The Gangnam Style music video does its job mainly thanks to attractive video editing, unexpected combinations of 'luxury and disgust' (e.g. dancing among flying garbage), and comprehensible parody. Inevitably, Gentleman doesn't come up with anything entirely new, it rather evolves the bizzare themes of Gangnam Style. We cannot expect anything more - and to be honest, who does; PSY has a talent to speak about uncomfortable truth pleasantly, nobody gets hurt and everyone's happy.
Regarding the video itself, its form is based on simple
gradation, using broken narrative plus occasionally appearing weird
Gangnam characters and pointless epilogue made of deleted scenes. In the
final dance, PSY is accompanied by his famme fatale - this time it's
Ga-In from girl group Girls Brown Eyed. As in Gangnam Style, PSY tries
several girls until he finds his chosen one. Ga-In means not only peace
for his soul, but the whole choreography they dance together is a
reference to her band's music video "Abracadabra" (2009).
In the opening scene, when PSY comes to the city for
the first time, his step is being abrupted by video cut. Elderly
fellows follow him, carrying his material property. Then PSY finds
himself in fashion interior - world of women, he touches mannequins,
presenting himself as materialistic bourgeois (like in Gangnam Style), getting lost in the whirl
of changes of the "civilized" lifestyle. In the next scene, he's
sitting having coffee with his friends, with a deviless dancing behind
his left shoulder - blunt lust, 'the
essence of the city'- and tempting him. PSY's diamond glasses illustrate
his view of reality, and what he considers important. Idiotic mind is
expressed by a mobile game, his first contact with a woman is made
through stupid playing as well - PSY changes her treadmil settings,
making her to fall down. Then he's having coffee with another girl,
while a character from Gangnam Style - representing PSY's peasant origin
and negligence - is replicates his repetitive dance
in the background. Another Gangnam style character - yellow-dressed
individual from the city - is being ruined by PSY, who inhibits this
person from going to the toilet (in an elevator).
He manages to make one more childish prank before the chorus - farting
in library. The chorus is followed by typical geometrical choreography
and playing with children; PSY's puerileness and spontaneity win this time.
As already
mentioned, PSY appears as a vulgar townsman, but it needs to be added
that he is rather pretending this image in order to disguise
his social background and his roots. South Korea isn't only about pink
luxury, as he already pointed out in Gangnam Style. PSY's figure is
savage and robust, despite this he formalizes himself as a party king.
He sways between his city temper and countryside nature.
In the second verse, he's again an embellished city-man, applying sun cream on women in swimsuits, only to be lying defeated by his peasant side (illustrated by two obscenely dancing men) in the very next scene.
In the second verse, he's again an embellished city-man, applying sun cream on women in swimsuits, only to be lying defeated by his peasant side (illustrated by two obscenely dancing men) in the very next scene.
He behaves odiously when meeting next woman, and he's not alone after all; there comes another man who hurts her.
And then there comes Ga-In,
working out in a gym. She gets hard luck falling in love with PSY after
he "makes out" with her (visualized by PSY hanging from a workout
machine frame, while she is holding his jacket in dread). PSY has had
enough and leaves, Ga-In in love follows him.
In Gangnam Style already, PSY
wanted to sell us the idea of love existing in a nasty city, or that
even a ridiculous savage masked as a townsman can find happiness in
love. In Gangnam style, he loves pure girl Hyuna, who travels by tube
and wears street clothes. Ga-In exercises in a gym; two materialists
meet in a place which serves the cult of carnality, filled by metal
constructions and digital numbers. Whilst the romantic moment with Hyuna
was parodically-sentimental, it is coarsely erotic with Ga-In.
Worth-noticing is Ga-In getting up after the "intercourse" droping a
white handkerchief from her crotch.
Rural dinner in a tent which
follows is somewhat different. Ga-In larks PSY in the way he did to
other girls, he's enjoying rustic fun. After that, even more meaningful
metaphors come: flirting suggesting mutual oral sex concludes in
success. Spectacular choreography compostition, now also with Ga-In,
intersects again the tent dinner scene, where PSY is celebrating with
beer. Then he introduces an ecstatic picture of himself sitting between
two women: one with curly hair and wavelets and one with straight hair
and tassels on her swimsuit, representing his countryside vs city
nature. In a frantic montage, PSY is - together with the girls- thrown
into a pool. Dancing sequences follow - at the pool, with city panorama,
and in a football stadium with Ga-In. The sun sets behind electric
wires. If it is correct to say that football stadium is temple of
manhood, PSY has won. His balance between nature and city is shown by
sunset behind buildings and dancing in front of the panorama of the city
in the middle of two girls - one wearing street clothes, one with
glittering jacket. The video closes with PSY in the stadium with his
femme fatale.
The epilogue consists of dance
on crosswalks, illustrating renewed love towards the city, not omitting
Ga-In's presence. In the very last scene, PSY scans himself, making
copies of his face with eccentric glasses - multiplying his looks and
message for others.
Gentleman is a story of a free
natural man coming to city. This theme of jerk in town has been used for
a long time (Chaplin, e.g. Modern Times). PSY as a video character
could be some kind of South Korean Chaplin, although his "poetics" is of
course incomparably more barbaric, and present time requires visual
elaboration.
Anyways, PSY crumbles our
comfortable images of what is a rapper like, who is the hero of a video
clip, what he looks like and how he treats women. Instead of detailed
studies of sensual touch in slow motion, as common in standard music
video cliché, we get paradoxically more powerful erotic moments in metaphors. And that itself is significant.
