After FKA Twigs proved that the office is still “happening” (in terms of presenting a banal contrast to a more exciting fantasy) with “Eusexua,” Jisoo has seen fit to do the same with her video for “Earthquake,” directed by Christian Breslauer (side note: “Earthquake” was released before fellow Blackpink member, Lisa, also unveiled a video directed by Breslauer: “Fxck Up the World” a.k.a. “FUTW”).
Opening on a scene of Jisoo sitting at her desk as she’s about to respond to a text from her current “love” interest, Cha Seung-won, playing, clearly, a guardian angel, swoops in to stop her from sending something potentially cringe and/or life-altering by grabbing, bagging and tagging the phone as “evidence.” After that job is done, he announces, “Before you reply to the message, I need to ask you a few security questions.” He then flashes his badge to her, indicating he’s a special agent for the Department of Heart Security (which features the subtitle, “Emotional Protection Heart Guard”).
This kind of “credential,” evidently, is enough to get her into a room with a lie detector test, with Seung-won asking, “What are your true feelings for him?” This serving as the perfect lead-in for her to reply with the opening verse to “Earthquake,” which establishes Jisoo’s combined use of English and Korean as she sings, “It hits me like an earthquake (uh-huh)/더 빠르게my heart race (uh-huh)/온몸이 떨려 can’t stand (uh-huh)/널 부정할 수 없게 (uh-huh)/I think I’m gonna.” Or, more to the point for the English-only speakers, “It hits me like an earthquake (uh-huh)/My heart races faster (uh-huh)/My whole body is trembling, can’t stand (uh-huh)/I can’t deny you (uh-huh)/I think I’m gonna…” (Yes, it’s, quelle surprise, very orgasm “coded” [read: a totally overt allusion to having one]).
To, er, drive home the point that Jisoo is quite taken with this “suitor” who’s been texting her, a car crashes through the observation window at the very moment when she starts confessing her feelings. In the next scene, Jisoo is driving through a tunnel in said car, going full-speed ahead. The metaphor being, obviously, that she doesn’t care about how reckless she’s being, she just wants to get to the light at the end of her tunnel (again, it seems pretty symbolic of an orgasm)…which is this dude. Or at least what the dude can potentially do for her physical well-being (though one doubts such a feat can be achieved by most men—physically or emotionally).
As she makes her way toward that light, Jisoo smashes through word roadblocks in the tunnel spelling out such anxiety-inducing queries as, “Can you trust him?,” “What if you’re wrong?” and “What if you get hurt?” It’s the latter demand that she really crashes into, sending her flying right back into the same room with the lie detector test, where a shrunk-down version of her and her backup dancers are now poised atop the polygraph chart lines to move to rhythm of the “truth.” Which is that Jisoo can’t resist sending a message back to her crush as a bolt of electricity goes through the phone, effectively taking it away from her as she sings, “Wake up, electric touch.” Electric enough to send Jisoo subsequently moving through the typically cold, clinical-looking space in an office chair, as though guided by a moody, even if divine, hand. While she gets taken on this abrupt “journey,” papers fly, ceilings crack, desks spontaneously “explode” and, at the end of all that, she appears to transcend into a, let’s say, “higher power” herself.
With regard to a certain verse in the song, the “Kesha-ness” is also surprising when Jisoo repeats, “‘Bout to blow” four times in a manner that definitely conjures memories of Kesha also forewarning, “This place about to blow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” back in 2010. A time when, to be honest, environmental phenomena like volcanoes and earthquakes seemed far less prevalent and climate change-related than they do now. Which is part of what makes Jisoo’s single oh so timely. For, even if it was fittingly released on Valentine’s Day to emphasize its “love” theme, the “earthquake” topic is continuously resonant as Mother Nature gets angrier and angrier with all the shit she has to put up with. And yet, after rattling Jisoo’s office a bit, Her wrath seems to miraculously result in Jisoo being “promoted” to CE(h)O as she authoritatively saunters through a line of minions on each side of her while wearing an ultra-chic “boss” (note the deliberate absence of the word “girl” in front of that) ensemble, complete with tie. She and her dancers then, of course, engage in the type of choreo that was literally made for TikTok (even if some of the moves look decidedly ripped off from vogueing and the “Macarena”).
In the scene that follows, Jisoo is back in her “mousy” look, wearing wire-rim glasses, a basic white top and a black skirt, as she opens a white box (now property of the “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” as opposed to the Department of Heart Security). But no, it’s not her phone being returned to her again. Instead, it’s a mechanized heart that also happens to be a ticking time bomb about to go off in seconds. And when it does explode (albeit rather mildly considering all the buildup), it leads into a scene of Jisoo going back to shrunk-down size atop the buttons on the screen of her phone. Joined again by her dancers, the group does the last of what they can to try to forewarn “Mousy” Jisoo not to hit send on that text she started composing at the beginning of this whole thing.
Alas, with little fanfare (particularly compared to all we’ve just seen), she does just that. Which proves how much one can create an entire alternate universe in their mind during barely five minutes spent in an office.
