Strategies of Embodiment and Empowerment in Music Videos: Three Austrian Case Studies

Abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic, musicians started exploring the potential for innovation in social media and online platforms and created new performance ideas for online consumption. These creative concepts impacted on ideas of feminism, intersectionality and empowerment: While the song »Burger« by the band DIVES revolves around the question »Can you really eat a whole burger? «, dropped during a first date; a supposedly charming question that implies heteronormative body norms, prejudices, and sexism, the band Шапка (Schapka) plays with ideas of power and gender performance in their music videos. Meanwhile, the trans activist and rapper Kerosin95 dedicated  the track »Trans Agenda Dynastie« to all their trans* allies.

In this paper, I discuss feminism and empowerment in the aforementioned Austrian music videos by drawing on work dealing with feminism and empowerment in popular music to highlight how musicians deal with misogyny and homophobia and critique hegemonic power relations. My methodological considerations correlate with Philip Auslander's approach to musical personae as the central objects in the analysis of music videos. Auslander's remarks are supplemented by a critical examination of scholarly work in relation to the persona in popular music and expanded by intersectional categories such as gender, sexual identities and class.