The ReVe Festival: Red Velvet, Digital Images and the Making of an Illusion

With the wonder of Dorothy entering Oz, Red Velvet enters a colorful word. And, like Dorothy, they will uncover a darkness underneath the glitz.

The Wicked Witch of The West, melting after being doused by Dorothy. Wiki.

part 1. -24 hours remain-

As the title of the album suggests, "Zimzalabim" takes place at a festival. An amusement park has conflicting meaning: it is a place of fun, but is also an archaic reminder of things broken and worn down. In American media, circus and abandoned theme parks are often used as a horror setting.

In typical Red Velvet M/V fashion, the girls find themselves in a world where the laws of physics are out the window. A roller coaster takes the girls through a plethora of rides and activities before culminating in an explosive firework show. In this moment, the body, mind and rhythm are now in an alignment of excitement.

More about the body and pop music.

However, though the song is encouraging, many fans have noted the unsettling looks the girls give the camera, especially Irene. There is a thread in almost every red-concept Red Velvet video that indicates unbalance.

it’s not strange to have a member or group enter a strange world and explore it, but it is strange to have members pit against each other. groups rely on their appearance of cohesion, but there is no cohesion when four girls are on stage, one is offstage and one is above, controlling them. similar to their russian roulette mv, its a bit discerning, but the horror is playful

 Red Velvet - Rookie

In "Rookie," the group re-purposed one of the world's most viewed images, Bliss. In "Zimzalabim," they continue to defy our expectations of logic. "Throw all your worries over the flat earth [the edge of the earth]," they sing as they ride the most space-defying roller coaster of all time that ends in a teacup. The idea of a flat earth is antithetical to the most known image known as the most reproduced image in history, The Blue Marble.

The chant of "Zimzalabim" is intoxicating; they girls gyrate in a come-hither way. According to the lyrics, it is an "incantation" to forget "numbness" and bring out dormant "hope" and "dreams." The girls of Red Velvet are our guides into the unknown, the wise crones that want to teach us their secrets.

More on spirit guides.

However, the video ends abruptly, before we see what has truly been summoned. "Zimzalabim" sets the stage of a festival that is overstimulated with magic and merriment, a concept that will definitely definitely not take a 180 by the end of the trilogy.

nah i'm good

part 2. -12 hours remain-

In "Umpah Umpah," the girls are continuing their summer of fun, but this time, they are hit with obstacles: a turtle in the road, rain on a beach day, clearly plagiarized outfits, etc. These circumstantial events force them to take a passive role on their cabin vacation adventure.

If "Zimzalabim" is about bringing forth your own happiness, "Umpah Umpah" is about letting it find you while you're stuck inside. But, quoth Sunny Hill, "is the white horse coming?" Despite singing about "something unforgettable," they are having no fun; all they have is bored games, a leaky roof and no cable.

Lyrically, "Umpah Umpah" is more directly about a relationship than "Zimzalabim." With their "partner," they want to "breathe together" and "look each other in the eye." The titular onomatopoeia is a cartoon-ish exaggeration of excitement and surprise. Similarly, the girls swing and surf in a fake, glittery sea next to a caricature of a yellow lighthouse. They dream of their ideal adventure that is simple and colorful.

But, because real life doesn't live up to expectations; the wise, aloof and intangible women of "Zimzalabim" are very human, disappointed and bored. Gone are the knowing looks to the camera, to be replaced with a parody of the expressionist painting "The Scream," another image so well-known it is ubiquitous in media.

The video continues to parody the classics by confining the girls in a cabin, another omnipresent horror trope that Twice also used to signify the genre in "Cheer Up." When a domestic space is infiltrated, it causes the audience to defamiliarize their safe space.

The worst sound I know is the sound of somebody crying in another room. It sounds like dissolution to me. It sounds like entropy, the slide of life into meaningless ruin. It’s the sound of termites in the walls. It’s also the most intimate of sounds. [...]

The horror that comes from within the family [...] is far more personal and therefore more immediate than anything that swims toward us from another star. It’s one of the reasons the vampire and the zombie are such powerful cultural touchstones: the monsters wear the faces of our loved ones. We can see in these monsters symbols of lovers who have turned against us for reasons we can’t fathom, of family members whose personalities are subsumed by mental illness, so that we find ourselves sharing a home or a bed with a personality we no longer recognize.

The H Word: Domestic Horror 

"Umpah Umpah"'s villain is not a monster or a even a thunderstorm; the real horror is what happens to the mind during isolation: the girls believe that their idealistic version of the beach is better than the real one, and refuse to go outside when the rain stops. The ideal is more interesting than the real and the girls become withdrawn.

NO IM GOOD

part 3. -6 hours remain-

Like a reoccurring nightmare, the girls are once again in a car. This time, surrounded by glitz and glamour, it is not a symbol of travel or fun, but power and opulence. Unlike the beach, this gothic manor is portentously gloomy. This juxtaposition of richness and authenticity is echoed in the lyrics: the girls feel "up and down / I can't control myself." Despite a wish for honest communication, they are surrounded by objects with intangible value. Instead of a eclectic beach house, the setting is a large manor with wide spaces and material objects.

There is a story buried beneath the aesthetic cuts: a visual illusion is slowly being chipped away. The girls are surrounded by the Platonic ideal version of things: Seulgi poses next to a beautiful statue, Yeri bounces on a bed surrounded by images of the sky, Joy takes a joyride around the city in her fancy car, etc. Here's a cool reddit thread with some analysis. But, are these things making them happy, as they thought it would in"Umpah Umpah"?

From the very title of the song, the audience can tell there is conflict within the minds of the girls. Many shots in the video are framed with doors, suggesting isolation and secrets. But, slowly, we begin to see the illusion crack: Joy cuts a phone cord like its the string of fate, Irene pricks her finger innocently like Sleeping Beauty on a spindle. These are small stings from the unconscious, letting us know that something is wrong. And, stories aren't told about times of tranquility.

The girls' mental anguish culminates in Yeri, the most childish and innocent member, finally taking an active role. She takes a rock to break a mirror, and a Pandora's Box of magic tricks are revealed. The audience saw fighting, and thought it was between the girls, but it was actually against the stage as a whole.

After the illusions finally shatter, the girls seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves: they weave around a room of white dresses that hang like ghosts, representing their innocence that is, not lost, but now part of their greater whole.  It is not the break of the illusion that has them rejoicing, it is the act if shattering the illusion, of telling us a story. Tearing down the illusion takes away your child like wonder, but Knowing the illusion brings you the confidence to have fun.

But like all fantasies, this story must end too. Irene looks at the camera again and delivers the last word of the song, a whispering echo "Psycho." This final Inception-like reveal places the illusion back on the audience's eyes; it is not the girls being tricked by images and hopes of grandeur and romance, but us. We see idols in a certain way based on their clothing, image, wealth, etc. But this is the ideal we place on them, not the reality they actually live. The audience is the one projecting, which is what gives Red Velvet their power over us.

suddenly im good

conclusion. -dawn of a new day-

"If you only just sit and wish for it, it wont come true."

"Zimzalabim" uses the metaphor of a carnival and the wisdom of a crone to illustrate the freeing, glorious state their music puts us in. Meanwhile, "Umpah Umpah" challenges this ideal state by acknowledging our physical and mental limitations as humans. Finally, "Psycho" lets us pretend again, as long as we are careful to acknowledge our fantasies, and not compare them to our reality.