Useless blabbing about XXX lyrics and PV (part 2)
I’ll try to understand some elements in the PV.
I think it can be considered a syncretistic mix among several elements: religious, mythological, and also…profane.
I can’t help thinking that all this is definitively so Japanese...
The Eden
Since the scene that opens the PV is called by hyde “Eden scene”, I start from this element.
Usually, if I think of Eden, in my Western mind appears an image of a lush garden, more or less like this:
In the PV, Eden is represented instead like a luxury party with beautiful and sexy girls:
To understand better this change, I think it’s necessary to take into consideration some elements, like the connection hyde made between original sin and lust, or the feminine point of view in lyrics not to mention the idea a man can have of paradise XD
Another important element is hyde’s desire for a gaudy PV, to celebrate L'Arc~en~Ciel 20th anniversary. The party looks really gorgeous.
In this scene Laruku members are performing dressed in white.
There’s another scene, with white background and CG image of the Eden tree with golden apple and members dressed in black.
At first I thought it had a moral meaning, like: what is gorgeous and glittering on surface, in reality can be dull and evil. It turned out that it was a proposal from production staff, because the song has 2 sides, acoustic and distortion.
Laruku themselves chose to play the role of tempting snake in the PV. At least hyde, as it’s clear in this fading:
The golden apple
The forbidden fruit of Bible has been always represented as an apple, a real apple I mean. To tell the truth, the Bible does not indicate precisely the name of the forbidden fruit, but it became an apple with time
The apple became a golden one probably because of the gorgeous atmosphere of the party, and maybe because it was mixed with Greek mythology, where golden apples are featured in several legends.
The most popular is the episode called “Judgment of Paris”
In that myth on the apple was written “To the fairest”, in the PV “XXX”.
The letter “x” can be associated easily with the idea of “prohibition”; in this way the golden apple became the forbidden fruit in the PV.
There are other elements connected with Greek culture: the statue of Venus, the Cupid-like girl that rises up…
Despite all these mythological elements, the girls are all dressed in the latest fashion, because tetsuya asked to make their outfit similar to “Gossip girl”. He seems to be a fan of this series XD
The mark
So, being allured by hyde/snake, the girls start eating golden apples. As they do that, they become sexier, and the party excitement reaches the climax.
When the banquet comes to an end, they seem tired, sleeping, almost dead. They all have the XXX sign on their skin. It can be interpreted as the sign of their “sin”.
The gloomy atmosphere maybe signifies that they won’t be able to enjoy Eden anymore, like human being in the biblical episode. Since also hyde ate the apple, he share the same symbol, but in his eye. He reveals it only in the CG scene.
Well, there’s no visible mark in the Bible. I think it maybe comes from horror movies or similar, but I’m not really sure XD
I’m at a loss to understand what is considered “sin”, and to find who gave the “prohibition”, since there’s no God in PV either…
I will be grateful to anyone who would add other interpretations, correct my mistakes or clarify my helpless point ^0^