DISCLAIMER: I am not a physicist. I’m not even a physics theory major. I’m just a bored college kid who watches too much LOST and spends too much time listening to music. This is merely how I interpret it. If you’re a quantum physicist trying to prove me wrong, first of all, don’t waste your time- I’m probably wrong. Second of all, why are you on my blog? Go disprove string theory or something.

Sometimes you find knowledge in the most unlikely of places. Like the music video of an otherwise-innocuous pop-rock band’s moderately successful 2005 single.

I’m looking at you, Relient K.

The video for “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” presents an important thesis- “Eb Major is the key of time travel!”
No?
How about “Matt Theissen’s piercing blue eyes right all wrongs”?
Not even close?
Let’s try to figure it out, then.

If you watched the video, you’ll understand what’s going on- moderately attractive video girl (let’s call her Ellie, just because I feel like it.) awakes to face the day and leaves her apartment. She’s frolicking down the street until she stops to stare at the sky- AND ALL LIFE AROUND HER CEASES! Any normal person would freak out, but Ellie skips this step and goes straight to the second thing any of us would do- she starts playing around with it. If she walks backwards, time goes backwards. If she walks forwards, the timeline progresses as usual. Fun, right? So after she plays Little Miss Time-Travel DJ for a while, she walks forward a bit, only to see Mr. Asian-reading-a-book about to get hit by a car. She freaks out and runs forward to stop him (forgetting that SHE CONTROLS TIME WITH HER FOOTSTEPS!) and the guy gets Fender Bender’d. She catches herself, and starts walking backwards. Once she’s moved far enough backwards, she takes a step SIDEWAYS (!!!) and begins to walk forward. Where in the previous timeline she caught the fruit that the creepy street vendor threw at her, she doesn’t catch it now. And when she reaches the point in the timeline where the Asian guy WAS hit by the car, he manages to be safe this time. And then she keeps walking forward, hoping all is well with the world (did you not see that smug smile on her face?) and continues about her day. WHAT? I’m pretty sure they made a video game about this.

Yes, it’s okay if your reaction is merely:

Let’s start with what’s going on here- let’s call it time travel, because that’s honestly the simplest way to look at it. There are three basic theories as regards time travel:

1. There is a single fixed history, which is self-consistent and unchangeable., AKA “Whatever happened, happened.”

This says that, should we travel through time, that was predestined, and anything we do in the past was something that we already would do, and that we can’t change anything. It’s what Daniel Faraday told us was true in Season 5 of LOST… before he was shot by his own mother. Whoah. Anyway, this theory posits that a time traveler, in trying to change the past, is merely executing the events that had to take place to create the present-as-we-know it.

In the WIAHWIB video, this would mean that Eloise was always meant to experience the Asian guy’s almost being hit by the car, back up, and then step sideways, making all “right” with the world.

First of all, I don’t like how this theory applies to the video because it really seems like a waste of time. If she was meant to save the Asian guy, why wouldn’t she just save the Asian guy rather than walk down the street, walk backwards, step sideways, and THEN walk forwards? Fate sure likes to waste time, huh?

So I’m throwing out that theory in relation to the video, which leaves us with the conclusion that you CAN change the past. Which gives us the two other options: (Well, there’s also Primer’s Calvin-and-Hobbes version of things, but I’m not convinced that actually makes any sense.)

2. The Parallel Universe Phenomenon AKA “The many-worlds theory”

This posits that, in her changing of events, Ellie created a new timeline. So bear with me here:

Ellie’s first trip down the street, before and after she discovered that she controlled time, will henceforth be TIMELINE 1.

The trip down the street in which she DOESN’T catch the fruit and the Asian guy DOESN’T get hit by the car is TIMELINE 2.

So, when Ellie ran backwards down the street and STEPPED SIDEWAYS, she literally created a new timeline that coexists with Timeline 1, but has a completely different course of events. Timeline 1 is untouched, Asian guy would still get hit by the car, but in Timeline 2 he is safe.

This is what’s (apparently) going on in LOST Season 6 right now- (I’m trying really hard to keep LOST out of this, by the way) the executive producers of the show are literally calling the alternate timeline “SIDEWAYS FLASHES.” Relient K… secret influence on my favorite show? Perhaps. But nonetheless, in this theory we have two seperate timelines- Ellie, by changing the past, created something new.

And furthermore, who’s to say which is right and which is wrong? Ellie’s pleased that she “saved” the the bookworm, but why should she have created a new timeline? What are the ramifications of him surviving? Maybe he’s the next Hitler? But Ellie didn’t think of that. Because she’s just a girl in a music video.

I think this theory is valid in relation to the video, but I don’t entirely buy it as the director’s thesis. (I’m of course assuming it was the director. Someone else could’ve developed the treatment, but I’ll probably never know.) I like the third theory of time-travel best:

3. History is flexible and subject to change AKA “The Doc Brown theory”

This says that time travellers are interfering with the line of history. It’s basically everything Christopher Lloyd was yelling about in the Back To The Future trilogy. So if you go back in time, anything you do will affect the present you came from. But if you believe Ashton Kutcher, then anything you do will screw everything up, etc. etc….

Basically, this is incredibly confusing (as if all time travel isn’t!) and probably doesn’t make much sense with a real-life application. But as for the video? It’s perfect.

After Ellie executed the actions taking her to the point in the street where the Asian guy was getting hit by the car, she was at what we’ll call POINT B in the timeline (there’s only one timeline this time, remember?). And then, she travelled back in time to POINT A, which is where she stepped sideways. She CHANGED something in the timeline- in this case, where she was located on the sidewalk and that she didn’t catch the fruit – and this time the Asian guy survived at Point B. All is well, right? WRONG. She has NO IDEA what the ramifications of her stepping sideways are. She could’ve changed everything. But we don’t know, because we’re on the song’s outro and the feedback conveniently ends the video. So it makes the most sense for this to be the proposal they’re offering up, especially considering the song- you can CHANGE. The lyrics have all kind of weird tense choices that I could go into, but the crux of the biscuit would just be this: you can change. Whether it be history, or yourself, or your socks, or whatever.

Whew.

In summation, time travel never really makes perfect sense in continuity, so suspend your disbelief next time you watch Doctor Who. and don’t take this blog post too seriously. I’m not sure which theory I subscribe to in real life, But it sure is fun. And makes for a cool music video.

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Yes, I’m quite aware that most people don’t typically think of these things while they watch MTV.

While we’re at it, The Click Five try and teach the lesson that watching boy bands on the roof are a more valid way of spending your school day than studying Hemingway, (FALSE!) and not what those kids should have been learning- what his first novel was (The Torrents Of Spring) and why they should care (because satire is brilliant, and Hemingway is brilliant, and that the motif of impotency features so much in Hemingway’s works from around that period that it seems worth noting, especially when compared to the rest of his oeuvre). But I’ll save that for another rant.

For the time being, just watch closely- sometimes things are more complex than they seem.