Absolutely PHENOMENAL.
This video is so spectacular, I can barely find words to describe how profoundly and acutely affecting this piece is. It's so beautiful and it's easily G-Dragon's best work to date. I went on a little rant about it on tumblr right after it came out (see HERE), but it's not the critical evaluation this amazing video deserves.
First of all, the song is incredible. It takes the artificiality of synthesizers and uses it to make a statement about reality and the feel of fakeness inside the real world. The song moves melodically because of the vocal line's relationship to the pitches in the synth line, since he's really only singing in a nearly flat line. I love it because it makes the mundane and simple and dramatizes it like the lyrics do to real life. It's also been recorded repeatedly and double tracked to achieve a chorus effect (mostly in the chorus) with distortion and warping that pulls thematically at the idea that there's a ton of other people feeling this exact same loneliness. There's also a cool call & response element that adds to that same theme. It really is fantastically well made.
That the video starts with GD walking away from us is a nice touch, giving insight to the fact that as alone as he's feeling there are people following him and concerned. He just can't see them. When he's running away from te camera, he's felt the concerns of those people and is trying to escape them, the guilt of being unhappy around them despite the effort, the annoyances they pose in trying to make him feel better . . . And when he's running towards the camera, he's chasing those same people, wanting to keep up with them and just be normal again, but be can never keep it up for long. A timeline is something that doesn't exist here, playing off the idea that none of it matters, when and where and why are just questions used to attempt to impose meaning and order on a world eternally caught in painful chaos. It's really beautifully done.
GD looks gorgeous throughout, the styling is spectacular, and his acting is fantastic. Honestly, I don't even think a lot of it is acting. Kwon JiYong the person and G-Dragon the performer are very different people, as GD has repeatedly tried to explain, so I'm sure that this isn't any sort of cry for help or thinly veiled explanation of how he feels right now, but at the same time . . . there are certain things you can't act without having first experienced. The sort of pain this song is talking about is one of those things. This sort of wracking physical pain is found in a very unique, very deep rooted, traumatic loneliness that stems from the idea of being different from other people on a fundamental level; this isn’t just the ‘weird one out’ syndrome, this is the absolute extreme: the ‘how the hell are you people even people, or am I the one not human’ syndrome. It's a violent, vicious feeling and it just plain hurts. His posture kills me; through the whole MV it's just so perfectly on point, so heartbreakinly defensive and wounded and lost . . . there's no way he was just trying to act out a feeling he's never had before. He's put so much emotion into this MV and I think he's absolutely fantastic for it. He's not sugar coating reality, he's not sensationalizing or fictionalizing the pain, or dramatizing the scenario into something worthy of a kdrama. He's taken a very real, very human emotional state, and has displayed it with a frank honesty that is both artistic and guileless.
First of all, the song is incredible. It takes the artificiality of synthesizers and uses it to make a statement about reality and the feel of fakeness inside the real world. The song moves melodically because of the vocal line's relationship to the pitches in the synth line, since he's really only singing in a nearly flat line. I love it because it makes the mundane and simple and dramatizes it like the lyrics do to real life. It's also been recorded repeatedly and double tracked to achieve a chorus effect (mostly in the chorus) with distortion and warping that pulls thematically at the idea that there's a ton of other people feeling this exact same loneliness. There's also a cool call & response element that adds to that same theme. It really is fantastically well made.
That the video starts with GD walking away from us is a nice touch, giving insight to the fact that as alone as he's feeling there are people following him and concerned. He just can't see them. When he's running away from te camera, he's felt the concerns of those people and is trying to escape them, the guilt of being unhappy around them despite the effort, the annoyances they pose in trying to make him feel better . . . And when he's running towards the camera, he's chasing those same people, wanting to keep up with them and just be normal again, but be can never keep it up for long. A timeline is something that doesn't exist here, playing off the idea that none of it matters, when and where and why are just questions used to attempt to impose meaning and order on a world eternally caught in painful chaos. It's really beautifully done.
GD looks gorgeous throughout, the styling is spectacular, and his acting is fantastic. Honestly, I don't even think a lot of it is acting. Kwon JiYong the person and G-Dragon the performer are very different people, as GD has repeatedly tried to explain, so I'm sure that this isn't any sort of cry for help or thinly veiled explanation of how he feels right now, but at the same time . . . there are certain things you can't act without having first experienced. The sort of pain this song is talking about is one of those things. This sort of wracking physical pain is found in a very unique, very deep rooted, traumatic loneliness that stems from the idea of being different from other people on a fundamental level; this isn’t just the ‘weird one out’ syndrome, this is the absolute extreme: the ‘how the hell are you people even people, or am I the one not human’ syndrome. It's a violent, vicious feeling and it just plain hurts. His posture kills me; through the whole MV it's just so perfectly on point, so heartbreakinly defensive and wounded and lost . . . there's no way he was just trying to act out a feeling he's never had before. He's put so much emotion into this MV and I think he's absolutely fantastic for it. He's not sugar coating reality, he's not sensationalizing or fictionalizing the pain, or dramatizing the scenario into something worthy of a kdrama. He's taken a very real, very human emotional state, and has displayed it with a frank honesty that is both artistic and guileless.
I give it a 9.5/10: DIVINE!!
*(nota bene: if you see any of this sort of behavior in your friends, particularly the posture thing, be aware that they may be going through a tough time. Please, do not call them out on it. Don't make them want to runaway, don't make them feel guiltier than they already are. Just be there, be supportive by simply refusing to let their ill treatment of you, others, or themselves, push you away. Don't try to fix it, or them, or anything. Just be there and smile. It will be the stability they need to pull themselves together and it could just save their lives.)
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