Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood: A Look into “LOST!”
by Karenna Blomberg
I love the way that cultural theorist Stuart Hall characterizes media making. In his lectures on culture and representation, he describes art and media creation as an encoding of a message, and media consumption a decoding of that message. When we are engaging with media, whether it be a TikTok, a 1,000-page novel, a text, or a music video, it’s like we are super spies, given a piece of paper with a secret message from the person who made that media, and we are running it through our brain-computers to interpret exactly what the person is trying to say. Sometimes the answer is obvious. Other times, there are layers upon layers of context and meaning to a piece of media, and sometimes what a person decodes from that media will not be the exact same as what the media-maker encoded.
To put it simply, the more you have to say, the more likely it is that people won’t fully “get” what you want to say, because no one can be inside your mind except you. One of the scariest parts of art—actually, one of the scariest parts of being alive—is confronting the idea of being misunderstood.
Kim Namjoon, or RM of BTS, has had his fair share of being misunderstood.
After his last solo release, 2022’s Indigo, where he tries to accept the downsides of his idol life while also promising to find his own peace, the BTS leader careens into a head-on confrontation with that history of misunderstanding in Right Place, Wrong Person (RPWP). The lead single, “LOST!,” and its corresponding music video directed by Aube Perrie offer a thorough dissection of Namjoon’s perspective, desperate to finally overcome those human communication barriers by literally taking you into his mind.
The first thing we see in the “LOST!” music video is a retro talk show set that aesthetically complements the album’s 1960s and 1970s sonic influences. The nostalgic setup also brings to mind the endless comparisons between BTS and The Beatles, especially their 2019 performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert meant to emulate The Beatles’ 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance. The show’s hosts introduce RM and switch back and forth between speaking in English and stilted Korean, their attitudes similarly faltering between eerily over-enthusiastic and completely deadpan, almost judgmental.
The premise of Indigo’s lead single, “Wildflower,” was that Namjoon was ready for a pursuit that was less high-pressure and in-the-spotlight than his previous ten years with BTS. He crafts an image not of a firework that explodes and fizzles out at its peak height, but of a “flowerwork”—like flower petals thrown in the air, something that keeps its life and color even once it hits the ground. He penned a similar line for the group earlier, in “Boy With Luv”: Listen my my baby, I’m flying high up in that sky / Now it’s too high up here / I’d like to have my eyes meet you. Namjoon, with BTS, has flown to seemingly impossible heights and is ready for the graceful landing.
This feeling of “falling” to a more manageable level of visibility is present throughout the “LOST!” music video, starting from the beginning of the song. Namjoon, along with four others all dressed in the same size suit and all with RM name tags, are in an elevator falling down into the depths of a surreal office building (cheekily labeled as “Namjoon’s brain” at the beginning of the video). The fivesome wander the building like a maze, looking for an exit that always seems to be just a single turn away. The gut-punch lyric of “Time flies like an arrow, 14 now they’re 30” underlines the sense that RM is seeking something beyond the idol mindset he has been in for the past decade and a half.
Each RM has a different way of walking, a different expression of gender, a different way they wear their clothes, and a different assigned characteristic—for example, one actor shared in an Instagram post that they played “overconfident” RM. Namjoon in dialogue with the infinite versions of himself is a theme that traces all the way back to the Love Yourself albums, but takes on a whole new disposition in this video. Much like he and fellow BTS member Jimin discussed in the recent Mini & Moni Music video, Namjoon’s inner self contains many coexisting, impossible contradictions, and the simultaneously eerie and jovial nature of “LOST!” demonstrates this.
Visually, the concept of wandering through an office building with different versions of himself is reminiscent of the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO), which Namjoon has mentioned as being impactful in his life. Evelyn, the film’s burnt-out protagonist, finds peace and meaning only after embracing the absurdity of a life full of technically infinite possibility. As both BTS and Jimin say in the lyrics of “ON'' and “Set Me Free, Pt. 2”: “[You] gotta go insane to stay sane.” For Namjoon, that may be by embracing a certain level of blitheness towards the less important issues, and a level of measured excess in his life and originality in his music beyond what the regimented idol industry usually affords.
But the thing that makes “LOST!” unique is that Namjoon is not just using it to make a statement on personas or the idol industry. Instead, the song and music video feel like a heartfelt attempt to show how disquieting it can be to take a mind so full of ideas, responsibilities, and contradictions and condense it into a singular public face. Every aspect of the scene inside “Namjoon’s Brain” is slightly off. From the random points in which the characters switch to clay figures or animated characters, to the extreme long shots of rooms that look almost like 1990s computer graphics, the video almost feels like an experiment in giving yourself that “uncanny valley” feeling. The cinematography by Director of Photography Chris Ripley and the mise-en-scène, developed by Creative Director San Yawn and London production design company Studio Augmenta, both echo this as well. Dutch angles as well as angled sets, actors, and props make everything in the office feel off-balance. Flickering lights and moody blue-green lighting give a feeling of discomfort that contrasts with the upbeat nature of the song to create an odd cognitive dissonance.
After finally reaching the exit to the office building, Namjoon climbs out to find himself back on the talk show set. As the other RMs watch from below, the one that climbed out faces the audience as they cheer for his new single. Even though there is so much to get lost in lying within him, and so much more to him than what he shows, he only gets one perfectly unified image while he’s on the stage. It reminds me of how fragile Namjoon’s role is not only as BTS’ leader, but their main translator as well: if people misjudge him or don’t understand where he’s coming from, that could mark a hit to his career, the entire band, and all their team members.
There are few things that are more emotionally vulnerable than sharing yourself through art, and Namjoon seems to have a more intense understanding of this than most. To make good, honest art you need to remove your armor, and once you’ve done that, you are just as exposed to criticism and attack as you are to recognition and understanding. When the art presented is so personal—in the case of “LOST!,” a blueprint of how it feels inside of Namjoon’s brain—the sting of those misunderstandings can be twice as devastating. So what do you do when you are a public figure working in one of the strictest, most judgmental systems in entertainment? What do you do when you know you are full of contradictions and versions of yourself, and people only ever want to see one?
Both “LOST!” and RPWP as a whole are receiving acclaim as well as some detraction from fans and non-fans alike for its sonic risk-taking, with many people claiming that it doesn’t resemble BTS or RM’s previous work. But in reality, both “LOST!” and its music video are richly condensed presentations of themes and ideas that have been brewing in BTS’ music for nearly a decade. The video is simultaneously triumphant and hesitant, acting as a firm shaking-off of the burdens that come from being the leader of a group as prevalent as BTS.
But unlike in any of his previous works, which often favor grounded rationality as the cure to an oversized life, the chaotic, surreal concepts and visuals that populate the “LOST!” music video suggest a different answer. Maybe you have to embrace the insanity as best as you can. Maybe you have to sometimes be a bit odd, awkward, excessive, cocky, and just look past the internet lashings. This music video acts as a monument to directionlessness as an opportunity and not a setback; to the idea that when you don’t like where you are and don’t know where you’re going, it might be time to get a little lost.
