"Adios" Hoody's Contradictory Song

Hoody’s song Adios featuring Gray is a very contradictory music video when comparing the visuals and supposed storyline with the translated lyrics. There are scenes where Hoody is both the aggressor and the savior (not typical Korean women stereotype), but also undertones of suicidal thoughts. Watching the video without sound gives the impression that the song might be more upbeat or "hard." The audience sees Hoody as a convenience store worker (in what looks to be the US), stuck working on what appears to be Halloween night where there are parties happening. It goes on to show a man (maybe drunk), trying to inappropriately touch a girl in the store that is wearing a skin tight costume. She keeps fighting him off and then Hoody shows up and takes him down, but also hits the girl in the costume. Later on when Gray shows up, he has a gun and attempts to rob the convenience store, but it is unclear if the gun is a prop from a Halloween costume or if it is an actual. He hears noises downstairs and when he goes to investigate he finds the party goers and the lecherous man taped up and being kept downstairs. Hoody sneaks up on him and the audience realizes that the gun was real. It shoots out the ceiling light and the scene jumps back and forth between Hoody and Gray singing then back to the “party goers” dancing. It then cuts back to “normal” where she is at the register again. When I turned it on with sound I was very shocked at what I heard. I was not expecting the song to be so mellow and laid back, even with Gray rapping. Part of the reason I did not expect the mellow song was because of who Hoody is or who I expected her to be. Since she is an artist that is signed to Jay Park’s label and with a name that already gives out signals of cultural appropriation, I expected her to be a rapper, not the gentle singer that she is. Watching the video with the translated lyrics adds a whole other level to the video especially after watching the video with and without sound, the lyrics are a stark contrast to the visuals. The lyrics seem very sad, almost like they have suicidal undertones; talking about going to the place where no one can find her and she is going and not coming back until everyone forgets her and how she wants to go to sleep and not wake up, etc. It reminds me a lot of “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People; a song that is very upbeat, but when you listen to the lyrics you realize it is about a school shooting. “Adios” feels more and more like metal health or suicide than just going on a vacation or to a party. In the video Hoody was not the typical stereotype of a fragile, innocent damsel in distress or sexualized (Lin, Rudolf 2017: 28), but she was someone that defended herself and was strong instead. Many times in other k-pop videos with girl groups or girls as the center of attention it is “active/male, passive/female” where the woman is an object and the man looks/uses (Mulvey 1975: 11). Hoody’s song is very contradictory. It is soothing to listen to but knowing the lyrics gives it a new meaning. The visuals also contradict what the lyrics seem to be talking about. The visuals are happy, but the lyrics are sad. She also shows a very strong image and the only male gaze in the video is when the perverted man tries to touch both Hoody and the other woman (though I still do not understand why she hits her too). Bibliography

“Adios.” Departure. AOMG, 2019. Hoody.

Lin, Xi, and Robert Rudolf. "Does K-pop Reinforce Gender Inequalities? Empirical Evidence from a New Data Set." Asian Women 33, no. 4 (2017): 27-54.

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