post feminism music videos the body image article
Excerpt from Composition:
CL’s “Hello Bitches” and the Post-Feminist Representation from the Body
In the music video by CL entitled “Hello Bitches, ” CL offers managed to escape the constriction of the normal K-pop girl group (sexy, innocent, sexy, chic) by asserting a more aggressive, masculine-mimicking (gagsta-rap-mimicking to become exact), hyper-sexual attitude of domineering vibes; yet, in doing so , this lady has fallen into another and separate trope – not the trope of the cute/sexy K-pop designer but rather the trope of the strong, feminist, sexually assertive/aggressive pop musician (a craze represented in numerous modes by simply others just like Nicki Minaj, Iggy Azalea, Beyonce, Female Gaga). CL’s performance in the video stations the strut of chauvinistic hip-hop artists, who wave and strut and jump in front of the camera while between their posse and/or hiérarchie of scantily clad females. For CL, her posse is the brigade of women – but below they are put on in tight leather one-piece swimsuit-cut items, flaunting cleavage, derrieres, and snarls (the ladies do not smile provocatively for the viewer but instead grimace and raise all their lips as though sneering on the viewer for thinking this could be just another “K-pop” song). The tone arranged by the video and its choreography is that CRAIGSLIST is “street tough, inch that her gang of ladies would in the same way soon run you over with their perceptions than they might give you the time of day. CL handles to change off the camera within just a few seconds of coming on display, as she bounces in hip-hop video fashion, adjacent by a circle of likewise dressed ladies, who seem to be conducting some sort of feminist spirit using a tribal/ritualistic move. It is a sensationalistic presentation of what Feminism has come to today – an indicator of post-feminism within a paradigm of showy, over-the-top girls that imagine that “being tough” means strutting, swaggering and sneering like their particular tattooed, hip-hop gangsta guy counterparts.
In some ways, the video issues the constrictions of personality of the genre codes of K-pop, but in others this reproduces and reinforces these people. One are not able to separate the background music from the video or the message from the functionality. The “medium is the message” as Marshall McLuhan offers noted.[footnoteRef: 1] In other words, the visual manifestation and the sound both present messages with an effect on the viewer. The visual content is still grounded in the K-pop paradigm: the video consists of scantily clad youthful women (the majority of to whom, were they not snarling throughout, would be considered attractive); to downplay or concern the K-pop base, however , the video shows the sturdiness of the women by putting their hair in long dreadlocks (dyed pink and purple to signify femininity); their cosmetic is hefty and striking (to show strength of personality, bravery, and dedication to a sort of no-fear viewpoint of life); and their clothing are typically K-pop sexy (though they land to the extreme edge, symbolizing more of a dominatrix version of sexuality than the usual sweet but seductive, innocent yet shady, broken-hearted display of the standard K-pop music group representation). The point of the CRAIGSLIST video is always to command: you should upset the conventional, which to some degree it does, although it also depends upon the standard in order to create its theme of flaunting itself thus gaudily. The dance movements of CL and her girl group are blues, fast, irritated, sexualized and full of tension – but are still only a variation on the theme – the Asian-as-sex-object theme that nearly every K-pop video utilizes for impact. [1: McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media, critical edition (Berkeley, Cal: Gingko Press, 2013), 1 . ]
Thus, CL’s video may seem revolutionary to some, but by simply relying upon feminine out and out aggression and gangsta-style mimicry, it relegates on its own to a trope that is unoriginal, as smooth and stale as its sugary-sweet polar opposing, and does nothing to really broaden the genre of K-pop music video artistry.
From this sense, it could be that CL represents the image of post-feminism – but then again, as Rosalind Gill points out, it is hard for students to arrive at any agreement as to what that term actually means.[footnoteRef: 2] Gill makes the declare that postfeminism is definitely “best recognized as a distinctive sensibility, made-up o many interrelated themes” such as the idea that “femininity is known as a bodily property” (CL undoubtedly demonstrates this notion) and the like.[footnoteRef: 3] CL’s music video does preserve a post-feminist aura, in the event one is to use Gill’s definition in order to be familiar with term. Libido is bristling within the online video with an almost combatant-like sense of display. There is a kind of self-discipline regarding the dancers’ performance, which suggests an overly-strong confidence that borders about farce (but the point appears to be that CL and her posse are women who usually do not take any kind of rubbish by anyone). The “shift from objectification to subjectification” that Gill speaks of will not quite engagement ring true from this sense (or really in just about any sense) because the girls continue to be an object of desire – a subject with the “male gaze”[footnoteRef: 4] – even as that they project sexual interest and a feeling of seeking conquest onto the viewer (so objectification and subjectification are never really distinct or with no other). Nonetheless, there is a obviously distinct feeling that is apparent in your CL music video – but it is definitely, to be reasonable, a trope that is not really reaching for creativity as much as it can be for surprise effect. [2: Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility, inches European Record of Ethnic Studies, volume. 10, no . 2 (2007), 147. ] [3: Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist media lifestyle: Elements of a sensibility, inches European Diary of Social Studies, vol. 10, number 2 (2007), 147. ] [4: Mulvey, L. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Movie theater. ” Display, vol. 16, no . 3(1975): 6. ]
Although this is absolutely nothing surprising, possibly, as Jordan Unger notes: “the K-pop girl group music online video is a paradox of (re)presentation” – the performers are celebrated and empowered, while Unger states, but as well they are “objectified and lowered to a item of idealized beauty. inch[footnoteRef: 5] What CL for least deals with to do should be to shift that sense of “idealized beauty” towards an even more masculine display of gratuitousness, swagger, and cheap street toughness (bordering on images of thuggishness): the women in CL’s online video are not simply sex items (even even though they funnel a kind of Amazonian sexuality – a fierceness that resonates within the dominatrix fetishistic genre of sex tropisms); also, they are sex searchers and sexual intercourse dominators. They will display through their boogie routine, sneers, and actions that they control sex: to them, sex is definitely not something which is for you gaze; sexual intercourse is for these people and them alone. It is an assertion of sexual electric power – nevertheless that does not indicate they are no more objectifying themselves; they are – and their halloween costumes say as much. A woman who not want to objectify himself covers very little in a veil, head to foot. These women bare almost everything – and so they do it having a tongue-in-cheek farcical tone of disgust intended for the “lesser” women who bare it all out of a desire to attract the male gaze. CL’s posse suggests that it wants to attract you gaze simply so it can crush this – or dominate it, sexually. The constriction by which other, more cutesy-pie K-pop girl organizations are limited is certainly not in force in CL’s online video. CL is essentially breaking totally free of the “cute” trope and taking on a much more sexually-militant feminist trope. [5: Michael jordan Unger, “The Aporia of Presentation: Deconstructing the Genre of K-pop Girl Group Music Videos in South Korea. ” Log of Well-known Music Research, vol. twenty-seven, no . one particular (2010): 25. ]
Indeed, Unger notes that “several K-pop girl groups manage to escape [the cute girl] constriction, as confirmed by the virtuosity of CRAIGSLIST in her group 2NE1. “[footnoteRef: 6] In other words, Unger supports the finding of Gill that some K-pop groups can assert a fresh image or perhaps representation of feminism that will not represent the normative depiction of beauty. The “virtuosity” of CL’s group is made by the significant, assertive, exclusive and hyper-realized fashion and aggressiveness with which the females chart their particular sexual behavioral instinct, sexual self-assurance, sense of body power, and aspire to dominate sexually. There is no pity or impression of “playing” by this group: they females are translucent, hardline, adepte, deliberate and purposeful. [6: Jordan Unger, “The Aporia of Presentation: Deconstructing the Genre of K-pop Girl Group Music Videos in South Korea. ” Diary of Well-liked Music Studies, vol. twenty-seven, no . 1 (2010): twenty-eight. ]
In short, CL’s music video is a post-feminist representation from the body that breaks throughout the prior constrictions binding various other K-pop groups, who has to be “pretty” and sensual inside their movements to be able to cater to the male gaze. CL’s body image is only conscious of you gaze or in other words that it intends to capture and make use of the male – not vice versa. CL’s posse is similarly snarky and sneering within their demeanor, suggesting that the
