How A Star’s Image Develops Over Time Through Music Video – Britney Vs Bjork

Britney Spears first appeared in the pop music scene with her first single “Baby One More Time” released at the end of 1998 and instantly became an international success. She is viewed as a role model for the teen market, her persona is identified within an artificial pop mainstream.
She started out with her school girl innocent look with pig tails and shown through a soft focus lens. It used the stereotypical school settings. Her look was much more athletic than sexual but still followed an artificial look.
Her early look was then backed up in “You Drive Me Crazy” in 1999 which helped portray her as a star by having a group of dancer-friends to help make her look popular.
By 2000 in her video for “Oops I Did It Again” her image had begun to develop as she had grown older, we see commodification as she becomes more of a product for men. There are also examples of feminine touch as she touches her face and body, and lies on the floor in a voyeuristic way.
We see an example of meta-narrative of her career when she hits back at the tabloids with her hit “Overprotected” in 2001, her she appears as a much more assertive character. We see more sultry pouts and sexual assertiveness in the video showing she has grown up and is now a woman. This is also represented by the use of close-ups and disambiguation, this is also one of the first times we see Britney not in a costume of some sort; with her staring as a school girl, waitress and devil in previous videos.
In 2002 Britney attempted to widen her appeal and took on a different look with “I Love Rock And Roll” in 2002 we see her seducing the camera with her crawling on the floor, an example of a ritual of subordination. This video is all performance based which is different from most of Britney’s previous videos.
By 2004, in the music video “Toxic” we see soft porn-like conventions and titillating costumes. We see her dominate over men by controlling them with her sexuality, she is a femme fatale.
However Bjork is presented in a very different manner. She is shown as a strange little pixie girl under a controversial light. She is used to sum up Scandinavian eccentricity. She is seen as a creative roll model and uses post-modern techniques in her videos, conveying the image of her niche music.
In the video for her song “Human Behaviour” in 1993 directed by Michael Gondry, whose work echo’s work within a world of folk and fairy tale, subverting traditional ideologies, we see the role of animals and humans swapped round. It uses the narrative of a fairly tale but subverts it, she is seen as an almost quirky fairy, and has a very natural look.
Her video released over 10 years late in 2005 “Triumph Of The Heart” directed by Spike Jones crams in as many intertextual Bjork-based references. It uses another fairy tale like setting and shows Bjork as a feminist revisionary. We see people in the bar help to improve her star image much like with Britney, this gives her recognition as being a popular artist.
We can see the vast contrast between both stars and how the wish to be portrayed throughout their meta-narrative of their careers.