Mic Drop’ As the Response of BTS Toward Hatred Feedback and Death Threats

Communication Studies-School of Humanities Batch: 2014

Analysing ‘Mic Drop’ as the Response of BTS toward Hatred Feedback and Death Threats

Eykal Primsa Ginting

President University, Jababeka Education, Cikarang, Indonesia, +62 8216 5110 132, [email protected]

Abstract K-Pop is a musical genre of rock, pop, hip-hop, electronic, and RnB music that had starting in South Korea. Other than getting the popularity, being K-pop idol is troublesome. BTS, as one of K-Pop boy band, has made 'Mic Drop' music video in order to react the hatred feedback that they got from their past days as the new beginner in K-Pop industry. In this study, the researcher conducted a visual analysis method using music video frame and song lyric as the object. It concentrated on answering the research questions of how BTS represents their self through 'Mic Drop' music video, to identify who got involved with this music video, and what situation that BTS needed to cover from their audience. To answer the research questions, researcher was using qualitative method and discourse analysis approach by Keith Kenney. As the media on making 'Mic Drop' go smoothly to their target audience and be well-known, BTS was using YouTube for posting their music video in the official channel. Keywords:BTS, Mic Drop, Haters

1. Introduction A shortening of Korean pop, Korean prominent music or without a doubt comprehended as K-Pop, is a musical genre of rock, pop, hip hop, electronic, and RnB music beginning in South Korea. K-pop has formed into an outstanding subculture among adolescents and youthful adults all through Asia. On May 2017, Billboard music awards had one nomination category which was top social artist. This included four of worldwide pop's typical, nominees: Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande and Shawn Mendes. The champ, however, was none from what was recently mentioned. Rather, it was the group who had topped the Social 50 for 31 weeks in the earlier year: BTS. BTS who called as Bangtan Sonyeondan, was the unintentional product of a little record label that detected a business opportunity for a marginally more mindful tone inside the exhausting energetic world of K-Pop: the band has included songs about depression and governmental issues. BTS has been on their world tour for the past months and has been in America for the past weeks. BTS's award reflected the undeniably outward-bound social power of South Korea. Their 2016 album WINGS had the most noteworthy first-month sales in Korean history. WINGS, one of BTS album, hit no. 26 in US as the best position ever for a K-pop album. Other than getting the fame, being K-pop idol is troublesome. BTS has earned various death threats on Twitter by what shows up from anti-fans, with a segment of the messages undermining Jimin especially. The rumors began from the user "Selja", called "@AinsleyPaisley", but her Twitter account has been suspended now. Photographs initially were spread on Twitter accusing her for hoping to spread lies toward BTS members. The 1 photographs claimed that Selja had plans to discharge rumors that BTS members were sexually assaulting a Brazilian fan. The bits of gossip that BTS members were sexually assaulting a Brazilian fan are completely and unequivocally false. They are false bits of gossip made to decry the notoriety of BTS and the group members. The photographs were not proven and were alleged screen-shots of a direct message from Selja to another user. BTS also earned series of death threat in Twitter. This isn't the primary death threat that has been made against BTS. It likewise originated from Twitter user (@AntiBTSAnti) who included a progression of specific threats against Jimin, declaring plans to shoot the South Korean singer with a weapon from rafters, with seats determined, while he performs the number "Lies" at the Anaheim Honda Center in Southern California. The venue, which has a limit of about 19,000, is due to of host BTS for two sold-out concert on April 1-2. The Twitter account additionally blasted photographs of a dead pig, firearms, and other bloody images.

Figure 1. Death Threat of BTS Figure 2. Death Threat Through Twitter

In 2016, BTS's anti-fans were appearing to attack BTS through trending topic in Twitter after BTS's 'HwaYangYeonHwa On Stage EPILOGUE' concert, occurring at Seoul's Olympic Park Gymnastics Arena.

Figure 3. Invitation to Attack BTS Through Trending Topic in Twitter

The notice read, “Please RT continuously. [#CopyBoys and related hashtags, trending attack] Time: 2016.05.07 – 7 PM KST when BTS's Concert ends, 2016.05.08 – 7 PM KST when the concert ends. This weekend, BTS's concert takes place from 4PM KST for about 150 mins, so please begin about 30 mins after the concert ends. Let's show them all of the fandoms' combined forces, let's show those cancerous girls (The Korean word for cancer phonetically sounds similar to the beginning of ARMY) our combined forces. Just upload any hashtags and words related to Bangtan's copying/plagiarizing controversies. After their concert ends, they will definitely go online to tell their boys good job, so let's show them.” In 2015, BTS was compelled to cut their hi-touch and photo event when a user undermined BTS with a weapon on Twitter. Fans who attended the New York tour of the K-pop boy band's Episode II: The Red Bullet tour at Best Buy Theater were dealt to two hours of performance before the band returned for an encore only to sing one song, then rapidly stroll off and wave farewell shortly after 10:00 p.m. Audiences sat befuddled as the house light rose and the band's music played overhead, yet did not move until the curtains were shut a few minutes after. Amid the concert, claimed threats towards a band member surfaced via social media showing people touting handguns threatening BTS leader Rap Monster (real name Kim Nam Joon) and using the concert's official hashtag “#BTSinNY.” The threats were considered sufficiently important to cancel a fan meeting that was arranged after the show. Recorded video has surfaced of a staff member nearby clarifying that there have been “very recent, serious developments concerning the safety of the members of BTS” and that the group “have chosen to take this threat very seriously... because the well-being of the artist and the safety of the artist and 2 every single person in this venue is our top priority.” Prior, it was reported that BTS Jimin blacked out and fell in front of the audience after a game event that included holding his breath in the midst of a fan meeting in Osaka, Japan. In any case, in various articles concerning the incident, numerous anti-fans have left series of rude comments towards BTS Jimin. Not just essentially being assaulted by the common anti-fans, BTS likewise got the dis from underground rapper. In 2013, it was reported that B Free (one of Korean underground rapper) was charged dissing towards Rap Monster and SUGA of BTS. He poked fun at the idol group's stage makeup, choreography, and more, which many fans found highly offensive. B-Free gained many hate due to these remarks about BTS but he did not back up. He really compounded the issue by re-tweeting hate comments towards BTS and even stating he would slap the boys whenever he sees them. The reason of researcher was using K-Pop, determined BTS as main object in this research was to bringing round that the entire sort of K-pop, including BTS, is still troublesome. On the off chance that trainees (soon to be as idol) need to make profit as an artist of any kind, they need to agree to being exploited. Despite everything that was heard as contemptuous talk of "selling out," however it can't sensibly be required to remain alive in a capitalist system unless the idol offer out in some fashion. BTS composes and creates their own songs with some assistance, yet their names are everywhere throughout the credits. This obviously is uncommon for a K-Pop group, however it gives an essence of the elusive authenticity that artists strive for. There's an existential viewpoint to a considerable lot of BTS's songs and visuals, even the cheerful songs about love. They understand that life is fleeting and they get caged in by the world or by their own evil spirits, yet at times, despite everything, they feel free (Heidi Samuelson, 2017). According to Samuelson (2017), BTS began basically as a hip-hop group, however they're currently a strong blend of singers and rappers and their sound is significantly more cross-type. There are likewise particularly Korean components to K-pop, BTS included. Also, Bang Si-Hyuk, who discovered BTS, has said that he could never need BTS to do songs completely in English just to engage a global market. Other K-pop groups, be that as it may, expressly endeavor to incorporate members who are not Korean with a specific goal to have a more extensive universal interest. There's likewise the social media presence, selfies, live-streams, tweets . BTS gives so much free content to fans, which is the way they've manufactured a worldwide relation. Being a K-pop idol is really being an idol, an image made for worship. BTS refers in some cases to their "characters," which implies that notwithstanding when they are acting as themselves, they know that they are being filmed, offering a persona. For entering America music industry, Korean artists had been attempting respectable endeavors to make their stateside mark for over a decade with various plans of attack and blended triumphs. BTS embarked on their U.S. Wings tour, playing five stadium appears in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, before returning in May for the Billboard Music Awards where they won the Top Social Artist award and sccepted the award on television. Quick forward to September, BTS dropped their Love Yourself: Her EP that broke all records for K-pop albums (after the band officially broke them with Wings) with a Top 10 debut and two Hot 100 singles with "DNA" and eventually their first Top 40 single with their "Mic Drop (Remix)." BTS booked their live U.S. television debut on the 2017 American Music Awards, which preceded a huge U.S. promo run including performances and additionally interviews on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Show With James Corden, E! News, and more. Billboard recently uncovering that BTS album sales, song achievement and social movement made them the 10th biggest U.S. artist of the year. BTS' 2017 is proof that grasping and respecting the components that make an artist extraordinary to can prompt accomplishment beyond what was possible. Also, it just appears as though things are getting greater for both BTS and for K-Pop in 2018. (Jeff Benjamin, 2017). By getting many hatred feedback and death threats from their anti-fan, BTS was trying to give their respond from their new song, entitled ‘Mic Drop’. The researcher aims in this paper is to analyse the reason of making "Mic Drop" and the music video itself. The linguistic and visual deconstruction of the video will allow for the observation of how BTS are represented. This is vital in order to observe the main linguistic and visual strategies used to respond towards those hate comments, yet in the meantime still gain the attention from public. The objective in this research was to make the researcher will end this research by being able to specify and identify on the whole of visual content, started from composition, context, also the idea and concept. 1.1 Research Questions 1. How did BTS represent their group through their music video? 2. Regarding to this case, who did BTS had involved with? 3, Is there certain thing that BTS needed to cover from their public? Why? 1.2 Significances This research might not be able to cover the majority of K-pop idols encounters because of the limited time in leading the research. Regardless, for the scholarly uses, this research could contribute to the study of social communication as the asset for study or future research. With respect to practical, this research could contribute 3 to the practice of communication process that occurs in social media or verbal communication. Concerning the K-pop idol or public figure, through this research, could know how to manage the anti-fans with the proper communication way. With respect to the K-pop fans, this research could give them the learning on how communication can assemble a major impact to someone's life.

2. Literature Review Since the research depends on music video where the frame of BTS emerges and is significant in conveying the meaning of the song lyric, the theoretical background of this journal needs to focus on attention management and multimodal discourse analysis. 2.1 Attention Management Influential Twitter users are starting to discover their way into the star-system of mass media alongside media celebrities; TV-shows progressively characterize the "news of day" or choose whom to interview on the basis of Twitter trends or by investigating Facebook discussions. Influencer people with large networks of connected followers and friends are also important (as cited in van Dijck 2013:40). The term ‘alpha distributors’ can be used to refer to users who act as key nodes in social media and whose recommendations have an extensive reach and influence. Journalists from news media frequently treat tweets from celebrities or politicians as quotes—a peculiar reinforcement of Twitter's powerful function as a public relations tool. Along comparative lines, Twitter's Trending Topics feature empowers users to boost certain topics or news items, while Retweets offer a tool to broadly "endorse" a particular tweet. Twitter likewise effectively pushes Promoted Tweets—paid for by companies and customized via algorithms to fit particular Twitter-streams. Regardless of the platform's egalitarian image, a few people on Twitter are more influential than others, partly because the platform tends to be dominated by couple of users with extensive followings, partly because the platform assigns more weight to exceedingly visible users. Verifiably, major platforms, for example, as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube have done as such by depending intensely on user reporting of posts that violate content policies, instead of currently policing the content themselves what James Grimmelmann (2015) has termed reactive as opposed to proactive moderation. Probably the best known model in research on issue attention is the “issue-attention cycle” created by Downs (1972). According to him, an issue passes through different phases of attention: (1) the pre-problem stage, where it is only discussed by specialists, and (2) alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm, where it makes a breakthrough into the public agenda and receives much attention, often through key events (Kepplinger & Habermeier, 1995). Then, the public is increasingly able to (3) realize the cost of significant progress. This leads to (4) a gradual decline of intense public interest and other issues may enter the agenda. In the (5) post-problem stage, key events could trigger an-other attention cycle (Petersen, 2009).An issue is a larger category, under which many related events could be subsumed (Shaw, 1977). However, they could also exist without concrete events. It depends on the context, that is, whether something is defined as an event or issue (Kepplinger, 2001). The entangled activities of measuring and manipulating expose a platform's technological concordances, while simultaneously reflecting users' capacity to push particular enthusiasm to the front-lines of public attention. Groups of users who choose something needs to become "trending" can organize a publicity wave to advance a specific thing, which can challenge on prominent platforms, for example, Twitter. Micro-blogging tool Twitter, more than some other platform, advances itself as a resound assembly of individuals' opinions, even situating itself as a substitution of offline opinion polls. Twitter supposedly measures informal sentiments, feelings, or underbellies of "the people" at a stage when they are still in the process of becoming "official" public opinion. Opinions and sentiments expressed via Twitter are extremely vulnerable to manipulation, following a similar dynamic as social theorists previously identified as pertaining to the role of opinion polls in mass media logic. Researchers have already begun to explore how power flows on and through platforms: at the level of design, platform concordances, such as Twitter’s 140 character length limits, shape which user behaviors are encouraged or discouraged on the platform (Neff, Jordan, McVeigh-Schultz, & Gillespie, 2012). Many social media platforms outline a set of community guidelines that specify the types of content they prohibit on the platform which include, at a minimum, provisions against violent, graphic or threatening content, obscenity and nudity, content that violates trademarks or copyright, and fraudulent content or spam. The creative approaches of protesters worked at cross-purposes with this, using virality to leverage the attention economy of social media platforms and rally newcomers behind the protest. Mass media logic already divulged a potent mechanism for pushing "likeable" people to become media personalities; depending on their ability to play the media and lure crowds, a variety of actors, from politicians to entertainers, accumulated mass attention, often achieving the status of celebrity. They adopted a wide range of tactics, from virtual sit-ins, petitions, letter- writing campaigns, protests in physical space, media coverage, hash-tagging and satirical art to sustain attention to the cause.

2.2 Multimodal Discourse Analysis Researchers generally use a method to study photographs and their escorting written texts, which is discourse analysis. A discourse can be specified as a composite of photographs and written texts that express information- knowledge and establish a specific version of reality. for a discourse analysis, photographs never stand alone; they are always links in a chain of meaning, along with other associated photographs and associated written texts (as cited in Aiello & Thurlow, 2006:148). The music video is a suitable case of a visual social semiotics due to the fact that it combines more than one method of communication: the song lyric and the visual frame. The multimodal text should be comprehended in general in which the combination of the distinctive modes effectively creates significance in an effective way. Visual social semiotics is functionalist in the sense that it sees visual resources as having been developed to do specific kinds of semiotic work. It follows Halliday (1978) in recognizing three main kinds of semiotic work, which are always performed simultaneously. Halliday calls these three kinds of work 'meta-functions', and distinguishes between: the ideational meta-function, the inter-personal meta-function, and the textual meta- function, which brings together the individual bits of representation and interaction into the kind of wholes that would recognize as specific kinds of text or communicative event. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) have extended this idea to images, using a slightly different terminology: 'representational' instead of ideational'; 'interactive' instead of inter-personal'; and 'compositional' instead of 'textual'.

According to Leeuwen (as cited in Jewitt & Leeuwen 2008:141), the three meta-functions are: • Representational Meaning Representational meaning is first of all conveyed by the (abstract or concrete) 'participants' (people, places or things) depicted. Where it has contributed new ideas for the visual analysis of representational meaning is in its emphasis on the 'syntax' of images as a source of representational meaning. There are two kinds of pattern. Narrative representations relate participants in terms of 'doings' and 'happenings', of the unfolding of actions, events, or processes of change. Conceptual patterns, represent participants in terms of their more generalized, stable or timeless 'essence’. • Interactive Meaning Images can create particular relations between viewers and the world inside the picture frame. In this way they interact with viewers and suggest the attitude viewers should take towards what is being represented. Three factors play a key role in the realization of these meanings: distance, contact and perspective. • Compositional Meaning There are three resources of compositional meaning: information value; framing; and salience and modality, an important 'interactive' resource.

3. Framework and Methodology The objective behind this research was to analysing the visual decisions made in 'Mic Drop' music video by BTS in order to respond the hatred comments towards them this entire time. The framework that was applied to analyse the visual part and lyric for every frame depended on the approach outlined by Keith Kenney’s discourse analysis (2009).

Mic Drop Music Video

Camera Position and Angle Music Video Frames Tonality and Color

Compositions Look, Gesture, and Gaze

Size Relationships

Lyric Detail

Production Context

Context Distribution Context

Reception Context

Ideas and Concepts

Table 1. Discourse Analysis by Keith Kenney

Adopted from Keith Kenney (2009), in order to do discourse analysis, we should follow these procedures: • Content The researcher needs to look closely at the video and lyrics, also describing exactly what the researcher sees and read. • Subjects The researcher needs to provide a thorough description of all the subjects in the photographs. • Composition The researcher needs to pay attention in the detail of visual content. • Context The researcher needs to analyse the context in which the photographs and their accompanying texts were produced, distributed, and received. • Ideas and Concepts The researcher needs to analyse the ideas and concepts behind music video of BTS.

This research concerns the way BTS are presented in the videos in relation to whether or not such a presentation could be said to react towards the hatred feedback, BTS interaction within the world of the video, and their interactions with the viewer were deemed to be the most worthwhile avenues of enquiry. The data to be analysed in this journal consists of the music video “Mic Drop” designed to represent BTS in order to react to the hate comments that they had received.

The researcher decided to use frame as the object of research study. A frame is the smallest unit of film. Each shot is comprised of numerous frames (24 frames for every second), and a scene is normally (not generally) comprised of a few shots. A scene is characterized as action that takes place in the similar area or the similar time. Each sequence is normally comprised of a few scenes (Hawks, 2010). After listening to the lyric and watching the music video, the researcher had chosen ten frames because of the interesting thing and the connection between each frame and lyric at the time which had hidden messages inside it.

With regard to the compilation of the video frames under research, the video was taken from a very useful YouTube channel maintained by the agency of BTS, BigHit Agency (see https://www.youtube.com/user/ibighit/), which provides the music video and the official english version lyric. The result section started with an overview of some ‘Mic Drop’ music video’s frames in which each frame is 6 followed by a description of their main visual and linguistics features, in order to observe the meaning behind the music video itself. After listening to the lyric and watching the music video, the researcher had chosen ten frames because of the interesting thing and the connection between each frame and lyric at the time which had hidden messages inside it. In this research, researcher is using Purposive sampling to determine the frame as research object and look for the most vivid and relevant examples that will enable to answer the research questions (Kenney, 2009).

4. Result and Discussion Regarding to ‘Mic Drop’ music video, released on November 2017, Rap Monster (leader of BTS) had shared the reason behind making this song in MNet (one of famous television channel in Korea), during BTS comeback stage. He said that he got inspired by President Obama when he made his speech at the Stage of Union and he did his mic drop. The mic drop moment gave RM inspiration for the song title. Firstly, He wanted to talk about sadness or anger in this song. RM asked the other members (Jhope and Suga) to write the song lyric the way he wanted to. As the result, they created the great rap and song lyric. After finishing the song, they didn’t carry any anger about the hatred comments toward them anymore. RM also said that ‘Mic Drop’ was created for those people who didn’t like BTS, the unfair feeling that BTS felt, and their emotions and anger. This song is the farewell for haters, because RM declared that BTS didn’t have any business with them, and also the new starting point for BTS.

4.1 Analysis of Each Frame

Figure 4. Mic Drop Frame 1 With regard to the first chosen frame, the following lyric is “you thought I was going down, but I’m fine sorry”. The lyric itself mean to those haters that gave their hatred comments who always thought BTS would be a failure for BigHit, in fact, they were the first winner in Billboard Music Award as a Korean boy band. The video was taken close-up in order to make the audience could see facial expression of video subject or Suga who did the apologize pose while smirking and close his left eye. In denotation, subject displayed close-up while rapping and showing apology gesture. In connotation way, the distance represents intimacy in order to make the audience close to him, not only as the part of his world but subject wanted to be closer to the audience. Without doing the eye contact, subject was offering apologize to audience. In this frame, Suga was absolutely support the lyric with his gesture, and the smirk pose was made for telling the audience that he extremely glad with his pathway as a BTS member. The video tone was in dark red. According to Dr. Mark Lucher (as cited in Bleicher 2012:43), people choosing red in the first position want their own personal activities to be intense and want to experience life to the fullest and live it on the edge. Red represents BTS passion to make things better regarding to their career. This frame got compressed space and the camera angel was in eye level while subject was placed in full frame.

Figure 5. Mic Drop Frame 2 The subject in this frame was the vocalist in BTS, Jung Kook. Behind him, there was J-Hope, the rapper of BTS. Subject in this video frame was placed in the center and taken in close-up with eye level angle. In this frame, Jung Kook was the main subject supported by his placement was standing one step forward than other member in order to show his expression clearly. The tonality was dominance with blue or cold tone. The blue color communicates significance, importance, and confidence without creating somber or sinister feelings (Jennifer Bourn, 2011). BTS tried to deliver the message that they got their confidence without worrying the hatred comment and convinced haters with Jung Kook facial expression. The sharp eye-gaze and fierce expression was supporting the lyric in this frame which was “how you dare”. Lyrical meaning was supposed to be the indirect anger about the thing that haters had done to BTS during their past days.

Figure 6. Mic Drop Frame 3 Regarding to the third chosen frame, the following lyric is “baby watch your mouth, it come back around”. It addressed to warn those people whole said bad things about BTS, without any proof. This frame was been dominance with black color with BTS members standing in the middle of four police cars and one ambulance. It was taken from upper-side and landscape with full-body angle. High angle expresses the willingness of BTS to be humiliated or threatened by their haters, but BTS get large amount of support and protection, therefore the haters have to be careful in every act they do. Other ways, despite their audience got power, BTS still got backup to protect them self. The apparel of BTS members dominated with black, red, and white color. According to Dr. Max Luscher (as cited in Bleicher 2012:43) Black represents the color of anarchy and protest; the person picking it wants to rebel against everything without exception. Those who choose black are those who do not to give up anything and may feel that things are not as they want them to be. It also denotes someone who pushes against fate and may do so just to be different and not do what everyone else is doing which are the dissenter and agitator. Jennifer Bourn (2010) said, the white color can represent a successful beginning. In heraldry, white depicts faith and purity. Black means the shield and endurance of BTS from external emotional stress which gotten by hatred comments, red means the passion that BTS had to did the better work in music industry, and white means the faith that each BTS member had in their group. Police cars and ambulance are displayed to support the lyric meaning whether their haters still wanted to continue spreading bad comments about them, because at the end, it only gains bad impact for the haters themselves.

Figure 7. Mic Drop Frame 4 This frame was dominated with dark tone and taken with landscape angle. It shot BTS members surrounded with fancy equipments (pro-video recorder, audio mixer, pro-speaker) in a room looks like BTS’s production room by eye-level angle. The lyric in this frame is “how many hours do we fly”. Hand gesture of the front subject, Rap Monster was describing its lyric well. His right hand was lifted and made fist gesture while throwing his body to backside, certainly support the idea of lyric. Lyrical meaning of “how many hours do we fly” is to claim that BTS is a worldwide K-Pop idol recently. Their songs were accepted in world and the tight schedule of their world tour was the proof of their achievement. The video recorder and some production tools displayed to tell the audiences that BTS is a professional boy band occupied with media interviews and producing the music in order to gain and maintain their fame as K-Pop idol.

Figure 8. Mic Drop Frame 5 With regard to the fifth chosen frame, the following lyric is “Mic Drop”. Video frame was taken landscape with far subject, BTS members, by eye-level. The tonality of this frame was dark and BTS members outfit dominated with black, red, and white colors. In the upper side, spotted many humans got their bodies burned with fire and falling down to the ground. There was flaming fire on the cars around BTS members with upside down position. The humans that got burned by the fire that felt down symbolized as their haters. ‘Mic Drop’ could mean the end of their song and their concern about the hatred comments. In this frame, the only one who didn’t get burn was BTS members, but the hatred that they received didn’t give any impact to their lives and career. Through this frame, BTS delivered that everything would be ruined, if the haters wanted to continue their hating-game, even themselves, and the only one that survived would be BTS.

Figure 9. Mic Drop Frame 6 This frame dominated in light black and white tone. The subject in this frame was Rap Moster, leader of BTS. There were 3 burned cars behind him, with smoke on it. In the video, Rap Monster was walking and talked to the camera “Live a life, man”. Angle in this frame was taken from upper-side. The white color of this frame supposed to be the fresh start for BTS, while the smoke symbolized that they didn’t hold any anger to the haters anymore. Espoused by burned cars, in connotation, BTS delivers to their haters to focus on their live otherwise they would be end up like those cars. The angle was focusing on the damage behind Rap Monster in order to emphasizing the horrible impact of holding the grudge, while his facial expression was pitying to the camera as though he didn’t want the haters end up ruining their lives and wasted their time doing things in vain.

Figure 10 . Mic Drop Frame 7 With regard to the seventh chosen frame, it followed by the lyric “Don’t got no words to tell. Don’t even apologize.” The lyric addressed to those people who were realizing that they did the wrong things (spreading hatred until death threat) to BTS. The background in this frame was clean white, taken with close-up and eye- level angle, and the subject in this frame was Tae Hyung. The close-up angle supposed to make the audience could see and focus on subject’s facial expression, raised his right eyebrow and closed his left eye, opened his mouth, and made the folded hands gesture in front of his face. According to Marsh (2017), the folded hands gesture that subject had posed was the ‘namaste’ gesture which came from India, means respect to other. The folded hands in the frame, was known in Asian culture as the way to say please, thank you, and sorry. The correlation between lyric and this frame was supposed to tell the haters that the regret is useless because of everything is already happened. According to general habit, people often said that we shouldn’t regret things that had done. The apology will not change thing that happened, otherwise, related to the white background in the frame, BTS aspired their haters to start the decent beginning in their lives, as well as BTS.

Figure 11. Mic Drop Frame 8 The camera was in close-up and eye-level angle in this frame. The background blurred and the focus was on Tae Hyung while smiling to the camera. The frame taken in the road and there were cars with flaming fire on it. The following lyric was “see you just end up like that”. Connection between frame and lyric that BTS delivered to their haters that BTS would have happy ending in their career pathway, eventhough they got much hate comments and death threat, while the cars connotated as haters would ended useless with the anger inside them. The tone in this video was dark, dominated with black, supposed to intimidate the audience. There was some way to express happiness, included smiling. According to Guillaume Duchenne (as cited in Jaffe 2010), smile is the symbol of ‘sweet emotions of the soul’ or we often felt it as happiness. The smiling gesture in subject was to support the lyric that BTS would live happily in spite of bad comments and death threat toward them.

Figure 12. Mic Drop Frame 9 With regard to the ninth chosen frame, the angle was taken from below and landscape. The tone in this frame was dark and the subjects were the whole BTS members and cars with flaming fire behind them. BTS members were using outfit with black, white, and red colors. The following lyric in this frame was “your cornea get shocked when it sees us”. Related to the lyric, in this frame, BTS was using fancy and expensive outfit from famous brand. According to @bts07151, fan account of BTS in twitter (2018), some of brand that BTS used were Off—White C/O Virgil Abloh, JUUN.J, Haider Ackermann, Mastermind, Alexander Wang, Yeezy, GCDS, Elioti, and Alpha Industries which worth 2.1-25.8 IDR per each piece. BTS annunciated that they were becoming better while their haters busy with their anger about them, BTS would be growing their fame and career as K- Pop idol.

Figure 13. Mic Drop Frame 10 This frame was dominated with blue tone and taken from eye-level angle. The blue color means confidence, strong, and stability. The subject was Suga while gesturing his left hand stick out to drop the microphone that he held in the front side. This was the last frame in ‘Mic Drop’ music video. Related to the frame tone, the mic drop frame supposed to close the song confidently. It also could be the connotation to BTS ended their concern with the negativity that they got as from the audiences who didn’t like them. The subject was blurred and the focus was on the dropped microphone. The close-up angle and eye-level was supposed to make the intimate contact to the audience who watch their music video. 4.2 Context of ‘Mic Drop’ Music Video

‘Mic Drop’ Music Video

Production Context According to Rap Monster, leader of BTS (as cited in MNet 2017),‘Mic Drop’ was created to talk about sadness and anger that BTS felt. They created this song in order to release their sadness and anger regarding to hatred comments and death threat towards them that created by their haters. Automatically, as Rap Monster said, the main target audience for ‘Mic Drop’ was those people who didn’t like BTS. Moreover, it also created for their fans and general public as the medium of entertainment. The purpose of ‘Mic Drop’ music video, according to Rap Monster (as cited in MNet 2017), was to declaring that BTS didn’t have any business with their haters, and also the new starting point for BTS. In order to succeeding their goal, BTS was creating ‘Mic Drop’ music video and using Steve Aoki as their feature partner. The music video exist to supporting music lyric, as well as being a proof for their main target audience by using supportive compositions in their music video.

Distribution Context BTS was using YouTube as the media for ‘Mic Drop’ to reach their target audience by using ‘ibighit’ YouTube channel as the platform. Furthermore, Steve Aoki did sequence promotion of ‘Mic Drop’ in his twitter account (@steveaoki) and BTS likewise was promoting ‘Mic Drop’ in their twitter account (@BTS_twt). The music video released on November 24, 2017, and last time researcher observes, on March 20, 2018, the music video has been watched by 200 million people. As the music video released, ‘Mic Drop’ would be available on iTunes, Spotify, and also in radio stations.

Reception Context With regard to the lyric and music video which mostly using red, black, blue, and white color, BTS was wanting the audience to interpret that they would be intense in order to make their career in the fullest and live it on the edge (Bleicher, 2012). BTS also wanting to communicate their significance, importance, and confidence without creating somber or sinister feelings (Bourn, 2011). They was wanting the audience discover that they do not to give up on anything. BTS was convincing the audience that they would live happily despite bad comments and death treat toward them (Jaffe, 2010),

Table 2. Context Analysis of ‘MicDrop’

4.3 Ideas and Concept of ‘Mic Drop’ Music Video The ideas of ‘Mic Drop’ music video were a successful BTS who wants to show the audience over their successful life in spite of the hatred comments and death threat that they had received in their past days. Despite getting many bad vibes on their career pathway, through this song, BTS signify that they consistently manage to reach the top as K-Pop idol and reach their goal as worldwide boy band. As for their haters, through this music video, BTS shows that the group had become the great musicians on worldwide. For their fans, BTS was trying to give hidden motivation that we do not have to pay attention to negative words about us and keep trying to be better. For delivering their idea, BTS use Steve Aoki as their feature partner in ‘Mic Drop’. In their music video, BTS use many connotation things, people and cars which got flaming fire as their haters, fire as anger, red color to express their passion, black stands for their endurance, blue stands for their confidence, white as for the fresh start for them, and recording equipment to express their professionalism. In order to deliver the idea that they are a successful boy band, BTS using expensive outfit from famous brands in ‘Mic Drop’ music video.

5. Conclusion This study analysed ‘Mic Drop’ as the response of BTS toward hatred feedback and death threat. The primary theory on this research was using Keith Kenney. Through ‘Mic Drop’ song and music video, BTS represent themselves as a tough boy band who can endure the negativity that they get in their career pathway. Even though they got many hatred feedback and death treat, they didn’t put any concert to it and keep developing theirself for a better future as proof that they are worth to stay in entertainment industry. This ‘Mic Drop’ music video dedicated to those people who didn’t like BTS. Avoiding make a direct riot for their haters, BTS response the hatred feedback through their music work. By creating ‘Mic Drop’, BTS could get benefits, as for their haters, BTS deliver their response through lyric, and as for general audience and their fans, BTS would gain more fame and profit in case the audience enjoy the music and repeatedly play the song in their YouTube channel or buying the song in music store. Through ‘Mic Drop’, as on frame with black and white tone, they try to cover the past days, the bitterness that they felt. In music video, they only display their successful life in order to make fresh start as BTS. The researcher thought that this kind of research is still rare, therefore, as recommendation, visual analysis should often be held as research method. A music video could speak thousands words and talk about specific person’s life. Video-Analysis is described by a solid focus on setting. As central as the setting is to Video- Analysis, its pursuit for that setting is situated in the convention of textual, linguistic analysis. Video-Analysis could help the researcher to analyse the unspoken value, based on relation between video and its following text. The research proven that BTS successfully got attention from audience through ‘Mic Drop’ music video. By using Keith Kenney’s visual analysis theory, the researcher found that BTS was creating a good music video from considering the frame, composition, context, and idea, to deliver their lyric well. Therefore, the researcher concluded that BTS was creating ‘Mic Drop’ music video by implementing the visual component on the existing theory.

Acknowledgement The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the official ibighit YouTube channel and Mnet television station. The author would like to thank Abhirama S.D. Perdana, S.Pd., M.Ed., MComn&MediaSt., as the research supervisor and all staff of Communication Studies at President University. Last but not least, the author would like to thank her family, also her friends (Antik, Debo, Ditta, and Rani), who always support the author.

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PANEL OF EXAMINERS APPROVAL SHEET

The Panel of Examiners declare that the journal entitled Analysing ‘Mic Drop’ as the Response of BTS toward Hatred Feedback and Death Threats that was submitted by Eykal Primsa Ginting majoring in Communication concentrating in Public Relations from the Faculty of Humanities was assessed and approved to have passed the Oral Examinations on April 02, 2018.