Story #16: Scars and kings
Finding universal truth in a music video
Last week, we went deep into Agust D’s Daechwita. At first glance, the song seems to be pure swagger and bragger, extolling the wealth, success and status that Agust D has achieved.
But we also dug into the bridge of the song, an intimate section where he confesses that he wanted riches, wealth and success—and now that he’s achieved them, he’s still not content. Here’s the key point of my analysis:
The shift in Agust D’s vocal performance mirrors his internal journey from the divided self to the integrated self.
At the beginning of the bridge, he’s chaotic and conflicted, unable to align his need to be grounded with his status as a king. But as the bridge continues, he learns to integrate these two parts of his personality into his one person. And as he gains control over this conflict, he syncs his voice with the percussion.
That section—and that realization—helped us recast the entire song. It allowed us to hear how Agust D has laced the entire song with elements that should be in conflict, but aren’t. Rather, he’s integrated these parts of himself into one person.
So now that we understand the song, let’s look at the music video and how it amplifies the themes raised in the song.
The story
Again, some housekeeping before we get started:
We’re not going to talk about the (many) Korean historical references in the video.
English captions will make it much easier to follow along. After clicking through to the video, look at the bottom left-hand corner of the YouTube player. Toggle the CC button. If that doesn’t work, you can also access captions through settings (the little gear).
Explicit language ahead.
There’s a lot to process here, so let’s start with the basics. There are three main characters: the mad king, the peasant king and the butcher/executioner.
Mad king and peasant king
In the first section, which runs from 0:00 until 1:44, we meet the characters one by one—first the mad king, then the peasant king, and then the butcher. There’s a crucial, tiny moment at 0:45 when the butcher and the peasant king exchange a glance. 1
Mad king meets peasant king
The second section runs from 1:45 to 2:03, and we get there via a match cut. That is, at 1:44, the mad king on his palace concourse makes a slicing motion in time with the lyric “off with their heads, ah” and in the next scene, he’s on the balcony with his hand in the same position.
A lot happens between 1:45 to 1:48. First, we realize we’re at an execution, and we learn a key piece of information: the executioner is the butcher. We learn that severed heads go into bags, and those bloody bags go into wooden boxes. That makes the Daechwita chorus especially creepy as the mad king dances on his upper platform while bloody bags dangle from the balcony. Behind him are stacks of boxes, presumably full of severed heads.
In other words, do not fuck with the mad king.
From 2:04, peasant king enters the ring, stirring up dust and bring chaos to the mad king’s orderly, horrific world. At 2:36, the mad king gives him a smiling thumbs up…only to switch it to a frowning thumbs down at 2:43, which we take as an execution order.
Mad king tries to execute peasant king
That takes us into the bridge, where peasant king gets bound and gagged before being executed. The bridge wends into the Daechwita chorus, which gets delivered twice: first by the peasant king, then by the mad king. At 3:09, the mad king again makes a slicing motion across his throat.
From 3:10 to 3:25, there’s a visual interlude showing us the lead-up to the execution. Peasant king is brought to the palace concourse and mad king readies a giant sword. From 3:26 to 3:59, the song winds up again into the final chorus of Daechwita. Peasant king is executed—or is he?
Remember that glance at 0:45 between peasant king and the butcher? Something else is going on. At 4:00, the peasant king gets up, the executioner passes him a pistol, and peasant king shoots the mad king.
Okay, but what does it all mean? Read on, my lovelies. Read on.
Why it works
Just as the song itself has layers to unpack, so does the music video.
Mad king and peasant king are the same person
There are a few clues that the mad king and the peasant king are the same person.
First, we meet them in the same way, as each of them skulks across the screen from left to right. Have a look:
What’s also interesting about these opening scenes is the perspective of the camera. The mad king is shot from below, which seems to emphasize his status. In contrast, the peasant king is shot from a level perspective, implying that his kingliness isn’t so status-driven. (There are scenes later on when peasant king is shot from below, so this may just be a coincidence.)
Similarly, they’re set up as foils for each other: the mad king in black, with a dark background; the peasant king in white, with a light background.
They have the same scar and both conceal it, at least at first. When we first see the mad king, the scar is in shadow the entire time. It’s hardly visible when he looks straight at the camera from 0:07 to 0:10. Then he turns to walk from left to right and we get the slightest hint of the scar (but only because we know to look for it). The peasant king also enters from the left side of the screen, his face obscured by a hat. But he’s less evasive than the mad king, because at 0:36, he lifts his head to show us the scar. He’s owning it.
And what is “it,” exactly? We don’t get specifics in the song or video, but it’s likely a symbol of trauma experienced by each king on his rise to the top. A literal and physical scar, as opposed to the invisible, psychic ones we all bear.
Both of them wear jewelry: the mad king gold and the peasant king silver.2 Western interpretation of the metals would imply the peasant king is “below” the mad king—but I have to point out that the so-called peasant king is wearing silver Chanel bling, so we may be splitting hairs.
At 2:59, peasant king gets the “I’m a king” lyrics, which are then echoed by mad king at 3:04. That makes sense because they’re the same person.
But they’re also different: Order vs chaos
So if we accept that the mad king and the peasant king are the same person, then we can also look at the ways that they are different.
Start with setting. The mad king’s palace is orderly, sparse and devoid of other people, save for an executioner and some dead bodies, who are probably not the best company. His opening scenes are tinted slightly bluey-purple, which lends a cold tone to his character.
In contrast, when we meet the peasant king, he’s surrounded by the details of ordinary life: animals, dust, village people going about their business. And the shots are warmer in tone, more yellow-orange. When he walks down the village street, people go about their business—he’s a regular human, even if he is a king.3
And we have to talk about how the peasant king and his b-boys launch into the first chorus of Daechwita at 0:38. I said last time how the opening of Daechwita afforded lots of space, even silence, and that once it gets started, it’s full-on. The audio is amplified by the visuals here. It feels chaotic and disorienting, and I love how the camera adds to the effect as it bounces up and down with the b-boys. Also note how the camera flies up at 0:50, as the peasant king looks up, and when it lands we’re in the next scene. The peasant king isn’t just embracing chaos, he is chaos. And he’s totally fine with it.
Old versus new
We can also look at the way that the song’s lyrics are divided between the kings. Here are the translated lyrics via Genius.com, if you want to refresh your memory.
The peasant king introduces the song and takes the first quatrain of the first verse, but the bulk of the first verse goes to the mad king. The mad king represents the “old” king who wants fame and fortune. He raps about how he came from nothing to achieve greatness, how he wants to shove his past into a rice chest (i.e., bury his demons), and how he doesn’t need to flex (pretend) because he’s a great rapper. Notably, he gets the single verse of “who’s the king” as well as the chorus that follows.
Where the first verse was about the past, the second verse is focused on the present. So it’s fitting that these lines go to the peasant king. The peasant king represents the “new” king who knows what’s really important—which he explains in the bridge.
I got everything I wanted, what more will make me feel contented?
I wanted clothes, clothes, then money, money, then goals, goals, now what’s next?
Yeah, what's next? Here comes my reality check, there’s nowhere higher
I only looked up and now I want to look down and put my feet on the ground
At the start of the bridge, the peasant king’s hands and upper body are bound. By the third line, he’s also blindfolded—the pursuit of material wealth is literally constricting him. In this section, the camera also pans around in a circle, emphasizing his stuckness.
Details that foreshadow
Now that we know what the story is about, we can also see how the video’s director laid the breadcrumbs for us right from the start. They foreshadow the idea of execution right from the start. Check out this shot of the mad king surveying his concourse. And you know, some dead bodies, under blankets, their heads in a box.
We get this foreshadowing with the peasant king, too. From 0:32 to 0:37, we see a shot of a cow’s eye, a butcher’s cleaver hacking into a piece of meat, a clear view of peasant king’s face and his scar, and then a chicken in a cage. They’re all images of prey, or meat, and foreshadow the peasant king’s execution order.
At 1:05, we return to the palace concourse and the mad king raps while weaving around lumps covered in black cloth. What are they? At 1:24, you can see feet. They’re PEOPLE. We presume they’re alive because there are no boxes next to them, but it’s supremely creepy to see them lined up in rows, prostrate and covered.4
We can also interpret this as the black-clad army being silent and still with the mad king—they’re just props, really, given that he jumps on the back of one of them. But with the peasant king, they literally come alive at 3:33, headbanging in unison and expressing solidarity, not to mention freaking me out the first time I watched it, because I hadn’t registered them as people.
Old and new
As with our song analysis, there are parts of the music video that should be in conflict, but aren’t. Consider the mad king’s outfit: traditional dress up top, jeans and sneakers on the bottom.5 The peasant king stirs up dust in a traditional square with his beater car. And there is the general mixing of K-rap and b-boys in an otherwise traditional village/palace setting.
What it all means
At the end of this video, peasant king shoots mad king. And while we don’t get to see what happens, I think the mad king dies.
In her book The Situation and the Story, author Vivian Gornick says:
Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.
In Daechwita, the situation is that there are two kings jockeying for power. The story is that the two kings are different aspects of the same character. The story is that sometimes we get what we want, but those achievements can be hollow. The story is that we can and do change over time, and that we can choose to change in ways that we want.
What we can learn from it
Daechwita—the song and the music video—is a multilayered work. There’s a certain resonance that drew me in. From the first listen, I knew there was something here to interrogate, and it’s taken me a good year to really understand it.
First, the music video has the underlying structure of a good story: three parts that encompass thesis / antithesis / synthesis, which I talked about briefly in my analysis of Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode. It’s well plotted, even if some of the important details whizz by at light speed. And while there are surprises, when we have a closer look, it turns out that the surprises have been set up with tiny breadcrumbs throughout, so that we’re expecting the unexpected.
Importantly, the mad king and the peasant king take Agust D’s internal struggle out of his head and onto the screen. I think the use of setting, and its cues about character, is really effective: so subtle you might not notice it, but our brains get it anyway. And as with the song itself, threads of old and new run through the whole thing. It’s reinforcing the audio with video, sending the same message through multiple senses.
And that’s hard to do. Internal conflicts, like the ones raised in Daechwita, are rich and universal narratives. I can relate to the feeling of working toward some goal, achieving it, and then realizing that it’s hollow. I imagine many of you know that feeling too. But stories and narrative are driven by plot and action, not sitting and thinking—even if the story in those thoughts is timeless and relatable. Daechwita shows us one way of getting out of our heads and into the world.
Did you like this? Share with a friend. Did you hate it? Share with an enemy.6
At 0:59, Jin and Junkook from BTS make a cameo appearance as villagers who bump into the peasant king. Their upstaging performance coincides with Agust D’s line “We so fly, we so fly, private jets, we so fly,” which is a nod to BTS’s international stardom and commercial success.
I said I wouldn’t comment on the Korean references in this video, but I should at least link to this Wikipedia entry on spoon class culture. Long story short, silver and gold are shorthand for socioeconomic classes in Korea. There may also be something to the fact that the peasant king starts off without bling, and only acquires silver jewelry partway through the video, symbolizing his upward mobility. (Dirt spoons are among the lowest of the social classes in Korea.)
The notion of spoons, class culture and inequality is also addressed in BTS’s song “Silver Spoon.”
This type of “person walking down chaotic street” treatment reminds me of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony,” which itself probably originates with Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy,” both in song name and music video treatment. You can also see it, with a tweaked ending, with Ben Gibbard’s “Gold Rush.”
In this behind-the-scenes video, Yoongi explains these are the court officials.
Insert mullet joke here.
This call-to-action text stolen and modified from Dan Nelken’s excellent newsletter for creatives.