| Song title |
| SNOBBISM |
| Original Upload Date |
| 21 March 2018 |
| Vocal |
| Kagamine Len / 鏡音レン & Kagamine Rin / 鏡音リン |
| Views |
| 1,600,000+ (NN), 4,800,000+ (YT) |
| Links |
| *Nico Nico Broadcast/Youtube Broadcast |
| Characters |
| Bizu |
| Lyrics |
| *[Vocaloid Lyrics Wikia] |
Background/Theories[]
One theory explains that the music video is a work of satire criticizing people who turn to social aggression due to their cynical perspective and beliefs (represented through the character “Bizu-kun”).
The first verse talks about how people lash out at each other to relieve themselves of their frustrations. One is kept up at night and “can’t even think of sleeping” by overthinking oneself into irritability. This is common in people who have developed long-term mental illnesses as a result of past trauma.
The “girl who thinks selfies are supreme” and the “[boy] on a crowded platform” are two examples of everyday people who aren’t going anywhere in life and end up becoming practically “disposable” humans in fast-paced society. The internet is flooded with selfies and train platforms are similarly flooded with people, and this scene of “mass society” is meant to signify a social stagnation. The selfie should signify beauty and individuality, but has come to be seen as pointless or vain. The train station should be a symbol of productivity and metropolis, but has come to be seen as grueling or mechanical.
Bizu-kun, like Datsu-kun and I & Yaya, is frustrated with everyone he’s surrounded by. However, instead of withdrawing like they do, he responds by taking out that frustration on other people (“Let’s make a scene! Leave vivid impression by launching some missiles”). He feels that he’s better than these people for not surrendering to society and being deceived by its false promises of happiness, and thus looks down on others and feels in a way arrogantly superior, hence why the song is titled “SNOBBISM.”
The visual style of the PV with its bright colors and cartoony proportions is most likely a representation of how Bizu-kun himself sees the world. Everything is vivid and unrealistic because everything appears according to how he wants to see it, and he sees no bad in anything he’s doing. He’s having fun and celebrating being able to feel (his own twisted and rather hypocritical version of) happiness. It’s a world painted in yellow where the only people he sees are himself and nobody else.
He doesn’t see human beings or the stagnant society they’ve built ever changing. The lyrics “we lust for something illusory” and bit about the “blueprint of the future” explain this stagnation– society supposedly has a plan to keep developing and progressing, but nothing towards those goals has actually been done. It’s increasingly apparent that it’s probably just a big lie, that society will never change, and its false promises still continue to somehow deceive the foolish, naive masses.
There’s a problem in this “extravagant period of time” of modern society (especially in urban areas, like Tokyo) where people seem to be living in luxury and thus appear to have everything they could possibly want. However, urban areas are no stranger to poverty, crime, and inequality. cities are home to materialism, consumerism– ideas that have been criticized for trapping people in states of constant unhappiness by incentivizing desires. Thus, civilization and humans have trapped themselves in a modern “Gilded Age” of sorts– serious, deep-rooted social problems are masked by a thin layer of surface-layer gold.
Tokyo is mentioned in this song (“What a coincidence that today in Tokyo area…”) because it’s a perfect example of a place where the sufferers of this social problem Neru is talking about are found. Advertising culture is heavy in cities, and for the Japanese salaryman, so is the pressure to work. These people live droll yet hectic lives in a fast-paced world, and their comforts (drinking, going to the arcade, karaoke, social media, etc.) eventually fall into routine and cease being new. In time, people re-adjust to monotony and continue to pursue empty pleasures as they get used to having them around. Because humans have become predictable and unable to think for themselves, they’re depicted as smartphone-addicted robots in the PV.
From this, there’s a feeling of hopelessness in that no matter what we do, nothing will change or get any better. Towards the end of the song, there are lyrics like, “There’s nothing to lose, and we are not even qualified to be loved” and “Throw all of your worldly possessions away!” where Bizu-kun realizes that society are hopeless and can truly never be fixed, rejecting hopes for the future. Feeling convinced that nothing matters anymore, and anything he gets in trouble for can just be “patched up with tape” afterwards, he feels free to do whatever he wants and continues to cause trouble and “make a scene.”
The egg is an interesting character-- it's a thing that's living in its own shell. It's never growing up, and it's already become characteristic of Bizu's cynicism, snobbism, and general negativity. It only appears when Bizu is depicted sleeping, and Bizu even tries to kill it. It could stand for several things, but in this theory it makes sense for it to represent the nagging unconscious feeling of worthlessness that causes Bizu to become distressed and aggressive with people. As he already views others as nothing but mindless and disposable, for something to appear differently to him, it would have to be something within him.
It’s also important to emphasize that this song is satire, and the lyrics are PV are given from Bizu-kun’s perspective, who is an unreliable narrator. Nothing about his presentation is ever typically unhappy– he’s always smiling, dancing, or up to some mischief. The point is that he’s convinced himself that his “solution” to feeling depressed by impulsively attacking people is fine, because he can get away with it and it makes him feel good about himself. He doesn’t see it as a bad thing, because he sees everyone around him as a mechanical mindless drone instead of actual human beings and doesn’t care if he hurts them.
Trivia[]
- The typeface used for the "SNOBBISM" text is Twentieth Century MonoType Condensed.
- The lounge room in the PV contains many references to Neru's CYNICISM album, which was released a week after SNOBBISM.
- The poster on the wall that reads "3rd 0328" is a reference to CYNICISM being Neru's 3rd major album and its release on March 28th, 2018.
- The jukebox's playlist shows "CYNICISM Is," "SNOBBISM," and "I~ya I~ya I~ya," the first three tracks on the CYNICISM album.
- The PV's retro/vintage aesthetic is based in a wide variety of decades throughout the twentieth century:
- Bizu's design seems to take stylistic inspiration from rubber-hose animation, an American animation style that was popular during the 1920s and 1930s.
- Bizu is depicted dropping a 100-ton weight from an offscreen pulley, a slapstick gag that was popular in retro cartoons.
- Bizu wears a top hat and gloves with his tuxedo, accessories that were standard for black tie men's formal attire until the 1960s, when they became optional.
- SNOBBISM is electroswing music genre, a fusion genre of modern electronic dance music with vintage swing/jazz.
- The PV uses many visual overlays that emulate vintage film, photography, and CRT image display, such as film dust, chromatic aberration, visual glitching, film grain, and vignette.
- Bizu is shown posing in front of a disco ball, with disco being at peak popularity during the 1970s.
- The lounge room features a neon sign, which were popular throughout the 1920s to the 1980s.
- The lounge room features a jukebox, which were popular in the 1940s until the 1950s brought the invention of the transistor radio.
- The lounge room features a vintage drink vending machine, most likely a Cavalier CSS-64, manufactured during the 1960s.