A feminist analysis of Red Velvet’s “Psycho”
Link to MV
Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds. Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that. So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess. - Excerpt from “The Princess and The Pea”
To manipulate someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity. - Definition of Gaslighting
You know it so well and control me… We're in a very weird and strange relationship… You got me feeling like a psycho, psycho - Excerpted lyrics from “Psycho”
In The Princess and The Pea, a prince wants to marry a “real” princess but can’t find a way for his bride-to-be to prove it. So when a woman shows up one rainy right claiming she’s a real princess, his mother devises a test to verify this. By forcing her to sleep in a ridiculous contraption and making her feel discomfort she doesn’t understand, she proves that she has the mystical delicateness of a real princess. In doing so, the princess is gaslighted. She thinks she’s “psychotic” for feeling distress over nothing. Once her psychosis has been explained away, however—it’s because princesses are so sensitive that they border on being “psycho”—that somehow automatically reduces her to a marriageable object for the prince, because only a prince could handle a “crazy” woman like that.
Red Velvet’s new “Psycho” MV is an incredible song with a hauntingly beautiful music video. The MV is laden with symbolic imagery, and in my opinion, it’s the best MV that RV has produced since “Cookie Jar.” I’m pretty sure that many of these references are to fairy tales. Yeri jumping on the bed seems to be a reference to The Princess and the Pea. Irene seemingly pricking her finger on the spinning wheel is a reference to Sleeping Beauty. The scene of Seulgi sitting alone in a room that has a loom with the golden hue and gold decorations reminds me of Rumpelstiltskin. The wedding dresses may be a reference to the frequent theme of marriage in fairy tales like the ones above. Most fairy tales involve women experiencing some bizarre, tragic situation that makes them (or others) think they are “crazy,” and it takes a prince charming who can live with their “craziness” to save them. Once the bizarre situation is solved and their psychosis is rationalized, they are automatically reduced to brides because there is no other capacity in which they can live with their experiences. However, like the dangling wedding dresses at the end of the MV, these princesses are empty shells of femininity, they aren’t people.
I think this is the “moral of the story” the MV is painting between its references to fairy tales, wedding dresses, and the lyrics of the song, where a woman seemingly talks about how she loves a man who manipulates and controls her by making her feel like a “psycho.” There are many scenes where the RV members seem to go “crazy”: Seulgi’s mirror image starts moving on her own, Irene is surrounded by butterflies. It’s about how women are made to feel helpless and isolated through gaslighting, convinced that they are bizarre and loveless, except by the one person who professes to be able to rationalize and love them through their psychosis (but who is causing them to feel this way in the first place).
The Princess thinks being wed to the Prince is her destiny and “happy ever after” because her self-confidence has been shattered to the point that she’s convinced she can’t be happy in any other situation, certainly not by herself.
Of course, there’s always the option of fully embracing one’s monstrosity and irrationality as a source of empowerment. “Peekaboo” demonstrates this, where the RV members embrace their identities as “psychotic” and dangerous women. In “Psycho,” however, they seem to be more hesitant. Here, they seem to be struggling to assert agency against the way the trope of psychosis also constrains them. It can feel liberating to not be understood, but it’s also very isolating. I'm thinking of the scene where Wendy stands there listlessly like a ghost, and Joy passes her by at first because Wendy doesn’t want to be understood, she wants to be left alone, but then turns around and grabs Wendy’s hand, and life comes back to Wendy. It’s as if Joy is telling Wendy that this is not empowerment. And then there's the dressing room scene where the RV members break character, demonstrating that these are just costumes/ roles/performances that RV puts on. They may feel liberating, but they are not the entirety of who the RV members are. Monstrous femininity can be empowering but also limiting, and RV is trying to navigate that.
(I’m sorry if this post is a lot more rushed than my previous analyses! I am a sad PhD student trying to write this with time I don’t have ;_; The MV is so dense with symbolism that I am sure there is plenty I have missed.)
