The Pain in the Pretty - by Tracy Gustilo
BTS's most recent album dropped a few days ago, Map of the Soul 7. This boyband from South Korea is the first to break solidly into the mainstream American pop music scene. And it’s not only in America. BTS is frequently touted as "the biggest boyband in the world." As their album ships, and YouTube views reach into the 10's of millions, with over 2 million copies of the album sold within the first two hours of release, we can even watch their live performance of the title song "On" in Grand Central Station, which was shut down and emptied for Jimmy Fallon's The Tonight Show.
The lyrics run in part:
Bring it, bring the pain, on yeah
Bring the pain
It'll become my blood and flesh
Bring the pain
No fear, now that I know the way
Breathe on the small things
My air and my light in the dark
The power of the things that make me, “me”
Even if I fall, I come right up, scream
And the chorus:
Hey na-na-na
Gotta go insane to stay sane
Hey na-na-na
Throw myself whole into both worlds
Hey na-na-na
Can't hold me down 'cuz you know I'm a fighter
Carried myself into this beautiful prison
Find me and I'm gonna live with ya
Cultural critics -- or perhaps western media following marketing hype -- tell us that behind the seven-album series of BTS there is an ongoing story, with the most recent albums delving into Jungian psychology and making cultural references to the likes of Herman Hesse, Ursula K Le Guin, and Nietzsche. The addressee of the lyrics, consistent with Jungian influence, seems to be the dancer’s shadow.
Is there a deep story here? It seems doubtful that this pretty-boy band of 20-somethings could tap into anything of real cultural depth or the dark reality of actual human suffering. But BTS band members themselves certainly think they do, and some cultural experts agree. K-pop’s integrated content of story, music, vocals, dance, elaborate sets, costume, makeup, and especially persona is the way they reach their fans and maintain a devoted, even worshipful, following. K-pop fandoms are some of the most powerful cultural forces on earth, and BTS has its own “Army.” Fans memorize and chant lyrics called fanchant and sell out stadiums in record time. In June 2019, BTS sold out the 90,000-seat Wembley stadium in 90 minutes. These pretty young men in pain deserve to be called idols!
Surely mass culture might concern itself with struggle and pain. There is nothing new in that. Would anything here qualify as sacred art? Or perhaps, since we're dealing with the making of contemporary idols, we should call it demonic art. Or, do we have mere harmless entertainment and pop art "for the kids,” not to be taken too seriously? That BTS has at least some pretensions to produce art at all, even fine art, is evident in the band's sponsored film “Black Swan” performed to another track on their new album by MN Dance Company, with a rather different choreographic character. Or one might point to CONNECT BTS, which describes itself as a "collective curatorial practice by curators around the world who resonated with BTS' philosophy."
Recently, as I've been immersed theologically -- and now, given that Lent is well under way, liturgically -- in the dynamics of the paschal desert, there is much to ponder in our own story. In the scriptures of the Exodus, the plotline tracing how God works to bring Israel out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the Holy Land, we learn that Pascha -- Passover -- Passage is not pleasant. Even God has a hard time persuading the stubborn hearts of his people Israel to stay the course. As Christians, we believe that Christ provides the ultimate solution. He is the new Adam, the new Moses, the new High Priest, even the new Tabernacle-Temple in the flesh, and at long last he takes his place on God's throne as the only just and righteous Shepherd King. (Palm Sunday and Ascension are the oft-neglected framing bookends of Holy Week.)
If we can get out of the slavery of Egypt, the slavery of our passions; if we are able to become human in the desert by seeing and contemplating liturgically, enabling us to choose freely to follow God; if God himself can lead us successfully at long last into the Promised Land, into a new City of Peace, our prime motivation to get there, through all the struggle, pain, asceticism, and wandering Lenten journey of our own Pascha, must be a driving love for Christ himself, the Beautiful.
Is not Christ himself a pretty young Asian man in pain performing spectacularly?
In the Old Testament, idolatry is The Sin. In some fashion Christ our God must be less an idol and more of a God than the beautiful and inordinately gifted and world-beloved young men of BTS. As Christians, we should figure out how. Perhaps only then will we have an answer for why millions flock worldwide to BTS concerts, while only a few hundred souls, in this country at least, manage to straggle through Christian Lent and Holy Week each year. My suspicion is that only a properly theologized liturgical beauty of Holy Week, Pascha, and the season of Pentecost can provide a vivid enough counter-performance.
"Bring the pain on.”
Tracy Gustilo is Assistant Director of the Institute of Sacred Arts and teaches a course on Theological Aesthetics at St Vladimir’s Seminary.
For further exploration ~
Probably our Orthodox abbas and startsy would call boyband idol-worship demonic, and perhaps it is. Here is Jimin performing in both roles:
The “demonic” Jimin performing (with J-Hope) “Boy meets Evil” at MAMA in 2016
The “angelic” Jimin’s solo dance, ”I Need U” at MMA 2019 (via fancam)
As this essay goes to print, the official music video of "On" has been posted. It offers a narrative and visual feast of ostensibly epic proportions. The story on display easily rivals many popular sci-fi or fantasy movies and online series. One might wonder whether it is a story that could possibly rival the epic narrative of Christianity itself. More intriguing would be the suggestion that the story being told in the BTS universe builds intentionally (if indirectly) upon Christian motifs, or that it in some not-so-subtle way is responding to or re-interpreting the age-old story of Christ himself put on epic display in the pain, struggle, and ultimate redemption of human life.
In another update, here is a video commenting on the Jungian and Christian/biblical symbolism and meaning for the band members.