A Deal with God : analyse d’une hybridation gestuelle et musicale entre féminin et masculin

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the "Running up that Hill" video clip, from the Kate Bush album Hounds of Love, released in 1985. Summer 2022 witnessed what some people have called Kate’s Bush “big come back”. Actually, she had never left, as those who have been interested in her and her work from the beginning may know. However, the fact that "Running up that Hill" was a part of the Stranger Things original soundtrack did extend and renew the success of that track, particularly among the youngest generation. Maybe now more than ever, a political and aesthetic analysis of that hit and its video clip appears to be necessary. The original clip of "Running up that Hill" was put online on Youtube on January 15th, 2011, and it took almost eleven years for it to reach more than a hundred million views. The extract from the TV show where Kate Bush’s hit plays a major part was put online on May 30th, 2022 and has already gathered more than eighteen million views. Whithout adopting a reactionary perspective, we will try to demonstrate in that paper in what way the 1985 video clip is still relevant, especially in our fields of study, which are dance and feminist and queer studies. The aesthetic and political analysis of that hit and its video clip, whose depiction of straight romance has almost exclusively focused the attention of critics, will allow us to see in what way Kate Bush invites the viewer to resort to Hélène Cixous’s concept of écriture féminine, avoiding the pitfall of essentialistic feminity.

Keywords

• Kate Bush
• Running up that Hill
• video clip
• analysis
• dance
• choreography