video. This might be an attempt to break the fourth wall? But instead of calling attention to the fact that this is fake, to instead say it’s more genuine than we imagine? Rap Monster did say that they aren’t playing characters here.
These three screenshots are references to J-Hope. The first is J-Hope’s circle. The second martini glass full of pills is a shot directly out of J-Hope’s video. In the third shot, he reaches for someone who’s not there. Being that it’s another asylum-like bed, and J-Hope is the other member placed in this context, it’s pretty safe to assume her person he’s missing is J-Hope.
There’s a street sign in Korean. I tried to look this up, but I couldn’t really find anything. If anyone knows anything, go ahead and let me know. Again, there’s also the inversion of colors.
This scene parallels Run. Just another reference to J-Hope and the past pairing.
Caught in a lie,
Find me, who was once pure,
Inside of this lie, I can’t get out,
Bring back my smile,
Caught in a lie,
Take me out of this hell,
From this pain, I can’t get away,
Save me, the one taking this punishment
These are the lyrics from the song included. In contrast to his previous behavior in the video, these lyrics are very remorseful. There’s genuine longing to escape the cycle of lies, very real pain as a result of them. It suggests that his exhibited sociopathic behaviors themselves might be a lie, a guard put up to protect himself.
Jimin is in darkness and water drenches him–save that the water is not falling but is moving in reverse. I think I would probably say that this water also represents the subconscious as it does in Jungkook’s video, but I think that because of Jimin’s suicide in the bathtub, it makes more sense to say that this a reference to that. The water moving backward would represent a regret.
Again, the piano represents loss. This is also a reference to Suga, who is Jimin’s new partner for this concept.
Here we see a real apple dropping in water. The apple is Jimin’s symbol, the water would be the water of the bathtub.
And here we have the iconic bathtub. The water is actually moving backward into the tub, as if he’s trying to turn back time, to go back to the time he was pure, to erase his hardship. The cycle of lies has made him yearn for an escape, which we know was in suicide. Here it is just revealed that it was done out of pain and even a cause for regret.
Then Jimin falls backward into the tub.
He resurfaces in the rot iron bed. This is another example of a fluid transition. I also think that it emphasizes the transition between worlds.
Jimin begins to reach upward, as the ceiling moves upward as well. I think this can be interpreted in either of two ways. First, Jimin longs to escape and this is the removal of constraints. Second, the removal of the ceiling and the curtain walls is removing the world by which he orients himself which would lead to further disorientation.
Here we have a conglomerate image. First we have the image of the forest. Jimin is at the center of the screen, his circle image imposed behind him. Then at his feet, there’s water. In all this, the colors are inverted. I think this is meant to symbolize lies (i.e. the tree picture, the apple) and escape (i.e. the water) with Jimin caught between them.
Jimin’s head snaps back in a twitching motion. This represents his fractured person: the real him versus his lies, his desire to escape versus his desire to perpetuate the only cycle he knows. It could also symbolize fractured perceptions of reality, or a manic energy trapped in one person. He takes a bite of the apple, showing that he ultimately chooses to give into temptation, ultimately chooses to swallow more lies.
This is pretty much the same shot from the beginning. It makes the video cyclical, just as lies are cyclical.
This is a lyric from “Run.” They express feelings of being lost, of reaching out without rescue, still needing to be saved.
I’m chasing butterflies, so lost in dreams I follow your traces Show me the way, please stop me Let me breathe
Love is a lie, lie
After he takes a bite of the apple, he looks changed. Before he was arrogant and untouched but now he looks solemn or perturbed or mad. There’s a little twitch at the lips. Ironically, as he chooses to perpetuate the cycle of lies, we see his truer emotions. We see, finally, his inner thoughts behind the facade.
This is a lyric from “Save Me.”
I want to breathe, I hate this night I want to wake up, I hate this dream I’m trapped inside of myself and I’m dead
Jimin changes the angle of the camera, points it directly at the painting. It’s possible that this shot of the painting is meant to be the shot of the painting at the beginning of the video, and this whole video is a record of itself. A less complex interpretation is that this signals a shift in perspective.
This shot is a direct parallel to J-Hope’s video. This also foreshadows a similar moment of Jin staring at the painting in the MV. Jimin stands right in front of the painting, stares at it. This is probably the most “insane” thing that Jimin does the whole video. The way he sets up the camera to watch him looking at the painting, it implies he’ll be there for a long time. In his disturbed mental state, he resolves himself, in the end, to stare for an indefinite amount of time at a lie. It’s as if he’s given up telling his own lies, but he’s still trapped in one.
Like all the videos, we end with the circle, although this has already been introduced earlier in the video. Again, it’s the apple.
The links to all of the posts will be here. Again, please read them in order!
Intro | Begin | Lie | Stigma | First Love | Reflection | Mama | Awake
