BTS theory: alluding to American Beauty

I came across this post. I didn’t notice the plastic bag when I saw them separately in their own contexts, but this post made me realize how odd it was that they added a shot of the floating plastic bag in the Puma advertisement. It’s not coincidence that a similar shot appeared in BTS’s Prologue. If you’ve seen American Beauty, then when you saw those gifs you probably thought about the infamous dancing plastic bag from the movie, rather than Katy Perry’s lyrics to “Firework.”

Let’s begin with some background to American Beauty. Throughout the film, a teenage boy, Ricky Fitts, is seen using a camcorder to record things he finds beauty in. When asked why he was filming a dead bird, he replied, “because it’s beautiful.”

Who’s the member with the camcorder? That’s right, Jin.

Ricky’s footage all comes out grainy, low quality. When we see the POV shots from the camcorder, we are seeing reality in its purest and most raw form. In contrast, the rest of the movie is carefully edited, beautiful, and seemingly flawless, much like ‘The American Dream’ (which is one of the themes of the movie).

Jin’s recordings are also grainy and low quality. He is attempting to preserve memories of the good times they had together before everything started going wrong. What we are seeing is Jin reliving those moments inside his fantasy, which is the only thing Jin has left of his friends.

The calm before the storm. Jin sees the plastic bag early on in the Prologue, early on in the chronicle of memories he is reliving. He sees the plastic bag while is is still reliving the peaceful, innocent memories. That was the calm. Taehyung jumping off the platform is the beginning of the storm.

Let’s not forget that their album is titled The Most Beautiful Moment In Life. Much like Ricky, the purpose of recording is to remember, to preserve beautiful memories. Jin is recording the last few happy moments he had together with his friends. 

Perhaps Ricky’s words resonate with Jin as well. Imagine your friends leaving you one by one in such traumatic ways, and now you’re all alone. Jin must have felt so lonely and afraid: fearful of what awaits him if he chooses to live on without his loved ones, but also uneasy at the thought of taking his own life to join his friends on the other side. Maybe he too, felt a “benevolent force” through that dancing plastic bag, that told him not to be afraid of the unknown.

BTS theory tag

V+Jungkook and JHope+Suga?

In the middle of the HYYH pt.2 photobook, this is the picture you see. The members’ order (from L to R) is: 

Jimin, Suga, JHope, Jin, Jungkook, V, Rapmon

Let’s call this Picture 1 (sorry for the poor quality):

But if you open the fold-out page, the picture you see is very very similar, and at first glance almost the same. But Jungkook and V actually swapped places, while everyone else is in their original place. The order is now: 

Jimin, Suga, JHope, Jin, V, Jungkook, Rapmon

Let’s call this Picture 2:

Why is that? I don’t know. Picture 2 (in which V stands behind Jungkook) is the one on their instagram, facebook, twitter, and official website. 

But V and Jungkook’s place swap isn’t the only thing worth noting! I took pictures of my photobook and focused on JHope + Suga holding hands, with JHope leading Suga:

I swear, this looks like the exact same picture. I think they cut out JHope+Suga from picture 1 and edited them into the picture 2, or vice versa. There are small differences in how the rocks look, probably due to editing or the slightly different angle that the second picture was taken. 

I know they did this deliberately since nobody else was copy & pasted like this. These two are also the only ones physically connected to each other, so does that have something to do with why they stayed the same? Frozen in time? Maybe one of them has a more important role than we realized?

Everyone else looks different going from Picture 1 to Picture 2, but JHope+Suga stay the same, and V swaps places with Jungkook. I have no idea why this is. These two pairings aren’t the original pairings, so I don’t know what connection they have with each other. WHY BIGHIT WHY 

BTS theory tag

V and Rap Mon

I’m sure most of you are aware of the taehyung x namjoon pairing, and have seen the following photos from HYYH pt1:

and HYYH pt2:

All 3 photos are similar since V is looking directly into the camera while Rap Monster gazes downwards, but the two are obviously connected in some way (RM turned towards V, or RM’s arm draped over V)

Now look at one of the pictures from their star1 photoshoot in September:

Looks familiar right? RM looking down, and connected to V through body language and physical contact. V is still looking at the camera. This is essentially the same pose, and gives off a similar somewhat unsettling feel.

The difference in the star1 photo is that now Jin is next to V. The one thing these 3 members have in common is that they seem to play important roles in this HYYH series, seen in Run, INU, and the Prologue. Namjoon doesn’t have a dying scene (& he may be Peter Pan/the grim reaper), Taehyung committed suicide & sets this entire story into motion, and Jin who is constantly singled out and looks different from the others (theories by @taetaetown).

BigHit is so sneaky, is it possible that they went so far as to carry their concept into a photoshoot?

BTS theory tag

How did I manage to get my bias' photo card for both HYYH pt1 AND pt2 albums??! Oh happy day~ ㅋㅋㅋ