And this is Y all that’s left is Hope

45

Where’s your crown, King Nothing? (Metallica)

REFERENCES:

- decoding iamamiwhoami – the beginnings
- A Closer Look To iamamiwhoami’s b Video
- iamamiwhoami’s o video
- u-1
- u-2
- n from Nature/Natural
- T – back in the kingdom we were Kings and Queens
- And this is Y all that’s left is Hope

- Iamamiwhoami – The Book Of Changes – Hexagram Theory

- Iamamiwhoami – Sources of Inspiration
- Identity in iamamiwhoami
- An Archetypal and Mythological Approach to iamamiwhoami
- iamamiwhoami official youtube channel

Did you ever notice that on a chess board the king is the most vulnerable, powerless piece of all? And yet, only the King can secure the victory in a game of chess.

Y is here. Let’s watch it and see what everything is all about.

WOW! It’s great to see the iamamiwhoami concept outdoing itself! With each video being better than the previous, you’d think the task is becoming more and more difficult. It might quite be so, but the results… just wow!

There are a couple of theories that fly above our heads, each sustained with different arguments. I’ve always walked on the perverting of Nature by humans idea, and I could easily see many items to confirm this theory. Looking at MO as being the representation of Nature and at Mr. Underpants as being the representation of humanity itself, I would just conclude Y is showing us how Nature is continually trying to teach the human being how not to destroy it and how each and every time the human being manages to f*ck things up (excuse the language, but it quite its the mood of the video, if you know what I mean) and fail, with dead nature getting re-born over and over again and the human being given yet another chance to try.

Little hope is us. We’re the baby in the video. Remember n? You are the child filming. Little hope. I remember what my grandfather used to tell me: we failed at making this world a better place, it’s in you, the youngsters, to do it. You are the only ones able to induce and complete this change. When we’re young, we’re ambitious children directing stories of ourselves.

As we grow up, we become confused Mr. Underpants. The King and the Knight are one and the same thing. The two sides of a human being: the passive psychic (powerful by nature, but very weak and vulnerable in will) and the active psychic (powerless by nature, but very strong when covered by protective armor, also instinctively violent). In the symbolism of the tarot cards, these two are the equivalents of  The King of Wands and The Knight of Swords. If you read a little bit about both of them, you’ll see what I mean by those two sides.

Plus: Mandrake grows under the gallows of unrepentant murderers, springing up from the criminal’s last semence. It must be uprooted in a particular manner, as the piercing groans of agony are so horrible that whoever hears it will die, or go deaf and insane. In the moonlight, the harvester must put wax in the ears, draw three circles around the plant with a sword or willow wand, and use a dog to actually uproot it.

I cannot move away from that cat! This time, it makes monkey noises, as expected. The thing about a monkey is that to me it looks like a representation of a joker (a fool). You know… the Joker in a court, the one who entertains everybody and who, in his madness, always speaks the truth? Also, in my previous analysis of other iamamiwhoami videos, I was referring at the cat as being a demon or some sort of cruel divinity. I am going to move up to the point where I could consider it a representation of God. The cat is moving around freely among glasses, forks and spoons and it even sits on its butt on a plate for cryin’ out loud! The cat is the story teller (Tell me how this story ends now), the path director.

As we enter Mr. Underpants’ realm, we find him as The King of Nothing, a king of waste, of duct tape. He might have a throne, but it’s placed in a dark, empty palace ans it’s made of duct tape. It’s clear he has failed in becoming what he has been suggested to become in ‘t’. His crown, scepter, orb and entire palace are made of the same material his beard is made of: brown, faded tape. Far from the precious foil of the Mandragora. Even more, he has no idea what to do with these items. He is stopping under their weight. Maybe he doesn’t give a damn either. His lethargic attitude speaks for itself. The way he wastes paper shows his lack of consideration for Nature (trees, as the material paper is made of) and everything else around him. As he marches towards nothing specific, leaving aside his royal regalia possessions, he moves both in space and in time. This is his pathetic try to become active. His walk has nothing of the proud walk of the Mandragora in T. His walk says “I’m too lazy o be a King, I’m self-sufficient”.

Don’t get fooled by the foil surrounding everything in MO’s realm, as this one looks more precious than the one the car in T was wrapped in. This foil is glass looking. It sparkles and it speaks ‘preciousness’. Because it protects precious things. Look on the ground of the forest: it’s full of waste. The trees are practically drowning in waste.

The light bulb is nothing but a direct reference to Little Hope. It’s the small light of hope. The light at the end of the tunnel, as we say. And you can see how this little light bulb has the power to light all the forest in the end. First a sparkle, then a fire. First one little bulb then numerous large neon lights. Also, if you look at the entire scene, it could be an allegory of a child being born and then going through life. We are all born having a small light upon our heads  – our life – and it’s up to us to live in such a way in which we make this life as luminous as possible. It’s our goal to make of ourselves successful individuals, powerful enough to produce light of ourselves, powerful enough to become someones, people whose paths of light would be known by others.

Alone in his empty kingdom, the only thing the King is left to do is to make sure he leaves a little hope behind. In real life, people procreate to make sure their species survives and their offspring do a better job at preserving nature and the environment. The King must be protected in order to win a game of chess, remember? No matter his weakness and his lack of skills in battle. On a board of chess, the king can only move a square. He has the same powers as a pawn. The only difference is the crown.

As the Mandragora leaves the realm of the King, worlds are reversed once more, and the King as left alone in his world, while another character appears, trying to save what’s left of the foiled Nature: the Knight. Or is it that this Knight in shining armor is actually the King who has disguised himself and is actually invading this world? The problem with the Knight is that, while it portrays triumph through direct action, it also implies angry, knee-jerk actions from a person. While he might act swiftly and with confidence, he is not as cautious of the sin of pride. When reversed, the Knight symbolizes the opposite of his upright meaning. He represents an individual’s state of mind marked by feelings of inadequacy or excessive hesitance. Clearly, the King cannot become a Knight, or should not aim at becoming a Knight. This is why he ends in killing the perverted nature and removing himself (the bad apple) as well from it, leaving room for a new future King, the baby.

Thus another cycle is complete, a new one begins, another MO bowl is being ‘fed’ and… well… I guess we’ll see what happens in the next video.

One thing I really liked about the knight is how he is portrayed. He belongs to the foil forest, he is part of it (or wants to be), as his armor is made of foil. Nevertheless, we can clearly see his undies. Then, he is being ‘named’ by his possessions. It’s interesting how the director of this video chose to make the knight kill the trees using all weapons knights fighting in crusades use: a sword, a lance, a bow, and an ax. I cannot make more of this apart from the denomination means. Maybe on an allegorical level. The many ways he pierces those trees as in the many ways to ‘penetrate’ during sexual intercourse.

Now, going on with the mythological approach, we can definitely see how the myth of the Mandragora Officinarum is being shaped and completed. Everything from the birth, to the growth of the MO is present. Even the outrageous ‘dead man’s semen’ we’ve all been avoiding for so long.

Last, but not least, sustaining an archetypal approach, friends from the best iamamiwhoami discussion channel ever have found analogies with the archetype of the German Goddess Alraune. Now, if you would be so kind to read this short wiki description of the myth, you would understand where this analogy comes from. Very similar to the MO myth. Naturally.

Maybe one of the biggest discoveries in what the inspiration for these videos is concerned is a passage from David Brown’s ‘Tchaikovsky the Man and His Music’ referring to the Mandragora. See the ‘About the Knight’ section at the end of this article for details. That is major discovery, especially if you think about the fact that we couldn’t make much of the usage of paper sheets in the iamamiwhoami concept. This changes many things, if you think of it. If the Mandragora morphs into a piece of paper to stick to her knight’s ankle in order to make him see her and fall in love in the end, then we sort of realize what King Underpants is really after.

However, we cannot restrain ourselves to judging the campaign from this point of view only. Because there are many elements that just wouldn’t fit. It’s clear this campaign is a modern interpretation of everything the myth of the Mandragora Officinarum implies, starting with the myth itself and continuing with all the shapes this archetype takes in other works of literature it has inspired.

Another thing that intrigues me is the stick man shaped plant in the black pot.

doubleY

To me it looks like a double Y. Which makes a Psi (Greek alphabet). Which makes me think of a couple of analogies:

  • - Psi – 23rd letter in the Greek alphabet. Jonna Lee has one reference to Greece on her twitter account, I believe?
  • – Psi – as direct reference to psychology, to be more specific to a certain branch: parapsychology. read the first paragraph of the wiki description.
  • - Psi – more exactly the Psi-Theory and more specific the 5 basic needs that trigger behavior, among which species preserving needs (related to sexuality) and need for affiliation (signals of legitimacy).

I’m pretty sure there’s more to the black pot than the ye can see.

Lyrics:

Little hope, little home of heavenly
Come and save us from this ugly truth
Little hope, sprung from necessity
May all good things in life come to you

Little ghost, so innocent and carefree
They would never stop hunting you
Little voice, life got the best of me
And in time that’s what awaits you too

Little hope, sing a song of fire
I know I’m to be just like that
Little hope, little hope, sing a song of fire

Little hope, love is on the inside
If you want, you dream of life now
Little hope, little hope, sing a song of fire

I’ve seen the truth and it’s nothing like you said
I’ve seen your picture of a perfect world
Now you can touch the halo around my crowned head
So many questions, so many things unsaid

Other opinions to sustain video analysis:

We are captain underpants. We long for videos like we long for drugs. We search through page after page of websites for clues and answers then got bored at some point. After getting a new vid, we become maniacs again, forming our own theories and stories (such as a knight in a fairytale), attacking haters and trolls (trees) and wrong information along the way. samchanso - YT iamamiwhoami community

I like that one, makes sense, of course. But as relevant as that might sound, the concept just has to be more profound, right?

‘captain underpants’ is father time- is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device(in B an hourglass is turned over) jonna represents mother nature- In prehistoric times, goddesses were worshiped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. As for the sixes-She had eaten six pomegranate seeds and had to spend six? months with Hades – six months that represent fall and winter. I’m guessing the strawberries are actually pomegranates. Jonna last updated her blog with ‘GREECE’ as the title. dreamedwonderland

That’s an interesting point of view and TheBizkitt has completed it perfectly:

I really like the idea that aside from being based on the mandrake it’s also based on the mythology of the six pomegranate seeds and Persephone… Persephone is the daughter of the Goddess Demeter… Ring a bell? She is essentially the goddess of BOUNTY. There are essentially other ties to Demeter, such as how T’s video bears resemblance to Salvador Dali’s painting based on the Empress Tarot Card… A tarot said to be usually tied with Demeter. And of course the setting of the first? videos are kind of like an underworld.

Furthermore:

There is clear message of the videos going a long? with the theme of women are used + the environment is used. The discarding that you speak of Mandrake women doing is of a women leaving a man, who has essentially taken advantage of her and abusive (see the simulated rape scene in U-2)… The same way he abuses nature by wasting a lot of paper (which was once Trees). I see the foil forest scene as a sort of condensed telling of iamamiwhoami…? Kind of like a PLAY of sorts. The Mandrake woman gets the idea (a light-bulb) of leaving her *safe* womb and venturing off to the wilderness, only for a man (possibly in love with this women) to try and play the role of her protector her knight and shining armor, but ends up fucking everything up by destroying nature… The thing that had created the girl in the first place. I don’t think IAM kills the man, he kills himself. She only opens her eyes at the same time because she knows the part where he kills himself is coming, and is very pleased.

About the Knight:

“A knight falls in love with a beautiful lady, who spurns his affections. A feast at the castle. A minstrel sings a ballad about the omnipotent Mandragora. The knight searches in the secret forest for Mandragora. Night. Incantation. The Mandragora blossoms. The prince pulls it up from its roots—and it turns into a beautiful enchantress who, of course, immediately falls in love with him, and in the form of a page, attaches herself to his foot. However, the magic spell is cast, since in the knight’s beloved jealously is at first awakened, and then love. Finale—as a result of this reversal the unfortunate Mandragora turns back into a flower, and the lovers wed” samchanson via and via:1iam

2iam

At the end of everything, the thing that appears to be getting out of the pot is a sheet of paper/a letter:

GIF animations generator gifup.com

Other things I have noticed only after I got into the video frame by frame:

- owl throne

owlthrone

- foiled man’s head on the ground, bottom left, between trees: 5:27

headongrownd

- foiled dead soldier/knight laying on the ground, right beside Mandra: 3:20

foiled man on d ground

- what appear to be some cocoons, and if you’re watching carefully the scenes in the forest, there are many of them laying on the ground

cocoon

I am also looking at Y as being the symbol for the virgula divina (a dowsing rod), a ‘tool’ which shows the way towards water or which has the power to discover hidden treasures. Symbolically, it shows the way towards the origin (water, as the source of life) and towards hidden inner resources (treasures – like creativity, for example – hidden deep inside one’s conscious).

In the same range of symbols, the way the tree MO is born out of looks is interesting. First, because it reminded me of those Vanuatu music instruments here, and second, because:

treehole

Compare the sign for Mo with:

motree

The text is taken  from The Evolution of the Dragon by G. Elliot Smith, page 280. Read it here.

Comments (45)

Unbelievable! I think we’re getting close to an end too. Y is like a gathering of all other videos, like a story in which she explains the steps she’s taken so far! Will there be an epilogue? I hope it will!

Thank you so much for the analysis
You make this campaign much better :)

I’d like to say that, in the following lyrics:
“Little hope, and the song is silent with your mind”
I hear “Little hope, love is on the inside, if you want”
which would make sense if we consider the myth of Alraune and the theory that the baby is the offspring of MO and the king. The baby has to choose if he wants to be human and feel “love inside” or if he wants to become a mandrake. In that scene the baby looks at MO and “says” with his head :)

Hey, Nico!
yup… I can hear that ‘love is on the inside, if you want’, thanks!
I am now going to have the lyrics proofread entirely, see what else sounds better ;)

It DOES look like a sheet of paper at the end! Oh, I cannot stand this wait! What’s neeeext?

Shoot… not even a remix since T… I wonder where this is going too. I have a feeling it’s nowhere, but… little hope

Thanks for some quality points there. Y is like all videos in one, sort of hard to acknowledge. I just saw it. I know, it’s been two weeks already, but I just saw it. Visually, it’s amazing, musically, it’s great. I also have the impression there’s going to be some sort of epilogue in one or two weeks. The waiting is a killer!

Cheers, keep following :) )

@ Mario: they must be preparing their great exit/entrance if you know what I mean. Plus, those remixes ARE going to be part of the album, I bet.

@ Connor: a little late over there, Connor, aye? Haha! Make sure YOU keep close, I say in two weeks max everything is over/just beginning. LOL!

Oh, dear God, this waiting is sooo annoying! I hope this doesn’t end though, I can’t imagine waking up every day without checking the iamamiwhoami page!

The underpants king looks pretty retarded, I wonder what he could stand for? He surely doesn’t represent humanity!

We’re clooooooose!

Lol, Julian, how do you know? As far as I’m concern we have just started. Not even that :) )

Thanks, poster, for all this analysis. I’ve been checking your blog every time something new from iamamiwhoami appeared and have never been disappointed. Keep up the good work!

@Julian: close? LOOOOL!!!!

@Zed retarded? He’s under the influence of drugs!!!!!

i know that, I was just saying… the way the portray him! Moving like that…

Y is the entire campaign in like 8 minutes! It’s genius! I don’t think it’s over, but this video is gathering everything we have been shown up to now.

Captain Underpants is my new idol! I wish I could danced like that!!! Nothing retarded about his dance, he’s cool!

Come oooon, Jonna!!! Don’t keep us waiting any longer, PLEASE!!!

I think you want to send her an IM for that, Aquarius :) )
Anywho, this is the best iamamiwhoami video!

Hyeah… I’m trying to post this message anywhere I can find an iamamiwhoami article. Who knows, maybe she reads it :P :P:P
Whoah, wouldn’t it be great if iamami would be reading these analysis? LOL, what would you do if you got an e-mail from them: ‘thank you for your support’? :) I’d trip!

I’d be honored, Aquarius ;)

Thanks for the review, love your blog posts and the fact that you are constant. Always a pleasure to read.

Wow… you’re following this from the very beginning. Awesome! I just discovered this video and was amazed to find out there are so many more. And the viral… wow, no words. They are genius!

Got here via Twitter and I like the iamamiwhami articles a lot! I particularly like your hexagram theory, even though so many people don’t stand by it. I think it’s the closest anyone got to those numbers. Even if it’s a silly approach, it’s still a good one. I nearly broke my brain trying to figure out what those numbers are all about…

What do you think is going to be written on that piece of paper in the end?
I’d die if it’s going to write ‘the end’, lol

Hi! Your article rocks and is really a very good way of understanding Y!

@Dax: no way! That would be too tacky!!! No way!

@dax now, that 20101001 appeared and they want a volunteer, aka maybe an ultimate sacrifice, maybe they’ll write the volunteer’s name on the paper :) )

I agree with fatima here. I exclude the possibility of a ‘the end’

@Jaye sometimes it seems so silly even to me but meh…

Thank you all for the nice words!

haha, yes, don’t worry, I agree. You know, most of the times it’s better to say something silly than say nothing at all :)

Can’t wait until Nov 16! So excited!

It’s Jonna’s birthday, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!! Happy birthday, JL!

I absolutely love Jonna’s serenity in this video. She’s gorgeous!

I believe it’s because she’s supposed to portray an accomplished woman, that is a mother.

That end… freaky!!!

Hey, I recently started reading your blog – thank you for the good work.

The end is not freaky, it just follows the course of the mandragora myth. I am curious what comes out of that pot though.

Great articles, congratulations for your consistency! It’s always a pleasure to read your comments upon these videos, as weird as they might be.

Let me start by saying nice post. It’s not often that I encounter a blogger to follow a viral in its entire development. Iamami has fascinated me since I have heard about them, even though I would have liked to find about them sooner.
I think Y is the epitome of the perfect video, the whole campaign taken into account. You have basically all the elements of this myth in 8 minuted. Greatness!!!

There is obviously a lot for me to discover outside of my books :) ) Thanks for the great read :)

Keep on posting such articles. This helps us to stay updated and connected to people with same interests as ours.

When I first saw Y, I thought this would be the end of iamamiwhoami, but what a big surprise with the entire volunteer session! Now I watch the concert over and over again and I keep asking myself. Is this the end? I certainly hope not, but if so, I now understand Y.
I’m not such a big commenter, but I want to tell you I appreciate your effort. Hopefully you’ll have more to write about in the future.

Thanks, Jana! I hope I have material for it too :D

Virgula divina… interesting. Makes sense if you think about the ‘journey’ inside oneself. Congratulations for these posts, it’s always a pleasure to read these interpretations!

This is like my third time coming by your site. Regularly I do not make comments on, but I have to mention that this article really pushed me to do so. Really awesome article!

for “y” since 3:48 to 04:38 we can hear a female voice.
If anyone could solve what “she” say….

Video is top imagery. Great way of sharing powerful music.

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