Blackpink: Light Up the Sky Is Surprisingly Vulnerable and Revealing

Early on in Blackpink: Light Up the Sky, the new Netflix documentary that traces the K-pop group's meteoric rise to fame, rapper Jennie drops a simple yet vulnerable confession that struck me: During a session with her Pilates teacher, Jennie makes a casual, off-the-cuff comment about the instructor being a friend.

“One of the few that I have,” she adds.

It’s one of several surprisingly candid moments throughout the 80-minute film, which aims to give the four young women who make up the most powerful girl group in the world right now, K-pop or otherwise, a “three-dimensional quality.”

In just four short years since their debut in 2016, the group—which consists of members Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa—has been smashing records. Until BTS released the hit song “Dynamite” in August, Blackpink held the record for biggest music video debut in YouTube history for “How You Like That.” Two of their videos boast more than 1 billion views. They also became the first female K-pop group to perform at Coachella last year. But for all this success, the women's interior lives haven't been seen in such an intimate light as this before.

“I hope the documentary just humanizes the members, and that viewers will see them with more empathy,” says director Caroline Suh in a Zoom interview days before the film’s October 14 release. Suh—whose last major project was Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, based on the best-selling book by chef Samin Nosrat—was given unprecedented access to Blackpink for the making of the documentary and says nothing was off the table.

When I express surprise (and some skepticism)—the music industry has a reputation for micromanaging stars’ public and private lives—Suh says she, too, was excited about how candid and forthright the women were in their interviews. “Honestly, YG [the entertainment company behind the group] really stepped back once we all came to an agreement about making the film,” she tells me. “We had creative control of the film, and I guess that’s surprising to people. But they really said, ‘Do whatever the girls want, defer to them.’ In the interviews they spoke very frankly.”

In Blackpink: Light up the Sky, Lisa, Jisoo, Jennie, and Rosé are incredibly open about the difficulties of coming up in the industry, which involved entering a K-pop boot-camp-slash-boarding-school as teens and training 14 hours a day—all before making their debut. Through home videos, audition tapes, concert footage, and interviews with Suh, the young women detail times of loneliness, homesickness, rivalry, and self-doubt. (Some sample quotes: “Everything that I did was wrong”; “It wasn’t a very happy vibe”; “Being told that I’m not good at stuff to my face and trying to keep everything together...it’s really harsh.”)

Lisa, who moved to Korea from Thailand at the age of 14 without knowing the language, puts me to shame. Her Korean is beautiful and flawless, and I felt pangs of guilt as I listened to her switch effortlessly between Korean, English, and Thai. Jennie and Rosé are also perfectly and enviably bilingual, having lived and grown up in New Zealand and Australia respectively.

I am also part of the Korean diaspora, a first-generation Korean Canadian living in Paris. My French is better than my Korean, and I’m not proud of that. (Side note: I LOL'd when two members rhapsodized over dinner about the prospect of living in Paris for a year. DM me. I’ll give you tips.) So there are parts in the documentary that I think will resonate with third-culture Korean kids who will undoubtedly watch through a different gaze. Rosé talks about living a double life in Australia: one at church within the Korean community, the other at school. For many within the Korean diaspora, church and Korean cultural associations can serve as a safe space where you don’t have to explain yourself to others, where you can eat kimchi out in the open and settle in among people who look like you.

Both Suh, also a Korean American, and the group’s producer, Teddy Park, attribute the women's international and dual identities as one of the many reasons that Blackpink was able to do what so many other K-pop girl groups before them tried but couldn’t quite achieve: penetrate the mainstream music landscape around the world.

“The combination, that’s what makes Blackpink unique and stand out,” Park says. “All those different cultures in one pot. It’s just different how they walk and talk and how they dress. It’s the perfect balance, how they complement each other. It’s fascinating.”

While watching the documentary, I confess I found myself shifting uncomfortably at certain parts. I felt proud, perplexed, impressed, and troubled at the same time. Fans—or Blinks, as they call themselves—talk about how much they admire the girls’ style, the music, their friendship, and the way they own the stage. Suh says the film is a narrative of how four Asian women with big dreams and a ferocious work ethic (Rosé works in the studio until 6 a.m. sometimes) made great things happen. I was most impressed at their determination, discipline, and grit, but I also found myself wondering if being trained under such extremes is really such a badge of honor, given what we know about the dark side of the entertainment industry.

And knowing what I know about Korean culture, which places an undue amount of pressure on appearance (it’s still a very patriarchal society) and has a very narrow definition of beauty ideals (small, V-shaped face, big eyes, waiflike thinness), I also worried about what other extreme expectations might be put on the young women—and what kind of message that exports to the world. I’m all for girl power and diversifying beauty ideals, but I admit I worried how much agency these women really have.

But then I’d take another hard turn. Like Suh and Jennie, who both expressed pride and awe that non-Korean fans have become such major supporters of K-pop and, by extension, Korean culture, I’m moved and proud.

“I’m happy to be in an era where people are open to new cultures, new music,” says Jennie. “Who would have imagined at Coachella, thousands of people singing ‘Love Is on Fire’ in Korean?”

Vivian Song is a Paris-based travel, food, and culture writer.

Originally Appeared on Glamour