Video Analysis of "Welcome" Official MV by Celia Yu

In the 21st century, a digital screen allows audience members the power to “fantasize about having a personal relationship with a music star”, otherwise known as a parasocial relationship (Auslander 2015: 324). “Welcome” by Bak Jaebeom aims to create a parasocial relationship between himself and the viewer through its unique hybridity of genres, stylistic music video filming technique, and visual exposure to male body parts.

Bak Jaebeom is known for singing an extensive range of genres including pop, hip-hop, and R&B. “Welcome”’s fascinating aural hybridity of all of these genres effectively delivers an “acoustically local” vocal effect and a unique blend of rhythms so that viewers feel more connected with him and song (Lee 2006: 137-138). Not only does “Welcome” hybridize Bak Jaebeom’s commonly sung music genres, it also incorporates select components of a K-pop ballad. In fact, a ballad’s structure of a slow beginning, emotional climax, and soft ending, are clearly evident in “Welcome” and sounds unlike his other songs. Although “Welcome”’s theme of love may not be easily relatable to the rest of society, this video and its musical elements effectively create a fantasy space for the listeners instead. Viewers may therefore be enticed by and feel a sense of intimacy with the artist because he has captured a style of Korean pop music that is sensual, exotic, and unlike the majority of other K-pop songs.

In addition to the song genre, visual elements of the “Welcome” music video also play an important role in creating a personal relationship between Bak Jaebeom and the viewer. The “Welcome” music video lacks a cohesive mixture of “light, rhythm, costumes, [and] beat” (Kim 2018: 95). These popular components of mainstream K-pop dance videos are used to build a synesthesia of different senses in order to generate a digital experience (Ibid.). However, these elements do not match the slower-paced song genre that Bak Jaebeom sings in “Welcome”. Instead, “Welcome” has dark tones, artificial yet minimalistic film sets, and simple outfits, in order to place a spotlight on the artist. The musical pause in the the video further highlights the emotion-filled climax and creates temporary uncertainty of what will happen in the video next. The slow-motion camera shots and hidden face of the female character in the later half of the video even gives viewers the opportunity to imagine themselves as the female character. This video’s ability to evoke a synesthesia of emotions within the viewer is a powerful tool for establishing and maintaining Bak Jaebeom’s fan base.

In order to promote feelings of intimacy amongst his viewers, almost the entire length of “Welcome” is dedicated for Bak Jaebeom to expose his naked abdomen on camera. In “Welcome”, Bak Jaebeom promotes “the popularization of the term ‘chocolate abs’” via shirtless singing shots and subtle body rolls, therefore evoking fan reactions and their “fantasies to caress and consume” (Epstein and Joo 2012: 5). The YouTube comments for the “Welcome” not only praise how Bak Jaebeom’s physical attributes meet Korean beauty standards, but also his ability to create a mysterious and sensual aura through his body movements and camera gazes. These intense gazes captivate the viewer because it appears as if Bak Jaebeom is singing directly at the person watching. “Welcome” has therefore decreased the social distance between the artist and viewer through the spotlight treatment of eroticized male body parts.

The parasocial interaction between an artist and viewer is “a necessary component of fandom” and it is for this reason that artists strive to grow these relationships via online platforms that emphasize visual stimulation (Auslander 2015: 69). The mechanisms of music videos that appear on such platforms are meticulously planned in order to captivate an audience and, “Welcome” is no exception. The success of “Welcome” is not only captured by the number of views or downloads, but through the amount of viewers that felt a genuine connection between themselves and Bak Jaebeom.

Bibliography

Auslander, Philip. “Everybody’s in Show Biz: Performing Star Identity in Popular Music.” In the SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, edited by Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman. 317-31. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications Inc., 2015.

Epstein, Stephen and Rachael M. Joo. “Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the Transnational Imagination.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10, no. 33 (2012): 1-24.

Kim, Sukyoung. K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018.

Lee, Hee-Eun. “Seeking the ‘Others’ Within Us: Discourses of Korean-ness in Korean popular Music.” In Medi@sia: Global Media/tion in and out of Context, edited by Todd Joseph Miles Holden and Timothy J. Scrase. 128-47. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006.