Black Rose: Taemin, Gothic Imagery, and Identity 

I’m not too familiar with gothic literature but I have always noticed a darkness in Taemin’s work. I have been a fan since 2020. This was very interesting and insightful. I find that Herman Hesse quote very interesting in the context of the K-pop industry. The egg is the industry. Taemin is trying to break out of the industry standards and live his truth. He was in the shadow of the other members at first. His solo career he wanted to express himself and challenge those societal norms in K-pop and South Korea as a whole. He was sexualized and treated badly as a kid for being feminine. SM helped push that innocent feminine image. Min Hee Jin (who’s now the CEO of NewJeans label ADOR and has a lot of questionable artistic imagery involving minors and young adults) had him dress shirtless at age 18 in the Sherlock photo shoots. When he was 21 and made his solo debut, she asked him to be shirtless. He wasn’t told beforehand that he would be shirtless. He was mad, because he wasn’t allowed to bulk up in advance. For that first EP he tried to be very masculine to push back at the feminine image forced upon him. During MOVE he was able to reconcile his masculine and feminine sides with the choreography. He absolutely knows what he’s doing! He’s clearly familiar with this western literature. Also, the ending quote is great. Life is not sunshine and rainbows. I also find a lot of his work to cope with loss. I won’t go too in depth and some of it is theorizing, but some of the “doubles” can be interpreted in other ways. Like the just me and you video, and he even has a song called shadow. It can be about a side of himself and unable to escape a certain image that was forced on him. He was brought up in the shadow of Jonghyun who also taught him how to sing when SM wouldn’t train him because he was “tone deaf”. Yeah. But his singing style can be similar. And Jonghyun wrote pretty boy and other songs. So some people would compare them. Taemin wanted to have a unique identity. Jonghyun supported this and supported his career the hardest. I’m sure you know what happened so I won’t say here. But I feel like he is coping with that loss intensely through art. Not only losing a best friend and mentor but losing part of his own artistic identity in a way. The song “identity” at the end of the never gonna dance again series (oh gosh I could go into the concepts of IDEA alone) has the lyric “base to ace” which has a double meaning. Because it’s about his career journey and how he’s known as the ace of K-pop. But the other thing is that his solo album was called Ace and Jonghyun’s was called Base. NGDA series is exploring loss and trying to move forward. Identity is acknowledging how Jonghyun helped him forge his identity. Advice is his claiming himself. Guilty is him tearing down the institutions that hurt him. It’s self incrimination for SM, I’m shocked they let him release it at all. He left the agency this year and has joined BigPlanetMade. He’s still in SM with SHINee. SM makes it hard to leave the company totally as they’ve blacklisted artists before and won’t give up their group names and such. It’s sad. That’s why the whole group hasn’t left I think. But the whole industry is a prison, some cells are just closer to the surface, or the egg shell I guess. You say he’s perfectly happy being a man. Maybe he is. But it’s hard to know that. If he came out as trans or even gay, he would be blacklisted from the industry. The only artists who are able to be out are independent artists. It’s still taboo in South Korea sadly. Slowly changing with the youth. But we’ll see. Companies want to push fan service. I’m non-binary (AFAB) and tbh Taemin was probably instrumental in my self discovery even if I didn’t realize it at the time. I would wonder if he would identify somewhere on the non-binary spectrum if allowed to or even able to come out to himself. Again, we will never know this. Maybe he is happy as a man and it’s all performance. But it’s important to remember that we never know who someone really is. Also, an additional note, the press your number video features him pointing a gun at himself I think. Anyway, thanks for making this!! I really appreciate it.

This talk was such a pleasant surprise! I never thought that kpop would be a topic of discussion in the world of the Gothic, but I’m so glad that scholars are finally recognizing artists (singers, musicians, directors, etc) who utilize the Gothic in their work. I’ve been a fan of Taemin for a long time and have always been fascinated by his unique aesthetic and fearlessness in creating art that’s personal to him (as opposed to simply making something trendy.) You’re 100000% correct in saying that identity is important to Taemin; it’s a theme that is continuously weaved into almost every music video he’s ever made. Taemin’s constantly exploring identity and doubling and using those themes as a way to try to better understand the differences within himself. It’s quite fascinating!

31:45 The concert was called Metamorph, so YES! Edit: You explained this at the end, lol.