BTS other-worlds: Music video and the intermediality of the self-reflexive musical

Abstract

This close reading of Heartbeat, a 2019 music video by South Korean pop group, BTS, shows how intermedial musical performance generates narrative and meaning through depictions of bodies and movement. The article begins by highlighting the delivery of Heartbeat’s audiovisual narrative through a hybrid set of formal devices linking the music video with cinematic language. The article makes specific intercultural and intermedial links between Heartbeat and self-reflexive classical Hollywood musicals that highlight spontaneity, integration and the audience. Further discussion of Heartbeat focuses on the music video’s intimate address to viewers through song and writing, highlighting a key moment where on-screen text is made to move in a manner resembling dancing bodies – while English-language lyrics are sung in ways that permit multiple meanings. Elements within this music video – such as the use of bodies to bear musical meaning – ultimately connect with larger intermedial contexts and spin-off products, demonstrating that intermediality plays across several levels from the aesthetic to the commercial.