[MV REVIEW] AKMU'S MELTED: PEOPLE ARE COLD

I've been listening to AKMU's MELTED these days while working on my PC. I do really love this song, like really really really really and really. Just now I found out that AKMU has made an MV for this song. The MV is ... great. Sigh. Let me breath. It's been so deep made me crying an ocean now. For another reason, the MV is making me feel better, that one's life is supposed to be like mine, yours, or even ours. Life is cold. People are without exception cold. 

The MV is simply showing a boy with his camera and stuffs on the bang of the road waiting someone who can give him a ride.  Fortunately, a man is kind enough to let him in to his car. The boy sits on the back seat while taking picture of his surroundings but the man hates it. He throws the boy out from his car. After that the boy is told buying things in a shop. He thinks whether to buy two boxes of film roll or snacks. He decides to buy the roll one and a banana. He buys them with coins. The shop owner sighs as he doesn't like the coins. Then, the boy sits on the park where many people are actually working out their lives together. There is a clown who works all day, a balloon seller, an Asian mom and her child versus Black mom and her child, and many more. Basically all races in America are there. And, finally, the boy meets a woman in the car, and let him in. She even lets the boy to take photo of her. The boy follows the woman into a pub where she abandons him afterwards. He finds the woman runs with a man and doesn't pay for the drinks she buy. The pub owner slightly feels angry and ask for money from the boy. As this boy doesn't have any money and even his bags are with the woman which are left in the car, he has nothing at all in his hands, except a camera that he really loves. The pub owner beats him. Then he goes to the police station to report his missing belongings but the police rejects him. He then walks, walks, and walks until meet a van where a dog is tied in front of it. He sees the dog barking. As he sees himself in the dog, he starts to bark too (to the dog). At that time a man comes out from  the van. It comes out that the man offers him a dinner. 

It is such unique MV remembering the MV comes from Korean artists as the MV is trying to portray the distinctiveness in America. There are many people staring in this MV come from different races. Although I don't really want to talk about that point, but actually there is a reason why the MV is made especially in America. From my perspective, the purpose of making this MV in America is to capture the various kinds of people. While using America as a setting place, it can be easier for the director to portray the coldness within different people even if in the same nation. Imagine if he decides to make it in Korea, all we can see is Koreans -there won't be Whites, Blacks, Chinese, or Indians. By portraying people through this easily-identified-distinctiveness, he hopes spectators, like us, can understand more of how every individual is different, but having the similar trait within them, that is unexpectedly (they are) cold.

For the boy himself, as a spectator, I can see the camera as the thing he loves most. The camera in this MV is the symbolization of his life. His life is the camera itself. He carries it everywhere he goes. All the things that surround him fascinating him that make him want to capture everything. He is like that one person who really loves to see his society in the corner of his emptiness, of nothingness. For him, his life is within this society, but none can really relate to him. He is somehow different from the others. People mostly dislike him. He gets thrown over because of the thing he likes (the man throws him from the car), he isn't respected by others (the coins in the shop is the symbolization of poverty/doesn't have enough money and the shop owner is the society that dislike this fact), and can't get lucky enough (eventually he meets good woman but she leaves him). But, in one's life there always be that heartwarming moment. That moment is when the boy meets with the dog and the man who cares enough to let him in to his van. Inside a man there is also a warmness.

As for the man who stands on the window in the building while holding a glass of ice (which melts) I don't really know exactly who he is. But, to relate with the plot, I guess he is the adult of the boy. That is the day when he reminisces his past. I can think like that because somehow deep in my heart I always wonder how does it feel standing like that facing the world in my late fifty years old while thinking about this moment which is quiet difficult to deal with, or about how nice this moment is. This moment where everything seems so cold may one day be just a memory but this is what makes us being our true selves. This cold moment will eventually melt too and the warm song will come out. No worry, one day, these are going to be a beautiful memory we can tell to the world.