influences research

1. Club Paradise - Novaa
Influences research

2. General look/sound similarities
• I can see where AEM gets some
of her look from – the haircut
and general movement style
when dancing is similar
• The heavy bass contrasted with
a high/light voice is also found in
both

3. Gender representation
• Inverted gender roles and a more general
gender blurring can be seen – the man
washing her, and clearly being a part of a
female gaze
• The old men in suits who sit around and
stare at her performance is a comment on
the male gaze, and maybe a comment on
the male hegemony of the music industry
• This idea of blurred gender roles and queer
representation is a part of AEM's work, and
as a non-normative female artist in several
ways this commentary doesn't go amiss in
some of her work

4. Male vs Female Gaze
• The male gaze refers to when
women are framed in such a way
that they are objectified – close-ups
of body parts, sexualised in a way
that the actual woman becomes
irelevant.
• A post-feminist idea is to exploit this
as a woman, in order to sexualise
oneself and appeal to a male
audience
• The idea of a female gaze has also
developed – women sexualising men
in a similar way, or men sexualising
themselves in order to appeal to a
female audience
• Another example of the female gaze
is in Charli XCX's Boys music video,
which only has men in it, framed in a
way to appeal to a female audience

5. Potential controversy
• In Lily Allen's Hard Out There, there are many close-ups of
women dancing, however only the black dancers were framed
in this way
• She faced controversy in the news, accused of racism and
cultural apropriation, however she said it was not purposefully
done
• There could be a similar issue in this music video – the only man
to be sexualised is the balck man, and the scene where he is
washing Novaa is definitely polysemic
• It's unlikely that the artist was intending to be racist, and she
may even be making a point about racism
• However, Stuart Hall argued that texts are inherently poysemic,
and different audiences will derive different meaning from the
same text based on their experiences

6. Intertextulaity + meaning
• The name of the song and the way she
articulates it when she says it reminds
me of Coolio's – Gangsta's Paradise
• The message of the song is similar too
– feeling trapped in a situation and
wanting to reject it ("velvet
ropes" around her neck, "lost halo",
"unable to fly", but not wanting to
"live to be a goddess")
• The idea of being trapped or hiding is
in AEM's work too