How did the Netflix doc ‘BTS: The Return’ end up becoming the carrot BTS is waving? - 경향신문
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A scene from the Netflix documentary <BTS: The Return>. Courtesy of Netflix
“Tae-ho, this has gotten too big.” In 2006, on MBC’s <Infinite Challenge> ‘Challenge Supermodel’ special, Yoo Jae-suk, who was to walk on designer Lee Sang-bong’s runway, said this to PD Kim Tae-ho with a bewildered look. It may sound like a tangent, but watching the recently released Netflix original documentary <BTS: The Return> brought that image of Yoo Jae-suk to mind. Just as a run-of-the-mill weekend network variety show suddenly formed the biggest fandom in Korean TV history and became a national flagship program that every visiting global star felt obliged to stop by, <BTS: The Return> shows BTS, now global stars, watching together their early footage from when Bangtan Sonyeondan were merely promising among the countless K-pop idols pouring out, and feeling the gulf of years. When the fresh rookies working hard through their ‘first reveal’ stage on Mnet’s <M Countdown> in 2016 are intercut with the last pre-enlistment concert in Busan in 2022 on an incomparable scale, their changed stature becomes intuitively clear without lengthy explanation. What on earth happened to them over those six years? Of course, laying out a sequential timeline of how they gradually took over the charts and gained global recognition is not difficult. The important question is how to explain it. That is why Yoo Jae-suk’s line comes to mind. Even they, preparing to return as a complete BTS in <BTS: The Return>, do not hide a kind of bewilderment at what has happened to them. Speaking of the burden of returning, Jin says, “I have succeeded far beyond my station,” and RM, pondering the direction of the new album, says, “We are trying to figure things outwhat it is that makes us distinctly BTS,” seeking to understand the still insufficiently explained secret of their success.
That is why the ostensibly plain title <BTS: The Return> ends up carrying a complicated context. One could simply call a comeback after four years a return. To return presupposes the place where one stood before leaving. Yet, as noted, even for them the process of arriving at that place remains a mystery not fully unraveled. Even while struggling with a busy schedule, Jimin rallies the members“We should not be hearing things like ‘BTS are over now’”and everyone agrees; but crafting high-quality songs and satisfying those who have been waiting for BTS are different matters. Elsewhere, regarding ‘SWIM’, which is to be the title track of the new album, they voice mixed concerns such as, “The track itself sags,” and, “It feels like we are running in the exact opposite direction of what is expected.” In response, Suga says he also likes the direction of ‘SWIM’, arguing that a change of course might in fact please fans: “It would be cooler for people to go, ‘Oh, so they can even come out with something like this?’” Both sides have merit, which only makes the decision harder. This is what makes their return more complicated. They are not simply retracing their steps back. It has already been 12 years since debut, there is a four-year gap, and the members are now in their mid-thirties. RM says: “We have not made a decision yetwhat to keep and what to change. But no one has the answer to such a question, not even HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk. It is an untraveled road, so we cannot know what it is like.” A return, yet also an as-yet-untraveled road. Thus their dilemma can be summed up as follows: What keeps us still us?
In the Netflix documentary <BTS: The Return>, members of BTS conduct a live broadcast and greet fans. Courtesy of Netflix
From the moment the album title was revealed, the keyword ‘Arirang’ sparked expectations, worries, and some shock; it is treated as central in this documentary as well, because it is the answer HYBE presents to the question of what feels quintessentially BTS now. Let me quote RM once more: “No one has the answer to such a question, not even HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk.” This is not about knee-jerk likes or dislikes toward an ‘Arirang’ concept, but about the process. A creative director at HYBE’s BigHit Music seeks to craft a narrative that links the Joseon boys who traveled to the United States in 1896 and had the folk song ‘Arirang’ recorded by an American anthropologist with BTS today. Bang Si-hyuk likewise thinks the legacy of ‘Arirang’ can show who they are now, saying, “You need to show itwhether that is who we are.” But RM immediately, half-joking yet earnest, voices resistance: “I get a bit of an allergy when I hear talk of heroes and legends.” In the album process, V, giving feedback on inserting ‘Arirang’ into ‘Body to body’, worries they will hear, from a Korean point of view, “They have decided to just go all-in on nationalist kitsch.” In the film, they repeatedly ponder whether filling the signifier BTS with the meaning of “national representative” fits them, and whether that is the place to which they should return. As Jungkook says, perhaps they could have connected contemporary K-pop with Korean tradition by interpreting the meaning of ‘Arirang’ in a way that suited them. For instance, Na Hoon-a, in a 2004 contribution to the Kyunghyang Shinmun, opposed calling the traditional songs he sings trot or ppongjjak, and boldly proposed calling the genre ‘Arirang’. He argued that in Korean history, ‘Arirang’ is a folk song, a song of resistance to Japanese rule, and a movement song that, in every era, has carried the people’s lives; therefore, let us call the contemporary traditional popular songs loved by ordinary people Arirang. Had such a bold appropriation of tradition been attempted in BTS’s ‘Arirang’, the search for identitywhat BTS are now and what they can bemight have followed a far more intriguing path. But in the end, that proved impossible.
In the documentary, Bang Si-hyuk lays bare an intention to use BTS, via the ‘Arirang’ concept, as a tool to massage his own ego. Even if they did not seek the mantle of national representatives, it may be the weight of a crown they cannot help but bear, a position they must accept. <Infinite Challenge>, too, at some point had to put a bibimbap advertisement video up in New York’s Times Square. But Bang seems to go further, appearing fixated on satisfying a desire for recognition in overseas markets even at the cost of some musical completeness. When, instead of the version the members had already agreed upon, they hear a ‘Body to body’ in which ‘Arirang’ plays for close to a minute, everyone is aghast, but Bang tries to persuade them: “When you gather 60,000 or 70,000 people and perform, a scene where more than 50 percent of the foreigners sing along to the chorus of ‘Arirang’ will be immensely iconic.” He calls it persuasion, but as it goes on a kind of passive coercion repeats. Granted, BTS are iconic and a team that faces a global public, as he says, but who, exactly, is supposed o feel the chills at the moment foreigners belt out ‘Arirang’ in unison? Here the focus is not on the song and the artists the overseas fans are singing along to, but on the desire of a Korean label chairman who wants self-justification through foreigners’ mass sing-alongs. The documentary captures, with startling rawness, the dilemma in which, on a journey to find how we can be ourselves, the desiring subject cannot actually be us.
People say the most useless thing in the world is worrying about celebrities; with BTS, it even seems apt to ask, who would dare worry about whom? And yet, again, Yoo Jae-suk’s words come to mind: “Tae-ho, this has gotten too big.” Neither Yoo Jae-suk, the god of variety, nor genius PD Kim Tae-ho made <Infinite Challenge> succeed precisely according to their intentions. Before the contingency of life, we are often swept in unforeseeable directions, for better or worse. In the documentary, BTS, under the weight loaded onto the name BTS and amid countless variables beyond their control, still ask and search for what they can control in the name, the path, and the direction of their lives. Of course it remains hard, and perhaps they may never find the answer they want. At least from what the documentary shows, the immediate return is closer to a process of groping and holding back than to an answer. Had <BTS: The Return> depicted a king’s return, with answers found after agony, it would not have offered much resonance or interest to non-fans. But instead of smoothing things into a linear narrative of progress, by leaving unresolved questions in parentheses, the film gains a universality that even non-fans can relate to, while unintentionally becoming both an indictment of HYBE and the carrot BTS are waving. Perhaps this very intriguing outcome can serve as a counterexample to the K-pop market’s illusion of, and faith in, control.
