Star theory & Pop videos

Music industry creates and promotes artists within clearly defined genres. Music videos can use images to illustrate the lyrics. Amplify is when the lyrics and the video have no clear distinction, but there are hidden meanings that the artist has put in. Disjuncture is when the meaning of the song is completely ignored and the music includes random scenes that have no correlation with the lyrics.

Kanye West

Richard Dyer believes that artists are manufactured for financial gains. They are constructed through advertising, films, magazines and music videos to represent 'real people' in order to sell their brand. These artificial images are used to show the artist experiencing emotions so that the audience can relate. This gives the artists a unique selling point to make money for their record labels. Dyer claims that record labels manufacture artists to cater for different audiences knowing that they will become trend setters which leads to more financial gain. If we look at Kanye West most people will know him for his fashion. Fans of Kanye will look up to him and imitate his fashion by wearing similar footwear or clothes.

Britney Spears

Britney Spears is a well known artist. She is an actress as well as a singer and since signing with Jive Records in 1997 she has been successful in the music industry internationally. In her early days of her music career she was represented as a girly artist. She wore pink, had her hair in pigtails and wore make up. In her video "Baby One More Time" her dance routine was choreographed in a way to make the audience desire to be in her gang. Her look was branded to suit the record label.

Britney Spears is an artists that supports Dyer's theory. Her original image was changed in order for the record label to make money. For many years Britney was made to look like an artificial star so that the audience could relate. In the "Baby One more Time" we see that she is wearing a cropped blouse and this was the start of a new trend. She was made to look innocent, but the way she was dressed in some of her videos you can argue that this was just to gain a bigger audience. Laura Maulvey's male gaze relates to films, but we can relate it to Britney. The theory suggests that women are viewed as objects to men. In the music video "Oops!...I Did It Again" we see that Britney wears a full latex suit to engage the male audience. The video has not direct link with the lyrics, but people will still watch it because it catches the eye.