btsorpheus

[btsorpheus]

to(BTS (방탄소년단) '봄날 (Spring Day)' Official MV; Feb. 12, 2017.)

THE BANGTAN MYTH, I

An ongoing joke among BTS’s fanbase is the fact that BTS’s song, “Spring Day,” always seems to reappear on the charts when they drop new music--even in 2020, though “Spring Day” was released in 2017.

The song is often cited as their best work. The melody is clear, sweet, and strangely nostalgic. The vocals are deeply emotional and the beat is charming. And yet the lyrics reminisce about loss, grief, and heartbreak.

Rarely do pop songs enter this dangerous territory. A lot of people use music as a relief from the tragedy and stress surrounding their own lives; willingly lending an ear to even more pain feels dangerous.

But this overwhelming emotion is also alluring. In mythology, Orpheus’s music borne out of grief was so powerful that it even made the stones weep.

1. Spring Day

“Spring Day” is a song about loss. They long for the so-called ‘spring day' as they live through an emotional “cold winter”--a period of mourning.

In its grief and confrontation of loss, it’s already an Orphic song. The music video for the song takes this a step further by taking advantage of the added visual medium to utilize Orphic visual tropes.

The opening shot of the music video shows V stepping onto the train tracks. The train is representative of journeys, not unlike Orpheus’s own into the Underworld. The modern retelling of the Orpheus myth, Anaïs Mitchell’s 2006 musical Hadestown, even uses train tracks as Orpheus’s guide into the Underworld.

The journey into the Underworld is also a descent, from the realm of the living into the realm of the dead below. Films with Orphic themes will often use spiral staircases to represent this, as originated in Black Orpheus and reintroduced in Théo et Hugo. BTS does the exact same thing in the music video for “Spring Day,” wherein the members walk down a spiral staircase--a prominent scene that’s dispersed throughout the video as a whole.

The video itself is permeated with imagery of retro, rusting, and empty backdrops. It’s clear that this is an image of the past--one of lost youth, as the imagery of the decaying carnival ride and the reference to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” which details a fictional community called Omelas that only prospers if a child suffers, suggest.

It’s been speculated that “Spring Day” was written in response to one of South Korea’s great tragedies, the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014, which resulted in the deaths of 304 of its passenger, 250 of whom were students.

“Spring Day” may or may not be a response to a very real, very devastating loss, but that association that a listener might make remains tangible.

A last persistent, Orphic image in the music video for “Spring Day” is Jin’s Backwards Look. At several points in the video, he gazes intentionally into the camera, always over a shoulder.

It’s unclear what he’s looking for. But whatever it is, like Eurydice, it seems to be just out of reach.

2. Save Me

BTS has an intense relationship with loss. As touched on with regards to the Eurydice figure, a part of BTS’s personal identities must be sacrificed so that their public selves can survive.

They have taken this theme and given it a prominent role in what is referred to as the BTS Universe, or the HYYH Series. (HYYH stands for Hwa Yong Yeon Hwa (화양연화), translated as The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, one of their album series.)

Though it began as a series of seemingly loosely-connected videos, including short films and music videos, the underlying narrative was eventually culminated in an officially licensed webtoon (a term for digital comics) called Save Me.

A panel from “Ep.01" of the webtoon Save Me.

The story revolves around an alternate, fictional timeline of the seven members, who go by their birth names, wherein they meet as students and grow up together. They lead happy lives until Seokjin (Jin) leaves for the States and comes back to find everything has fallen to shambles: Namjoon (RM) is in jail, Jungkook and Yoongi (Suga) are dead, Hoseok (J-Hope) and Jimin are in the hospital, and Taehyung (V) has murdered his father. To save them, he must travel back in time and confront them before they succumb to their fated demises.

A panel from “Ep.02" of the webtoon Save Me.

It’s an intense, often gruesome webcomic. The reader must watch representations of the members of BTS die over and over as Seokjin tries and fails to save them. (Shockingly, the second episode opens with Jungkook’s body smashing into the hood of Seokjin’s car.) 

Save Me doesn’t even end happily--Seokjin thinks he’s finally succeeded, but he’s forgotten Taehyung’s hatred for his abusive father. In the end, he is unable to stop Taehyung from seeking revenge, and is forced to start another time loop, the success of which the webtoon leaves open to interpretation.

This very narrative is reminiscent of the Orphic myth. Seokjin traveling back in time to try to save his friends is similar to Orpheus’s journey into the Underworld to bring Eurydice back to life.

Like Orpheus, Seokjin fails--repeatedly. But both receive second chances: Orpheus through each retelling of his myth and Seokjin on every timeline he cycles through. Unfortunately, also like Orpheus, Seokjin’s attempts are in vain. The webtoon ends on his failure.

3. Run

One music video in the BTS Universe is “Run.” The opening shot of the music video is of Jungkook falling backwards into what at first appears to simply be his reflection. It’s only when he hits the surface that it’s revealed to be a body of water.

([MV] BTS(방탄소년단) _ Run; Nov. 9, 2015)

A common visual repeated throughout BTS’s videos is the mirror. Though I covered its function in the Orphic myth with regards to Eurydice and her multiple selves and only mentioned Aristaeus, Orpheus also significantly faces his double in the latter through Virgil’s poetry.

Orpheus is a man who utilizes excessive passion, called furor, to forge his path into the Underworld; Aristaeus is a god who follows the gods’ orders to the letter. Furor can only take Orpheus so far--in the end, Aristaeus is the only one of the two to succeed in his task.

But their dynamic brings up the mythic theme of the Good Twin and Bad Twin, as described by philosophical anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It may be easy to pinpoint Orpheus as the Bad Twin because the narrative ends with him failing in his endeavor, but in Virgil’s version of the Orphic myth, Aristaeus is the man responsible for Eurydice’s death. Would that make him the Bad Twin? Or because the narrative ends with his success, has he been forgiven and rendered the Good Twin?

Again, the morality of music becomes unclear.

4. Blood Sweat & Tears

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘피 땀 눈물 (Blood Sweat & Tears)’ Official MV; Oct. 9, 2016)

BTS doesn’t seem to have an answer to this dilemma. The image of the mirror reappears in several of their music videos--as mentioned before, in Suga’s “Interlude: Shadow,” but also in perhaps their most iconic music video, “Blood Sweat & Tears.”

The song is one of seduction, where the object of the song’s affections is a corrupter. Jin, the protagonist of the music video, reluctantly passes through the storyline, falling deeper and deeper into the other members’ different representations of sin.

By the end, when he sits before a mirror, his reflection’s face has begun to crack. Whether his real self’s face is cracked or not is unclear--but what is clear is this divide between his parallel selves.

The Good Twin and Bad Twin dynamic is present in Jin and his corrupted self, separated by the mirror.

5. Fake Love

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘FAKE LOVE’ Official MV; May 18, 2018.)

There’s a sequence in their music video for “Fake Love” that also uses mirrors. RM faces his reflection--which is imperfect, wearing different clothing and differently styled hair--as the shot doubles the scene against Jungkook also reaching for his.

“Fake Love” is a part of the BTS Universe. Several of the scenes from the music video are adapted into the webtoon (such as Suga sitting in an empty room with his instruments and Jimin’s drowning scene).

The song itself is about a loss of identity--“Try to erase myself and make me your doll,” V sings. It’s not a difficult assumption to make, given their other songs, that this is referencing the relationship between an idol and their fans. (Eerily enough, BTS literally have their own Mattel doll line.)

Suga only adds to this unsettling dynamic, rapping, “You say I’m not myself which you knew well,” but how can an outsider claim to know someone better than they know themselves?

Though the music video doesn’t pit RM against himself, there’s something ominous about the imperfect reflection and its unblinking stare. It’s unclear what it wants or why it exists.

Another scene in “Fake Love” that makes good use of mirrors is a sequence wherein V passes through a hall of flashing black screens that mimic phone cameras snapping photos. It’s reminiscent of a line in Suga’s “Interlude : Shadow,” wherein he pleads with the listener, “Please don't let me shine.” The music video makes it clear that this is in reference to the constant flashing cameras--from paparazzi and reporters alike--that follow them in every public appearance.

The scene also reminded me of one of Judy’s monologues in Vertigo which she delivered as Madeleine. I’ve posted a series of gifs here, but in short, Judy describes a “long corridor” covered in “fragments of... mirror” that ends in “darkness” and her death.

Mirrors have taken on a fatal quality. It echoes both the struggle between the Good Twin and Bad Twin and the Eurydice plight--both are fatal. One Twin must win over the other, and Eurydice’s story always ends in death. In the Orpheus myth, mirrors are always a danger.

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(BTS (방탄소년단) '봄날 (Spring Day)' Official MV; Feb. 12, 2017.)

THE BANGTAN MYTH, II

In the context of the BTS Universe, the double could also represent the parallel universes that exist as a result of Jin’s Groundhog Day-style time travel. Though the implication is that they all exist in a linear timeline that Jin travels back through to a specific point, there still technically existed at some point a version of, for example, Jungkook who died.

(A diagram explaining how the Save Me webtoon’s time travel operates.)

Multiple versions of the BTS characters exist within the same work--not unlike how multiple versions of the BTS members exist within our world, within the public and the private spheres. 

6. Black Swan

The idea of the sinister double culminates in BTS’s music video for “Black Swan.” Though it’s more of a performance-based video than a narrative one, the visuals are haunted by shadows and mirrors.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘Black Swan’ Official MV; Mar. 20, 2020)

As Suga raps onstage, his shadow (which, in the behind-the-scenes, is revealed to be a projection of another member) moves in an entirely different way. The same happens to RM as he raps, the shadow on the ceiling above him dancing even as he simply remains stationary.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘Black Swan’ Official MV; Mar. 20, 2020)

The shadow even faces the wrong way. There’s an obvious disconnect between the rappers and their shadows, but they barely acknowledge one another.

The same image repeats itself with Jin in front of a set of mirrors.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘Black Swan’ Official MV; Mar. 20, 2020)

As Jin turns to face the camera, his multiple reflected selves don’t move. This seems to be more case of the Good Twin and Bad Twin. The eerie disconnect between the parallels continues but unlike with Eurydice (as exemplified by Judy in Vertigo), they don’t occupy the same space. The self and the reflection coexist as separate entities--an Orpheus and Aristaeus.

Where Eurydice could not exist with multiple selves occupying her body, so too must Orpheus and Aristaeus come into conflict.

The tension is echoed in the violent lyrics for “Black Swan,” wherein Suga and RM describe a “first death” due to a lack of artistic inspiration. But it’s more than just a quiet death--some outside force is actively “killin’ [them]” as, even still, they demand someone “film it now.”

It’s the conflict between the artist and the idol--something they describe in their aptly named song, “Idol.” Though in “Idol” these two identities seem reconcilable (“You can call me artist / You can call me idol / .... / I know what I am”), here BTS seem to have realized how being an idol can harm the artist.

Again, instead of producing art for art’s sake, there’s a need for everything--even their “first death”--to be commodified. A large part of being an idol is being constantly accessible to fans. Because that isn’t realistic, they instead film enough content for nearly 100 37-minute episodes of their V Live series BTS Run, several docuseries (Burn the Stage, Bring the Soul, and the soon-to-be-released Break the Silence), their YouTube clip series called Bangtan Bombs, among appearances on reality and variety shows and commercials.

They are constantly called upon as entertainers, a role that must be exhausting on its own. That they need to produce art atop all these responsibilities makes this “first death” seem less surprising.

Interestingly, Aristaeus could be described as an idol. As an agricultural god, he would have had worshippers and rituals dedicated in his name for success with crops (and particularly bees, for whom he was a patron). Orpheus, the great mythic musician-hero, could easily be described as an artist.

The conflict between idol and artist can be represented by their mythic forebears, Aristaeus and Orpheus. Even the way idols’ public images are tightly controlled reflects the way Aristaeus complies with the gods’ instructions--versus Orpheus the artist, who wields his music in unruly, revolutionary ways.

Just as BTS embody the multiplied, dying Eurydice, so too do they embody the conflicting Orpheus and Aristaeus.

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[btsorpheus]

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

THE BANGTAN MYTH, III

The visual influences of the Orphic myth conflate in BTS’s music video for “ON,” a song that feels extraordinarily different from the typical K-pop sound. It features a gospel choir and--fun fact!--UCLA’s marching band on the drums, a step away from the usual fun, electronic, earworm beats K-pop songs tend to use.

It’s an impressive song. BTS’s agency seems to agree; the song actually has two music videos, a “kinetic manifesto” (which is purely performance-based) and a narrativized, almost theatrical version.

While the performance video is already impressive, the narrativized video plays like a small blockbuster--but because they only have approximately six minutes to tell their story, the video relies heavily on symbols and icons that step out of the Orphic myth itself.

The “ON” music video revolves around Jungkook, who runs from a concrete compound with his hands bound in a crown of thorns.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

The crown of thorns is a powerful symbol--it seems to be an overt reference to Christ and the Crucifixion, which from Christian theology is Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for humanity.

The Christ symbols continue through the music video: V takes the same pose as Christ on the Cross and Jungkook eventually steps into water to remove the crown of thorns in a quasi-baptism.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

Interestingly, parallels can be drawn between Christ and Orpheus. European artists have been doing so since the 14th century, such as in this painting:

(“No. 37 Scenes from the Life of Christ: 21. Resurrection (Noli me tangere)” by Giotto di Bondone, 1304-1306.)

In it, Christ looks back at Mary Magdalene, one of his followers, directly after His Resurrection. Though in the original Biblical text, Christ does not explicitly look backwards at her, Orpheus’s Backwards Glance is being associated with Christ’s story of revival.

The similarities go deeper within their stories. Both culminate in a journey to and from Hell to restore life (Christ’s sacrifice for humanity on the Cross and His subsequent Resurrection) and both figures demonstrate an affinity for nature and rhetoric. While some have compared RM to Noah in this scene, not all of the animals are in pairs, as in the Biblical Flood.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

This could instead be read as as an Orphic or Christ-like image. Like with Christ’s gentle nature, the animals are drawn to RM as he raps. Yet, like the performer Orpheus, RM is oblivious to them, focused on his music and watching the camera instead.

The descent into Hell is present in two sequences. The first is when Jungkook passes out and the screen fades to black, only to open on J-Hope rapping in a field of dead trees as a black bird pecks at Jungkook’s body.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

The image is hauntingly deathlike. The repetitive trees, empty expanse, and desaturation are reminiscent of the Underworld staging in Matthew Aucoin’s operatic version of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice play, wherein the Underworld was minimalistic and monochrome, and the dead all looked alike.

(Danielle de Niese as Eurydice in LA Opera’s world premiere of “Eurydice.” Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of the LA Opera.)

But another image of Hell appears during the dance break. First, V meets a blindfolded girl (which could be read as a reversal of the Transgressive Gaze, with the young girl--instead of her Orphic guide--robbed of her sight) and they journey to a massive wall.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

The wall is a common image in Orphic retellings; again, Matthew Aucoin’s opera uses a wall to demonstrate Orpheus’s entry into the Underworld. It represents the crossing of a boundary, from the world of the living into the world of the dead.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

Next, as BTS performs the most intensive section of the choreography, Jungkook emerges with a shell that he also uses as a horn, a sort of instrument.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

The members are all dressed in red, torches lit behind them. It feels like the Christian vision of Hell--the usual fire and brimstone.

Like Orpheus’s emergence from Hell, and Christ’s Resurrection, the direct result of this sequence seems to be life restored to the world.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘ON’ Official MV; Feb. 27, 2020.)

The forest turns a deep, vibrant green as the camera pulls out, revealing a now flourishing world. Unlike Orpheus, BTS is successful in their retrieval--which, for them, feels inevitable given that they are known for their message of self-love and positivity. 

However, they’ve done so without playing into the role of Aristaeus and the idol. The key to BTS’s success within the video is their use of music--Jimin opens the song dancing in front of a pile of drums, they dance to complete their replenishing ritual, and Jungkook holds up his shell-instrument.

The image of restored nature is a fusion of the Orpheus myth: instead of bringing a lover back to life and subsequently mourning with Nature, BTS has brought life back to Nature itself. “ON” both plays into and subverts the Orpheus myth. 

But by fusing Eurydice with Nature (and in a way, the entire world) and allowing BTS to succeed in the way Orpheus couldn’t, it almost seems to be proposing that BTS is more powerful than myth’s greatest musician.

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(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Feb. 14, 2020.)

BANGTAN

방탄소년단, Bangtan Sonyeondan, Bulletproof Boyscouts. Or, most recently, Beyond The Scene.

(Twitter (bts_bighit); Jan. 26, 2020. From left to right: V, Suga, Jin, Jungkook, RM, Jimin, J-Hope.)

They’ve performed at the Grammys, they’ve swept the Mnet Asian Music Awards, and they’re the first group since the Beatles to achieve three #1 albums in a year. They shut down Union Station for a performance; they consistently sell-out stadiums; they have hundreds of millions of YouTube views to their name.

They’ve even spoken at the U.N., the message from their Love Yourself albums becoming a speech “about empowerment and love” on September 24, 2018.

No one seems sure whether they want to be them or be with them.

They’re BTS, and they’ve achieved world domination.

(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘IDOL’ Official MV; Aug. 24, 2018.)

I only discovered BTS on December 6, 2019. I remember this day because it was the Friday before final exams--my roommate and I had desperately been trying to distract ourselves from the mind-numbing tediousness of Ancient Greek and Roman social life, and had suddenly recalled a mutual friend who liked Korean pop music. More specifically, she professed to be deeply in love with a boy group called BTS.

In truth, we were just looking for a laugh or two. At the time, we’d both dismissed K-pop as a weird, niche interest along the lines of anime.

Neither of us could have predicted that two months later, my roommate--a staunch English mono-linguist--would burst into tears upon listening to a song sung in Korean. And not just once, but on three separate occasions.

As Richard Powers writes in Orfeo, “Music isn’t about things…. It is things.” Music is more than just words and melodies mixed together to tell a story. It is living, evolving, and moving (in more ways than one). It can influence a person’s state of being, from something small-scale like their mood to even their outlook on life.

There’s something provocative about BTS’s oeuvre that connects with millions of fans all over the world–that sets them apart from other Korean artists, who have failed to achieve their level of success, and American artists, who have the numbers but not the deep devotion that BTS’s fanbase offers.

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Apr. 22, 2019.)

What is K-pop?

K-pop is a recent phenomenon for the Western world. Short for “Korean pop music,” the term encapsulates a wide variety of artists, trends, and genres. Boy groups and girl groups tend to be the most popular K-pop phenomenons, and while they all have wildly different styles and concepts, fan culture tends to be the same all around.

The members of these groups are referred to as “idols” and each group has a fanbase with names that link them to the band. For example, if you like BTS, you’re an ARMY. If you like Monsta X, another boy group, you’re a Monbebe; fans of the girl group Blackpink are called Blinks.

Members usually have three roles they can specialize in: as a rapper, a vocalist, or a dancer (though all members are expected to be professional-level dancers). A “visual” is considered the best-looking member of the group. Each group also has a designated “leader” for communicating with their agency and the press. Some groups have a “translator” (usually specializing in English or other Asian languages)--an increasingly important role as K-pop expands to a global phenomenon. 

K-pop idols are expected to be physically and mentally flawless, to be entertainers, and to love their fans unconditionally. They don’t have lives outside of being a part of their groups (as evidenced by the infamous dating ban imposed by companies in their aptly-nicknamed “slave contracts”). There’s an expectation of perfection associated with being an idol--those who fail at this are quietly removed, and the industry moves on.

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Apr. 13, 2019.)

Who is BTS?

BTS is composed of seven members. They each play different roles, both with their professional performance skills and in their personalities.

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Sept. 11, 2019.)

1. RM: Kim Namjoon, the leader and a lead rapper. He’s considered the “smart one” and is credited on many of their song lyrics. Additionally, he has his own solo album, mono.

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Dec. 3, 2019.)

2. Jin: Kim Seokjin, the visual and a lead vocal. He is the oldest member of the group and is known for his love of food, jokes, and semi-ironic epithet, “Worldwide Handsome.”

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; March 8, 2019.)

3. Suga: Min Yoongi, the main rapper and frequent producer. He’s known as the "cool” member--both in terms of talent and attitude. With RM, Suga is often the member who answers technical questions about BTS albums. His solo album is called Agust D, the name being another one of his monikers.

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Feb. 17, 2020.)

4. J-Hope: Jung Hoseok, a lead rapper and the main dancer. He’s also BTS’s moodmaker (a trope in K-pop meaning that he’s the “positive” one) and headed the group’s most successful solo album, Hope World.

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Oct. 12, 2019.)

5. Jimin: Park Jimin, a lead vocal and lead dancer. Jimin tends to be one of the most popular members of BTS, and is often cited as the “sexy” one. 

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Dec. 29, 2019.)

6. V: Kim Taehyung, a lead vocal and lead dancer. V is known for being the “weird” one and for his interest in art and photography.

(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; Aug. 31, 2019.)

7. Jungkook: Jeon Jungkook, a lead vocal and lead dancer. Jungkook is the youngest member of the group, but he’s called the “golden maknae” (maknae meaning “the youngest” in Korean) because he seems to excel at everything--from music to athletics to art.

Note: As is traditional with Korean names, the family name comes before the given name.

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(Photo: Michelle Kim. “Statue of a Seated Poet (Orpheus?)” at the Getty Villa. Greek, dated between 330–300 B.C.)

I. WHO’S ORPHEUS?

When recounting the Orpheus myth, most turn to Ovid’s version. 

It begins with the accidental death of Eurydice, Orpheus’s wife. Orpheus, being the great musician that he is, sings his way into the Underworld and moves even the dead to tears. The rulers, Hades and Persephone, are sympathetic and allow him to leave with Eurydice--on one condition. Orpheus cannot look back to check if she’s following him.

Of course, like any good drama, Orpheus fails in his endeavor and returns to Earth empty-handed and heartbroken. From that point on, he only has relationships with young men and sings his grief to the point where even the stones weep for him. The Maenads, followers of Dionysus, the god of wine, madness, and festivity, eventually become agitated and rip Orpheus limb from limb.

The myth of Orpheus has been passed down and retold across thousands of years. Each retelling brings a new perspective to the table, but there are a few details every storyteller usually agrees with.

The lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice, are forcefully separated. Whether her death is an accident or something more sinister varies.

Orpheus makes his journey into the Underworld (the katabasis), a dangerous, impossible, and transgressive task.

Orpheus’s voice is powerful--rhetorically and transactionally. It has a civilizing power over both nature and the Underworld.

Eurydice is not quite the same in life and death.

When Orpheus looks back, the lethal backwards gaze is a transgressive and traumatic action. Eurydice dies her second death. The reasons given for why he turns back vary.

Orpheus turns, essentially, from heteronormativity to homonormativity after Eurydice’s death.

These are the mythemes--or mythical building blocks, like how cells compose living things--of the Orphic myth. 

(George de Forest Brush, 1855-1941, North American; American. Orpheus. 1890. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/AMICO_BOSTON_103832885.)

Orpheus and Eurydice have become more than their original Greek myth. Their story has become interwoven into our culture in ways that are sometimes obvious and sometimes not. Each time the story is retold, another layer and another question is added.

For example, Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice focuses on how Eurydice suffers the trauma of death and her entrapment in the Underworld instead of on how Orpheus grieves his loss of her. The film Black Orpheus introduces the visual of the descent into Hell as a spiral staircase, prompting its Orphic successors (Vertigo and Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo among them) to echo the same motif.

But these are all works of fiction. Maybe it’s a reach to try to apply an Orphic lens to real events and real people--but maybe it’s also entirely necessary. Myths exist to serve a purpose, after all. 

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice may have begun as a way to understand the powerful influence a piece of music can have, or to better understand death in the development of new rituals (as evidenced by the Ancient Greek Orphic cults), but it’s become too ingrained in the cultural consciousness to have just these two specific functions.

Exploring BTS as the newest iteration of the Orphic avatar to observe how Orpheus and Eurydice have each evolved in the role of a global celebrity power is just another way to utilize the myth.

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[btsorpheus]

(Kate Greenaway (British illustrator, 1846-1901). The Pied Piper of Hamelin, illustrations, pp. 40-41. 1888. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/AMCADIG_10310847749.)

II. PIED PIPER

If you were on Twitter in the early months of 2020, it’s almost inevitable that you would have bumped into a user with a superscript “7” attached to the end of their name.

(Screenshots from the following list on a K-pop humor Twitter account on March 9, 2020. Twitter handles have been blurred for the users’ privacy.)

This was originally for BTS fans, collectively known as ARMY, to show their support for the new album, Map of the Soul: 7. It has since become a way for individual ARMYs to quickly display their fan status to other users--as well as demonstrate how overwhelmingly numerous they are.

It’s almost insane how much influence BTS holds over Twitter. Though they have only 24.3 million followers as of March 9, 2020 (compared to Justin Bieber, who has 110.3 million, and Katy Perry, who has 108.4 million), four of their tweets are on Wikipedia’s list of the Top 30 Most Retweeted Tweets. 

For another comparison, Barack Obama is on that list four times, as well. Neither Justin Bieber nor Katy Perry have made it as of March 9, 2020.

What have BTS done to have accumulated such a devoted fanbase?

Listening to their song “Pied Piper,” it’s clear that BTS are aware of the power they hold over their fans. Like Orpheus, it’s unclear whether their music is ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Jimin and Jungkook put it best when they sing, “It’s a bit dangerous but I’m so sweet / I’m here to save you, I’m here to ruin you.” 

In Ovid's version of the myth, as recounted in the last section, Orpheus’s music both soothes nature and causes it to break into violence. Though he technically uses it for what appears to be a good purpose (i.e. saving his wife), Orpheus is also a transgressor--living beings aren’t meant to enter the Underworld, nor are they meant to bring the dead back to life. By doing so, Orpheus has crossed what should’ve been an uncrossable line. 

Furthermore, Virgil’s Georgics uses him as essentially a bad example. At odds with the typical view of Orpheus as a great hero, Orpheus is portrayed as a failure compared to Aristaeus, an agricultural god who follows the gods’ exact instructions and succeeds in his task while Orpheus inevitably loses Eurydice.

It’s interesting that BTS choose to identify with the Pied Piper of Hamelin in their music. The Pied Piper, after all, is the antagonist of his story. According to Robert Browning’s poem, “The Pied Piper,” when the Mayor of Hamelin is unable to pay him for ridding their city of their rat infestation, the Piper kidnaps all of Hamelin’s children and holds them hostage until he gets his reward. This is not typical heroic behavior.

Similarly, BTS paints themselves as tempters. Like how the Pied Piper lured children out of the city, RM is aware of how their music can cause obsession that distracts fans from their day-to-day responsibilities. He raps, “Now stop watching and study for your test / Your parents and boss hate me,” with ‘watching’ referring to the content BTS are constantly churning out (“video clips, pictures, tweets”).

Like Virgil’s Orpheus, BTS disrupt social order with their musical prowess. They don’t even seem to be certain whether they want this or not. Obviously, the more people streaming their music, the more money they make. But some fans take this to another level--trending hashtags and getting views on music videos is what they feel is their job.

(Screenshot taken from the YouTube comments section on BTS’ “ON” music video on March 10, 2020. The spelling of “buzz words” (ex: streaming (“st34m1ng”), YouTube (“y0utube”), deleting (“d373ting”), view (“v13w”)) have been altered so that YouTube’s algorithms don’t mark the comment as spam and delete it. Notably, this comment has approximately 4,800 likes.)

This is when the obsession becomes dangerous. When the experience of listening to music is no longer about enjoying it for what it is, an essential part of why the work exists has been removed. For the music industry, the only reason music is produced is to make money--similarly, using music for profit seems to be the only reason the Pied Piper plays his songs. 

The K-pop idol industry tends to fall into this category of mercenary music. A lot of K-pop acts feel “manufactured” as a result of “artists being too managed by the agencies,” as CedarBough Saeji, a visiting Korean studies assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington, notes in a Wall Street Journal article on BTS’s growing popularity in the United States.

Every aspect of an idol’s personality is tailored to appeal to fans. Doing “aegyo” (Korean for “cuteness”), or a coquettish display of affection, is purely fan service, just like how agencies impose a dating ban on their idols to ensure they can appeal to fans as available sex icons. (When a member of the boy group EXO announced his marriage, his “fans” immediately turned on him, declaring him a traitor and calling for his blood.)

BTS appear to have the authenticity and intimacy that other K-pop groups lack. Because they’re allowed to sing about their genuine feelings--as they do in “Pied Piper,” despite how morally dubious the lyrics are--their fans feel a deeper connection with them. This is likely key to why they have sky-rocketed to worldwide fame while other K-pop groups, who sing almost exclusively about partying, monetary success, and vague ideas of love (typically kept carefully PG-13), have stalled.

Jin’s most recent solo song, “Moon,” is specifically about the parasocial relationship between BTS and ARMY. It almost feels like a love song from him to their fans, with its upbeat, poppy tune and gentle promises (“I will stay by your side / I will become your light”).

But the guiding metaphor through the song is Jin (and by extension, BTS) as the moon and ARMY as the Earth, with Jin orbiting but never reaching them. There’s an essential distance between the group and their fans that can never be breached. No matter how many vlogs and selfies BTS put out, the vast majority of their fans has never actually befriended or even met them. They can’t know who they really are. Even if BTS appear authentic by comparison to other K-pop groups, at the end of the day, they’re still performers.

This doesn’t stop fans from taking BTS’s professed affection at face-value.

(Screenshot taken of a BTS fan’s tweet after RM’s (Kim Namjoon’s) V Live livestream on March 9, 2020. The user’s Twitter name and handle have been blurred for privacy.)

It’s a weird relationship that brings into question exactly what kind of love this is, and maybe even blurs its boundaries. But it becomes clear that their music isn’t the only factor in what draws their fanbase in.

Like Ovid’s Orpheus, BTS have a rhetorical power that functions as transactional. Orpheus’s song to Hades and Persephone to convince them to release Eurydice from the Underworld is a business proposal that clearly states how both parties would benefit in the exchange of Eurydice, describing her as a “loan.” Any element of romance remains absent as Orpheus instead attempts flattery, calling Hades’s kingdom “vast” and noting that he holds “longest dominion over humankind,” referring to a soul’s infinite inhabitation in the Underworld after a temporary mortal life.

Who is the fanbase in the Orphic scenario? If BTS are the serenading Orpheus, then, 

The fans must be either Nature, which listens to Orpheus’s song and weeps with him, 

Or the rulers of the Underworld, who listen to Orpheus’s song, weep with him, then give him Eurydice as payment. 

In the well-oiled K-pop idol industry, where award shows and fan service loom around every corner, support (whether financial or social) is always expected in return for content--a Eurydice for every song.

And at the end of the day, BTS are still an idol group and a commodity. Just because they appear more authentic than other groups doesn’t mean they can give up their whole, genuine selves. As Pitchfork notes in their review of Map of the Soul: 7, though the album follows “philosophical, Jungian blueprints,” it lacks the ��kind of candor and complication” that should feature on an “album about the dark side of the psyche and the BTS journey.”

I showed this review to my roommate, a more passionate BTS fan than I am. Though she agreed to an extent, she added that, “If they actually came out and said something like, ‘Our fans are insane,’ they’d lose all of them in an instant.” And with the fans, their income.

Jin’s “Moon” is, itself, an Orphic song. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, the moon and the Earth can never be together. The moon is fated to orbit the Earth forever, looking back longingly as Orpheus does at Eurydice, but never able to reach her.

Maybe “Moon” is a genuine love song. Maybe Jin does feel a loving connection between him and ARMY, and he wanted to share a piece of that. 

Or maybe “Moon” is a sweet, safe song in the midst of an album about being swallowed by your stage persona (Suga’s “Interlude : Shadow”) and losing your passion for art (“Black Swan”)--one that lures fans in and will get them emotional, streaming, and, ultimately, generating revenue.

(Screenshot from a Twitter fan account dedicated to encouraging other fans to listen to BTS’s music more often not out of fondness for the songs but to get their numbers higher, taken March 10, 2020.)

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[btsorpheus]

(j-hope 'Airplane' MV; March 6, 2018.)

III. THE UNDERWORLD

There’s a recurring motif in the works of several East Asian artists that I’ve noticed: that of the airplane and the transpacific flight.

Even as young Indonesian rapper Rich Brian recalls all of his initial struggles in moving to the U.S., he repeats four times throughout his song, “Flight,” that “flyin' 20 hours never felt so right.” 

Higher Brothers, a group of Chinese rappers, also draw attention to the physical journey they made to get to where they are in “16 Hours,” the first track on their second album, Five Stars.

BTS describes the same journey in J-Hope’s solo song, “Airplane,” and the group’s sequel to that, “Airplane pt.2.”

While Rich Brian and Higher Brothers spend a majority of their respective songs navigating the difficulties of the new world they’ve entered, J-Hope lingers in the plane itself. It’s a dreamy perspective: “Every day above the clouds,” he sings. “My feel above the clouds, check it above the clouds.”

(j-hope 'Airplane' MV; March 6, 2018.)

“Airplane pt.2” continues this sense of never quite touching down. “From NY to Cali, London to Paris.... From Tokyo, Italy, Hong Kong to Brazil,” the chorus never settles in a final destination.

Where “Airplane” loves the journey, “Airplane pt.2” is more difficult to place. It’s a song about BTS’s success as a result of the vehicle, with each rap verse tackling a different aspect.

RM’s rap verse takes on the temporary nature of flights and overseas trips. When you’re constantly traveling, there’s nothing to ground you or give a sense of consistency. There’s only the anonymous “hotel rooms” that exist “wherever in the world we go,” always doing the “same work.” Each destination could be swapped out for the last with no distinction. This anxiety develops into fears about their career (“One day it works out too well, then the next day I’m completely screwed”) and about his personal identity (“Who should I live as today, Kim Namjoon or RM?”).

By contrast, J-Hope’s rap verse continues the theme of “Airplane.” While RM dreads the repetition of the taxing flights, J-Hope revels in them. For him, being up in the air is a time for him to turn on “airplane mode” and “turn off all the concerns.” He doesn’t think of the destination, only the journey.

Suga’s rap verse is also focused on the flight itself, but he takes a more aggressive perspective. The many flights they undergo are just proof of their success--or as he puts it, “My passport is about to die from overworking.” Their careers are difficult (“I don’t know... how to stop”; “I don’t know... how to take some rest”) but they remain on top: “I don’t know... how to fail.”

Airplane

Orpheus is the great transgressor, the one who dares to make the journey that few Greek heroes ever can. The impossible quest of entering the Underworld even has a specific name--the katabasis.

Crossing oceans, even by plane, is no easy feat. Not only are the hours long (as Rich Brian and Higher Brothers helpfully point out), but the destination isn’t necessarily friendly. Eastern culture and Western culture can be vastly different, in manner as much as in language and food.

If the transpacific flight is to be taken as BTS’s modern-day katabasis, then it should be noted that there are key differences between their journey and Orpheus’s. For one, BTS frequently make this flight. For another, America isn’t exactly Hell.

But it is interesting that both BTS and Orpheus use the journey as an opportunity to display their power.

BTS and Lil Nas X performing “Seoul Town Road,” RM’s collaboration with Lil Nas X to remix the latter’s hit, “Old Town Road,” at the 2020 Grammy Awards.

When Ovid recounts Orpheus’s katabasis, he takes care to mention Orpheus’s influence over the Underworld as he sings for Hades and Persephone. His music “[makes] the pale phantoms weep”--phantoms who have already been tortured for ages, but are still moved by his song. Even the Furies, demon-goddesses of punishment, weep for “the first time ever in all the world.” Though Orpheus does not come from the Underworld, something about his music resonates with its occupants.

It is because of this feat that Orpheus is considered one of the greatest mythic figures of all time. Not many heroes have the chance or desire to enter the Underworld. Hercules, Odysseus, Aeneas (a mythic founder of Rome), and Orpheus are some of the few to do so, and Orpheus’s technique of using music to essentially tame the Underworld makes him unique among them. Hercules, the notorious strongman, forces his way in; Odysseus stays on the surface and merely brings the dead to him to converse; and Aeneas journeys through the Underworld but takes nothing from it.

While each hero is able to show his skill and bravery by emerging successful, Orpheus is the only musician among them, thereby proving that he is the greatest, most heroic musician in mythology. Who else could move Hades and Persephone to such pity that they could lack the “harshness to refuse him?” Certainly no one else has ever tried.

The katabasis is what cements Orpheus’s position as the greatest musician in mythic history. In a way, world tours do something similar for BTS.

A preview for the purchasable DVD recording of BTS’s 2019 São Paulo concert.

Their performance in São Paulo, Brazil, features an extraordinary amount of confetti and streamers, a multitude of fireworks, possibly water-jets, and definitely Jungkook suspended in the air encircling the stadium--a spectacle on the level of Disney and far-removed from anything the Superbowl could ever hope to put on. It’s a huge display for a group who claim to be “seven normal boys from Korea.”

Concerts and promotional tours are an impressive avenue to give fans the interaction that they crave, even if most can only watch them after the fact through a screen. But they’re also a tool for BTS to prove, over and over again, why they’re the K-pop group that’s always trending on Twitter, being invited to the Billboard Music Awards, getting their own special take-over on Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show,” and breaking records on YouTube. Many would believe BTS deserve to be there because they are the best, just as Orpheus deserves to be lauded as the greatest mythic musician-hero.

As RM, J-Hope, and Suga all recognize in “Airplane pt.2,” traveling around the world has become an essential part of their job. Their passports may look impressive, but it’s all just a day’s work to ensure they remain at the top of the music charts. Everything they do when they travel is to promote their group. Their recent trip to L.A. in early 2020, for example, had them doing a show with James Corden, rehearsing for and performing at the Grammys, and filming their music video for “Black Swan,” all in under two weeks.

Additionally, the simple fact that their music, which is sung and rapped overwhelmingly in Korean, is listened to worldwide is strange. Most people wouldn’t even dream of listening to a song in a language they don’t understand, but “ON,” a song from Map of the Soul: 7, entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #4, becoming the first K-pop song to break the top five on that list. Billboard chart rankings are specific to the United States, a country that doesn’t have a particularly large Korean-speaking population.

That BTS could succeed so thoroughly in a region that shouldn’t be particularly receptive to their music is a powerful, transgressive act.

It’s one thing to be successful in Korea, like the lesser-known but well-respected older groups SHINee and Wonder Girls, and it’s another to be the object of affection of the entire world.

Even John Cena, the pro-wrestler-turned-universally-beloved-personality, loves BTS. When asked by James Corden why he does, Cena answered, “They’re a Korean pop band, and they were the first Korean pop band to actually connect everyone throughout the world.”

A frequent claim that ARMY makes is that “BTS paved the way.” When an interview with Monsta X released on April 27, 2020, the group didn’t explicitly mention BTS when asked why they thought K-pop was so popular--and “BTS PAVED THE WAY” soon began trending on Twitter in retaliation.

A screenshot of Twitter trends on April 27, 2020.

Orpheus’s katabasis has persisted in the cultural consciousness in a more lasting way than those of other ancient heroes. BTS has gained more attention than other Korean artists.

Though neither Orpheus nor BTS are the sole champions in the endeavors they undertook, both are venerated above their peers.

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[btsorpheus]

 (BTS (방탄소년단) MAP OF THE SOUL : 7 'Interlude : Shadow' Comeback Trailer; Jan. 9, 2020.)

MIN YOONGI IS DEAD, WHO KILLED MIN YOONGI?

BTS have never been afraid to be horrifically personal in their works. Even in 2013, when they first started out, their songs criticized the grueling nature of being a K-pop idol. In “We Are Bulletproof Pt. 2,” one of the songs on their first album, RM declares that they are, indeed, “bulletproof” even as Jungkook recalls “[giving] up sleep for [his] dreams” and Suga confesses, “My limit was broken in the / double standards and many oppositions.”

Out of the seven members, Suga has been the most revealing of his interiority. This usually comes through his music more than any other source.

One of the songs my roommate cried through was on his solo album, Agust D. Agust D is one of his many monikers: born Min Yoongi, beginning his rap career as Gloss, rebranded by Big Hit Entertainment as Suga, and self-declared Agust D (which is “Suga” backwards plus DT, which allegedly stands for Daegu Town, his home). Agust D is a deeply personal album in which he discusses his social anxiety, depression and implied suicidal intent, and growing ambition amidst it all.

Which is the real man? The vulnerable and furious rapper, the K-pop idol, or the boy born in Daegu?

The answer feels like it should be obvious. But as Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo proves, people don’t always want real.

Vertigo is an Orphic film that intertwines with celebrity. By the time this film was released, Alfred Hitchcock was already an established director and the film’s star, Jimmy Stewart, was a popular and well-liked Hollywood leading man. Though the film was largely unrecognized when originally released, it has since become a cult classic with a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Like BTS, Vertigo has slowly accumulated celebrity and respect over time.

In the film, the hero, a detective named Scottie, falls in love with Madeleine, the woman he’s been tasked by an old classmate to follow. However, Madeleine appears to be possessed by her ancestor, a woman named Carlotta. And to top it all off, Madeleine is not even real--she’s really Judy, a young woman hired by the classmate to pretend to be the true Madeleine.

Three woman exist in Judy: herself, Madeleine, and Carlotta. Scottie is convinced that he is in love with Madeleine. Even when just Judy wants him, he tries to reshape her into the Madeleine he thought he knew.

Scottie occupies the role of Orpheus--a man chasing after the woman he loved, a woman who is technically dead. Scottie’s attempts to resurrect Madeleine echo Orpheus’s attempt at guiding Eurydice out of the Underworld. It is, from the start, a doomed endeavor.

Judy/Madeleine must then represent Eurydice. Though perhaps not evident in Ovid’s myth, Eurydice is often depicted as different in life and death in later iterations. Judy/Madeleine is extremely fragmented, but even the Eurydice of French filmmaker Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (1950) changes after death. Lively and happy in life, she becomes quiet and stiff in death.

(Orpheus (1950) dir. Jean Cocteau.)

In both films, the mirror is used as a signal to the viewer that there is a separate virtual reality that the characters are in contact with. In Orpheus, the mirror is their portal to the Underworld--a physical parallel reality. In Vertigo, the mirror is a nod to Scottie’s deluded belief in the Madeleine he thought existed.

In Suga’s music video for “Interlude : Shadow,” he opens the song by standing in front of a door, which transforms into a reassembled mirror--that then acts as a portal to introduce a second Suga behind it (as shown in the header image on this section). It’s eerily similar to the mirrors of Cocteau’s film--gateways to a separate, parallel reality.

The Orpheus myth demands a death. Eurydice must die so that Orpheus can make his katabasis, and she must remain dead so that Orpheus can mourn so powerfully that he "[draws] the trees, / the beasts, the stones to follow” (Ovid 259). Eurydice must die so that Orpheus can succeed.

On Agust D’s “The Last,” Suga kills Min Yoongi: “Min Yoongi is dead already (I killed him).” If Min Yoongi is dead, then who is singing? Since the album is credited under Agust D, then it must be him. But his idol identity as Suga is still present; a majority of the listeners tuning into Agust D are only doing so because they already know him as Suga from BTS.

Min Yoongi must die so that Suga can succeed. In Vertigo, Judy and Madeleine can’t coexist for Scottie, and though Scottie and his grief-stricken attempts to bring Madeleine back make him an Orpheus-figure, the mytheme of the fated separation of lovers is echoed in Madeleine and Judy’s inability to coexist even if both women, though one is fictional, have fallen in love with Scottie.

Suga can’t constantly exist as both his constructed (or, fictional) idol persona and his organic self. RM recognizes this same conflict in “Intro : Persona,” in which he questions his identity and who he wants to be. The idea of death comes back into play as he asks, “Who the hell am I? / Tell me all your names baby / Do you wanna die?” Though the question is posed in the second-person, he later addresses the several personas he has to wear in his daily life:

“The 'me' that I remember and people know”

“The 'me' that I created myself to vent out”

“The 'me' that I want myself to be”

“The 'me' that people want me to be”

“The 'me' that you love”

“And the 'me' that I create”

“The 'me' that's smiling”

“The me that's sometimes in tears”

(RM dancing in front of a set of mirrors in the MV for “Intro : Persona.” March 27, 2019.)

As an internationally famous group, BTS face a lot of pressure to maintain a public image. To do so, they must sacrifice who they would’ve been otherwise: the idea of being a normal person with a normal life. Now, they must play the personalities that “people know” and “love,” and who “people want [them] to be.”

They essentially confirm the existence of their public masks in a Q&A during a fan event, 2019 Festa. It’s not just RM who feels this pressure, but all of them. J-Hope and Jin both discussed their need to be “cheerful” and full of “energy” on-camera and in public in order to maintain the optimistic façades that their fans are used to seeing.

But the public self isn’t always a danger. Jimin commented, “As BTS, I tend to be assertive and I’m a very confident guy. But what troubles me is whether Jimin as BTS and Park Ji Min should be more alike or different.” 

They project qualities they admire in an effort to be perfect idols, but in doing so have become almost static, idealized role-models both for their fans and for themselves.

(BTS (방탄소년단). Jungkook in BTS MAP OF THE SOUL : 7 Concept Photo Sketch #2. Feb. 19, 2020.)

As the youngest member of BTS, Jungkook presents another form of Eurydice’s death in his solo song on Map of the Soul: 7, “My Time.” In it, he recounts his journey from being a trainee to his current position as one of the most popular idols in the industry.

Because he’s the youngest member, Jungkook debuted at the age of 16. This isn’t unusual in K-pop; superstar Taemin debuted at 14. But he’d been training all through his formative years and begun his career before even graduating high school--because of that, he’s had to “[become] a grown-up faster than everyone else.” As his peers continued their education or completed their compulsory military service, Jungkook has been caught up in the constant whirlwind of the entertainment industry, feeling “alone in a different time and space.”

Jungkook describing his career as an idol as a form of isolation is reminiscent of Eurydice’s fatal imprisonment. There’s a reason the musical Hadestown depicts the Underworld as a highly industrialized institution that Eurydice binds herself to, locked up behind a restrictive contract not dissimilar from a K-pop “slave contract.”

Like how Suga sacrifices his private self for the glory of being a public figure, Jungkook has sacrificed his childhood to grow into a celebrity. In an interview from the third episode of BTS’s documentary series Burn the Stage, Jungkook calls his sense of self “a manifestation of all [the other members’] characters coming together.” Jungkook says, “What I see, feel, and learn is mostly from the members.” Whoever Jungkook would’ve become had he not entered the Korean entertainment industry has been lost. But unlike Suga, who intentionally “killed” Min Yoongi, his loss has been a gradual, perhaps accidental one.

In this, BTS continues the Orphic myth: whether Eurydice’s death is an accident or not varies on the teller.

In this way, BTS have come to occupy both the Orpheus and Eurydice roles. As Orpheus, they’re powerful and influential musicians who cross physical and linguistic boundaries. As Eurydice, they sacrifice a part of their selves in a performative death to be public personalities.

Even though Madeleine and Judy can’t coexist, Orpheus and Eurydice come in a pair. The Orpheus of Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice is distraught without her--he loses his sense of reality and self when she dies, and it’s this distress that motivates him to find her. The clerk officiating Orfeu’s marriage in Black Orpheus turns to Mira, a woman outside the myth’s typical structure, to jokingly ask if she’s Eurydice under the assumption that Orpheus and Eurydice must always be together. 

Black Orpheus, like Vertigo, is a film surrounded in stardom. The fame of Brazil’s Carnival, the holiday during which Black Orpheus takes place, surrounds the film, and portraying Orpheus as a local celebrity plays into the struggles of maintaining a public image. Orpheus is expected to marry Mira, the queen bee in their community, but pines after the quiet newcomer, Eurydice. He struggles between maintaining his reputation as a beloved musician and becoming the man who breaks Mira’s heart--and when he chooses the latter, his once-fans immediately turn against him and destroy his home.

Because BTS’s songs are as much about the downsides of fame as they are about BTS--their personal struggles, or at least the ones they’re willing to share, stem from that aspect of themselves.

BTS, with their public personas, come to embody both halves of the mythic pair. And while Eurydice must die in some respect (“I killed [her]”), she lives on, like a ghostly shade, in others.

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[btsorpheus]

THE HI-TOUCH

I like to joke that on February 14, 2020, I met the love of my life.

I didn’t, of course. But for a second, I fumbled my way through a half-high-five-half-handhold with the K-pop boy group Monsta X and absolutely did not cry, no matter what Rolling Stone attempted to imply. (Yes, that’s me in the foreground of the final photograph.)

The hi-touch is an extremely weird event, to say the least.

Anxious because this was the first time I’d ever attended a fan event, I’d managed to show up four hours early. About three of these hours were spent nervously reading Orfeo by Richard Powers at the Coffee Bean down the street, occasionally looking over trying to figure out when people queue up.

The final hour was actually spent in the line. I tried to make small-talk with the fan in front of me, but soon gave that up when she grimaced in disapproval after finding out I’d been a fan for “only a month” then literally took me by the shoulders and shook me while insisting, “MAKE SURE YOU MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THEM! MAKE EYE CONTACT OR YOU’LL REGRET IT!”

It was while I was worriedly scrolling through my phone that Monsta X rolled in in sports cars.

Just as I began to recover from the absolutely mind-boggling spectacles I’d already been forced to face, I was ushered into the venue--which housed six enormous cut-outs of the members’ faces. Which, frankly, was terrifying.

(Photo: Michelle Kim. Two of the “six enormous cut-outs,” featuring Hyungwon and Joohoney, set-up at Tower Records for Monsta X’s meet-and-greet on Feb. 14, 2020.)

I’d probably been waiting in there for around 15 minutes when the employees desperately trying to hype up the room (mostly full of nervous young girls) introduced Monsta X, who suddenly burst through the curtains on the opposite side of the room and rushed up to the table before hurriedly taking their seats (Kihyun, their main vocalist, barely had time to shrug off his jacket) and sticking out their hands.

After that, it’s just a blur.

Writing this approximately a month after the event, all I can remember is the first member possibly smirking at me, the second holding my hand more firmly than I’d expected, the third smiling broadly, and the last two seeming tired.

And then I stumbled out of the venue and called an Uber and was back home, largely unchanged.

(Photo: Michelle Kim. Paul McCarthy, Dead H Drawings, 1968-69; graphite and ink on paper. Paul McCarthy, Dead H Crooked Leg, 1979 and Dead H Crooked Leg Maze, 1979; graphite and ink on paper. On display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA. Photo taken Feb. 22, 2020.)

The Gaze

When recalling the original myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the first thing that usually comes to my mind is Orpheus turning around to look at Eurydice and to lose her. It’s the climax of the story. And though that Orphic gaze is translated differently in different iterations of the myth, it always seems to be a focal point.

Gazing at something implies a strange binary--it reveals that there is that which you can see and that which you cannot. Paul McCarthy captures this in his Dead H Drawings, a series of sketches of said letter with the space in the center horizontal line highlighted. If you were to look through the legs, you would never be able to see the inside of that portion; you could only see out the other end of the leg like a tunnel. Hence, it’s a dead space.

Even when just looking at a specific object, it becomes clear that you can only focus on one thing at a time. Everything in your peripheral is less easily accessed--forget whatever’s happening behind you.

In Orpheus’s case, the gaze is about confirming Eurydice’s presence yet also losing her. It’s both a moment of relief and of grief, of catharsis and of catastrophe. The nature of his tragedy is that he can’t have the first without the second; if he did, he will have succeeded.

For Scottie, the protagonist of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, it’s exactly this sense of conflicted intangibility that attracts him to Judy/Madeleine, the Eurydice-figure. Even when he believes she’s just Madeleine, there’s an element of fantastical unreachability to her--the fact that she is supposedly possessed by Carlotta. And then when Judy falls back into the Madeleine role, Scottie continues to push her to the edge until she dies a true and final death.

Perhaps this is what makes celebrities such easy objects of affection and what motivates paparazzi. Celebrity sightings, celebrity photos, and two-minute interviews--they’re all small glimpses of a desirable person that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.

(Screenshots of replies from Twitter on a tweet regarding how the original poster believes BTS loves ARMY more than ARMY could ever love them, taken on March 11, 2020. Twitter handles and personal information have been blurred for the users’ privacy.)

A persistent phenomenon in BTS’s fanbase is ARMY seeming to think that BTS’s members genuinely love all of their fans.

K-pop is particularly adept when it comes to commodifying celebrities. It’s why they’re referred to as “idols” and not just as normal performers. Their jobs are to record songs and dance at concerts, but they’re also expected to vlog, feature on variety and reality shows, film practice videos, take and post selfies, consistently interact with fans on Fancafe (a blog platform for K-pop idols), be gracious and friendly in public--and on top of all this pressure, maintain their appearances and memorize choreography and lyrics.

Because there’s hundreds of hours of content featuring them available, it’s easy for fans to believe that they truly, personally understand their favorite idols. But idols are first and foremost entertainers. Everything they do is in the interest of gaining more fans, who turn into consumers and therefore income. When taking into account their motivation, does that still make idols genuine?

In Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice, Eurydice loses her memory upon death. She must relearn who she was when she was alive through her father, also dead, as he reteaches her how to read, her favorite past-time when alive. 

By the time Orpheus arrives to guide her out of the Underworld, it’s unclear if Eurydice has regained her previous sense of self. And if she has, it’s been filtered through her father. 

Similarly, the return of “Madeleine” in Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a hazy recollection of the original woman.

(Vertigo (1958) dir. Alfred Hitchcock.)

Though Judy is dressed as Madeleine, talks like Madeleine, and walks like Madeleine, she’s only playing the Madeleine that Scottie wants to see. She’s putting on an artificial performance of what he expects in an effort to appease him. The Madeleine that he wants is a cool, refined, and feminine lady. Though not playing hard-to-get, she’s always out of reach as a woman both disconnected from reality and married, therefore unavailable. 

Judy can’t always be that. In the car, when Scottie drives her to the bell tower where the true Madeline died, Judy slips through her Madeleine veneer as she acts just a shade too coy.

Eurydice can’t always be what Orpheus expects her to be. The Backwards Look that ultimately causes him to lose her is an act of attempted confirmation, to be sure that he has her: the “loan” that Hades had promised him.

This Backwards Look manifests in many ways among BTS fans.

First, there are the sasaengs and fansites. They’re in some ways comparable to paparazzi--fansites especially, who consider it their (unpaid and unasked for) jobs to photograph idols at their every public appearance, even if they’re just going to catch a flight, then to share their professional-grade photographs online. Sasaengs take this a step further; they’re essentially stalkers who will buy an idol’s personal information to, for example, share a flight and book a neighboring hotel room to be as physically close to them as possible.

Though less extreme, there are also fan artists and fanfiction writers. Both attempt to capture the BTS members’ personalities and internal lives and manifest them in portraits, comics, and elaborate stories (often novel-length or longer). Artists and writers have to assume something about BTS when creating such content. There’s no way anyone could fully understand what’s happening in another person’s head. And when BTS is constantly presenting stage personas while acting like reality shows, filmed by dozens of cameras and producers, represent who they truly are, it’s difficult to say who the artists and writers are trying to capture.

Even a fan’s desire to stream music and videos and look at photos of BTS is a form of the Backwards Look. They’re constantly revisiting a moment and trying to recapture that first instance of experiencing it. This is the Eurydice moment--the experience of falling in love with a piece of art in a brief glance, and losing that feeling as soon as the moment is over.

These experiences are by no means limited to just BTS. Many fandoms, especially other K-pop groups’ fandoms, all experience this overwhelming amount of content consumption. But because BTS is the current Orpheus--dominating their music genre--they have the most fans, the most fanart and fanfiction, and the most streams. They are constantly under the pressure of the Backwards Gaze.

And they are constantly beyond it at the same time. In Ovid’s telling, Eurydice disappears as soon as Orpheus looks back (“she was gone, in a moment”). In Ruhl’s, the lovers “turn away from each other, matter-of-fact, compelled” as soon Orpheus sees Eurydice. When Scottie finally sees the Madeleine he wants, she dies in the next scene.

Eurydice is always beyond reach. And for every minute of content BTS releases, there’s still hours where they’re beyond the camera’s gaze. Are they the same in front of it as they are apart from it? Would they still profess how much they love ARMY if no one was there to record them? Would RM be as well-spoken? Would Jin’s laugh be the same?

It’s only been a month or so, but it’s difficult for me to recall what exactly happened when I gave Shownu, the leader of Monsta X, a horrifically awkward half-high-five-half-handshake. I tried to record what happened right after the event, but I was so shocked that all I could write for him was “funny little smile,” which doesn’t help much when I’m trying to piece together the memory.

Even in the moment, it was difficult to parse exactly what that “funny little smile” meant. There’s only so much time to think when you’re given just a split-second glance. Had Shownu been teasing, playing the flirt that loves all his fans as idols are expected to? Had he been genuinely excited to be there? Had he been embarrassed? (I know I was.) Maybe the smile hadn’t been funny, or little, or even a smile at all--maybe I’d read the moment all wrong.

Funnily enough, Shownu features on a song called, “Don’t Look Back.”

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(BTS (방탄소년단) on Facebook; March 8, 2020.)

WHY EVEN TRY?

BTS must be aware of their mythic status.

In “Dionysus,” BTS compare themselves to the Ancient Greek god of madness, wine, and festivities. He’s the same god who patrons the Maenads, the women who murder Orpheus.

BTS cannot escape their Orphic influences. In fact, they seem to be capitalizing on it. No other K-pop group uses imagery and narrativized structures in their music videos quite like BTS.

SuperM, described as “The Avengers of K-Pop” due to all of them being already established artists under SM Entertainment, are a group suspected to have been created to contest BTS’s fame. But their most popular music video (“Jopping”) is still performance-based rather than story-based.

BTS aren’t just accepting a mythic status, but creating their own.

In Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss describes the crafting of myths as a way to “understand the world around [us], its nature and [our] society.” He compares mythology to science in that both serve to display “order in the universe” by giving explanations for otherwise unfathomable occurrences like natural disasters, death, and the changing of the seasons.

By imposing a mythic structure on BTS, a very real group of humans whose personal lives must, in reality, expand beyond the constraints of the Orphic myth, I’ve been attempting to bring order to a complex and in some ways unfathomable phenomenon.

And it doesn’t have to be a comparison to an ancient myth, either. Stephen Colbert illuminating similarities between The Beatles and BTS fulfills this same need for order--to understand something new by comparing it to already-known things in our stories and our histories.

It’s a concept that German philosopher, Hans Blumenberg, also observes in his Work on Myth. As previously mentioned with the Gaze, there’s only so much you can see at once. When there’s an object in the distance, we have to wait for it to come into view. As it approaches, details become more distinct as we are able to focus better on it--but there’s an anxiety to the approach, as we can’t be certain of what emerges on the other end.

This is one of Blumenberg’s most famous concepts--the Absolutism of Reality. The mind focuses on something that hasn’t been given absolute definition yet, waiting for it to emerge as a known object. Because BTS can never be truly known by the public--particularly their fans--they both design narratives for themselves as well as take on narratives developed by fans.

BTS have been crafting their public image since their debut. In their debut music video for “No More Dream,” they take on the role of students (highlighted by Jin driving a school bus) causing chaos in their otherwise safe, suburban neighborhood. Their earliest albums 2 Cool 4 Skool, O!RUL8,2?, and Skool Luv Affair, were all pushback against the high pressure they faced as students in the Korean education system. “No More Dream” is itself an encouragement to “all the youngsters without dreams” to “become the subject of [their] own [lives], away from suppression.”

Of course, by this time, BTS weren’t a group of normal Korean students anymore. They were a recently debuted K-pop idol group already pursuing their own dreams, and their music is merely a reflection on their past attitudes and outlook on life.

Orpheus does this in Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown when he sings to Hades to beg for Eurydice’s return. He takes the story of Hades and Persephone’s romance and he sings, “And I know how it was because / He was like me / A man in love with a woman,” effectively drawing the both of them into a narrative comparison. In adopting Hades’s feelings as his own, and vice versa, Orpheus has taken on a relatable narrative to his target audience in a way that’s not dissimilar to BTS’s adoption of the position of the dissatisfied student.

It’s an effective rhetorical trick. After all, it wins Orpheus Hades and Persephone’s favor and BTS more fans.

Fans also create their own narratives for BTS, adding to the already seemingly endless amount of BTS content available. 

On the website Archive of Our Own, a popular database among all fandoms for fanfiction, the amount of fanfics for BTS has grown to surpass that for Star Wars, a franchise powerhouse. 

(Screenshots from AO3.org taken on March 15, 2020.)

By creating their own narratives and interpretations of BTS’s characters, in spite of BTS being “real” people, fans are developing their own myths for BTS. In the spirit of Claude Lévi-Strauss, they’re attempting to impart “order” on something they strongly desire to--but ultimately can never--understand.

But what are the stakes with BTS? Why is there a need to understand them through a mythic structure?

Like Eurydice, they’re in very real danger of disappearing.

One of BTS’s fans’ deepest fears is enlistment: South Korea requires their adult male citizens to complete compulsory military service for two years, and BTS’s Jin is expected to be leaving for that soon.

(BTS fans on Tumblr and Instagram expressing their fears regarding Jin’s enlistment. The Tumblr account was unprompted; the Instagram comments were in reply to a fake article announcing Jin’s supposed enlistment. Screenshots taken March 15, 2020; users’ handles and personal information have been blurred for privacy.)

There’s an ephemeral quality to even their celebrity. When Jin enlists, BTS won’t be an entire unit anymore. Something will be missing from their team--and the looming countdown until the other members also enlist begins to feel more urgent.

BTS will likely regroup after each member completes their military service. But if BTS must follow the mythic structure as the Eurydice taken away by outside forces, there remains the fear that they won’t return.

Even BTS and the K-pop phenomenon aren’t guaranteed to stay. In the aforementioned Monsta X interview regarding the popularity of K-pop, vocalist Kihyun remarks that another member, Minhyuk, had once observed, “Trends are always moving and that’s natural. I think it’s K-pop’s generation.” Today, K-pop might be all the rage--but that doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow. 

Because it’s so easy to lose BTS, the need to hold onto them and to understand them becomes inflated. 

(Though, even if the real BTS disappears as Orpheus did at the end of his original myth, hundreds of thousands of fictional ones exist on AO3 alone--just as Orpheus is constantly revived for his retellings.)

Finding similarities between BTS’s narrative and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is a continuous, relational spiral--a shape that is itself Orphic, as with the spiral staircase. 

As long as the Orphic myth lives on, there will always be more connections to draw, more Orphic works to compare to BTS. All of them serve to inform one another in an ongoing loop that heightens BTS’s reputation with mythic prestige and reinvigorates the Orphic myth back from the dead through BTS’s persisting relevancy.

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BTS’s music video for their song “ON” from Map of the Soul: 7, featuring Orphic elements. For example, Jungkook seems to be framed as a Christ figure who undergoes a resurrection and V guides a young girl through a set of gates. Their song and dance bring their natural surroundings back to life.

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Kihyun, I.M, and Hyungwon rolling into a Monsta X meet-and-greet event at Tower Records in Los Angeles.

(Video: Michelle Kim. Feb. 14, 2020.)

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(BTS (방탄소년단) ‘FAKE LOVE’ Official MV; May 18, 2018.)

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BTS’s most-watched MV: 932,397,108 views as of March 2, 2020, 6:06 PM PST.

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“The 'me' that I want myself to be / The 'me' that people want me to be / The 'me' that you love / And the 'me' that I create / The 'me' that's smiling / The me that's sometimes in tears”

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(Vertigo (1958) dir. Alfred Hitchcock.)

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(Vertigo (1958) dir. Alfred Hitchcock.)