#queer2016

REAPPROPRIATION AND QUEERING MUSIC IN THE KNIFE’S “A TOOTH FOR AN EYE”

The Knife was a Swedish electronic music duo from Gothenburg founded in 1999 and disbanded recently in 2014. The duo was composed of siblings Karin and Olof  Dreijer. For most of their career they rejected the music industry and the mainstream music scene always producing their albums independently or on independent labels. They did not perform any live concerts until 2005 and after that they hardly made any public appearances at all; their promotional photos always depict the siblings wearing masks with bird beaks similar to the plague mask worn centuries ago. They were nominated multiple times at the Swedish Grammis for their music, but never attended the shows as a protest against the male dominance of the awards ceremony.

How The Knife feels toward mainstream media and the music industry is not completely dissimilar to the origins of punk music, which is illustrated in the book, Playing It Queer by musicologist Jodi Taylor in her chapter in queering punk music: “Initially, punk rejected the mechanisms of the music industry, instead favouring independent music production, distribution, staging and publicity” (Taylor 140). This statement completely embodies what The Knife set out to do not only for the dislike of mainstream media, but also it’s patriarchal hold on society and the music industry. Protesting these ideologies by boycotting the awards shows where they had nominations, never showing their faces in the promotional photos, and dressing in extravagant and non-conventional attire was seen as a political statement against the views of western society and their habit of, as Taylor states, “governing our bodies and legislating against gender, sexuality and sexual acts considered to deviate from prescribed norms” (Taylor 5).

The music video I selected from The Knife is for the song “A Tooth for an Eye” from their last album, released in 2013, called Shaking the Habitual, which takes it’s title from a Michel Foucault quote stating that the intellectual’s work is not in “mould[ing] the political will of others” but instead, through their own analyses, re-examine and re-work the assumptions and views held by the dominant narrative; “to shake up the habitual of working and thinking.” This is basically what the album and the music video is trying to do.

The video depicts a diverse group of men in a locker room preparing for something athletic in nature. It seems to give off the feel that they are going to start participating in a stereotypical masculine sport of some kind, but then you notice an elderly man in the group, the non-normative hairstyles that some of these men have, and the Caribbean influenced backbeat playing throughout giving off the feel that this video might be going in another direction. It then cuts to the men running into a dance gym and starting to warm up for a dance practice of some kind. Then a girl in a referee outfit, also with unconventional hairstyle, comes onto the floor and starts leading all of these men in a choreographed dance as she sings the lyrics to the song.

This video takes dance, something that is more feminine, according to the dominant narrative, and has men perform the act under the leadership of a young girl. This switching of roles depicted in the video tries to reappropriate roles that the opposite genders are usually ridiculed for and put them in a positive and creative light. When interviewed about the video, The Knife stated that they were trying to deconstruct the dominant images of maleness, power and leadership through a dance video. This idea draws back to Galinsky’s point on overcoming the social effects of negative stigma: “Through the creative use of categorization and social comparisons, groups attempt to positively revalue attributes that previously had been considered negative” (Galinsky 228). The men share an interest in dance and comparing themselves to each other gives more positive stimulation to overcome the negative stigma posed on men in dance. This can also tie into another statement made by Taylor in Playing it Queer on the origin of the word music; “The meaning of the term was originally derived from the Latin musica and the Greek mousiké, meaning the skill and art of the muses and referring not only to sound, but to dance and song as well” (Taylor 6). The Knife’s music video reappropriates the meaning of music back to its original meaning from its Greek and Latin roots and, again, depicting it through men expressing this form of the word.

Through its lyrics, through its video and through its sound I’d say that “A Tooth for an Eye” epitomizes what it means to actually ‘queer music’ and deconstruct and reappropriate the ideologies of broken dominant societal norms.

References:

A Tooth For An Eye by The Knife Songfacts. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2016, from http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=28799

Galinsky, A. D., Hugenberg, K., Groom, C., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (n.d.). The Reappropriation Of Stigmatizing Labels: Implications For Social Identity.Research on Managing Groups and Teams Identity Issues in Groups, 221-256.

Michel Foucault Quotes. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2016, from https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1260.Michel_Foucault