Lunch Lecture in Dynjandi
IUA Music Department, Skipholt 31
28.10.22 at 12:45pm
In this lecture Anna-Elena Pääkkölä will discuss three music videos by Nordic pop artists in relation to questions of body positivity and sexual agency which are conveyed through the exhibition of (semi-)nude female bodies. The examples are Jada's Keep Cool (DAN, 2018), Paha Matami's Träppäsin sun äijän ("I trapped your man", FIN, 2021), and Tove Lo's bitches (ft. Charli XCX, Icona Pop, Elliphant, ALMA; SWE-UK-FIN, 2018). These artists depict positive sexual expression in their vocal strategies and frame their bodies as powerful to demonstrate control over their creative work. Body positivity and sexual agency are mediated through pride, camp, queer and/or burlesque aesthetic strategies. All of these examples frame nudity or suggestive semi-nudity as not only titillating but also natural. Nordic cultures (perhaps Sweden in particular, because of its history of globally distributed vintage porn) have a reputation for relaxed attitudes towards sex and sexuality, but at the same time, sauna culture normalizes nudity, marking it as non-sexual. This resonates with the aesthetics of global pop feminism, where displays of female sexual empowerment are embraced as a sign of success. My research questions are: How are sexuality, nudity, and body/voice politics connected in the music videos? What is specifically Nordic (Swedish, Finnish, Danish) about them? How do body size and sexual orientation influence these depictions?
Anna-Elena Pääkkölä is a Finnish Academy post doctoral researcher in musicology at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, and a performing musician. In her PhD, Sound Kinks: Sadomasochistic Erotica in Audiovisual Music Performances (2016), she discussed themes of gender, sexuality and embodiment in various music genres, and has published on film music and sound, international and Finnish popular music, music videos, musicals and opera. Her current research project on Nordic female indiepop artists discusses their music videos through eclectic feminist theories and queer studies, fat studies, cultural activism and ecofeminism, post- and beyond-human embodiment and technology.
