Blog 8: Star theory Britney spears

   Britney Spears hit single ''Hold it against me'' has caused some dispute as to the interpretation of the music video:

   The Rise and fall:

        

        One interpretation is that the video symbolizes the rise, breakdown, and re-rises of Britney's fame. The video starts with a meteorite hitting the Earth containing Britney who then rises to fame.  She is then surrounded by cameras showing that she is under the constant eye of the media, public and media industry. 

   She is then uplifted, showing her rise through the music industry. However things take a darker turn, with her fighting herself and spraying paint over her past videos, showing how her breakdown tainted her image.  Then when she get's into a fight with herself, this is symbolism of how she was fighting her inner demons, leading to the finale of her being a superstar back to reclaim,her title.

      However a different interpretation could be that she is instead under constant surveillance, and following Laura Mulvey's gaze theory, she is being overtly sexulised, by exposing herself, as well as constant product placement of products such as GoFish  and various perfumes. The camera's show Mulvey's voyeurism theory as it symbolises her under constant viewing from the male gaze.

    However, this trend of sexualisation that Mulvey proposes has some merit. One of Spears earliest videos is one more time:

     There are 2 ways to look at this, either A) Mulveys perspective. Here Spears is a poor young girl being exploited by the patriarchy, and sexualised by the patriarchy, when she is is too young and new to the industry to understand whats fully going on, or b) She realised, or at least her choreographer/ video planner knew they use sexualisation to sell her and break her into the industry. Either way, it was a success proving one of these theories correct.