Blue and Red: Could ENHYPEN be connecting to the Matrix?
In ENHYPEN’s “Let Me In: 20 Cube” music video, We see members consuming blue and red substances. The first thing that came to mind for me when faced with these two colors in a food/drink form was the red and blue pill of the matrix. So naturally, I started investigating. Here are some possible connections that I have found.
-Dream
-In “Given-Taken”, Sunoo sings that the light of the sun burned him and blinded him, “But I go now, follow my dreams, Dive into red sun, no lie.” And later, the lyrics mention doubts and mistrusts that won’t leave them alone and then the lyrics state, “But I go now, follow my dreams. drive through the question for life.” This could be implying that even though there are hints that the world they are pursuing is not the reality they were anticipating, they are still pursuing their dreams.
- “Outro: Cross the Line” ends with the, “If I wake from dreamless sleep, May tomorrow begin like a dream.
-ENHYPEN included a reference to dream vs reality in their 2020 MAMA Performance. See picture.
-When Morpheus first meets Neo, in The Matrix, he tells him, “You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up.” This implies that Neo suspects that he is dreaming. He already has a sense that the world he has been living in is not reality.
-Prison
-This dream that Morpheus describes is the Matrix. He further describes it saying, “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Neo asks, “what truth?” And Morpheus states, “ That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, were born into bondage...kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.”
-There are many references in The Given-Taken and Let Me In music videos to prisons or being trapped. Some of the biggest that jump to my mind are Ni-Ki being chained up and later with the shadow of bars moving across the room.
Jay and Jake in what feels like a basement or prison in the blue lighting with the red room on the side.
The members lining up to be examined in a clinical authoritarian manner.
Jungwon banging on the window being trapped outside the room where the others were enjoying themselves.
Some of the images in “Let me in” show us all of the members in the glass box.
All of the members in the terrarium, and Sunoo sitting hunched over in the crate.
-Sunghoon also shows us an example of the inability to fully sense the world around him. First he stares at his plain hand, as though he is wondering if it is really there or as though he knows that something is about to happen to it. Later we see him watching it on fire without being afraid, hurt, or bothered by it. Clearly showing that either he knows the fire is not really there, or that it does not have the power to hurt him.
-Blue
-Morpheus describes the blue pill as something that will make the story end. “You wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.” Within the context of the movie, someone who takes the blue pill will continue believing that the lie of the world around them is the truth. They will continue to be “living” the life they are forced to live, but they will be ignorant of the fact that they are not in control of their own life. They will believe that the lie is real.
-In “Given-Taken” there are many cooler tones used in the camera work, but the most prominent use of the color blue for me is when Jay and Jake are in the basement looking at each other with red light shining on their face from the room where Sunghoon is.
-In “Let me in”, We see the boys dressed in Blue as Mannequins at the start, both standing on wooden boxes with plastic over them and contained within a glass box.
We also see Sunoo drink the Blue drink. Before drinking the Blue drink, he has no cut on his face. After drinking the Blue drink he has a cut on his face and we actually see him get that exact cut from Heeseung while they play in a separate scene. Possibly demonstrating that the things that happen in the Matrix, or the fake world, affect what happens in reality.
-Fate.
-At the beginning of the pill scene in the Matrix, we have Morpheus asking Neo if he believes in fate. Neo answers no and states his reason as “Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.
-In the Given-Taken music video, we have the reference to Fate present in the lyrics "in a shower of fate's arrows." We also have Jay and Jake depicted as being engulfed in a blue light with a red light shining from a room near by with their faces being on the border between these two shades. The camera then zooms to the reddish hued room and the word “FATE” being written on the back of the wall in a bright red color with Sunghoon singing “you calling me over the thin line, I who calls you,” again referencing the border between two ‘somethings’. Dream-Reality? Lie-Truth? Also, We get another picture of Sunghoon’s red blanket cape from the debut teaser 2 video in this room as it is draped next to him on the bath tub in stark contrast to the dark blue room the other boys are standing in. (I also think that the blue room is portraying ground and the warm toned room is portraying I-land, but that is for another post). This ties into the next connection point.
-Red
-Morpheus, “You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” In the Matrix, taking the red pill is embracing the knowledge that the world you have been living in is not real. The life you have been living is a lie. Taking the red pill is choosing to take control of your life by first acknowledging that you don’t currently have control over it. Neo taking the red pill instigated the series of events that led to him being removed from the Matrix into the much less glamorous but now palpably REAL life where he could make his own decisions and experience things in actuality and not just what he was being ‘told’ he was experiencing. A real life that was less rigid but complicated, free but challenging.
-In addition to the red mentioned in Sunghoon’s scene listed above, there are many other references to this color in Given-Taken. Right as Sunghoon finishes singing, “I link the two worlds” during the first chorus, Heeseung is standing on the table in a blue tinted dining room and takes a pill. The lyrics immediately following are “my red eyes”. After taking this pill, We see images flashing in Heeseung’s mind. If you slow the video WAY down, you see that these are scenes of the boys reading and playing mixed in with scenes of them sitting rigid and frozen.
Then scenes of them all dancing and having fun mixed in with an abandoned kid’s room.
The scenes where the boys are playing or dancing around and generally being active have been shot in a reddish tinted/warm color scheme while the frozen scenes and the abandoned room are shown in a blue/cool toned color scheme. Sunghoon is also shown again later in the video in red during the lyrics, “I link the two worlds”
and again during “Till I reach the new world.”
This last lyric is also said again over Sunoo standing in his blue room while he holds his bear and the window slowly cracks behind him before he slowly looks at the camera.
-There are also many references to the color red in the “Let Me In” music video as well. The most notable being the red gummy bears, red backdrop of the terrarium, and the red sky.
More on those later, Red is also used to show danger or alarm with the warming light that comes on after Sunoo drinks the blue juice and the previously white and inactive cube turns red.
To be continued...
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