It’s Britney Bitch: Constructing the Feminist Identity of Britney Spears in Her Music Videos
Abstract
Pilarta, L.O. (2015) It’s Britney, Bitch: Constructing the Feminist Identity of Britney Spears in Her Music Videos. Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.
Britney Spears, recipient of the MTV Michael Jackson Music Video Vanguard Award in 2011, is known for, amongst many things, her music videos. With their distinct Britney sound, elaborate choreography, and creative narratives, her music videos have been widely viewed and discussed, by both the press and audiences. Despite this, there have only been few attempts to study her music videos in the academe, and it is this very lack that motivated me to conduct a study on the music videography of Britney Spears.
Using a semiotic framework derived from Saussure and Barthes, I dissected the music videos of Britney Spears, analyzed their lyrics and visual images, in order to see how gender and sexuality are represented and portrayed in them. It is through the insights generated in this level of analysis that I have constructed, using feminist theories, Britney Spears’ feminist identity.
Keywords: textual analysis, Britney Spears, music videos, feminism, semiotics