Redefining Gender Representation in Dua Lipa’s “Hallucinate” (2020) Music Video

Dua Lipa’s animated music video “Hallucinate” was released during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The song is taken from Lipa’s second album, Future Nostalgia, and was influenced by the studio 54 aesthetic (Daly, 2020). Dua Lipa's animated character in the music video has been compared with the features of Betty Boop, a figure who epitomized the hedonistic nature in America in the 1920s. It is certainly striking to realise the possibilities of Dua Lipa's character re-engaging with these historical associations (Batkin 2017, 8). Yet the “Hallucinate” animation also provides an interesting space to think about the relationship between the representation of women and queer animated characters in the music video. This blog will look at a ten second clip situated towards the beginning of the video, where an animated version of Dua Lipa is performing on stage, and which occurs before Lipa begins, as the title suggests, hallucinating. It will explore the relationship between queer theory and animation to highlight animated music videos’ potential for portraying an alternative to heteronormative standards, first examining the anthropomorphic cross-dressing stars in the short sequence, then turning its attention to Lipa’s character to understand how her figure interrogates stereotypical representations of women in animation. In doing so, this blog post will argue that the animated characters in “Hallucinate” challenge queer identities and stereotypes.

Sean Griffin writes that animation has the “potential” for queer readings due to the medium’s ability for “metamorphosis” (2004, 105). Here, Griffin is implying that the unpredictability and malleability of animated characters lend themselves to embodying certain queer identities and states of being. The foundation of queer scholarly writing is, perhaps, established by feminist philosopher Judith Butler’s theorisations of gender as a “performative accomplishment,” with gender identity formed through repetitive acts (1988, 520). In these terms, queerness is an attitude that animation has the capability to portray as a result of the medium’s ability to construct and deconstruct its animated characters seemingly at will. As Paul Wells argues, animation can “destabilise gender identities,” suggesting the ways in which the medium can embrace its form to reject and dismantle social stereotypes (1998, 209). Let us consider these questions in the case of the ten second clip from “Hallucinate,” by first focusing on the background dancers.

Fig. 1: Still from “Hallucinate” showing Dua Lipa performing centre stage.

As an animated version of Dua Lipa performs centrally on stage, the two background dancers perform a dance sequence (Fig. 1). One dancer is shirtless and showcases exaggerated muscles (Fig. 2). The other dancer is wearing fishnet tights, suspenders and a corset. The excessive representation of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ qualities could, as Jack Halberstam suggests, “reassert grotesque stereotypes” of heteronormative standards of gender (2008, 274). However, anthropomorphised ‘stars’ replace or substitute the heads of the bodies in question. These abstract heads problematize the figures’ identities, indicating the gender of these background dancers remains ambiguous and, potentially, queer.

Fig 2 - Background dancer featuring ‘masculine’ qualities

Fig. 3 - Background dancer featuring ‘feminine’ qualities

In addition, the presence of ‘star’ heads lends itself to reading these figures in terms of cross-dressing. The stars' faces are given human features, though this form of anthropomorphism can be damaging. For Simon May, anthropomorphism is a widely used technique that creates a “demeanour of human beings” in animals and objects, which in turn creates a group of “outcasts” that humans feel the need to “patronise” (2019, 110). The stars in the video are personified with a human body, which generates a form of object transvestism and could potentially be read as suppressing the ‘other.’ These anthropomorphic characters, as Wells also puts forward, require a level of “imitation” or “impersonation” of human qualities (1998, 203). Connected to Butler’s theories on gender performativity, these characters are also ‘performing’ to present human traits as much as they are gender. Their identity is therefore determined by acting as humanlike. As their bodies are constantly in flux (due to animation’s ability to manipulate their appearances), this element can be understood via the instability of their gender and identity. Thus, the ambiguous nature of these animated characters promotes a potential queer narrative, with these characters fluctuations between stars and humans becoming the deconstruction of constraining binary attitudes towards gender.

Fig. 4: Cover of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia Album.

Fig. 5: Betty Boop.

The rendition of Dua Lipa’s animated character in “Hallucinate” also suggests that their character is either a liberation of gender constraints, or encouraging the fetishizing of female bodies. Dua Lipa is the only figure presented in colour while the other animated characters and backdrop remain black and white, and wears a white feathery bodysuit and knee-high boots. Placed centrally, all the other characters on screen direct their gaze towards Lipa’s body. The animated version of Lipa wears their hair in a style that further resembles Lipa’s appearance from the Future Nostalgia album cover (Fig. 4). However, Lipa’s animated eyes, eyebrows, and lips are enlarged to the point that they are not realistic but cross into the realm of caricature, which perhaps explains why Lipa’s appearance is referred to as the spiritual descendant of Betty Boop (Daly 2020). For Griffin, the fetishized distortion of Betty Boop’s body, with her oversized head and small torso, nurtures her overt expression of sexuality (204, 109) (Fig. 5). As Jane Batkin writes, Boop’s character on screen was playful and flirtatious and had a self-awareness of the camera (2017, 12). Similarly in “Hallucinate,” one scene where the ‘camera’ is placed in the crowds shows Lipa directing their gaze towards it (Fig. 6). In this sense, would Lipa’s animated body provide the same connotations as Boop’s? While the characters on stage are for the erotic display of the crowds, Dua Lipa’s gaze towards the camera offers to take control of this and embodies a sense of empowerment.

Fig. 6 - Dua Lipa’s character is aware of the ‘camera’.

Fig. 7 - Close-up shot of Dua Lipa’s lower body.

Another significant aspect of the representation of Lipa’s character being used as a vehicle of expression and inviting the gaze occurs towards the beginning of the “Hallucinate” sequence. Lipa walks along the stage as the ‘camera’ shows a close-up of the lower part of her body, submitting itself to Laura Mulvey’s assertion contending the conventional representations of women and their “to-be-looked-at-ness” (1975, 11) (Fig. 6). The animated onlookers all direct their gaze upwards towards Lipa’s body - indulging in their voyeuristic adventure. For Wells, women have created a feminine aesthetic in animation to counter the inherently masculine language of live-action films, alongside a resistance to “Boopism”, which involves highly sexualised designs (1998, 198). What is important to note is that the director of “Hallucinate”, Lisha Tan, identifies as a woman. Why would Tan welcome these outdated ideals that Boop stood for? Rather than purely promoting these outdated traditions, Lipa redefines these “natural codes of existence” by being positioned above the animated audience to suggest that they are physically stomping on the gaze, and in the process of doing so is regaining power (Fig. 7).

In this moment showing a close-up of Lipa’s boots, only the top half of the animated audience members’ faces are visible, which indicates that they too are fragmented representations. Their ambiguity can, once again, lead to a queer reading of the robotic audience, though although Lipa herself does assume the identity of an anthropomorphic cross-dresser between an animal (dolphin) and a human towards the end of the music video. These moments of “transmogrification,” as Griffin points out, work to expose Lipa’s unstable identity (2004, 109). In this way, acting Boop-like is a costume that Lipa wears to perform. Lipa’s potential to shape-shift establishes her as a queer figure.

This analysis of the animation in “Hallucinate” has enabled an alternative understanding of heteronormative standards. Anthropomorphic stars for faces of background dancers break away from binary gender constraints and reveal society's need to suppress the ‘other.’ The similarities between Dua Lipa's character and Betty Boop on one hand encourage a visual indulgence of the female body. But, by physically stomping on these gazes in the animation, Lipa redirects this gaze away from the body. Lipa's potential to morph into other characters also reveals their unstable identity, which contributes to the interrogation of existing gender norms. Given how Lipa's identity in “Hallucinate” is in constant flux, it is therefore important to read the video for how it might be understood through the lens of queer studies as a way to think about how the video redefines orthodox forms of representation.

**Article published: August 26, 2022**

References

Batkin, Jane. 2017. Identity in Animation: A Journey Into Self, Difference, Culture and the Body. London and New York: Routledge.

Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. Theatre Journal 40, no. 4: 519–531.

Daly, Rhian. 2020. “Dua Lipa 'Hallucinate's A Betty Boop Fantasy In New Animated Music Video.” Entertainment Weekly, 2020. https://ew.com/music/dua-lipa-hallucinate-video/.

Griffin, Sean. 2004. “Pronoun Trouble: The Queerness of Animation”. In Queer Cinema: The Film Reader, edited by Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, 105-118. New York: Routledge.

Halberstam, Judith. 2008. “Animating Revolt/Revolting Animation: Penguin Love, Doll Sex and the Spectacle of the Queer Nonhuman”. In Queering the Non/Human, edited by Noreen Giffney and Myra Hird, 265-282. London: Routledge.

May, Simon. 2019. The Power of Cute. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Screen 16, no. 3 (October): 6-18.

Wells, Paul. 1998. Understanding Animation. London: Routledge.

Biography

Demikel Evans holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Film Studies from King's College London where she also directed two short films on the course: Ephemeral Soul and Blink 14. She will be pursuing her Master's in Digital Effect from the National Film and Television School in 2023.