[music]
This week's Music Monday is the beauty edition
with Brown Eyed Girls "Cleansing Cream"
[music]
It isn't often that videos like this are voted in
so we're really happy to talk about a more serious Kpop video.
Both the lyrics and the music video for Cleansing Cream
are chock full of symbolism
through the lyrics, videography, and even color.
So! Strap yourself in for a more serious Music Monday.
Um. I think maybe I should change out of my hamster shirt. Simon?
That's a good call. It's not really serious enough.
Ok. Hang on a second.
BREE HEE HEE! BREE HEE HEE! BREE
No wait. This can't be right. Hang on a second.
Ah. Much better.
Guise: we can't emphasize this strongly enough:
this is a totally awesome music video.
Don't believe me? Look at my dorky bowtie and my nerdy hair!
I wouldn't dress up this scholarly if it wasn't for a good reason!
Now, this isn't my favorite song of the year,
but this is definitely my favorite video of the year.
You must watch this video NOW! No, wait, not now.
Wait till after the video. We have it loaded in our playlist because we're so nice!
Now, the song is a ballad, and it's pretty much the complete opposite of Sixth Sense.
Which was fierce and passionate and aggressive.
This song, on the other hand, sounds quite delicate, and beautiful, and dreamy.
And while Sixth Sense was powerful for being commanding and aggressive,
This song is also very powerful, but for different reasons.
Now we've noticed that a lot of mainstream Kpop bands
tend to release a ballad once in a while.
And it usually deals with love and loss or sickness and death
But if you really want to go for the gold
you go for a combo breaker straight to the heart
Of love, loss, death, and sickness,
all rolled up into one mini-drama music video.
[sound of film reel]
I love you!
I love you.
We'll always be together!
Yes! We...will
*cough cough* I'm sick.
Don't die on me!
Ugh! I'm dying!
I loved her!
I loved her too, POTTER!
I didn't really die!
Yay! Let's get married!
Yay! Oh. I'm dying.
The point that we're trying to get at here
is that Brown Eyed Girls take a totally different approach
than most of the ballad videos that I've seen.
But before we talk about the video
I think we should explain what we think happens in it.
Now, Brown Eyed Girls don't actually play a part in the video.
Instead, there are three main characters who we will refer to
as the wife, the husband, and the blind girl
who we're assuming is the wife's sister and is living in the wife's house.
The music video opens with an innocent looking blind girl
walking around a seemingly empty house in a billowy white nightgown.
We see her sitting alone in the room
which is filled with lots of childish toys.
But at nighttime she sneaks into the married couple's room.
Using her hands, she traces the sleeping wife's arm
and tries to imitate her sleeping position.
Afterwards she wanders over to the husband
and starts slowly and delicately tracing all his facial features.
While she's doing that the wife wakes up and sees her sister doing it.
And of course she's shocked, but, she doesn't say anything.
Instead she keeps a closer watch on the blind girl's behaviour.
And she starts to realize that perhaps the blind girl
is starting to fall in love with her own husband.
We see that the blind girl falls in love with her husband
through sensing him in different ways.
She feels his face at night, but she doesn't know what he really looks like.
She smells and touches all the clothes in their closet
and she happily runs her toes through their furry carpet.
And when she fumbles around the room and finally finds him by touching his shoe
He doesn't really try to reach out to her
or to offer her anything but his silence.
And afterwards the blind girl tries to impress the husband by putting makeup on her face
But she does a terrible job at it, but, because she's blind
She can't actually see that she looks ridiculous.
The wife, on the other hand, is not blind
She sees, in fact, she sees a little bit too well.
The image we get of the wife is one that is always seeing.
Her eyes are open at night when other people are sleeping.
She's watching her husband, while he's sleeping.
She sees the blind girl's activities while no one else notices her.
And she secretly watches her husband through many mirrors.
Now compare that to the images we see of the blind girl.
She's walking around with a blindfold on.
We even see some powerful shots of the bedframe shadowing across her eyes.
While the blind sister sees too little, the non-blind wife sees too much.
You see, the blind sister, through vague senses and soft touches
yearns for an experience of that marriage, but it's only a superficial experience.
The wife, on the other hand, has an in-depth experience of the marriage,
and she knows that it's nothing to yearn for.
In fact, the video suggests that this is not a happily married couple.
They never touch or kiss or hug.
It seems like the husband and wife hardly ever interact with each other.
The husband and wife aren't necessarily very warm and cuddly with each other
There's that important shot of them sleeping when they physically turn away from each other.
Now, I know we're in symbolic analysis mode right now,
and we're not saying that someone's sleep habits
should be an accurate reflection of what their relationship is like
Because if it is, then I do not want to know what it says about our relationship.
[Sleepytime music]
Pshh! That's not how we really sleep!
I'm just saying it's...ugghhhm. Back to the video!
The opening and the last scene of the video
are of the wife dragging the sister to the bathroom to wash off her face.
But why does the wife make such a big deal of it, though?
Because she looks ridiculous? Well, the blind girl can't see herself
So she clearly doesn't look ridiculous in her own eyes
Does the blind girl look ridiculous to the husband?
We can't really tell, because he is as indifferent to the blind girl as he is to his own wife.
But she does look ridiculous to the wife because, in a way
the blind girl is a reflection of the wife herself.
How is the blind girl a reflection of the wife?
[Learning Time Music]
Well, I think the most important concept of the video is one of blindness vs seeing.
You see, all of us and all of you may very well be that blind sister.
Not physically blind, of course, but metaphorically.
We fumble around this world barely knowing what we're doing or where we're going.
We find somebody that we want to be with but barely know who they are.
And then we sometimes go through huge extents to try to change who we are to make that person like us.
We do it through the makeup that we think we should wear
We do it through the clothes that we think we should buy.
We do it through the actions we think we should do.
And we do it through the words we think we should say.
We try to be somebody that we're not, to make somebody that we barely know like us a little bit more.
[BELL!]
The wife sees this not only in her sister, but also in herself.
She furiously wants to wash the makeup physically off her sister's face
and for herself, she wants to wash it off metaphorically.
The wife not only sees her reflection through the mirrors in the room
but also through the blind sister, who is the biggest mirror in the house.
Yeah man. Deep.
I feel kind of awkward now.
Can we have a fart joke in there or some awkward sexy dancing?
[fart] Huh?! JYP!
Now the plot's not the only reason why we like this video.
You gotta look at different things about it, like, even how it's filmed.
Look at the slow motion bursting of the curtains when the first chorus kicks in.
There's also an incredible use of color.
We see the warm color red and the cool color blue competing with each other in this video.
We even see the warm color of the blind sister's room
try to burst into the cold colors of the married couple's room.
And when the woman is watching her husband sleep,
we can see that she's covered in a warm red color, while her sleeping husband is in a cool blue color.
The video is beautiful and moving on many different levels.
From the profoundness of the message to the fantastic acting of the blind girl and the wife
to the great cinematography to the prettiness of the song
Yeah! Wait. I think I'm forgetting something.
Oh yeah, there's no dance in the video,
and the English is pretty accurate and minimal,
soooo....yeah. I like pie?
[music]
Last week we asked you which music video was more retro?
T-ara in "Roly Poly" or Wonder Girls in "Be My Baby"
And the winner was T-ara's "Roly Poly"
They actually kind of crushed the Wonder Girls on the Facebook poll.
And, it's funny, because a lot of people kind of complained
that the T-ara music video was a bit too long
But I mean, come on. They even do a "OOOA OOOA!"
That's pretty retro.
For this week's Beauty edition we ask you which video has a more profound message on beauty:
Brown Eyed Girls' "Cleansing Cream" or Sunny Hill's "Pray"
Leave your votes in the comments, or in our Facebook poll,
and we'll announce the winners next week.
Also, thanks to everyone who voted for Brown Eyed Girls' "Cleansing Cream" this week.
If there's a video you want to see us do for next week's Music Monday
head on over to http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/requests
and tell us who we should do a video for.
Don't forget to like and favorite this video
and to subscribe for more Kpop Music Mondays
And I'm sure that you want to know who won the Wonder Girls' CDs from last week's contest.
Which we're announcing in the blooper reels.
Take it away, Spudgy.
[music]