“Working for the knife”: semiotics and Butoh in Mitski’s performance

Through an affective, choreographic study of Mitski's 2022 song “Working for the Knife,” this article weaves together the aesthetics of white girlhood and Mitski's relationship to and rejection of them. Butoh enters as an analytical tool—both a history and a technique—choreographed for Mitski and performed by her to discuss notions of inherited trauma and sadness that offer insight into Mistki's choreographic rebuttal to the internet-driven aesthetics of twenty-first century America.