SHINee’s “Married to the Music”
This MV was released in Summer 2015, but I think it should have been published during
Halloween season for having all of the spooky and quirky vibes.
The story is about SHINee getting involved in an eccentric party and slowly being swallowed
by it. In this wedding ceremony, the bride is a mysterious woman dressed in black tulle
whose face isn’t shown.
Since the very beginning of the MV, it could already be seen that this isn’t a normal
party.
Opening the story is a phrase stamped on a roadblock, “Marriage is a slow death.”
The next transition where the screen goes from black to white can be interpreted as
the time SHINee is crossing the barrier between mundane life and some fantasy realm.
The cans tied to the back of the car are a reference to a wedding tradition. However,
the neon colors - a very uncomfortable color to look at - signal something unusual. Just
like the bride’s black dress, this tradition-breakthrough was an indication of very abnormal things.
Though the room was first empty, after each SHINee’s member took a glowing drink, it
was suddenly filled with party-goers. The boys were initially surprised but then managed
to quickly adapt. All the members were then so absorbed in the wedding party that they
agreed to get into some deadly games.
The members first gathered around the kitchen table to spin the bottle and when the bottle
pointed at Key, he was pinned on the wheel of death, then the bride threw a knife and
cut off his head.
Losing Key, the members gradually came to sense about what was happening. Then it was
Onew’s turn to be chosen by the spinning bottle. This time, he was told to beat others
with a baseball bat. Taemin was hit in the head, leading to both his eyeballs popping
out and landing on the ground.
Whereas Onew then laughed like it was very funny, Taemin groveled on the floor like Velma
looking for her glasses. As karma came back around, Onew was the next member to lose part
of his body. After vibing mindlessly to the party, he came to the bathroom, washed his
face and got his nose chopped off by the deadly water.
Then came Jonghyun’s turn. After taking a glowing cookie from the bride, he immediately
puked up confetti which other people kept playing with. Kinda gross tho.
After that, the bride approached Jonghyun with a kiss and took away his lips.
The last person on the death note was Minho. To save the best for the last, the bride tricked
all the other members of SHINee to blow the wedding cake candles with her, but they didn’t
know these candles were spelled and were gonna burn off Minho’s face once they blow them.
As a result, they were all the murderers of Minho’s downfall.
The story came to an end with the bride sitting alone in her bedroom with poor lighting, cutting
out SHINee’s pictures in a shady way. Then we see SHINee members and their body parts
lying all over her room.
Combining all the above clues, we can come to a conclusion that this creepy bride is
going to make her own “ideal” groom using different SHINee’s body parts that she collected
during the party.
Jesus, she sounds more like an evil witch than a bride.
The ideal groom turned out to be pretty handsome. He kinda has Key’s head, Taemin’s eyeballs,
Onew’s nose, Jonghyun’s mouth and Minho’s body.
Sunny Hill’s “Pray”
In a Kpop industry mostly fuelled by sugary melodies and sweet visuals, the MV “Pray”
of Sunny Hill is a very, very different take when telling the haunting story of a physically
deformed man.
Opening the MV, we see a mysterious man covered in cloth being held captive in a semi-underground
dungeon.
Then a woman comes, takes the man with her to a laboratory where a doctor performs some
kind of experiment on him. The somber, cold shade of blue in the lab amplifies the sinister.
This is where the man takes off his mask, revealing a heavily deformed face with several
rough bumps. The next series of scenes portrays numerous experiments done on him, each is
more misgiving and weariness than the one before. After that, he is locked into a room
with a cross hanging on the wall to “pray”.
As the speaker in the song, presumably the deformed man, openly wailed:
“Someone told me to pray, to dream. They say that anything can come true.”
He was told to pray and to believe in the religion, in return for the promise that he
will be set free. However, in the end of the MV, the fate of
the deformed man is still doomed, his ear was cut off and put into a glass jar along
with many deformed body parts of other abnormal people like him.
Through this MV, the author not only expressed the dark message about how some abnormal individuals
are at higher risks of discriminatory or even dehumanizing treatments, but also raised a
doubt about the fulfilment of prayer, because at the end, the man did hold on to a light
hope and managed to break free, but he was still taken back and put down. The praying
he sent out had never truly set him free.
VIXX - “ Voodoo Doll” If you have watched the MV, it might take
a lot of energy to draw the whole thing out because on the first watch, the story and
the lyrics seemed totally contrasting.
The lyrics are about how the VIXX boys were willing to be the victim of the girl’s voodoo
doll that she could take out her anger on. “Should I go? Should I stay? Nobody knows,”
it seemed that the boys didn’t want to escape any time soon. But, in contrast with the lyrics,
the MV scenes showed all the members trying to escape. 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.
Though many artists had addressed the topic of abusive relationships through their works
before, VIXX creatively used a voodoo doll to tell the story through four features of
an abusive relationship: intimidation, isolation, coercion and minimization.
There are many horror scenes where the members have to endure pain. pieces of glass stuck
to his arms, Hyuk, Leo, Ken, and N all have piercings all over their body and binded to
the ceiling, and Ravi is physically restrained with ropes.
The creepy vibe of the song mainly focused on this feature because throughout the MV,
all the bloody scenes rotated around how the girl tortured the voodoo doll and thus indirectly
hurting VIXX members.
Opening the MV was a scene of the girl cutting open the members and carelessly stitching
them while they were bleeding.
Throughout the MV, the girl repeatedly stabbed the voodoo doll that controlled all of the
boys. Here, when putting the choreography into perspective, it could also be understood
as even when the girl didn’t hurt them, the boys would still be willing to hurt each
other to please her.
The second feature, isolation, would need a little bit of consideration to figure out.
In the MV, the fact that each member was trapped in a separate cell whereas the girl was outside,
freely walking around signaled that in a toxic relationship, no connection was made in the
name of lovers. Instead, the bond between the two was just master and servant.
The third factor, coercion, was a little hard to pin down since there was no dialogue. Yet,
it can still be interpreted through some scenes where the girl approached each member and
tempted them. Seemingly, just by her presence, she managed to drive them all mad and ready
to ride or die for her.
The last factor, minimization, was super hard to see just by merely reading the lyrics.
Yet, when you looked closely at how different members were dehumanized into entertainment
entities by the girls, you would easily see how VIXX portrayed this feature. The girl
objectified them physically with promiscuous outfits and treated them like toys. When she
stabbed the doll, she laughed satisfyingly at them as they’re in clear, visible pain.
They were less than puppets to her and they were just surrogates for whatever emotion
she wanted them to feel.
Ending the MV was the scene where all the members managed to escape except for Hongbin.
Though there was some ambiguity, it can probably be interpreted that as Hongbin had escaped,
got his soul back, which explained why his eyes were normal for some seconds, but then
was dragged back to the girl, he was again possessed.
Because the other members had all escaped, Hongbin was now the only person to be tortured
through the voodoo doll.
Irene & Seulgi - “Monster”
Different from the previous songs mentioned in the list, the creepiness of Monster wasn’t
visually shown. Only when you connect the lyrics to the scenes that you see how scary
the MV was.
Though SM hasn’t never publicly stated their inspiration for the song, many people believed
that it was based on the novel “Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu, the benchmark of every
Vampire story on Earth.
If you have read the novel, you would immediately realize that there were lots of references
from the book. For those who haven’t known, the story was about a young woman named Laura
who was preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla. The
character is a prototypical example of the vampire, expressing romantic desires toward
the protagonist.
The reason why “Monster” wasn’t just about queer baiting is that the two characters
were ideally supposed to seduce each other.
Opening the MV was the scene of Seulgi being the monster and crawling toward Irene to take
over her body. According to Carmilla, the cat-like makeup
of Seulgi also matched with the figure of the “monster” because it was described
to have many forms, one of which was in the cat-like shape.
Similar to the story where Carmilla controlled Laura, in the opening choreography, it can
be seen that Seulgi was also manipulating Irene.
The dance moves in the pre chorus further portrayed the way Laura was controlled. This
combined with the lyrics of “under one light why are there 2 shadows?” indicating how
they were becoming ‘one’. This integration was again seen in the mirror dance in the
chorus.
Though in the first verse, Seulgi took charge of seducing Irene, in the second verse, things
completely turned upside down. While the lyrics remain the same, the cinematography has a
few changes. With Irene turning into the monster, it was indicated that Seulgi had succeeded
in assimilating Irene and now both of them were ‘Monsters’.
As the final chorus approached, it can be seen that Irene was now the one to control
Seulgi.
In the story, there was also a similar detail implying that Carmilla was killed by Laura.
Though the MV didn’t portray the end of the story, Carmilla’s head was actually
chopped off and burned down to ashes.
Ga-in - “Fxxk U”
Though Ga-in has always been famous for her sexy image, in the “Fxxk U” comeback,
she suddenly strayed away from the familiar figure.
Basically, “Fxxk U” reveals a relationship that has taken a dark turn where it grew emotionally
and physically abusive. The man in the MV spent most of the time brutalizing Ga-in,
attempting to force her to sleep with him or intimidating her with brute force and violence.
Beginning of the MV was the scene where Ga-in was forced to sleep with her boyfriend. Since
Ga-in wasn’t strong enough to fight back, all that she could do was to suffer in silence.
After that, Ga-in got into the chain of days where she was sexually abusive.
As the MV proceeded half way, there was a scene where Ga-in seemed to have fainted in
her boyfriend’s hands.
Though there was some ambiguity, this scene can be understood as when Ga-in tried to stand
up for herself, she was intimidated and beaten up. Since the man really wanted to have Ga-in,
he held her beside to compensate for his violence.
After that incident, they seemed to make up because the MV transited to the scene where
they were both happily conversing.
Yet, after realizing that Ga-in hasn’t put her trust completely in him, the boyfriend
got mad and tore both Ga-in and their relationship apart. This interpretation can be deduced
from the horrifying scene where blood was all over the bathroom.
The peak of this whole thing was when he poured gasoline all over their body and forced Ga-in
to die with him. Luckily, Ga-in seemed to have escaped from
that toxic relationship because at the end of the video, all that was left was her boyfriend
crying all by himself and Ga-in was in another place.
So, which MV do you find most eerie and why? Are there any other creepy MVs that you want
to add to the list? Don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts down below! Also, don’t forget
to like and subscribe to BeBossTV because there will be lots of interesting videos waiting
for you ahead! Thank you for watching.