OMG dream on (Part II)
The doodles are alive, are you?
*This post is divided into two parts. Click here for Part I.
Duplicitous devices
Now that we’ve established that NewJeans is entrapped in a living dream which, to a certain degree, threatens to efface their identity, we can examine other MV elements that subtly illustrate the dichotomous nature of idol-hood.
a) Day vs. Night dichotomy: NewJeans during the day dance to OMG in full zest while decked from head to toe in idol attire. One look at them and you know they’re K-pop idols performing inside an asylum (try reading this one out loud). In contrast, NewJeans at night still perform in the same setting but in white billowy gowns that take on a pajama-y look. The girls are freer in their expressions and they incorporate a bit of play into the dance that reminds viewers that NewJeans is just a group of goofy teenage girls. If you’re fast you should have caught on by now—the day performance represents NewJeans on stage when the lights are on, while the nighttime performance represents the girls off stage when the lights are off. As such, the Hee-soo we see towards the end of the video is sitting alone in darkness because NewJeans is no longer performing.
b) Identity vs. Role dichotomy: we see at the beginning of the film that the girls are discussing who they are. However, they don’t seem to realize that they are conflating the concepts of identity and role. Each of the girls assumes a different role within the music video and mistakenly believes that this defines who they are. We already discussed in Part I how Hanni supplants her identity with the role of an iPhone, which is a metaphor for the idol dream. The other four girls all have distinct, symbolic roles of their own that warrant some analysis.
i. Princess Haein: NewJean’s maknae (the youngest) represents romantic fantasy. Throughout the film, she transitions into three different fairytale characters: Cinderella, the Little Match Girl, Snow White. The commonality amongst all three characters is that they all dream and, at some point, fall prey to their fantasies; Cinderella almost gets stranded inside Prince Charming’s castle in rags; the Little Match Girl freezes to death after lighting match after match to imagine a warmer and happier place; Snow White succumbs to “sleeping death” after being scammed into biting into a poisoned apple. Princess Haein befalls a similar fate after accepting Haerin’s fruity bait, which is a metonymy for seduction, but wakes up to find a bear—not prince charming—hovering over. This menacing, heavily toothed bear signals that romantic dreams are just a dream.
ii. Cat Villain Haerin: is responsible for upending Haein’s romantic dream. She conjures the heavily toothed bear, which kills Dani (read below), through her seemingly innocuous doodles. Put simply, Haerin is the villain within this multi-layered narrative. However, it’s hard to frame her as the antagonist of the entire film because she’s also a victim. Haein suffers from a loss of identity. She believes her nickname “cat”, a moniker lovingly given by Bunnies, is her identity. We see her with a stick of Miro Churu (“miro” translates to maze in Korean) in her mouth, which prompts the members to stare at her in bemusement. In short, Haerin’s identity has been displaced by her role as NewJeans’ “cat”.
iii. Savior Danielle: is the only one out of the five who seems to recall that they are NewJeans. Danielle represents reality, as evinced by a frustration that breaks the fourth wall via remarks such as “we’re filming” (촬영 중이잖아) and “don’t you guys remember, we’re NewJeans!” (얘들아, 진짜 기억 안 나? 아니, 우리는 뉴진스라니까!) Her attempts to remind the other members of their past and her role as Haerin’s prince automatically makes her the savior out of the bunch, hence the title “Savior Danielle”. Unfortunately, Dani fails to save both the girls and herself; Prince Dani is killed by Haerin’s doodle bear, and the girls still remain in the mental institution despite Dani’s invocations. That the girls show no signs of accepting their identity as NewJeans intimates that even their roles as idols cannot replace their identities as individuals.
iv. Doctor Minji: is the glue that keeps the girls together. Minji’s role as a doctor represents TLC. While everyone at the roundtable doubts Minji’s proficiency as a medic (she gets a long stare from the psychiatrist), she is the closest reification of the boy the girls rave about in OMG; Minji comforts a distraught Hanni, watches over Princess Haein, checks up on Danielle, identifies doodler Haerin and reaches out to a crouching version of herself. In a way, Minji personifies the comfort and safety that everyone longs for when they feel vulnerable, not unlike the imaginary boy that exists only in the lyrics of OMG.
v. Defeated Psychiatrist: is not a NewJeans member but should be examined as the change in his attitude conveys an important message. At the start of the therapy session he is authoritative and in some ways, judgmental, as he stands towering over the girls. However, he later crouches up in the same corner Haerin’s bear plushie previously was with an expression of defeat on his face. The psychiatrist represents the futility of external force on dreams; the dreams that envelop us are ours to enter, cherish, wander, and exit. Thus, the scenes in which the roundtable occupants alternate from NewJeans to construction workers, students, children, ghosts, robbers, businessmen and women—a sundry of people—imply that everyone is an agent of their own dream. No one can excise us from it.
Antithesis dreams
Now for the final branding takeaway.
I said before branding is storytelling. Put differently, branding is dream crafting.
Much like how stories rouse our imagination, branding incites us to construct a whole new version of ourselves in our minds. This version may be fleeting or it may latch onto us like a vision with claws. Branding that excites prompts people to imagine how owning, using, consuming, following a brand might change our lifestyles, our aura, our outlook on life.
K-pop is no stranger to this. The industry has a prolific history of leveraging idols as wannabe brands. For the longest time, both female and male idols have been placed upon the pedestal; their doll-like faces and svelte frames are a beauty standard that is made all the more desirable due to its near unattainability. People like idols because they are so tantalizingly unrealistic. In short, the K-pop industry sustains itself by crafting fantasies —fantasies that invite the public to project even more fantasies onto idols.
NewJeans’ OMG music video is both a self-reflection on and critique of this reality. Shin Woo Seok’s decision to portray NewJeans as a group of amnesia patients receiving therapy at a mental institution is the antithesis of K-pop’s traditional idol. NewJeans is not just an idol. NewJeans is a group of five teenagers who must juggle their public personas alongside their individual identities. This is hard. To be liked by others while retaining an unwavering sense of self is hard.
Dream on
This isn’t to say that pursuing and embodying a dream—be it the idol dream, the Elon Musk dream, the President dream, etc.—is bad. Dreams, as illusive and elusive as they can be, are the best motivators for progress and evolution.
Many of you might be wondering why a random guy pops out towards the end of the music video to pick up Haerin’s doodle pad. To understand this part you need cultural context: ChimChackMan (hereafter CCM), now a renowned Twitch streamer, used to be a webtoon artist who went by the pseudonym Lee Mal-nyeon. CCM’s public identity, however, underwent a metamorphosis when his role as a streamer gained popularity. He now rarely, if ever, refers to himself as an artist.
Thus, CCM’s presence at the end of the video, when he looks out the asylum window to see Haerin’s doodle figures come alive, mediates to viewers that even though all dreams have a ravishing, yet dangerous, aspect to them we can and should continue to harbor them. OMG’s NewJeans haven’t made it out of the asylum yet with their separate identities, but one day, they’ll have a better sense of who they are beyond their role as ADOR’s 90s-nostalgia-inducing idol.
Dreams, whether they are self produced or partly another person’s projection, give us reason to change and evolve for the better. And if this isn’t life, then what is?
Hello! Would also like to argue that, in a flipped manner, the song is also about fandom. If one replaces the persona as the "fan" and the addressed guy as the idol, then the metaphor and the critique of fan culture perfectly works.
The fan always has an expectation that s/he be wowed (thus the OMG reaction) by performances and personalities. Current connectivity with fans give the impression that idols are there for them "24" and that there exists a literal craze about these idols.
Put aside the MV, it evokes the same feeling: get beyond the fantasies that K-pop idols tell fans and face the complexities and "boring" aspects of life in all its realness, so to speak.