Okay so mostly everyone living in the 21st century knows, or was once shamefully obsessed with, the one and only Britney Spears. Less than a decade ago she was a pop culture sensation and was known throughout the world for her talent.
Popular culture refers to the aesthetic products created and sold by profit-seeking firms operating in the global entertainment market (Grazian, p7). So technically britney is regarded as a "product" to be sold to the public, and profit is expected to be made out of her talent.
She started out as an innocent young country girl who just loved to sing but somewhere along the way she lost herself and became a lesser version of herself.
The worst part is that the whole world had to witness her breakdowns and her face was all over the magazines and tabloids.
Who could forget this phase of her life. The whole world witnessed as Britney went through a bad breakup and watched as her career went down to shambles compared to how it was before.
Enough about her past for now. What really got my attention this week was her new music video for her latest single "Hold it Against Me".
I figured this would be the time for her to regain herself and maintain her initial claim to fame. The fame that came without the rumors and drugs; the fame that came out of respect for her talent.
But I couldn't be more wrong. The video was not the comeback we were all waiting for, it was more of a video promoting her products and enticing people to buy specific brands.
The video revolved around product placement. Each product was shown really quick but the audience could easily notice the brand and anyone would notice that it was no coincidence that the products were placed in the video.
Less than one minute into the music video Britney receives a perfume from one of the background dancers and of course it is "radiance" by Britney Spears, and the camera zooms in on the perfume and large bold letters are clear to the audience. She sprays some perfume and continues to look for other products to introduce next. Next there is a short pause on a make up packet, Make up forever, which she opens and applies to her eye lids. Then she is shown using the sony plasma touch screen, surfing the web on the the plentyoffish website, which was also seen in Lady Gaga's Telephone video (which is a whole other shameful story about product placement). After that there are plenty of other clips where the word Sony dominates the screen.
Even though the video looks like it would be a high budget project, I reckon it easily broke even and received profit from the ridiculous amount of advertisements in the video.
