Filming female desire: queering the gaze of pop music videos

Freeman, Cordelia

Abstract

This paper examines the queer gaze within pop music videos. It contends that the contemporary US musician Hayley Kiyoko can be seen as a queer music video auteur who has transformed what the ‘gaze’ can mean in mainstream pop music through directing her own videos. The paper asserts that through her performance within and, arguably even more significantly, via her direction of videos, Kiyoko has produced a new and complex portrayal of how female sexual desire is represented even when, on the surface, it may not necessarily appear to disrupt normativity. Reaction videos made by Kiyoko’s fans have also queered the gaze whereby the ‘watcher’ becomes the ‘watched’. The paper concludes that online spaces and digital technologies are radically reshaping understandings of queer sexuality in music videos.

Citation

Freeman, C. (2020). Filming female desire: queering the gaze of pop music videos. Cultural Studies, 34(6), 1007-1032. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2019.1704039

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 9, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Dec 18, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 19, 2021
• Journal: Cultural Studies
• Print ISSN: 0950-2386
• Electronic ISSN: 1466-4348
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 1007-1032
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2019.1704039
• Keywords: Music videos, gaze theory, queer, lesbian, sexuality, Hayley Kiyoko
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3524024
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2019.1704039
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Cultural Studies on 18/12/2019, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2019.1704039