Description

• Title:
  Harry Styles as a Cecaelia: Sexuality, Representation and Media-lore in “Music for a Sushi Restaurant”
• Creator:
  Giuffre, Liz;
  Hayward, Philip
• Contributor:
  Giuffre, Liz - University of Technology Sydney;
  Hayward, Philip - University of Technology Sydney;
  Giuffre, Liz - liz.giuffre@uts.edu.au;
  Hayward, Philip - philip.hayward@uts.edu.au
• Description:
  The music video for Harry Styles’s 2022 track “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” (directed by Aube Perrie) provides a surprising representation of the pop star (arguably at the peak of his career) appearing as a cecaelia (a monstrous figure with a human head, arms and torso giving way to tentacles around its midriff). The video is notable in two distinct contexts. First, in terms of Styles’s trajectory as a popular music performer who has received intense media attention because of his fan base, artistic persona and ambiguous sexual identity; and second, in terms of the articulation of a relatively minor media-loric (i.e. modern folkloric) entity in a high profile popular cultural context. The article discusses these aspects before moving to an analysis of the music video showing how Styles’s role as a cecaelia serves as a representation of his career position, public profile and desire to assert his creative-industrial agency in the early 2020s. The music video thereby illustrates the potential of media-loric figures to represent complex themes in contemporary cultural discourse.
• Object availability:
  free access
• Rights: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
• Date:
  2023.12.29;
  2023.12.20
• Type:
  Article
• Language:
  English
• Format:
  application/pdf
• Publisher:
  Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Relation:
  Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture;13
• Subject:
  Harry Styles;
  performer identity;
  sexuality;
  cecaelia;
  mermaids;
  media-lore
• Identifier:
  2083-2931;
  http://hdl.handle.net/11089/48985 ;
  2084-574X;
  10.18778/2083-2931.13.23
• Data provider:
  Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Can I use it?:
  check license
• Type:
  image