Jung Kook’s My Time: The Performing Body As Text
I must risk myself toward others.
- Sondra Horton Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body
The performer, notes Fraleigh, allows themselves to be vulnerable in being judged by others. An act of courage.
It is with this in mind that I begin to shape my thoughts on Jung Kook’s performance of My Time as a part of the Map Of The Soul ON:E concert. I attempt to read the performing body as text and through this close reading, hope to elucidate how the performer embodies the dance, willingly offering up an objectification of the self to allow for the ritual of performance to have complete impact.
The sonic layering of the song meets its match in the intricacy of this performance, reduced by many to being irrationally sultry. This prompt judgment it induced almost felt like a deliberate trick on the audience to fool them into thinking of it as ‘effortlessly sexy’: a descriptive tag that has often been associated with Jung Kook, and one that is capable of being broken into rudimentary pieces. It comes across as a challenge, daring us to think of him as inherently knowable and neatly pigeonholed, based on the quantifiable sides he shows to the public. The sentiment is similar to that in Jimin’s Filter, which is a more overt statement of the artist’s multifaceted personality.
The intricacy of the choreography shines beautifully through movements that appear to come to Jung Kook with practiced ease, perfected over the years. Simultaneously, his expressions reveal exertion more openly than they usually do. The latter feels like an artistic choice, especially when viewed against the general opinion of how idols make it look easy, like it’s second nature to them. So while Jung Kook the performer glides over the stage, there are also glimpses of the immense hard work that is poured into putting on the show, into ensuring that it goes on, lost if you blink.
The visceral that characterizes the performance is reminiscent of physical theatre. The body, boldly flouting the Cartesian mind-body dualism, is at the center, both literally and figuratively. The carnal, in a sexual awakening that is a rite of passage in any coming-of-age, is embraced. But, and perhaps more importantly, it is also a symbolic reaching out to the self and inserting himself into the world through the body. This aligns with the lyrics of My Time that begin with his confession of how he is out of pace with those around him but progress to finding his place, to a sense of belonging. This is evident in the culminating part of the performance when Jung Kook is in the center of the clock projection and the other dancers flutter around him in movements that imitate swallowing actions, also seen in the Black Swan Art Film, threatening to consume him but ultimately settling around him. The chaos of the swarming images and the numerous jarring spotlights, replicating the media frenzy that has been surrounding him for years, also settles as the dancers align themselves in order around him.
In reading the performance as a Künstlerroman, I find it illuminating to go back to Jung Kook’s previous solos, Begin and Euphoria, where the addressee is clearly someone else. Lyrically speaking, My Time is a ‘writing in’ instead of the usual ‘writing out.’ The “ya” in the song, in my opinion, is Jung Kook himself and the actual touching that is part of the choreography symbolizes getting in touch with oneself. Also noting his desire for self-actualization as expressed in the snippet of Decalcomanie, the ‘self-image’ and the ‘ideal-image,’ to borrow Carl Rogers’ terms, can be clearly spotted. The difference is that this ‘ideal-image’ already coincides with Jung Kook the idol, and thus, has been achieved as a part of himself.
This gap between the stage persona and the ordinary self has been addressed more than once by both RM and Jung Kook. The conscious effort towards assimilating these facets without feeling the schisms as deeply but also without uselessly chasing a cohesive, homogenized whole, can also be tracked in their musical journey. Known for being a perfectionist, Jungkook has often responded to praise, accomplishments, rising pressure and expectations with the promise to be “better.” Both he and j-hope (in Break the Silence) have confessed how they fear they might be insignificant outside of their roles in BTS. The gradual shift from that to Jung Kook being more comfortably (and unapologetically) himself and taking control of his narrative, as we have seen both in this performance and in general this year, is commendable.
This reflects in the performance wherein Jung Kook follows the rhythmic agility of the song with bursting passion, a keyword in his chosen way of living (Buzzfeed Celeb interview, 2018). The dancer, as his ‘unrepeatable self’ (Fraleigh, 31), is joined onscreen by his myriad images which are simultaneously all him and not him, and we get a fleeting glimpse of the infinite self.
It is interesting to note the nested structure of the performance — the choreography of My Time, rather than a smoothly flowing individual piece inextricably woven with the song, seems to comprise an array of isolated modules in staccato juxtaposition — each of which plays out like a set of learned gestures attributed to his years of perfecting his role as an idol. Likened to coded human conduct, this can be studied as what Norbert Elias calls ‘education’ of ‘behavioral control’ (1994). So while it is obvious that Jung Kook has mastered these movements so that they’re now second nature to him, the performance also hints towards his implicit awareness of his compliance with the precepts and expectations of the society he is functioning in, therefore indicating that Jung Kook the performer is, after all, separate from Jung Kook the 24-year old and one is not subsumed by the other.
Practicing this “delicately weaved mesh of controls,” the performer, in dance, is also able to transcend the restrictions of routine movement permitted in civilization (Elias, 1994). Susan Bordo has remarked how the body is “a medium of culture” and “may also operate as a metaphor for culture.” But in dance, one is able to discard the habitual and the mundane and thus, can amount to more than the culture that is inscribed on their bodies (the subculture of K-Pop in this case, more specifically).
During the dance break, Jung Kook slams through the fourth wall and the objectifying gaze is, quite literally, objectified through the placement of the cameras (which are the instrument of the aforementioned objectification) within the frame. The scene bears resemblance to the one in Interlude: Shadow where Suga stands surrounded by cellphones, also thematically tying My Time to the exploration of the shadow self as per the Jungian model of the psyche. This is not to say that My Time is a sad song — it is never that simple with BTS’s music. But I do aim to underscore the thematic movement of the song mapped out onto the space of the stage.
His clothes too, are part of the choreography. He untucks his shirt to show skin (a throwback to his viral Fake Love moment) and nearly drops his jacket, with these elements of ‘tease’ drawing a comparison to the neo-burlesque. Thus comes in the issue of self-objectification which, despite its negative connotations, is also a tool that empowers against the often scathing criticisms centered around conventional handsomeness (for instance, how those describing the boys as ‘feminine’ consider their jokes worthy of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor; how this video release was followed by a flurry of comments on Jung Kook’s acne). “Part of the dancer’s power lies in her ability to objectify, to visualize herself as she may appear to others, to make herself into the dance she visualizes,” notes Fraleigh (p. 37). With the conscious choice of the provocative nature of his performance, Jung Kook wields both sexual attractiveness and bodily discipline to boomerang upon the spectators’ desires on his own terms.
“The self the dancer projects is chosen: a selected, aesthetically constituted, and practiced self. The audience does not want to see what the dancer can only attempt to do. They want to see what she has mastered.”
(Fraleigh, pp. 33–34)
Certain parts of the choreography, like the shirt lift, the hip thrusts, the body rolls and the running of the hand up his thighs are actually compilations of Jung Kook’s hit moves which he superbly delivers every time to get the desired reaction from the audience. The body becomes a spectacle, disembodied by the evaluating gaze to serve an aesthetic purpose. This purpose, however, is innately tied to the identity of the performer and this is how he comes into power, never losing his subjectivity.
The title in Korean, 시차, has a range of meanings including time difference, jet lag and parallax. The latter, for me, begs special attention as the displacement corresponds with the difference between the onscreen (or onstage) Jung Kook’s perception by the audience and his own image of himself. “The good dancer does not project her limitations,” remarks Fraleigh (p. 33). Jung Kook both does and does not, and that is exactly what I believe makes this particular performance better than good, great- the swift constructedness juxtaposed with evident human effort, leaving viewers gasping for breath.
My Time, with Jung Kook’s plum-colored vocals (his performing chest voice being richer than the studio-recorded version of the song), encapsulates the FOMO that characterizes our generation but in retrospect. It is a lament for the chance of a ‘normal’ teenage experience that has slipped through the hands like grains of sand, while the fear of having missed out is at the same time overcome with Jung Kook’s ode to all his past selves who have worked tirelessly to get him to this pinnacle. The refrain that shifts from the negative “I can’t” to the affirmative “I will” clearly underlines a gaining of confidence and dispelling of self-doubt. This is Jung Kook refusing to be pinned down through hasty judgments delivered from limited perception.
The refrain “find my time” indicates persistent effort to do things at his pace, as opposed to how he has had to grow up too fast in conforming with the ‘social time,’ sacrificing most of his personal time to be recorded in the name of ‘content.’ This is bolstered when we recall Jung Kook admitting in the Festa 2019 that recording now feels more ‘comfortable’ and ‘relaxed.’ My Time, then, is a song of assurance, a melodic raising of the glass for the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into making Jung Kook, the heartthrob.
P.S. The views expressed in this article aren’t definitive or close-ended. If anything, this analysis has opened up even more questions I’ll continue to seek answers to. Any insights are welcomed.
Works cited:
1. Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics. University of Pittsburgh Press. 1987.
2. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. 1939.
3. Elias, Norbert. The Society of Individuals. 1987.
3. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press. 1993.
