BTS’s Run MV (Music Video Analysis)
The views presented in this analysis are a part of my own individual interpretation of the video, which means they are subject to error. I haven’t read any theories yet because I didn’t want to be influenced, so some of this might be repetitive, some of it might be radically different. I don’t know. This post is based off of the video from the 1thK Youtube channel.
I did an analysis/theory post about the chronology of I NEED YOU and the Prologue and I may refer to it in this post.
Wasted Youth Enter the Void: There’s writing on the wall at one point in the video that says this, “Wasted youth enter the void.” I NEED U and Run are pretty much totally displays of wasted youth. Though, where I NEED U was melancholy and tragic, Run is chaotic. In I NEED U, they were nearly made out to be victims or martyrs–too good for the fate they were met with. But Run is all chaotic parties and running from the police, tagging walls and blocking traffic. In I NEED U they hurt themselves, in Run they hurt others and each other. In the most beautiful time of their life, they waste their youth with destructive habits. And as promised, wasted youth enter the void.
The Void: Run is the void, the afterlife, a dream-dimension they were sent after their deaths. Though there were aspects in I NEED U and the Prologue that were abstract, like the symbolism of the six lily petals or how Suga is missing from the polaroid, they were primarily straight forward. Run is by far the most dream-like of the three videos. There’s a lyric I think applies well: I’m chasing butterflies, so lost in dreams.
The void is a place where elements of their prior lives are recycled, though there are inherent differences. Think of the flash-sideways/purgatory scenes from Lost. Everything is familiar, yet there’s an underlying anxiety that tells us something isn’t quite right. It’s an inversion of reality, one where they could supposedly fulfill their dreams.
This inversion is expressed throughout the video with reflections, like in the surface of water and in mirrors. (Though this doesn’t really add any significance to the video, certain parallels can be drawn between the video and Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The first book was set in May and the second was set in November, just as I NEED U Original Ver. was released in May and now Run in November. The playing cards may also reference Alice in Wonderland. Alice was able to reenter Wonderland through a mirror, hence the title, also tying into the inversion/reflection theme within the video)
V stands on a reflective surface. He falls backwards into it, revealing this reflective surface to be water. As he falls, Butterfly plays, the same song that was playing as he jumped in the Prologue. Because of the reflection on the surface, the only indicator of what is real and what is just an inversion is which way V falls. After he plunges into the water everything becomes jumbled. Though he resurfaces later in the video, we don’t know which side he’s coming up on–on the true side or just the reflection.
This is how V enters “through the looking glass” into the void. I stated in my first analysis that I believed V was the first to die, so we see V enter first. (The other members are already present in the void because such a place would be outside of a time frame. Just as in Lost, it didn’t matter when each character died, they all existed at the same time within the purgatory setting.) Water has long been tied with entrance into the afterlife, as with the ancient Greeks who believed the souls of the dead were ferried across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the living from the dead into the Underworld.
The shot of V plunging into the water is paralleled with Rap Monster dropping ice cubes into his coffee. He then walks along the train tracks (a reference to I NEED U). He opens the train car door, and the scene flashes to a party.
Shots of V in the water are shown throughout the video. As the video progresses, we see him struggling, mirroring his drowning in the Prologue.
At this party sequence, we see V spray painting Jin’s outline (a reference to the Prologue), as if a corpse at a crime scene. As if Jin’s presence in this void afterlife weren’t enough proof of his death, this outline is definitive evidence.
Here we see the writing “wasted youth enter the void,” though the last word is blocked by Jimin’s head.
Three pairs are shown in all three videos: Rap Monster and V, Jungkook and Suga, and J-Hope and Jimin.
In a branch of the party scene in that apartment, Jin builds a house of cards and they all watch attentively. A house of cards is a precarious thing. It’s a structure designed to push limits, to build it up as high as possible before it falls. There’s an implicit understanding that there will be a fall. This is a commentary on the nature of the young, who test limits hoping to go up higher, only to fall. They fell in I NEED U. V is the one to knock over the house of cards, which ties into my earlier post about V’s suicide triggering depression in the others. And they’ll fall in Run. Even in this dream-like void, there will be a fall.
House of Cards is also a track on the album:
In a house of cards
We know the end is coming,
the house of cards are breaking
stupid us keep on dreaming and we stay a little bit more
Jin looks directly at the camera, breaking the fourth wall. Breaking the fourth wall is a technique used to call attention to the fact that what is being presented is fiction, usually by addressing the audience. They have an awareness that his isn’t reality, but an after-reality. The look that communicates this is a sad, near vacant look. This is their true expression in the midst of the happy farce of their lives presented in the void.
J-Hope is in a hospital room. This implied illness is tied to his medication addiction in I NEED U. The concrete walls are not typical of hospital rooms, and there’s an IV that isn’t actually connected to J-Hope. There are the ingredients for a hospital room, but they don’t quite all come together like they should if this were a true sequence.
This illness is juxtaposed with revel, as they have pillow fight in the apartment.
In the aftermath of the pillow fight, with feathers all around, someone, I can’t tell who it is, finds a card. There’s a butterfly on it, which ties the falling of the house of cards to Butterfly, which played when V jumped.
Also note that the house of cards was built in a different area of the apartment than this. The card should not be here. Another flaw in the dream.
Rap Monster is shown waiting in the train car he opened earlier before it flashed to the party. This is the truth of what happened. Though there was an attempt to reconcile his loneliness by showing the party sequence, an attempt to reconcile J-Hope’s illness with the pillow fight, Rap Monster remains alone in the car. And J-Hope remains alone in his hospital bed.
In another scene, Jungkook and Suga get into a fight. Jungkook is thrown against the wall, a parallel to I NEED U.
In the climax of their fight, Suga picks up a chair. For a moment, it appears as if he might strike Jungkook with this chair, but he aims for a mirror hanging on the wall instead. This mirror is representative of their inverted reality. The only remedy out of the chaos in this void would be to attempt to shatter it, a similar perspective that originally led him to suicide in I NEED U.
In the reflection of the mirror, we see a vase of blue-tipped roses. Blue roses do not occur in nature. Before we started experimenting chemically with flowers, blue roses were impossible to find. Attempts to cross-breed roses in order to create blue were unsuccessful, as roses simply lack the pigment necessary to have a blue color. Because of this, blue roses are associated with elusive mystery, the impossible, unattainable, and “unrealizable dreams.”
The presence of blue roses might indicate that what was considered impossible is now possible. However, these blue roses are only shown in the mirror’s reflection. There’s no sign of blue roses in the room. Even in a system that promises the impossible, the impossible cannot exist. What may promise to rebuild a house of cards cannot prevent the inevitable fall.
This is reinforced with the showing of the collapsing house of cards.
After his fight with Suga has ended, Jungkook leans against the sofa, staring at the camera, breaking the fourth wall. Notice also the darkness that surrounds the door frame in the first shot. The room is disembodied from a hallway, building, or any corporeal location. It’s only a dream.
As if to remedy the fight Jungkook had with Suga, there’s another party sequence going on.
Jungkook glances at the mirror, and the partying six disappear. There is nothing left except the shards of glass on the floor and the crushed flowers, which of course should not be there as they weren’t actually present in the room.
Jungkook has a very confused expression on his face and as he glances over his shoulder he sees that the truck on which he perched is actually blocking traffic. At first glance, the stalled truck in the middle of the tunnel appears artistic and abstract, as it directly contrasts what is meant to be done. On second glance, you can see the harm it causes, disrupting everyone else. The truck is clearly not meant to be there.
Jimin and J-Hope in the trunk are initially unaware of the traffic jam. Jungkook has only now glanced over his shoulder to notice it. If they’d parked there intentionally to obstruct traffic, then they wouldn’t be so unaware of what’s going on. More so, they could not have just parked there because Jungkook is sitting on top of the truck. He’d had to have climbed up there and been there a while in order to forget the cars piling up behind them. And why wouldn’t he have noticed the first car that approached the block? How could Jungkook have climbed on top of the truck and sat there while cars piled up, honking? Why did he only just now turn around? Why does he look like he has no idea what’s going on? The truck is clearly not meant to be there. It’s another flaw in the dream.
Instead of attempting to shatter the reality, this time they go along with it. They scream and throw food and basically attack parked cars. Wasted youth.
Jimin shakes feathers from his hair, apparently only having just left the pillow fight sequence. This is the same bathroom he drowns himself in in I NEED U, except hat it’s littered with glitter and trash and posters. It’s different than how it had been in life. On the door, the words inhale, exhale, and breath are written, ironic since this is the room where Jimin drowned himself.
The other members force Jimin into the water. In I NEED U, Jimin must not have been among the first to commit suicide. Other died before him, creating a pressure for him to end it as well. They essentially forced him into his death.
In the end of the video, Jungkook looks into the camera once more. This shot mirrors the scene in I NEED U just before he was hit by a car. This, again, indicates an awareness that this is only a dream. And still, Jungkook gives a ghost of a smile, as if he’s accepted this inverted world.
When V resurfaces, there’s no reflection on the surface of the water. The unreality has become his only reality. He’s come up on the other side. In this inverted reality, he doesn’t drown, but he’s still surrounded in pitch darkness.
Jimin sits in the bathtub, holding a polaroid Jin had taken of them at the beach. He lights it on fire, destroying it. This is another reference to I NEED U. By burning the polaroid of their previous lives, Jimin is rejecting that reality and accepting the unreality.
The date, 29 April, 2015, is the date part one of The Most Beautiful Moment in Life was released. The end date is ‘forever.’ The most beautiful moment of life is youth. This period began in April and will never end because, in this void, youth will never end.
Despite the inadequacies of this afterlife, this void, this dream, they accept it. They accept their deaths. At least in the void there is an attempt to rebuild what has fallen.
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