Multimodal Expression in BTS’s Music Video Blood Sweat & Tears (2016)

BTS’s Music Video and Comeback Album Blood Sweat & Tears  (2016) emerged as a fusion of visual art, literature, and narrative storytelling. As part of the WINGS era, many fans immediately noticed that this MV was not just an ordinary Music video. From classical European museum settings to existential philosophical quotes, from religious statues to detailed conceptual shots—everything came together to form a complex and symbol-laden visual experience. However, what is rarely discussed in depth is how BTS intriguingly structured this Music video as a multimodal text that blends visual art, literature, and narrative to convey themes of inner conflict, religiosity, and identity exploration—especially amid an ambiguous world.

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Explicitly, BTS stated that the idea behind the WINGS album and Blood Sweat & Tears MV was inspired by the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse. In an interview with BU Content Creators, the leader RM mentioned that after rereading Demian, he was intrigued by the idea of  ”killing the old world to discover one's true world,” which he also talked about in a VLive session. Not only used metaphorically, RM literally recites an important quote from the novel in the MV—“The bird fights its way out of the egg…”—during a museum scene. This reference serves as the foundational narrative that unites all the visuals and choreography.

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Additionally, the song consciously draws from classic European visual art. The expressions of the members, especially Jimin and Taehyung, evoke a sense of religious sorrow in lighting reminiscent of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro. In one scene, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights,  is shown, representing moral decay and temptation. Symbols such as the cross, angel wings, and living statues being kissed echo Baroque style and Christian iconography, yet they are employed in a modern narrative about losing control over oneself.

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Using an approach rooted in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Blood Sweat & Tears becomes a fascinating subject of analysis. Rather than merely adopting Western culture, BTS deconstructs and rewrites meanings from a K-pop perspective—where body, space, and text become fields of interpretive play. Amid a fast-paced, commercial music industry, this MV challenges typical consumption logic: it invites the viewer to think, feel, and reflect.

Blood Sweat & Tears offers something rarely seen in K-pop: a reflective, philosophical work that blends literary quotes, classical visual symbolism, aesthetic, and narrative storytelling. Thus, this MV deserves to be understood as a cultural text open to analysis through various lenses—especially Comparative Literature.

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Visual Art

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