POPULAR CULTURE: EXPLORING ALTERITY IN TERMS OF FEMINISM AND POSTCOLONIAL FEMINISM IN SIA KATE FURLER’S “BIG GIRLS CRY” AND “NEVER GIVE UP”

Abstract

“Big Girls Cry” is a song that is emphatic of how social gaze pushes efforts to be “tough”, they are not veritably acknowledged by the society. “Never Give Up” is a song that can be considered denotative of the women struggle in the post-colonial feminist paradigm. This paper carries out an exegesis of Gaytri Spivak’s concept of ‘Alterity’ as reflected in terms of Feminism and Post-Colonial Feminism in the music videos based on Sia Kate Furler’s songs, “Big Girls Cry” and “Never Give Up”, respectively. The music videos of the two songs share certain abstractions, binaries and motives that identify the need to transcend beyond concrete realities, parochial boundaries and restrictive barriers that fetter an individual’s imagination as well as his existence. The study chooses to analyze the visuals in tandem with lyrics in these videos because of the distinctive affinity that they share with the contemporary feminist and post-colonial feminist issues of otherness that the world currently confronts.