The album <Minisode 3: Tomorrow> has easy-listening songs for the general public, and I’ve seen many people get interested in TXT songs (including me!) I’ve been listening to the album a lot lately and I couldn’t resist analyzing the MV as a BTS theorist fan myself.
Today, I’d like to share my thoughts on Deja Vu music video.
As everyone knows from the concept trailer, the album’s theme is the novel <The Little Prince>, the famous novel talks about adults’ odd virtues in society and childhood innocence valuing love and accepting each other.
The music video goes one step deeper, bringing <The Catcher in the Rye> into it.
The novel is the story of a high school boy who gets out of a boarding school and strays on the New York streets for 3 days.
Holden, the protagonist, feels everyone in the school is hypocrites, and runs away from the school before being kicked out for his bad grade.
He runs away and hovers over various places in New York, but all he meets seem to be hypocrites wherever he goes. Some say he’s just an unstable kid who blames everyone other than himself, and some say he’s exposing society and the adults’ hypocrisy. Either way, one thing is for sure he couldn’t fit into the present society’s structure and manners.
Exhausted and tired, he became nostalgic for his little sister Phoebe. He arranged a meeting with her at the theme park and finally felt happy watching her enjoying riding a carousel.
We saw the carousel in the Blue Hour music video, too. The members fall from the carousel island and explore the magical world. This shows the carousel represents the boys’ origin. In Deja Vu, it only shows the horses. The scene explains the struggle in the discrepancy between the real and the ideal world he thinks.
The catcher in the rye, Holden dreams of, is who catches the children before they fall off a cliff while running(playing) around. This leads us to the next motif. But before that, I’d like to point out this is also hinted at in the song <I’ll be there tomorrow>.
황금빛 너의 머릿결 땜에
빛나는 밀밭을 사랑하듯
“Like as I love the wheat field
because of your golden hair”
And there’s one more thing the music video brings up with it, the movie <Oldboy>. It seems that the TXT universe (the concepts and motifs of the songs and music videos penetrating throughout their discography, not the webtoon universe.) has combined a novel with a movie in their music videos. This time, the Oldboy is the movie.
The movie Oldboy is the director Park Chan-wook’s 2003 movie, a remake of the Japanese comics of the same name.
Spoiler alert ⚠️ Death warning ⚠️
I’m going to cut to the chase to the final scene and theme of the movie, so if you’re planning to watch the movie, I highly recommend you skip this part seriously!
The movie is about two men, one stuck in the past and another robbed of the past and the present. What I want to talk about here is the man got stuck in the past. His only regret is that he couldn’t save his sister from suicide. His sister attempted to fall from the bridge in front of him, and he lost her despite his traumatizing efforts to grab her and make her stop falling. The Old Boy is the old man stuck in the boyhood mentality.
And yes, this is the hommage of the scene.
The ghost figure that TXT universe showed us several times before now turned into some angel-like figure here representing the origin, the little prince’s old promise with the rose, the haven Holden seeks. The vague shape forms into a real person and the scene ends while they hug each other.
The interesting part is the little prince has the look of a child, Holden is an adolescent, and the old boy is an adult. All three of them feel nostalgic for memories of the past, the innocence.
They try hard to go back to what reminds them of their childhood. But think of the consequences of it. Only the little prince is promising, since Holden goes into a psyche, and the old boy ends up dying. Probably it’s because we can never go back once we grow up. We grow up as time goes by, and it can’t go the other way no matter how hard we try to bring it back to life. (Maybe that’s why they chose the representing theme of the album.)
Dreaming(or reminiscing) of childhood innocence is like Deja Vu, but they never know it really happened before. Holden’s relieving feeling at the carousel with little Phoebe is the first time in his turmoil adolescence, and the old boy’s “Happily Ever After” with his sister has never happened. It can’t be reproduced and repeated even though how much we want.
Hence, ‘We’ have to meet there tomorrow, not in the past. It’s a healthy, positive cognition and relationship. The Anemoia, the future experience with a nostalgic, good sentiment.
오랜 promise, promise
이유를 모르던 나의 눈물 내 anemoia
“The old promise, promise
Not knowing the reason for my tear, my anemoia”
The last thing I’d like to mention is (This is slightly off the rail conversation but,) that the last time Bighit brought up The Little Prince with BTS Festa, it was like a finale of the BTS universe, and it has been a sad, shocking memory for me. I don’t know if that Festa was actually some kind of introduction to TXT, or it’s just how Bighit Universe ends with each of their artists or even both. Probably TXT also would go with more popular themes rather than focusing on the typical K-pop boy band’s “Universe”.
And one more thing, it’s very obvious why Bighit brought The Catcher in the Rye here is because their next group is ready to be out. KATSEYE? (yes, you probably remember the odd eye cats in BTS and TXT MVs.)
Now I know it’s Bighit’s typical strategy to thread their artists’ themes sequentially and introduce the next one. It was the same with the BTS’ ON MV and TXT universe, and now I can see it’s happening again.
But well, I’m just one fan who enjoys whatever I’m given. I hope both teams have lasting success and receive the resources they need in the future.
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