The other side of the contemporary teen queen : an examination of the compelling structures of music video

Abstract

This thesis investigates the role of the music video in the construction of star image. Specifically, I examine the intertextual nature of the star images of pop stars Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. In their early music videos, Spears and Aguilera were presented as sexy, precocious young women, an image which they have retained in subsequent video releases. This image initially received criticism for its supposed influence on the behaviour of impressionable children. In this dissertation, I discuss the stars' lesser-known music videos that have been marginalised in the discourse about the singers' problematic sexualisation. These videos received less attention from the critics and the public as they broke from the established formulae and promoted the stars in a different way, presenting them as naive, innocent, and virginal. Through a thorough investigation of these overlooked music videos ("I Turn to You", "Sometimes" and "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart"), I discuss how an alternative sexuality is presented in these texts, a sexuality that is distanced from that commonly employed in music videos.

The methodology employed is drawn from a number of writers whose work has already constituted the music video as a significant field of study. This methodology is outlined in Chapter One, in which I discuss the structural properties of the music video text and the way that an understanding of these properties can inform an analysis of the music video's role in constituting star image. In Chapter Two I examine the unique structural elements and dynamic tensions of these "lesser-known" Spears and Aguilera videos, demonstrating how, although their surface features play out in different ways, their underlying structure remains the same. In Chapter Three I argue that this structure, rare within music video, sets up a fetishistic relation that operates differently from that previously identified in music video. I also discuss how this fetishism has been differently employed in other music video texts.