What strikes me most about Björk’s work is
that it is unpredictable. Her songs are often ambiguous and hard to deconstruct;
but through her ambiguity she is able to defamiliarize viewers from cultural
images and problematic patriarchal ideologies. She seldom utilizes clear-cut messages in her work—even the lyrics and visual narratives (videos) of some of
her songs seem to work against each other—but her songs invoke concrete emotional
experiences. Björk
said during an interview, “It’s my job to be emotional. Doctors cure diseases
and shoemakers make shoes. It’s my job to go through emotions and describe them
to other people” (Dibben 173). She refuses to accommodate the audience by “dumbing
down” her performance. Watching her videos is an intimate experience,
provoking responses unique to each individual viewer. As Nicola Dibben writes,
“Björk’s music can be understood as contributing to the cultural construction
of emotion as something individualized and internal, a state of being which
forms part of the broader cultural narrative belonging to the modern Western
subjective” (172). Björk’s work is personal and self-reflective, thus it is
more affecting to an audience than, for example, superficial pop music that
utilizes safe repetitive aesthetics for guaranteed market success; it is also through
Björk’s subjective emotional performances that she is able to defamiliarize
audiences from ideologies of “beauty”, “cuteness”, and “cathartic” cultural
routines. Ultimately, using themes of subjectivity and experience, I will show how
Björk defamiliarizes audiences from—and thus deconstructs— patriarchal
ideologies of femininity; to do so I will investigate three of Björk’s songs and
their accompanying music videos: “Cocoon”, “I Miss You”, and “Moon”. Björk
“others” herself to expose the innate strangeness of cultural ideologies; she
reveals that “comfortable” ideologies are
queer. “Cocoon” confronts ideologies of domestic and nurturing femininity;
“I Miss You” subverts the “cute” aesthetics ingrained in the patriarchal
construct of femininity; and “Moon” critiques cathartic, satiating cultural
“habits”, and proposes a “rebirthing” of experiences.
I will begin with a brief biography of Björk and then move on to explore the
three videos mentioned above. Perhaps Björk’s most redeeming quality is her “child-like” imagination and sense of
wonder; she demystifies the cultural binaries of “child” and “adult”. As Mark Pytlik writes, "It
is no coincidence that description of Bjork as a young child are often easily
interchangeable with descriptions of Bjork as a full-grown adult. Dating as far
back as her early days with the Sugarcubes, this basic precept—of
thirtysomething as five-year old and five-year old as thirtysomething—has been
central to most of the pieces written about her" (introduction). Björk was born in Iceland in 1965 as Björk Guðmundsdóttir, and for most of her childhood she
lived with her free-spirited mother and stepfather on a hippie commune (Pytlik
4); Björk jokes, “They all had long hair and listened to Jimi Hendrix all day
long, and everything was painted purple, so I’m allergic to purple now”(Pytlik
4). She was a child star at eleven, single mother at twenty, and lead singer
for the Sugarcubes before her solo career (Dibben 172), thus she exhibited “adult-like”
autonomy from a young age and
“child-like” wonder at every age. She
recounts, “ My first memory is being in kindergarten and I refused to be one of
the kids, I was always helping the ladies out…I remember putting peanut butter
and rye bread out for the kids” (Pytlik 5). Thus, even from a young age Björk
refused to be thrown into a category and defined by its accompanying ideologies.
She is feminine, masculine, child-like, adult, sexual, and innocent— perhaps
all in quotations. She exposes these roles to be social performances, weed-like
fantasies stemming from the human imagination— common and difficult to uproot.
The video for “Cocoon” (2002), directed by Eiko Ishioka, from the album Vespertine, features Björk in a tight “nude” body suit, her hair done in the style of a Geisha— drawing from Western orientalist fantasies of Eastern female sexuality. Björk initially stands in a group of her clones, and then distances herself, moving beneath a spotlight. The spotlight suggests that an audience or society watches her, thus she is not free. However, she is able to show emotion. Ribbons or wires shoot out from her nipples, and slowly and rhythmically they dance alongside Björk; eventually they wrap her inside a cocoon that lifts her into the air. These ribbons or wires —or perhaps even red licorice (playing into cultural fetishization of youth and innocence)— defamilarize the viewer from imagery of breastfeeding or “domestic” ideologies of femininity. Thus the patriarchal woman’s role of “nurturer”— alluded to by the wire or ribbon invoking breast-milk— slowly traps Björk in a cocoon. Women in patriarchal society traditionally stayed home to take care of children; confined to the domestic sphere, they were fantasized as pillars of morality—often they were “trapped”. Beth Bailey writes, “By mid-century, women’s nature no longer was defined as the oversexual embodiment of evil and temptation that previously culled from the Bible, but as the natural seat of goodness and morality”(Bailey 99-100). Björk moves very slowly and non-threateningly in “Cocoon”, and her voice—high, soft, and restrained — encapsulates a fantasy of innocent and vulnerable female beauty. Edmond Burke argues that “distress is much the most affecting beauty” (Ngai 827) and that “women are very sensible of this; for which reason, they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness and even sickness. In all this, they are guided by nature” (827). As Sianne Ngai and Judith Butler would point out, this problematic essentialist ideology of beauty (or cuteness) is not governed by “nature” but rather by culture or social conditioning. As Jeffrey Weeks writes, “We cannot reduce human behavior to the mysterious workings of the DNA, the eternal genes, or ‘dance of the chromosomes’” but instead we should view biology as “a set of potentialities, which are transformed and given meaning only in social relationships” (18). Björk pushes this “vulnerable” behavior to the extreme, becoming almost insect-like in her fragility. Thus, she queers the ideology of female weakness. Björk’s vulnerable nakedness, orientalist costume, non-threatening movements, and “earthly” life-creating qualities (red ribbons mimicking breast milk), are an amalgamation of cultural ideologies and fantasies. A tight-fitted body suit eliminates imperfections on her “naked” body; this, combined with her fragile and doll-like Geisha costume, exposes problematic fantasies of female sexuality. These ideologies are undercurrent in Edmond Burke’s descriptions of beauty as “smooth and polished… light and delicate” (Harbrace 367); Burke argues that beautiful objects have the properties of: smallness, softness, smoothness, and “nonangularity” or roundness in particular (Ngai 827). Notably, Burke limits his definition of beauty to the “the merely sensible qualities of things” (Harbrace 367), thus the beautiful become the objectified —that which is observed but does not observe. Furthermore, the qualities of a “beautiful” or “cute” object—evidenced in the object’s language and aesthetic appearance,—also becomes “identified with a ‘twittering’ use or style of language, marked as feminine or culturally and nationally other” (Ngai 815). Thus, “cuteness” or “beauty” can be a harmful aesthetic, perpetuating racist stereotypes of the “other”. Björk defamiliarizes these problematic aesthetics to the audience through her Geisha costume; thus she self-reflectively distorts “cute” and “beautiful” aesthetics.
The music video for “I Miss You” from Björk’s 1995 album Post, directed by artist/cartoonist John Kricfalusi (director of Ren and Stimpy), pushes “cute” aesthetics towards the “uncanny valley” or grotesque, defamiliarizing the viewer with the video’s theme of children’s television shows. Children’s shows and other cartoons— such as Archie Comics and the Disney Princess franchise — are utopian, cathartic, and potentially “numbing” realities in which few “uncomfortable” topics are explored; flawed cultural ideologies are usually unchallenged, sexuality or gender ignored, and essentialist themes—such as “true love” prevailing or “evil” people being punished—run amuck. Björk creates a distorted simulacrum of children’s television shows. The video set is reminiscent of 1990’s Nickelodeon or Pee-wee Herman’s Playhouse, with human hosts in costumes coexisting with cartoon universes; Björk also makes a particular aesthetic of female “cuteness” grotesque. Thus, the viewers cannot impose cuteness upon her or distort her aesthetic “cute” style. She exposes that cuteness is itself a distortion of female sexuality. The video defamiliarizes the “simplified” female body from cartoons and pop culture; this cartoon body is “cute”, non-threatening, and often sexualized. Barbie dolls traditionally have unreasonably perky breasts, tiny wastes, legs that are too long and thin, and strangely elongated necks. Should she be real, Barbie would immediately collapse. Additionally, Betty Boop and Archie Comics contain similar distortions and simplifications of the female body. Although the cartoon version of Björk is reduced to an essentialized caricature of her femininity, this is done with self-awareness. The video draws attention to her breasts and bum, exposing cultural fetishization of “cute” female sexuality.
“Moon” from Björk’s 2011 album Biophilia is a visually and aurally soothing video and song; its imagery and lyrics are repetitive and predictable like a lullaby— aesthetically beautiful and hypnotic. However, there is something uncanny and unsettling about the video’s predictability—specifically the moon fading in and out, going through its cycles, while Björk, wearing an orange Victorian-era-styled wig, also fades in and out of the picture. Perhaps this feels “uncanny” because the moon cycles depict time passing, and in the video time passes very quickly. Eventually the moon cycles are visually juxtaposed to (or feed into) a skull-like design in the sky that might be a pelvis; the bones allude to death that comes with time passing. However, the video also conveys imagery and lyrics related to “rebirth” or reconstruction of life. Björk sings, “Best way to start-a-new/ Is to fail miserably/Fail at loving/ And fail at giving” (3:10). Björk wears a strange porcelain doll-like mask (2:38). Fading in and out of the imagery with the passage of time, she might be the moon or she might be the sun; as such she sings that she is “rejuvenated and rested”, and “all birthed and happy”, alluding to the healthy cycles of nature in contrast to potentially “unhealthy” cycles of the city or society. The repetition in the video alludes to comfortable “routines” in life that might be repressive and numbing, perpetuated by heteronormative ideologies and cathartic promises of a happier, simpler future. Lauren Berlant outlines these “numbing” promises of a happier future in Cruel Optomism; he exposes attachments that are “optimistic”— promising a “fantasy of you” (22)— as inevitably counterproductive: you abandon the fantasy for the object and all it promises. Through “Moon” Björk challenges the audience to step away from routine and live in another way; at the end of the song she chants “to risk all is the end all and the beginning all”. The video suggests that life should be more than predictable routines— no matter how beautiful a promise they offer or how “natural” they purport to be. Ideologies are unstable, and routines or rituals cannot be justified by their mere existence. As Judith Butler explains, the things we do in defined situations, things we do over and over again in repetition, “create the effect of the natural, the original, and the inevitable” but are not necessarily so (Weeks 59). Björk chants, “To risk all is the end all and the beginning all”; the end of cathartic, repressive ideologies and the beginning of a more liberating existence. As Björk explains, “With each new moon we complete a cycle and are offered renewal —to take risks, to connect with other people, to love, to give” (http://www.bjork.fr/Moon).
Works Cited
The video for “Cocoon” (2002), directed by Eiko Ishioka, from the album Vespertine, features Björk in a tight “nude” body suit, her hair done in the style of a Geisha— drawing from Western orientalist fantasies of Eastern female sexuality. Björk initially stands in a group of her clones, and then distances herself, moving beneath a spotlight. The spotlight suggests that an audience or society watches her, thus she is not free. However, she is able to show emotion. Ribbons or wires shoot out from her nipples, and slowly and rhythmically they dance alongside Björk; eventually they wrap her inside a cocoon that lifts her into the air. These ribbons or wires —or perhaps even red licorice (playing into cultural fetishization of youth and innocence)— defamilarize the viewer from imagery of breastfeeding or “domestic” ideologies of femininity. Thus the patriarchal woman’s role of “nurturer”— alluded to by the wire or ribbon invoking breast-milk— slowly traps Björk in a cocoon. Women in patriarchal society traditionally stayed home to take care of children; confined to the domestic sphere, they were fantasized as pillars of morality—often they were “trapped”. Beth Bailey writes, “By mid-century, women’s nature no longer was defined as the oversexual embodiment of evil and temptation that previously culled from the Bible, but as the natural seat of goodness and morality”(Bailey 99-100). Björk moves very slowly and non-threateningly in “Cocoon”, and her voice—high, soft, and restrained — encapsulates a fantasy of innocent and vulnerable female beauty. Edmond Burke argues that “distress is much the most affecting beauty” (Ngai 827) and that “women are very sensible of this; for which reason, they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness and even sickness. In all this, they are guided by nature” (827). As Sianne Ngai and Judith Butler would point out, this problematic essentialist ideology of beauty (or cuteness) is not governed by “nature” but rather by culture or social conditioning. As Jeffrey Weeks writes, “We cannot reduce human behavior to the mysterious workings of the DNA, the eternal genes, or ‘dance of the chromosomes’” but instead we should view biology as “a set of potentialities, which are transformed and given meaning only in social relationships” (18). Björk pushes this “vulnerable” behavior to the extreme, becoming almost insect-like in her fragility. Thus, she queers the ideology of female weakness. Björk’s vulnerable nakedness, orientalist costume, non-threatening movements, and “earthly” life-creating qualities (red ribbons mimicking breast milk), are an amalgamation of cultural ideologies and fantasies. A tight-fitted body suit eliminates imperfections on her “naked” body; this, combined with her fragile and doll-like Geisha costume, exposes problematic fantasies of female sexuality. These ideologies are undercurrent in Edmond Burke’s descriptions of beauty as “smooth and polished… light and delicate” (Harbrace 367); Burke argues that beautiful objects have the properties of: smallness, softness, smoothness, and “nonangularity” or roundness in particular (Ngai 827). Notably, Burke limits his definition of beauty to the “the merely sensible qualities of things” (Harbrace 367), thus the beautiful become the objectified —that which is observed but does not observe. Furthermore, the qualities of a “beautiful” or “cute” object—evidenced in the object’s language and aesthetic appearance,—also becomes “identified with a ‘twittering’ use or style of language, marked as feminine or culturally and nationally other” (Ngai 815). Thus, “cuteness” or “beauty” can be a harmful aesthetic, perpetuating racist stereotypes of the “other”. Björk defamiliarizes these problematic aesthetics to the audience through her Geisha costume; thus she self-reflectively distorts “cute” and “beautiful” aesthetics.
Next, I will
talk about “subjective” experience in “Cocoon”. Björk’s voice in particular
alludes to a unique subjective experience; her delivery is “labored and
effortful: frequent and noisy breaths taken mid-phase convey the effect of a
large amount of energy being expended…the placement of words is extremely
labored: consonants become stressed and explosive” (Dibben 177). Through her
personal and unpredictable emotional performance, she demonstrates the power of
subjectivity. She communicates an emotion without stating a clear experience,
thus the “viewers” are forced to filter the emotions through their own experiences and use their
imaginations. Björk has said that her album Vespertine
is made “by a character who’s very introvert. And it’s about the universe
inside every person” (Dibben 182). When I looked at the lyrics that seem to
conflict with the video’s visual narrative, I became painfully aware of Björk
privileging “experience” over claims to
objective truth. I became aware of the extremely subjective nature of my
reading; but that is perhaps what Björk intended. The lyrics of “Cocoon” seem to privilege the transformative and
restorative power of lovers. Björk describes her lover as “restoring my
blisses”. She sings, “Who would have known/ Miraculous breath/ To inhale a beard/Loaded
with courage” (1:35). Maybe these seemingly contradictory narratives (lyrical
and visual) are juxtaposed to convey the confusion of relationships, love, and
sexuality—all ambiguous, mysterious, and not so easily definable experiences. Maybe
the song chronicles the initial ecstasy of a romance. The video might then represent an “older” Björk’s perspective— the lyrics written while she was younger and
in love; and perhaps she is describing the “relationship cocoon” that—and not
necessarily negatively—weaves lovers into each others worlds so
intricately that the relationship transforms
them into one entity with shared experiences; but I should stop “perhapsing”. That
I am able to enthusiastically apply several readings, attuned to my experiences
and views, demonstrates the power of Björk’s
ambiguity. She defamiliarizes patriarchal ideologies through visual narrative,
but through the synergy of the lyrics and
visual narrative, she privileges the power of the imagination over more
objective “truths” or interpretations; thus, she exposes “truths” and
ideologies as unstable, dependent on subjective experience.
The music video for “I Miss You” from Björk’s 1995 album Post, directed by artist/cartoonist John Kricfalusi (director of Ren and Stimpy), pushes “cute” aesthetics towards the “uncanny valley” or grotesque, defamiliarizing the viewer with the video’s theme of children’s television shows. Children’s shows and other cartoons— such as Archie Comics and the Disney Princess franchise — are utopian, cathartic, and potentially “numbing” realities in which few “uncomfortable” topics are explored; flawed cultural ideologies are usually unchallenged, sexuality or gender ignored, and essentialist themes—such as “true love” prevailing or “evil” people being punished—run amuck. Björk creates a distorted simulacrum of children’s television shows. The video set is reminiscent of 1990’s Nickelodeon or Pee-wee Herman’s Playhouse, with human hosts in costumes coexisting with cartoon universes; Björk also makes a particular aesthetic of female “cuteness” grotesque. Thus, the viewers cannot impose cuteness upon her or distort her aesthetic “cute” style. She exposes that cuteness is itself a distortion of female sexuality. The video defamiliarizes the “simplified” female body from cartoons and pop culture; this cartoon body is “cute”, non-threatening, and often sexualized. Barbie dolls traditionally have unreasonably perky breasts, tiny wastes, legs that are too long and thin, and strangely elongated necks. Should she be real, Barbie would immediately collapse. Additionally, Betty Boop and Archie Comics contain similar distortions and simplifications of the female body. Although the cartoon version of Björk is reduced to an essentialized caricature of her femininity, this is done with self-awareness. The video draws attention to her breasts and bum, exposing cultural fetishization of “cute” female sexuality.
“I Miss You” begins with a little cartoon bug being pushed
across the screen, and then cuts to Björk in bed wearing retro pajamas; she is bored
and frustrated, waiting for the love of her life that she misses and knows…but
has not yet met. Although her cartoon self and “real” self adopt “cute”
aesthetics in the video, the cartoon Björk is also violent and rebels against the
docility and innocence ingrained in ideological aesthetics of “cuteness”. Björk—through
her videos and public performances— embodies many “cute” aesthetics described
by Sianne Ngai in “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde”. Ngai writes that cute
objects are “soft, round, and deeply associated with the infantile and
feminine” (814)—so too is the aesthetic world of the video. The appliances are
flat and anthropomorphized; the bathtub bounces and the powder container
smiles. The video contains several allusion to the cartoon The Flintstones—including: Fred Flintstone shower gel, Paleolithic
fashion, and even short sequences coloured and framed like the classic cartoon.
However, unlike the cheerful “cavewives” in The
Flintstones, the cartoon Björk looks like a strung-out 1960’s housewife (or
wannabe housewife). She wears a pink vintage housedress, flipped out retro
hairstyle, and often has dark bags beneath her eyes. The video’s animation is
simple and “flat”; however, certain points breech the uncanny valley, such as
when Jimmy the Idiot Boy transforms into a computer game animated version of
himself and then stares at Björk’s bum (during a change in drum beat) (2:50).
Ngai
argues that commercial cuteness depends on pliability and softness: the cute
object “invites physical touching” and
the object must “withstand the violence its very passivity seems to solicit” (830).
Thus “cute” objects—such as the cartoon version of Björk—are designed
to invite abuse and distortion; they are not human-like enough to elicit
concern. The cartoon Björk is
violently disfigured while showering in toxic-looking pink bath suds—her head bitten
off by little cartoon piranhas (1:28). Thus, “I Miss You”
demailiarizes audiences from “cute” aesthetics and exposes the repressive
gender ideologies perpetuated by “cute” aesthetics. Björk
utilizes what Sigmund Freud described as the uncanny (and its unpleasant
affects in the domain of art): Freud shows that the uncanny emerges etymologically
from its exact opposite— from the intimate, homely, and the private; through a
process of what he calls slippage, where “the most homelike and friendly affect
turns into its ugly opposite: which is the weird, the eerie and not homie” (Winge 15). Björk pushes “cute” aesthetics to an
extreme grotesque in order to expose the
problematic ideologies innate in even a cathartic and familiar form of cuteness. In the second half of the video she
reveals frustration with— and eventually violent anger towards— the false
promise that the Disney Franchise has made to millions of little girls and boys:
that the handsome prince of their dreams will come find them if they stay home
and be docile and “good”. Björk’s voice is more aggressive in “I Miss You” than
in “Cocoon”. Björk repeats the phrase (or invocation) “I miss you/ but I
haven’t met you yet” and at 1:28 she belts the lyrics, frustration evident in
her voice. Soon she admits, “I’m so impatient/ I can’t stand the wait.” Towards
the end of the song she becomes disillusioned with the romantic fantasy of
waiting for her true love; she sings, “I know by now that you’ll arrive/ by the
time I stop waiting”. As the video ends,
she abandons cultural expectation of the cute object; guns flash across the
screen and she tears a cartoon chicken in half (as well as a monster earlier);
additionally she wears two condoms as a “bra” and a miniature Björk and Jimmy the Idiot
Boy dance in each “cup” (3:46). Thus, she
defamiliarizes the audience with cute cartoon aesthetics and exposes the innate
patriarchal ideologies or fantasies invested in cute objects.
“Moon” from Björk’s 2011 album Biophilia is a visually and aurally soothing video and song; its imagery and lyrics are repetitive and predictable like a lullaby— aesthetically beautiful and hypnotic. However, there is something uncanny and unsettling about the video’s predictability—specifically the moon fading in and out, going through its cycles, while Björk, wearing an orange Victorian-era-styled wig, also fades in and out of the picture. Perhaps this feels “uncanny” because the moon cycles depict time passing, and in the video time passes very quickly. Eventually the moon cycles are visually juxtaposed to (or feed into) a skull-like design in the sky that might be a pelvis; the bones allude to death that comes with time passing. However, the video also conveys imagery and lyrics related to “rebirth” or reconstruction of life. Björk sings, “Best way to start-a-new/ Is to fail miserably/Fail at loving/ And fail at giving” (3:10). Björk wears a strange porcelain doll-like mask (2:38). Fading in and out of the imagery with the passage of time, she might be the moon or she might be the sun; as such she sings that she is “rejuvenated and rested”, and “all birthed and happy”, alluding to the healthy cycles of nature in contrast to potentially “unhealthy” cycles of the city or society. The repetition in the video alludes to comfortable “routines” in life that might be repressive and numbing, perpetuated by heteronormative ideologies and cathartic promises of a happier, simpler future. Lauren Berlant outlines these “numbing” promises of a happier future in Cruel Optomism; he exposes attachments that are “optimistic”— promising a “fantasy of you” (22)— as inevitably counterproductive: you abandon the fantasy for the object and all it promises. Through “Moon” Björk challenges the audience to step away from routine and live in another way; at the end of the song she chants “to risk all is the end all and the beginning all”. The video suggests that life should be more than predictable routines— no matter how beautiful a promise they offer or how “natural” they purport to be. Ideologies are unstable, and routines or rituals cannot be justified by their mere existence. As Judith Butler explains, the things we do in defined situations, things we do over and over again in repetition, “create the effect of the natural, the original, and the inevitable” but are not necessarily so (Weeks 59). Björk chants, “To risk all is the end all and the beginning all”; the end of cathartic, repressive ideologies and the beginning of a more liberating existence. As Björk explains, “With each new moon we complete a cycle and are offered renewal —to take risks, to connect with other people, to love, to give” (http://www.bjork.fr/Moon).
Thus, in
privileging the subjectivity of experience, Björk critiques ideologies that hold
onto essentialist “truths”; she exposes patriarchal or essentialist ideologies
as unnatural, their “truths” based on experiences and thus subjective. I have
shown how she does this in various ways: in “Cocoon” she defamilarizes the
audience with a patriarchal ideology of women as nurturing and docile care
givers; in “I Miss You” she defamiliarizes the “cuteness” of children’s
television and cartoons, and thus demystifies a patriarchal ideology of “cute”
and vulnerable female sexuality; and in “Moon” she critiques the catharsis or
“cruel optimism” of cultural ideologies that keep people repressed and
“comfortable”. However, most importantly, Björk demonstrates through her
imaginative performances that although there are so many ways to experience the
world, we all experience similar emotions. Björk has said about the
subjectivity of her music, “If you look at my songs as a cave, the words and
the photographs are the guide who goes out of the cave and says, ‘Listen, look
in here”….If you look right here, there’s a bit of joy here, and if you look on
the left, there’s a bit of humor. Go a little bit deeper in the caves, and
there’s some pain. The words and the images are more like signposts, a tool to
describe the songs, because I want to communicate”(Dibben 175). She
communicates her emotional experiences
but leaves the “message” or emotional response up to the viewer. Thus she
values the subjectivity of human experiences; each audience member is meant to
interact with her music in a unique and personal way. Björk explains, “I never
thought my albums were for clubs…I think my music has always been for
headphones and people listen to it in private”(Dibben 193). Nicola Dibben
writes that Björk’s music “contributes to the construction of emotions
congruent with a particular kind of embodied subjectivity” (191); it is because of the subjectivity of her art
that she is able to reveal human experience as complex and ambiguous. Björk’s
work explores the fluidity of sexuality, ambiguity of gender, the subjectivity
of experience, and thus the fragility of “truths”.
Works Cited
Bailey, Beth L. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-century
America. Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989. Print.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press Books, 2011.
Print.
Black, Joseph et al., eds. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 4: The
Age of Romanticism. annotated edition. Broadview Press, 2006.
Print.
Dibben, Nicola. “Subjectivity and the
Construction of Emotion in the Music of Björk.”
Music Analysis 25.1/2 (2006): 171–197. JSTOR. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Ngai, Sianne. “The Cuteness of the
Avant‐Garde.” Critical Inquiry 31.4 (2005):
811–
847. CrossRef. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.
Pytlik, Mark. Björk Wow and Flutter. Toronto [Ont.]: ECW Press,
2003. Open
WorldCat. Web. 8 Apr.
2013.
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality. Taylor & Francis, 2009. Print.
Winge, Theresa. “Undressing and
Dressing Lolo: A Search for the Identity of the
Japanese
Lolita.” Mechademia 3.1 (2008):
47-63. ProjectMUSE. Web. 7 Mar. 2013.
