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aliceksoo · 1 year

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New Jeans "DITTO" MVs analysis

or: how I fell in love with this group

I apologize in advance, but when I love something to such an extent I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT IT so here I am writing a massive post no one will ever read. If you do, kudos to you, and thank you.

(I actually had so many things extra to say, but I reached the limit of images allowed so I had to cut parts of it, but there are SO MANY INTERESTING DETAILS!!!)

Let me start by stating something: this is NOT a mystery, thriller, or horror kind of story. This is 100% a coming-of-age story.

I understand the vibes and some of the shots might hint at it, but that ain't it, sorry.

It is safe to say that this MV, or well, two MVs, have instantly become one of my all-time favorites.

The reasons are:

1) I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stories. I never get tired of it, I am 30 years old and I still cry like a baby over them. Love them.

2) The team behind it, the actors, the shots, the director, EVERYTHING works so well together it actually is insane to me how people in the industry are aiming for that level of quality sometimes.

I WILL TRY TO KEEP IT A REASONABLE LENGTH THIS WILL BE EXTRA LONG, I CAN'T KEEP IT SHORT, I HAVE A LOT TO SAY.

Let's start!

The main character in this story is Heesoo, a young student that we see more and less directly throughout both MVs.

The MV actually begins with her in the present, as an adult, opening a box with "memories" from the past, and starting a VHS of her past recordings.

Her POV is represented through the camera she holds through most of the MVs: this is important not only for the narrative but to actually understand the meaning behind what we're seeing.

When the reprise is in the retro, VHS style, it is what we see through her eyes; when we actually see wider shots with her in it, it switches back to neutral, HQ shots.

The story is shaped around a coming-of-age kind of narrative, which is a very popular trope we are experiencing among several K-pop groups, particularly within HYBE, with BTS in the past and TXT now.

Heesoo is introduced to us as a young girl in school, who loves to record all the time her group of friends while they have fun and they dance. While she is not necessarily represented as an outcast, it is clear that she might be a more introverted, shy personality, the one that loves to be "behind the camera" more than in front of it.

SIDE A

Heesol is the main character, and she is shown since the very beginning with a cast on her arm. In this MV, she is shown fully part of a group dynamic, with the girls directly involving her, smiling and talking to her, sharing makeup, and snacks during breaks at school, making jokes while running around both inside the school and outside, getting wet in the rain, writing on her cast. While we DO see parts of her perspective in daily life, the narrative is mostly shown from an external POV. The girls consider Heesoo part of the group, falling asleep all together, and in general experiencing all those youthful, happy moments a group of friends has while growing up.

Except, none of it is real.

The girls are not really there, and through the MV we finally get a glimpse of the reality: Heesoo was all alone the whole time, wishing for friends who would care about her, about her strugglings, about her thoughts and happy moments.

And her loneliness, her isolation, and her struggles have been invisible to everyone else in school, except this guy who keeps looking at her. And maybe because she does not understand why he is always watching her, she always turns the other way and stops the recording.

He might be her first youthful love, but in my eyes, he is also the first and only person who sees her struggles, and because of that he is very important in the story.

Before her waking up, showing us the truth about her loneliness, we see her dream of being in a winter landscape full of snow, with a fawn staring at her from the distance. This also comes with the reason that the scene is meant to have a symbolic meaning. The winter storm is her general feeling of loneliness and sadness, and the fawn represents herself. But there's more: a Fawn is widely recognized as a symbol and representation of youth and innocence, often tied with youthful, feminine representations.

She is in the middle of a winter storm, the storm being something negative in her real life, or simply her feelings, and she starts to see herself, her own youth, and her innocence.

She is growing up.

SIDE B

This is not an MV showing the same time but is in fact a continuation of the first one.

The MV starts pretty much with a similar shot we have seen in the previous one, except now we know the truth, and we notice the quick cuts that allow us to see beyond her camera, behind her fantasies. She is not recording her friends, cause they do not exist: we can actually catch some of her classmates looking at her with puzzled faces (cause they probably don't understand why someone is recording them doing nothing), and we also get glimpses of the empty halls that in her imagination were filled with New Jeans members running around freely.

We now see her alone on the roof; outside in the garden, she seems to be surrounded by her friends... Except they are not there, and when that same guy looks at her and SEES HER being alone, she realizes and runs away, not ready to face the reality. Not ready to come to terms with her feelings and pains.

But she can't run away forever (remember the dream from side A?), which is why we see her remember her time spent with her friends writing on her cast, only for her to realize that it never happened, her cast is all white and no one drew anything.

We also see her looking at five girls in a parking lot, in casual clothes, dancing to their song: this is to show that her longing for a group of friends actually comes from her sense of isolation. She wishes to fit in, to have friends caring for her, so she projects this on a group of strangers, young girls who she would love to see having fun with her.

Remember the whole premise about different kind of recording? We see clearly now that the shots with the girls on the roof are all from Heesoo POV, while the same shot from an external POV shows us her being all alone.

The camera and her shots, are all projections of the loneliness and struggles she is now forced to face. Which is why she tries to avoid it and throws her camera from the roof.

But she is, inevitably, growing up.

She is now fully aware, whether she likes it or not, that she is experiencing growing pains and struggling with new, unknown feelings, and she cannot rely anymore on her imagination and fantasy world.

She has to face reality. She now walks alone in the rain alone, without waiting for her friends, but she is now using the umbrella, she is caring about herself instead of running around and having fun. She is slowly developing a sense of responsibility.

Alone at home, she is once again facing reality. Part of her still wishes for a friend to call her on the cellphone (Minji, in this case), but she now knows it is not real, and so she is ready to let go. She does not pick up.

She is now looking the dawn right in the eyes, and it is staring right back at her for a long, important moment, before finally walking away, allowing her to let go of that youthful innocence and begin her walk toward adulthood, starting with someone at her side to grow up with, the guy we see her walk with (possibly her first love, but maybe just a friend... in any case, someone that for the first time made her feel SEEN, someone who CARED, who decided to STAY).

In the end, we came back full circle to the present, where adult Heesoo opens her box of memories of the past: she is now looking back at her struggles, at her pains shown in her recordings, while smiling. She recognizes now, that everything she went through served her to become the woman she is now, and she finally makes peace with her past. She finally smiles.

So what was the role of the members in the story?

They were, to put it simply, a projection of Heesoo's feelings, hopes, dreams, and fantasies she had in her youth.

Feelings she was not ready to leave behind to face adulthood... Until she was. Feelings, good and bad, that made her the woman she is in the present.

And isn't music a form of art? isn't art, in every sort of form, meant to express feelings, thoughts, and moments in life both good and bad? The girls provided the perfect soundtrack for this story, but by appearing and acting in the music video they also gave us a visual representation of the purpose of their own work.

They are here to grow up with the public and to show us all the spectrum of the emotions behind this beautiful moment in life.

(edit from future me, cause I really keep watching it and discovering new thoughts: it's not so much that the girls aren't real, they are, it's just that they are NOT the girls heesoo is portraying, they are a group of friends, classmates, that are very much real but probably not involved as much in heesoo's life. Friends who she wishes were closer to her to give her that supportive system and care she desperately needed at the time.)

(ALSO: the cast might or might not be a symbol of her pain, of her struggles she has to deal with, but this is just me overanalyzing everything.)

[AND ALSO!!! That single painted nail she has in the first MV, where we see her loneliness, might or might not be a not-so-subtle nod to the Polished Man Project, an international non-profit project born to raise awareness over violence against children, particularly to start a conversation over children traumas, their preventions and recoveries all over the world.

This project was born after the real life experience of Elliot Costello, co-founder of it, who came up with the idea for Polished Man after a visit to campaign beneficiary Hagar International in Cambodia. One evening, he met a young girl named Thea, who after playing naughts and crosses for hours, drew a heart on Elliot's palm and painted his nails (rings a bell??? Minji, who is the same girl she was painting Heesoo's nails, drew a heart on her cast with the nail polish).

Later, Elliot learnt how Thea came to be in Hagar's care - she was physically and sexually assaulted on a daily basis.

Elliot made the decision then and there to paint one nail to remember Thea, making it a symbol of the whole campaign.

This famous project has been discussed and promoted by several idols in the K-pop world, most noticeable ATEEZ' Hongjoong, IKON' Bobby, CIX' Seunghun, Wonho etc.]

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