Ziyang:
“Get Out” is the title song for AOA’s second album release, which is representative of AOA’s early attempt to construct an identity of “powerful girl band”. This early identity, while to some degree showed efforts of stepping away from sexualizing women, was overall not so successful in implementation, as I will demonstrate in the following analysis.
My analysis starts with the lyric, which provide context and overall theme for the MV. The content itself is a monologue of a girl after a break-up. What makes it interesting is the gender power dynamic it reflected, for example, “…without me, you’re a guy with no charm.” Here, it is the female that is empowering male, and such dynamic is consistent throughout the whole song, as the girl keep bashing the boy about his ignorance and foolishness. Additionally, the use of English for catchy phrases such as “get out” and “never”, is also notable, as “the popularity of English lyrics in K-Pop has been part of an English boom in broadcasting and society” (Jin and Ryoo 2014: 119), English itself has “became a must for economic as well as cultural globalization” (ibid: 119). Bearing the signature of modernization and cultural liberation, I believe it reinforced the message of “girl power” in the lyric.
Now I will move to the analysis of the visual components. Here the analysis will focus on three different scenes based on settings: the band scene, the individual movie reference scene, and the group dance scene. I will pick up points of interests in each of them and discuss their function in constructing a “powerful girl band” identity.
In the band scene, no revealing costume or erotic moves are used. Instead of sexualizing female body, by dressing each member differently and offering close-ups for singing and instrument playing, this scene clearly mimics a typical “band live concert”. By presenting the group as band members that are producing, instead of performing music, this scene contrasts the impression of idols as “consumable product that resonates with as broad an audience as possible” (Elfving-Hwang 2018: 193), gives a strong impression of their agency and individuality.
This sense of agency and individuality are further reinforced in the individual scenes, in which each member took on different appearance referencing a movie character. The choice of character is particularly worth noting, as all the figures can be interpreted in some way as “powerful” (The Bride from Kill Bill as an obvious example). Here, the industry trend of intertextuality has been taken advantage of for empowering the female in an entertaining way.
Despite the previous efforts of empowering women, contradicting messages are sent out in the group dance scene: it features everything one can expect from mainstream female idols, including “Revealing costumes, erotic choreographies, close-ups of female idols’ bare legs and waving crotches and hips, as well as depictions of sexual suggestiveness” (Lin and Rudolf 2017: 30), such intense sexualization have no doubt undid much of the previous efforts to show the members’ agency and individuality. Comparing to other scenes, the individual group members are much harder to identify, likely due to the standardization, specifically, highly unified clothing and synchronized dance moves.
To conclude, the “Get Out” is self-contradicting in the theme. On one hand, its lyric and part of the visual components highlights female agency and individuality, showing an attempt of constructing an identity of “powerful girl band”. On the other hand, the inclusion of erotic dance sequence adhering the industry norm that highlighting “physical attractions to gain advantage from the K-pop market” (Epstein with Turnbull 2014: 317) have put the group in an awkward position: they are not sexy enough to compete with the mainstream groups, nor did they constructed a strong enough “powerful girl band” identity to secure that niche market.
References
Elfving-Hwang, Joanna. “K-pop idols, artificial beauty and affective fan relationships in South Korea.” In Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies. Edited by Anthony Elliott, 190-201. London: Routledge, 2018.
Epstein, Stephen, and Turnbell, James. “Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment, and K-Pop.” In The Korean Popular Culture Reader. Edited by Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe, 315-36. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014.
Jin, Dalyong, and Ryoo, Woongjae. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English-Mixing in Lyrics.” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 2 (2014): 113-131, https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2012.731721.
Lin, Xi, and Rudolf, Robert. “Does K-pop Reinforce Gender Inequalities?: Empirical Evidence from a New Data Set.” Asian Women 33, no. 4 (December 2017): 27-54, https://doi.org/10.14431/aw.2017.12.33.4.27.