Redefining Gender And Sexuality Through The Music Videos Of Bjork And Missy Elliott
The visualization of music has far reaching effects on musical cultures and popular culture generally, not the least of which is the increase in visual interpretations of sexist power relationships, the mode of visual storytelling, the increased focus on how a singer looks rather than how he or she sounds, the need to craft an image to accompany one’s music, and ever-greater pressure to abide by corporate genreformatting rules. —Tricia Rose
Written by Ghia Godfree
Bjork and Missy Elliott are both successful in continually breaking the “corporate genre formatting rules” and upending the “sexist power relationships” that scholar Tricia Rose attributes to most popular music video.
Despite the different genres of music in which they excel, one of the most common themes in Björk’s and Missy Elliott’s music and video work is the seemingly unlikely combination of nature and technology. This juxtaposition, which is most often manifested in videos that reconfigure the two women as distorted or technologically enhanced bodies, challenges preconceived notions about characteristics and behaviors that are usually categorized as either feminine or masculine. J
ust as their music offers a sense of the “natural” female voice infused with the technological enhancements of electronica and sampling, these videos are visualizations of Bjork’s and Missy Elliott’s ability to confound popular conceptions of gender in which “categories of nature and technology are socially constructed respectively as feminine and masculine.”
Additionally, because both of these artists take an active role in the planning and subsequent construction of their music videos, they arguably empower the female subject-performer to discover new and broader ways of understanding gender and sexuality. In spite of these connections and these artists’ ability to demand attention by confounding popular conceptions of what it means to be a woman in an industry that rewards sexual objectification, their status as “agents” within the realm of music video production tends to take a back seat to the privileging of the director’s authorial vision.
The music videos by Björk are visually stunning as well as aurally captivating and are undoubtedly a product of both the artist, Björk, and the director, Gondry. Yet, because the videos are packaged for sale as part of a larger “Directors Series,” Palm Pictures tends to emphasize the role of the director, Gondry, and diminish the contributions of the performer, Björk.
In addition, the absence of any Missy Elliott videos on the Hype Williams compilation acts as a negation of her work within the canon of hip-hop videos. With such elisions and inequities in mind, this paper attempts to refocus attention on both Björk and Missy Elliott as authorial agents in their music videos by considering their positions within the music industry more generally and music video specifically by examining in detail the thematics of several of their videos. Because their music, stage presentation and offstage personas
are all manifested within their music videos, such considerations might help to open up a space for the possibility of female authorship in what has traditionally been considered a “male” genre.
Women and Music Videos: Although it is possible to point to successful female artists, such as Björk and Missy Elliott, whose videos do not follow typical conventions, the majority of music videos are defined by images of sexually objectified women. This framework— exemplified by revealing outfits, suggestive dance moves and close-ups of open-mouthed, glossylipped visages,
Many female artists are arguably complicit in creating music videos that conform to patriarchal modes of looking; they often adhere to these conventions because, at the end of the day, if the sexiness of the video guarantees it receives rotation, then record sales are sure to follow. This logic applies to male performers as well, as the tendency is to include sexually objectified females in the music videos. These “video hoes” are relegated to the “position of scopic object within the diegesis” and effectively stripped of any power or agency within the music video narrative.
This stripping of power usually coincides with the physical removal of clothing. Ironically, this is especially true of many hip-hop videos that allow black rappers to participate in the white man’s world of patriarchy and privilege through the subjugation of the black female form. In her 1994 book "Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America", Tricia Rose elucidates the difficulties hip-hop music videos have presented for female performers interested in articulating anything other than stereotypical viewpoints on gender and power. The usual hip-hop music video narrative objectifies women by casting them as relatively unclothed accouterments on par with other visual commodities featured. Focusing on female body parts, demonstrates an aesthetic that is perpetuated on the major music video channels, and as a result, music videos continue to inhabit a space seemingly devoid of positive or empowering images of women.
Agency and Authorship: The problems surrounding the representation of women in music videos is further exacerbated by the disproportionate number of well-known male directors relative to the number of female directors working in the field of music video production. The structure of the industry more generally contributes to this disparity; MTV and BET rarely feature work from female directors. This continues to be a worrisome trend for female artists, as young female music video fans may get the impression that they can be performers but not directors.
Unconventional female artists such as Björk and Missy Elliott consider it very important to find new conception of authorship that takes female agency in current music video production into account. Although Björk is typically described in popular media as the exotic Other, “mysterious and magical,” or pixie-like because of her Icelandic heritage and alternative fashion sense, such diminutive labels belie Björk’s inspiring work ethic, organizational skills and serious interest in creating an artistically rigorous finished product.
In addition, Björk is producing work in a genre that is typically construed as masculine “because of the innovative uses of technology in electronic music, it is often deemed a ‘masculine’ art form, and this leaves little room for women.”
Throughout her music, she utilizes narrative-based lyrics to distinguish her songs from much of electronica in which the male producer/mixer controls the female voice using it as merely a repeated hook. Furthermore, Björk is an artist whose music and music videos demonstrate her commitment to partnerships with other talented musicians and artists.
Missy Elliott began singing at a young age but eventually felt it would be difficult to obtain a record contract because in her words, “I wasn’t 5’6,” size three, with a tiny waist.” Elliott’s recognition that popular culture’s stereotypical conception of a female music star is defined by their lithe appearance convinced her that her weight would prove debilitating to a future solo career. However, her success co-producing eight tracks on the "One in a Million" album by the late R&B star Aaliyah, led the female head of Elektra, Sylvia Rhone, to grant Elliott her chance at a solo album.
"Supa Dupa Fly" released in 1997, featured Timbaland’s catchy and creative beats underlying Missy’s infectious vocals, unexpected lyrics and innovative sampling that drove the record to the top of the R&B charts and number three on the pop charts. In 1998, she became the first hip-hop artist to appear on the all-female music festival Lilith Fair. Subsequently she found time to produce tracks for Destiny’s Child and Whitney Houston as well as continuing to release her own albums including "Da Real World" in 1999, "Miss E… So Addictive" in 2001, "Under Construction" in 2002, "This Is Not a Test" in 2003 and "The Cookbook" in 2005.
Elliott is an accomplished hip-hop singer, songwriter, lyricist and producer. While Björk’s “It’s Oh So Quiet” video by Spike Jonze stands out precisely because of its Broadway stage-style dancing, Elliott’s music videos ally more closely to the traditional framework of choreographed dance routines that are a staple of female pop music videos. Missy continually depicts herself as the leader of a girl posse performing synchronized dance routines, as in the video for “I’m Really Hot” (2003).
By situating herself with her crew, Missy Elliott reveals that her videos exist within a larger tradition of hip-hop cultural expression that foregrounds the rapper with their posse.
Crossing the Nature/Culture Divide: In contrast to Missy Elliott and her crew, Björk usually exists in her own individual world within the narrative of her music videos. For example, Björk’s “Hyberballad” begins in a natural setting with Björk lying on a bed of decaying leaves.
Björk rests peacefully when suddenly the sound of static is heard on the audio track. Simultaneously, television snow is projected onto Björk’s serene face. Björk recasts femininity as technology by utilizing her face as a screen upon which a previously captured video image of Björk singing is visible.
This superimposition of technology onto nature is extended with the appearance of an animated Björk character. The animated Björk runs through a landscape of power line towers and then falls through the surface of the earth. The natural forest setting for Björk’s “Human Behavior” is also an effective moment within Björk’s music video reportoire where nature and technology exist within the same space.
Björk resides in a log cabin in the middle of a surreal forest inhabited by giant bears, hunters and flies. Elements of the set design appear to have been constructed by hand which reinforces the “crafty,” homemade quality to the production value of the video. The giant bear suit in particular resembles a handsewn teddy-bear doll brought to life. All of these low-tech elements within the video are analagous to the “natural” and “feminine” aspects of the video.
In contrast to the low-tech, “crafty” elements that dominate the video, Björk wears a dress made of a reflective silver material that “alludes to the metallic and to images of technology.”. The dress also alludes to the specific technology that is later used to generate the tiny image of Björk inside the bear’s stomach and when she appears next to the sleeping hunter. This intermingling of low and high tech and nature and technology within the diegesis of “Hyperballad” and “Human Behavior” works to break down the rigid binary of feminine/masculine.
The divide between nature and technology is further blurred in Björk’s video for “Joga,” which alternates between expansive vistas and microscopic views of nature. This video also
contains an animated Björk character who invites the viewer to gaze inside her heart and find an image of Iceland. Throughout her career, Björk has maintained a close connection to nature and her homeland through her references to “Iceland’s geographical and social characteristics” in her music, interviews and videos.
Within this video, Björk does not simply show the landscapes and vistas that inspire her; she also utilizes computer technology to alter these landscapes. “Joga” opens with vistas that soar towards and away from the camera establishing an emotional link between Björk, nature and the viewer.
Within electronica, the voice is treated as a natural element whereas techno sounds are more
masculine. Björk’s vocal delivery corresponds with beautiful views of nature until the heavy bass beat enters the song and the landscapes start to slide and tear with the help of computer intervention. The video visually conveys that the combination of Björk’s voice with the techno beats aurally destroys the binary opposition of nature/technology and puts forward a new future for popular music. According to Marsh and West, “Björk opposes the common belief that technology is cold and soulless, instead believing it to be warm and sentimental.”
During Björk’s compositional process, she infuses technologically produced sounds with a sense of soul. “Joga” merges nature and technology to show a series of emotionally charged landscapes and situate Björk as the quintessential daughter of Iceland. While the role of daughter is decidedly feminine, Björk achieves her status through the use of a stereo-typically masculine technology.
In general, Missy Elliott’s videos focus on similar themes of blurring the boundary between nature and technology. In particular, Missy Elliott’s video for “Work It” (2002), opens with a shot of bees swarming over her “working” a turntable switchboard. The title and chorus of “Work It” play on the word “work,” which simultaneously connotes the creation of the music as well as the intimacies of a sexual relationship. By equating the work she performs as a musician with the work involved in sex, she suggests that both activities are pleasurable; however, she also implies that both are labor-intensive.
Although the majority of the song is about Missy Elliott’s ability to “work it” musically, lyrically and sexually, she also wonders aloud whether she will receive oral sex from her partner. Within her explicit lyrics, she raps, "Phone before you come, I need to shave my chocha. You do or you don’t or you will or won’t ya. Go downtown and eat it like a vulture.."
While using technology to include a section of the chorus played in reverse, Missy Elliott also “flips” the narrative when she demands that her partner at least consider “working it” for her. Elliott’s willingness to discuss her sexual relationships in such a frank way, “challenge[s] male notions of female sexuality and pleasure,” a strategy similar to those used by the first wave of female rappers as described by Tricia Rose.
In several songs, Missy Elliott refers to herself as “The Queen” and in this video she brings the moniker to life. The walls behind Missy mimic the structure of a giant honeycomb and the bees fly around unperturbed as Missy Elliott “spins” or works the records back and forth in time to the music. Rather than present herself as someone’s honey, she is the Queen Bee on her DJ throne while her worker bees buzz around her. Nature as represented by the set design and the presence of the bees intermingles with technology as represented by the DJ turntables, speakers and headphones.
Missy defies stereotypical notions of gender by situating herself behind the turntables as the DJ, a figure in hip-hop culture that is traditionally male. In her privileged position as the song’s mixer, she adds aural elements to the song that are produced electronically but clearly derived from nature such as the braying of an elephant. The look and feel of “Work It”—with its Adidas track suits and talented breakdancers—echoes Missy’s hip-hop roots. The breakdancers also add a sense of the improvisational nature of earlier forms of hip-hop cultural expression divorced from the controlled aspect of modern day music production.
The video resonated with viewers who gave it Video of the Year and Hip-Hop Video of the Year awards at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards Show.25 In “Work It,” Missy Elliott dissolves the rigid structure surrounding conceptions of nature and technology thus challenging the definition of gender within popular culture.
“Pass that Dutch” (2003) also opens with a scene that blurs the boundary between nature and technology. Missy Elliott and her dancers are transformed into scarecrows in a cornfield. The cornfield recalls M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002) and later in the video there is an overhead shot of crop circles. Crows supplant the bees of “Work It” as a more menacing element of nature as they peck at the scarecrows and establish a theme of persecution that resonates throughout the
video.
The first threatening image of the crows is replaced by alien spaceships that reference Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), as well as helicopters that hound Missy Elliott reinvented as King Kong. The crows, spaceships and helicopters are all manifestations of the harassment that Missy feels because of her weight, sexuality and race. “Pass that Dutch” even includes a scene where
Missy and a car full of her friends devour a would-be car-jacker. By turning herself into King
Kong and a woman with a voracious appetite, she is proclaiming performatively that even in the face of criticism, she is going to pursue her distinctive creative vision. Partly owing to her size and
masculine stage presentation, speculations about Elliott’s ambiguous sexuality appeared as
soon as she entered the public eye.
Her costuming choices often reflect hip-hop style evidenced by oversize tracksuits, airbrushed shirts and headgear. The tracksuits in particular allow freedom of movement when she dances and performs but are also considered a more masculine aspect of hip-hop style. During one dance segment, Missy and her dancers also wear masculine suspenders and white button-down shirts with colorful berets to honor the contributions of the late Fred “Rerun” Berry (What’s Happening!! (ABC 1976)) to the legacy of African-Americans on television.
When a giant Missy Elliott displaces King Kong and towers over New York City, she wears a shirt emblazoned with an airbrushed image of the late R&B artist Aaliyah on the front. The “Rerun” costume and the Aaliyah shirt symbolize a theme of grief and remorse within the video over losing Aaliyah and other hip-hop stars such as Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.
By continually choosing outfits that signify masculinity and control, Missy Elliott demonstrates ownership of her body and her performative image despite the “negative” connotations some have tried to attach to them. In contrast to her masculine outfits, at another point in the video, Missy Elliott and the dancers wear a black leather outfit that emphasizes their sexuality. The beating of the crows’ wings is visualized in the dance movements of Missy and her leather-clad dancers who flap
their arms in time to the music. During their dancing, Missy Elliott and the girls also turn and shake their butts for the camera. This moment is then reiterated from the side.
Tricia Rose views explicitly sexual outfits and dance moves within the music videos of black females as both negative and positive. On the one hand, Rose argues that many women are complicit in contributing “to an already entrenched understanding of women’s bodies as objects of consumption.”
On the other hand, as Rose states in her analysis of the early female hip-hop group Salt ’N’ Pepa: The aesthetic hierarchy of the female body in mainstream American culture, with particular reference to the behind and hips, positions many black women somewhere near the bottom. When viewed in this context, Salt ’N’ Pepa’s rap and video becomes an inversion of the aesthetic hierarchy that renders black women’s bodies inadequate and sexually unattractive.
Missy Elliott furthers this “inversion of the aesthetic hierarchy” by showcasing her butt, her hips and her thighs along with those of her dancers in the video. She centers her body as unapologetically sexual, which in itself is groundbreaking considering the conception of Missy Elliott as ambiguous sexually and weight and thus excluded as a desiring subject and object of desire. In addition, Missy’s blatant sexuality within the video confronts the legacy of silence surrounding black female sexuality in America.
Another way in which Björk and Missy Elliott challenge preconceived notions of the female subject performer as sexual object is through music videos that reconfigure the two artists as distorted, technologically enhanced bodies. By distorting their bodies with technology,they highlight the
ways in which popular conceptions of gender might be altered. In the video for “Oceania” (2004), Björk situates herself in a sensuous underwater world. Only the top half of her body is visible in the darkened sea and by not allowing the viewer to see her legs, Björk transforms herself into a sea creature.
Within the video she sends out jellyfish and orchids with her voice, which alternatively trills, coos and growls through the song. Björk utilizes technological processes to make her sojourn in the sea appear seamless and the resulting video envisions her as an Earth Mother of the sea. The glittering silver jewels that are affixed to her face simultaneously transform her appearance and reference the technological through their metallic nature. Björk not only distorts her body but once again addresses the nature/technology dichotomy to imagine a new world unbound by limitations on female representation.
Missy Elliott also creates new worlds where body distortions focus attention on the limitations of popular conceptions of the female body. In the “Work It” video, Missy Elliott satirizes her image within mainstream media as a large woman. Her mouth distends and expands so that she can swallow a toy model Lamborghini. She highlights the absurdity of popular culture’s fascination with what women weigh and eat by suggesting that her own appetite is so voracious she could swallow an entire car.
Perhaps Missy Elliott’s most famous body distortions occur in the video for “The Rain” in which she donned an “inflatable vinyl suit pumped up by attendants at a gas station near the set.”
The giant, reflective suit becomes an organic extension of Missy Elliott’s body as she dances, creating an undulating amorphous effect. Rather than use the video as a space to appear smaller than her real size, the outfit in “The Rain” accentuates her large stature and makes her body appear even bigger.
In addition, there are numerous moments within the video when the camera distorts one part of her body after another. As the camera closes in on an eye or a lip, these body parts suddenly expand out of proportion with the rest of the body. Missy Elliott confounds nature and technology by the distortion of her physical self, which is complemented by the aural distortions of the sound of chirping crickets. Throughout the video, Missy Elliott alters her hairstyles, her costumes and her locations. She moves from an industrial complex to the beach to a cartoon landscape with a brilliant blue sky and white clouds and impossibly neon green grass.
In all of these locales, Missy Elliott experiments with distorting her body and calls into question traditional music videos’ reliance on the objectified female performer. This reliance is further questioned within two very different music videos where both Björk and Missy Elliott technologically enhance their bodies in ways that recall Donna Haraway’s cyborg.
In the “All is Full of Love” (1998) video, Björk literally becomes the human-machine hybrid that according to Haraway constitutes “a machine/human construct that challenges dichotomies of identity and carves out new hybrid spaces of being.”30 The video shows a pair of robotic arms constructing a cyborg with the face of Björk. As the technologically advanced construction of the cyborg takes place, Björk sings, “You’ll be given love, You’ll be taken care of.”
Interspersed with shots of her body slowly being pieced together are close-ups of sparks flying off her joints and water running over her. The fire and water are natural elements necessary for the creation of a perfect hybrid of female and machine, the cyborg. Towards the end of the video, the Björk cyborg is greeted by its mirror image and the two cyborgs kiss and embrace. The narrative subversion of ideas about female sexuality coupled with the use of the cyborg bodies is important because it further demolishes the opposition between nature and technology and thus feminine and masculine.
With the destruction of this binary goes the idea that the world is fixed and incapable of change. Through its narrative of transformation and allusions to narcissism, auto-eroticism and same-sex desire, “All is Full of Love” represents a world where women are free to determine what is “in their nature” rather than having their nature dictated by rigid power structures and systems of representation.
Missy also reconfigures herself as a cyborg, albeit a much different version of one, in the video for “Sock It 2 Me” directed by Hype Williams. The color palettes of the two videos are extremely different as Björk emphasizes the sterile environment through black and white while Missy Elliott creates a colorful pop aesthetic with bright reds, purples and blues.
The main reason these two videos look so different is that the songs they animate sound extremely dissimilar. While “All is Full of Love” is a slow, haunting piece, “Sock It 2 Me” is a bouncy up-tempo declaration of Missy Elliott’s power within an intimate relationship. While Björk as a cyborg is sleek, static and loving, Missy Elliott embodies a futuristic cyborg persona who is active, aggressive and energetic.
The prevalent use of computer graphics
within “Sock It 2 Me,” creates a video game world where Missy Elliott and Da Brat, a hard-edged MC who gained recognition with her debut album "Funkdafied" in 1994, recast themselves as powerful women doing battle against the forces of evil in outer space. Missy Elliott is a red and white or purple and white fighting machine that runs, flies and swims away from a succession of giant robots intent on her destruction. However, Missy Elliott negates the male video game fantasy of a supple female fighting character like Lara Croft and instead constructs a self-image that is literally larger than life.
Whereas Lara Croft’s outfit is skin tight and revealing, Missy Elliott’s costume is comprised of a series of round attachments that stick out from her body. Missy Elliott evokes a male superhero by decorating her red chestplate with a large M that recalls the S on Superman’s outfit. The visual cue of the letter M is repeated on the spaceship, which effectively stamps Missy Elliott’s ownership on the various elements of the video. By positing herself as a new kind of superhero within the realm of traditionally white, masculine heroes, Missy Elliott articulates a more fluid definition of gender.
Conclusion
One of the most appealing aspects of Björk’s and Missy Elliott’s music and music videos is that they continually exhibit a playful nature at the same time that they are interesting, innovative and engaging from a creative standpoint.
They successfully illuminate and challenge rigid gender categories within music video production by composing electronica and mixing hip-hop beats—skills that are traditionally viewed as technologically advanced and thus linked with “masculine” conceptions of musical art forms. Moreover, by juxtaposing binary oppositions such as “nature and technology” and “feminine and masculine,” within the same video space, the two women expose and dismantle the false limitations imposed by such rigid dichotomies. Björk and Missy Elliott establish themselves as agents who are involved in the music video production process, continually determining the look and feel of the finished product and distancing themselves from the stereotypical role of the sexually objectified female within the majority of music videos.
Further discussion of Björk’s and Missy Elliott’s music videos can build on this point by focusing on their relationships with particular video directors, including the collaborations between Björk and Michel Gondry and Björk and Spike Jonze as well as those between Missy Elliott and Hype Williams and Missy Elliott and Dave Meyers.
Both Björk and Missy Elliott have a distinctive style that is reinforced in their music, offstage presentation and music videos.
They are often whimsical and experimental in their destruction of the feminine/masculine binary and in their distortions of their bodies within their music videos. Björk and Missy Elliott have helped redefine the female subject-performer and her role in popular culture and both continue to break new ground with their most recent work. Both of them are inspiring because they sincerely embody these characteristics. Most importantly, within their music and their music videos, Björk and Missy Elliott refocus attention on the female body not as a biological entity but as a socially and psychically constructed arena open to re-imagination.
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