The vast universe guarantees us three certainties: the speed of light is the greater marginal value of the cosmic speed limit, a planet’s orbital speed is relative to its distance from the sun, and the BTS members will never shy away from amplifying LGBTQ+ stories through the decade-long scope of their art.
In the 24th of March, Jimin debuted as a soloist upon releasing a six-tracked testament of his mastery. FACE is a journal of the struggles he has faced over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and it is a humanistic indictment to one’s lapses as a person. Jimin’s brilliant command over multiple mediums from sound to sight encompasses the clear episodes of introspection.
However, it begs the question: introspection for whom?
The FACE of Park Jimin
Following the writing of this article, FACE has received a great magnitude of commercial and critical acclaim deserving of its quality. Its lead track Like Crazy occupied the industrially coveted Hot 100 #1 spot, spent a day as the most streamed song on Spotify Global, and cemented itself as the album by a soloist with the largest single and first-day sales in Hanteo history. The words “first” and “only” might as well be Jimin’s established moniker with how high he soared with the bar for musicality in his hand, breaking through the looming glass ceiling that divides art.
With its optics, the scope FACE has been reaching is unprecedented and Jimin has the world watching him define history as a world-class musican in real-time.
Meanwhile, I am given the privilege to view FACE from an angle that tackles the visible influence of LGBTQ+ figures all throughout the album.
The seven boys of BTS have never once ostracized queer sub-culture from their art. Three months and seven days before the group’s official debut, RM recommended Same Love by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, stating that the song is twice as better if the listener understands its lyrics about homosexuality. As their fourth anniversary Festa offering, RM and V wrote 4 O’clock that references the 89th Academy Award Best Picture Winner Moonlight, a film about navigating homosexuality and coming of age. Their 2016 hit Blood, Sweat, and Tears draws parallels from the 1919 novel by Herman Hesse, Demian, that is interpreted as a fragment of early 20th century LGBTQ+ literature by contemporary lenses.
I can go on and on about BTS’ involvement in LGBTQ+ media, but what is it about a 2023 album’s queer references that is hitting home far too harder than warranted?
It’s simple: FACE is a grand culmination of every single time Jimin coded his art with LGBTQ+ signals.
From his photo-folio in late 2022 wherein he broke through the conventions of femininity and masculinity by portraying Apollo and Artemis respectively to its three-pronged thematic strength. This theme arched over the domineering presence of magenta, purple, and blue in one of ID: Chaos’ color palettes, all of which circling to the stripes of the bisexual pride flag. Finally, Jimin wore the Yves Saint Laurent Love 1984 t-shirt that showcased “FREE LOVE” etched and immortalized on his skin.
Jimin’s solo endeavors have been an avenue after avenue to elevate LGBTQ+ art and history. As a South Korean artist whose followers stretch all over the globe, the ceilings Jimin is breaking is stacked against him tenfold yet he is reaching out to his LGBTQ+ fans amidst all the static. He is there. We are heard, we are seen.
The pair of pants Jimin wore in one of the Like Crazy performances is part of MISBHV’s line devoted to the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Born in 1946 and died in 1989, Mapplethorpe’s life is riddled with controversy from his sexually explicit portfolio. Black-and-white photographs adorned his vocation, most notably his visual chronicling of New York’s gay S&M subculture. Mapplethorpe’s legacy is not punctuated by his death. To this day, his foundation is constantly promoting photography as an art medium through scaffolding museums and exhibits. It also funds research on HIV/AIDS which is the ailment that ultimately led to Mapplethorpe’s demise.
One of the decorative details in the aforementioned song’s music video is the logo of the 1960s rock band The Kinks. One of the band’s biggest hits is Lola, a 1970 release that features the romance of a boy and one “Lola” whose gender remained elusive throughout the record. Lola by The Kinks is described as the first significantly gay rock-ballad by the American rock music magazine, Creem. Being released in the 70s, Lola is inevitably met with backlash in the form of radio stations denying it airplay or censoring some of its lyrics.
Finally, similar to The Kinks, rock royalty Queen also makes an appearance as a wall decal. It goes without saying that the legacy of Queen as an LGBTQ+ emblem blankets over several generations. Queen’s frontman and vocalist Freddie Mercury, an evergreen icon of rock and an even more transcendent queer symbol, is spectated by most of the world. The band’s music videos that gradually broke free (pun intended) from masculine conventions is just as anticipated. Mercury became a framework for the turbulent youth of the 70s and 80s to see queerness as a concept brimming with diversity and art instead of the bigoted illusions of immorality being used to indoctrinate the children.
I merely cited three when the presence of LGBTQ+ themes is much more visible in FACE, be it nuanced or blatant. These include thermal imagery of two women kissing or the blurred dichotomy between Jungian Philosophy’s animus and anima.
What does it mean for queer youth?
Jimin; history-maker Jimin, genre-definer Jimin, first-and-only-soloist Jimin. At the end of the day, the profound thoughts I harbor for FACE will never be brought to justice by what limited reach words have the capacity to encompass. They all boil down to Jimin embodying himself as the “person in Seoul who understands you.”
Navigating queerness is a struggle when there are merely a few contemporary artists that are open about LGBTQ+ inclusion. Time is finally granting LGBTQ+ youth the latitude to meet a wider number of artists who they may resonate with without the adherence of heteronormativity. I grew up with the scarcity of it and I am watching Jimin help queer youth grasp on art tailored for their identities first-hand, unabashedly so.
So, it is up to LGBTQ+ youth to protect Jimin’s art from being misconstrued by covert homophobia. Do not let the solace you found in Jimin’s art be robbed.
