Bjork is an international artist regarded for her creative integrity, often through the production of difficult texts. The red carpet entrance is a space revered for its tradition of celebrating the accoutrements of celebrity lifestyle. I intend to show how these two cultural products converge to, at once, achieve the same goals but for different purposes. I will examine Bjork's red carpet entrance at the 2001 Academy Awards Ceremony as a "difficult text." The strategies that I will employ to deconstruct her appearance/performance will be discursive, while still fitting within a Marxist framework. Bjork's value as an international experimental musical artist is of prime concern, because it informs her politics, her choice of forum, and her anticipated reception. Further, I propose that her appearance/performance was an act of resistance against commodity fetish, while at the same time making use of the fetish to advance her own goals. I also propose that because she is a product of globalization, she is allowed access to a red carpet walk and that she uses that power to disrupt the tradition, turning it into a transformative performance and making a statement at the same time.

To better understand how to proceed, and how to apply the following arguments, we must first determine what is meant by the term "difficult text." A difficult text is a term used to categorize any "readable" work (including literary, visual and musical examples) that proves especially inaccessible to audiences. This inaccessibility acts as a barrier between the work and the receiver. This barrier may serve to block comprehension and use, to prevent any significant interaction with the text, to create bafflement, and/or to produce anxiety on the part of the receiver (Diepeveen x - xi). This difficulty can manifest itself as structural complexity, instability, objectionable material, or material that depends on unavailable or painful historical context, to name just a few possible configurations (Watten 1).

For the purposes of application, it seems that the primary feature of difficulty rests in audience reception. That is to say that, whether there are just a few or a majority of audience members, there is a disconnect—whether due to incomprehensibility or dislike—that hampers reception. By reception, I am referring to the text either producing understanding and/or producing pleasure for the reader. It must be noted that to understand a text, one does not have to enjoy it; as well, one can enjoy a text without understanding it. It is speculated that what most readers expect to get out of the experience of reading a text, though, is some type of understanding or pleasure (Diepeveen x - xi).  If a text cannot produce one of those two responses, readers tend to label it a "difficult text," though how they proceed from there is not necessarily fixed. For instance, as Diepeveen mentions, for the audience member who values having to work with a text to uncover meaning, the experience that began in bafflement will most likely end in immeasurable pleasure (xi). However, if the reader does not find value in that experience and/or cannot see the social benefits in it [1], the text will most likely be dismissed (Diepeveen xi).

There are three other important points to mention in reference to difficulty. The first is that the difficulty could have been intentional on the part of the author of the text (as the modernist poets intended) or not necessarily intentional (as in works that are culturally-coded). Intentionality neither subtracts from nor adds to accessibility, though often an author does intend his or her work with a specific audience—and reception—in mind. To that end, the exclusion of all other audiences could become the site of difficulty of this text [2]. The second point, which connects directly to the last, is that being a part of a cultural community consciously or unconsciously informs one's reading of a particular text (Fish 2000) [3]. Theoretician Stanley Fish asserts that the text "would be understood to be acting in ways [appropriate] to the community of which they were, at the moment, members" (36), when discussing the relationship between community membership and interpretation. He says, further, that the final interpreted meaning rests upon one's interpretive framework, which is defined by one's community membership, and that this meaning could be completely divergent from another who's interpretive framework has a different orientation (36 - 37). The third point is that producing difficulty is a collaborative project, requiring input from both the author and the viewer. In essence, a text cannot be considered difficult, if there is no one to object to or attest to this fact. Without being read, the text is neutral, since it will never have been received by anyone. These three points seem of paramount importance when examining the difficult text at hand, the Bjork 2001 Oscars red carpet performance. These are the notions of difficulty that will inform this analysis.

Globalization is the next crucial topic informing this analysis. Theorists Karl Marx and Frederick Engels provided what will be my working definition of globalization, when, in The Communist Manifesto, they wrote:                    

All old-established national industries . . . . are dislodged by new industries . . . . whose products are consumed not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. (12)

More succinctly, globalization is the enterprise of commodities being produced in nearly every country on the globe and being trafficked to other countries for what results in international consumption. The result of such trafficking, says, Marx and Engels, is that:

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations, even the most barbarian, into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. (13)

The implication here is that capitalism is self-propagating and self-enforcing worldwide because of the benefits that it promises. Besides offering to sustain users of the capitalist system with financial rewards, what also seems implied is that it convinces those engaged in its administration to become more aggressive consumers as well. In this way, its pull or power grows exponentially as the world is exposed to knowledge of it. An example would be the country that decides to enter into foreign trade with others for survival, but whose administrators (and maybe eventually factory workers) decide that they want to buy the goods that they produce to ship to other countries. They may develop an appetite for more expensive (and maybe even imported) goods. They would become the same kind of consumer that they are looking to sell their own products to elsewhere. The detriment is that the nation and/or its people may never be able to enjoy the benefit promised them by capitalism (in the form of having an abundance of surplus), if indeed they require more to live than they needed previously. Like gambling, a country could grow addicted to reaching ever-increasing levels of surplus, while, at the same time, more frequently reveling in commodities with ever-increasing exchange-values (that, of course, economically benefit the seller more than the buyer).

On the other hand, one of the tremendous benefits of a worldwide consumer culture is the immense opportunity for cultural exchange. In the midst of such cultural exchange lies the opportunity to introduce difficulty created in one geo-social environment and disseminate it throughout to the rest of the world. The result is that any messages conveyed have a greater chance to proliferate since the audience is now much more wide-ranging and diverse. Conversely, there is also a greater opportunity to create anxiety within a greater number of people, if that is the intent.

The range of exchange opportunities available through—and because of—consumer culture and globalization, includes products of film, fashion and music. These three areas of culture will be explored in this essay as clear examples of globalized cultural exchange. As countries have come into contact with each other and exchanged goods and services, they have also exposed each other to the range of cultural choices available worldwide. This paper will highlight a fitting example of the intersection of film, fashion and music in one event. That event is the Academy Awards Ceremony (commonly referred to as the "Oscars").      

The Academy Award is America's highest, crowning achievement bestowed on what have been judged the best in films released of the year. Its categories are limited (less than 25 compared to music's the Grammys, which gives out over 100), its awards are all presented on-camera, and the televised event has consistently received extremely high ratings [3], all of which underscore its significance as a pervasive, American cultural event. Even though the purpose for the awards show is to honor those in film, one of the most central concerns of the evening—besides who goes home with each award—is what the celebrities, who are invited and who are nominated for the awards, are wearing [4]. The red carpet entry is central to this purpose for it is the first opportunity that the media, onlookers, and, ostensibly, the world get to see the celebrities' attire.

It could be said that Bjork picked the perfect moment to offer the world a difficult text, since the 2001 Oscars was particularly crafted to brandish the banner of a globalized film market. Presenting the world this acknowledgment of worldwide talent, America attempted to remain relevant to the film industry at-large, which like most other industries has undergone a global transformation. At the 2001 ceremony, awards were given to films and actors from all over the globe, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China) [5], Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro [6], Australian actor Russell Crowe, and Italian director Dino DeLaurentis received the Thalberg Award (Wasser par. 10). Not to mention that the affair was interspersed with international presenters and performers, including Arthur C. Clarke (who presented from Sri Lanka), Bob Dylan (who performed from Sydney), Sting (an Englishman), Coco Lee (Taiwanese), and, of course, Iceland's Bjork.

Following the idea that the Oscars somehow represents the world by including and awarding to those from around the world, it follows that the fashion spotlighted on the red carpet flaunts its international flair by representing designers from all over the globe. A simple glance at a list of the 2003 Golden Globe Awards (yet another highly publicized red carpet event) brings this realization to light. Fashion reporter Cynthia Nellis tells us that best-dressed Renee Zellweger wore Valentino (Italian), Debra Messing wore Vera Wang (Chinese American), Maggie Gyllenhaall and Heather Graham wore Chanel couture (French), Salma Hayek wore Narciso Rodriguez (Cuban-American), and the list goes on to name Ralph Lauren, Escada, David Cardona, Versace, and Armani (Nellis 2-4). It is not surprising that highbrow fashions spotlight typically non-American designers, since often their value springs from their association with global fashion centers like Paris, France and Milan, Italy [7]. The importance of the plethora of foreign designers—especially the inclusion of those who are not European—reinforces the notion of a more prevalent globalization of a variety of industries of which fashion is not immune. Bjork's choice of designer wear followed this trend of giving value to a non-European designer. Her dress was designed by Macedonian-born Marjan Pejoski.

It is important to foreground our discussion of the transgressive act by offering some information about Bjork, the artist behind the act. Formerly the frontwoman for pop band, The Sugarcubes (1986-1992), Bjork Gudmundsdottir began her full-fledged solo career in 1993 with the release of Debut. She and her band, The Sugarcubes, are credited with having created a musical style for Iceland, since Iceland had no popular musical style of its own before [8]. In 2001, after the release of her fifth of six albums, total sales for her solo albums are estimated to have exceeded 10 million units worldwide (Paoletta 3-4). These figures are important, so that we understand that Bjork is an international commodity, who is indeed marketed and marketable. Another important detail about Bjork is that, over the years, she has used collaboration as a tool to explore the range of possibilities before developing her own methods and boundaries for creativity. Not only has she collaborated with a vast array of music producers and artists (Nellee Hooper, Goldie, Matmos, to name just a sampling), she has collaborated with fashion designers (Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan), photographers (Nick Knight, Stephane Sednaoui and Nobuyoshi Araki), and video director (Chris Cunningham)—anyone who could help her craft the art/music of her creative vision.

It is integral to our discussion to understand the weight with which Bjork places on expressing her creativity in an all-encompassing manner; a way that involves all the senses in understanding the art. In fact, she is known for using visual mediums almost as much as aural ones [9]. To date, her musical expression is known as far-ranging and encompasses a myriad of genres, including punk, new wave, classical, dance, techno, jazz, pop and big band (Beatz 4-5). For the purposes of the popular music press, she is classified as "experimental." She is not afraid to take chances artistically. Finally, her music is very personal to her and she feels she has a moral obligation to be true to herself above all else. Her artist biography mentions that:

In conversation, Bjork speaks often about courage and cowardice, both of which figure large in the moral framework of her creative decisions. Characteristically, she has always pulled back from situations where celebrity or habit threatened to reduce her freedom, or she has expanded into areas of high risk where the potential for learning outweighed the possibility of losing credibility or commercial leverage. (Elektra 3)

She has been known to take risks in order to push the boundaries of her creativity. A recent, prime, and relevant example of this is her decision not only to compose the soundtrack, but to also star in movie, Dancer in the Dark. She was disparaged by critics for attempting (and failing at) too ambitious a task for a non-actor, but applauded by her core following for preceding onward into challenging territory (Elektra 3). Her role and soundtrack for the movie were the reasons she was invited to walk the red carpet at the 2001 Academy Awards ceremony.

The red carpet is a fetishized space, where a certain kind of behavior is prescribed. Also, the Oscars is the highest example of red carpet spectacle in America. To label the red carpet a fetishized space, we must first understand how the fetish operates. Though originally intended to explain religious behavior, the term "fetish" grew to denote any "object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion" ("Fetish," Webster's 1998). From that definition, political theorist Karl Marx used the word in a capitalist framework to suggest an obsession with man-made products (which he terms "commodities") and their influences on the natural processes of human life (chapter 1). In other words, man assigns an item an excessive and perverse value, often more connected to social relations than to the amount of labor required to produce the item. In the case of the red carpet, it is reverence for the area as a space for enjoying spectacle and the fetish of celebrity. One must be deemed important to walk down the red carpet. After all, the red carpet walk is an invitation-only experience. The value that one is assigned from having been invited is often calculable by the dollars that they can command for their labor. The wages that they command for their labor has often been assessed by having netted their past employer(s) substantial profit. For instance, Bruce Willis can command wages of $20 million per film for his labor, because movies he has acted in have made past movie studios far more than his asking price. He is unnaturally revered for having established himself as a box office draw and, therefore, will be invited to walk the red carpet whether he is being nominated for an award or not. Fans and the public at-large will be interested in seeing him (and what he is wearing) walk this special space of honor to celebrity. His highly marketable celebrity status earns him the right to take part in this spectacular parade. This is how the red carpet is the fetishized space.

What takes place on this fetishized space of the red carpet is an exhibition of commodity fetish. The stars that walk the red carpet generally wear pricey, exclusive designer clothes and jewelry. Their attire further underscores the notion that they are special (read "highly marketable") people, who wear items that bespeak status and financial success; items out of reach for most middle-class people [10]. Let us look at just one typical example: Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal wore a Chanel couture dress to the 2003 Golden Globe awards estimated to be worth $80,000 (Nellis 2). Also, many stars choose to wear Harry Winston diamonds, which range in cost from $90,000 and up (ETOnline.com 1). When asked by reporters, stars tell who designed their high-priced frocks in what amounts to a commercial for the entire world to see [11]. It is the on the red carpet that much of the world gets to revel in this spectacle, since this is the area that reporters and photographers use to approach, photograph, and/or interview the stars. Once the celebrities enter the theatre into what is, for the most part, a sit-down event, it is difficult to assess their clothing and accoutrements in any significant way. Therefore, the opportunity provided to display these items is important. Designer clothes, expensive jewelry and their display are fitting examples of commodity fetish. The designer clothes and jewels during the red carpet strut are a celebration of "the spectacular extravagance of money, beauty and talent" for stargazers the world over (Abdel-Aziz 4).

It can be said that there is a code of behavior and a fashion system in place for those involved in the Oscars' red carpet walk. We can consider Jennifer Craik's position that:

A fashion system embodies the denotation of acceptable codes and conventions, sets limits to clothing behavior, prescribes acceptable—and proscribes unacceptable—modes of clothing the body, and constantly revises the rules of the fashion game. Considered in this light, 'fashioning the body' is a feature of all cultures although the specific technologies of fashion vary between cultures. (5)

Over time, the red carpet walk has developed its own culture, which informs the participants' modes of dress and behavior. Prescribed behavior on the red carpet (and especially at the Oscars), includes wearing sought-after designer clothing (especially gowns), stopping and posing for photographers, and answering questions from reporters (especially 'What designer are you wearing?') before proceeding into the venue. Typically, females receive the vast majority of the media's attention for several reasons [12]. Fashion (or style) has traditionally been the domain of the female [13] (Radner 88-89). Therefore, it would logically follow that the women parading down the red carpet would wear the most extravagant, or at least style-conscious, fashions and get more attention for doing so. It would follow that women would be more aware of what is appropriate and/or expected, fashion-wise, at an event such as this.

It now seems necessary to recount the incident at question. Bjork was nominated in 2001 for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The song, "I've Seen It All", was co-written and performed for the musical in which she starred, Dancer in the Dark. Not only was she nominated for this prestigious award—most likely based on her success at winning best actress honors at the 53^rd Annual Cannes Film Festival—she was also invited to perform the song during the televised event. No doubt her many years of international star power—gauged through record sales—along with her recent successes at Cannes and nominations at the 2001 Golden Globe Awards are what deemed her a worthy candidate for nomination and performance—and to walk down the red carpet—at the show.

Image 1: Bjork on the red carpet.	Image 2: Laying the egg.

Seemingly following protocol, she took her place among the starlets on the red carpet before beginning her stroll. It was only under closer inspection that one could see that she was thwarting the established regimen. She was wearing a dress that looked like a large, white, feathered swan wrapped around her neck, whose skirt looked like a tutu with a flesh-colored fishnet bodysuit underneath it all (see Image 1). Further, she waited until the photographers started taking her photo before she dropped a large, white egg from underneath her dress and unto the floor (see Image 2).

Taking into account Judith Butler's essay, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution," we can read the red carpet walk as a performance. Butler contends that for an act to be considered a "performance," it must generally adhere to a certain set of criteria. Namely, it must create "an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts" (bodily gestures and movements, etc.), requiring a conception of a constituted social temporality, which manifests "an appearance of substance" (Butler 270-1).

Butler says these acts create a "constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief" (271). We can apply these criteria to the red carpet walk, as well. The red carpet walk has achieved its identity through repetition over time and so satisfies the repetitive requirement. Further, at each event—and especially at the Oscars—walkers wear certain types of clothing, repeat the name of their clothing's designer as often as they are asked, and they behave demurely, as previously discussed, which satisfies the stylization based on social temporality requirement. Performing in this pre-scripted manner maintains the integrity of the red carpet walk as one of underlining star status, denoting affluence, and maintaining/creating a model for non-celebrities (in the form of viewers-cum-consumers) to follow. Again, Bjork did not "perform" as she was supposed to. Instead, she used her status as a star (which allowed her to take the red carpet walk in the first place) to traverse red carpet tradition. She used this opportunity to make a statement, which singled her out and created controversy.

There are several characteristics about the incident that are particularly significant, including the fact that Bjork is an internationally-known musical artist prone to experimentation in her art (musically and visually); that she wore an extremely unconventional dress to such a rigorous event, whose onlookers expect a typical display of commodity fetish; that she dropped an egg from underneath her dress; that the incident took place on the red carpet (a fetishized space, where a certain kind of performance and/or behavior is expected); and finally that she would not divulge the dress designer's name when asked [14]. We have discussed how important each of those characteristics are in helping to sustain the Oscars' red carpet traditions. As mentioned previously, her attire and behavior were not consistent with preserving these traditions of Oscars past. The question remains why she decided to display such disregard for the established norms.

One of Butler's suggestions is to break the cycle of repetitive, stylized, socially temporal behavior, leading to an identity constitution, and transforming that identity through "a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style" (271). What Bjork did was not subtle and did its job to break and subvert the repetition of red carpet style. Because fashion can be used to disrupt [15], Bjork chose this vehicle to critique commodity fetish, and because the red carpet gave her access to the Oscars massive, worldwide audience viewership, her altered performance did not go unnoticed. Taking into consideration that she is highly collaborative, as mentioned earlier, it is no surprise that her act made audiences—in 2001, estimated at 42.9 million worldwide (Associated Press 1)—complicit in her act of transgression. She understands that she cannot produce the difficulty that she seeks and, thus, garner either support or criticism, without having anyone to read her text. At this event, during the red carpet walk, she was assured of having most likely the largest viewership ever at one time for her text.

The ironic part of her red carpet performance is that, though it may assure that she would not be invited back to walk the red carpet again, it also bolstered the star persona that she has created and maintained for herself (through years of repetition). She underscored the fact that one can expect the unexpected from her.
In fact, regarding her invitation to the Academy Awards, she has said:

I was very aware when I went to the Academy Awards that it would probably be my first and last time. So I thought my input should really be about fertility, and I thought I'd bring some eggs. (Bitzer 2)

By thwarting the expected red carpet performance, Bjork opened up the doorway to new possibilities of alternative performances (possibly what her egg was intended to symbolize). After all, she did not simply dress poorly for the event (as is what is usually talked about after the red carpet walk), she went out of her way to open herself up to possible ridicule by literally "laying an egg." Bjork picked a highly visible forum in which to unleash her difficult text. She is an international star who performed this act at an event whose treatment that year was very international, which might have scores more international viewers because of the numbers of international products receiving honor.

Further, since Bjork's career has thrived on producing the unexpected and, with that, a certain kind of difficulty, I would argue that this act was not a difficult text for her core audience. If we take into consideration Fish's premise that meaning is variable depending on the community doing the interpretation (Fish 37), we understand that the difficulty produced was due to the numbers of audience members unfamiliar with Bjork's artistry, and yet very familiar with the rules of red carpet performance. This difficulty was produced because Bjork was not dressed or behaving as prescribed and, further, that it was because, again, she did not simply dress poorly, but seemed to be trying to disrupt the space by dropping the egg. The addition of the egg demonstratedthat she was going out of her way to upset those who expected the usual parade.

Stanley Fish asserts that reading-cum-meaning is altered depending on the audience member's community affiliation and the knowledge that accompanies being a member in that community (37). Reflecting on this might lead us to understand that core Bjork fans may have other knowledge that being a part of that community grants them additional insight into her appearance and behavior. As mentioned previously, a Bjork fan is apt to know her penchant for taking risks. They would understand she would not be intimidated by the threat of failure—like being panned by fashion critics and entertainment journalists. Some of her core audience may know about Bjork's environmentalist mother, Hildur Runa Hauksdottir, who went on a hunger strike for three weeks (October 2002) to protest plans to build a 22 square mile large power reservoir for U.S.-based Alcoa's smelting operation (Kirby 1-2). Hauksdottir and other Icelandic environmentalists say that soil erosion and river pollution are the greatest dangers to the land there (BBC News 1-3). Those projected to be affected most severely would be the wildlife in the area, including the whooper swans (Middleton 2). Bjork spoke out publicly against the proposed $3 billion development at a conference against its development in November 1999 (2). Years prior to the Oscars, the concerns of wildlife, especially swans, were paramount to Bjork, so that a Bjork fan "reading" her dress may have immediately connected with her environmental activism. These fans might even already know that Bjork's Icelandic name means "re-birth" or "resurrection" [16]. They might associate the dropping of the egg with Bjork's maternal instincts, which not only have helped her produce two children to date, but probably, more importantly, a veritable plethora of songs. They may understand that she considers each song a child that requires care and nurturing, so that it can grow up and flourish on its own (Paoletta 3). Finally, core Bjork fans may realize that she grew up in a hippie, communal environment ("Bjork Bio" 4), where each community member depends on the other to achieve a certain happiness and balance, and whose culture is derived from a daily sharing of ideas [17]. Armed with any and/or all of this information might lead core fans to read the performance as bringing difficulty to the world of the Oscars, while knowing that in order to make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs. In other words, that you cannot have an impact if you do not take risks. Further that the result of such risk could lead to new life (symbolized by the birth of the egg) or to ruin (also called "laying an egg"). Regardless of the outcome, Bjork was opening herself up (on several levels) and helped foster new ideas about what the red carpet space could do. For Bjork, the red carpet was not about giving homage to commodity fetish in the form of expensive dresses and jewelry; it was about opening the world up to a new view of celebrity, that of a creator of new possibilities.

As a perhaps useful aside, Marcel Mauss' Essay on the Gift could help us theorize about designer (and friend) Marjan Pejoski giving Bjork the swan dress to wear. According to Gayle Rubin's article, Mauss says that "in a typical gift transaction, neither party gains anything" (541). One gives and receives a gift of equal value. In this instance, Bjork said she wore the dress on the red carpet at the Oscars as a birthday gift to the designer. If Maussian logic is applicable, then wearing the dress gave her instant attention she may not have normally gotten, while exposing Marjan Pejoski's design to a larger and more diverse audience. It does seem an equal exchange. The result of wearing the dress is that academics, like me, have sought out and circulated the designer's name, even though Bjork declined to give it when asked on the red carpet by reporters.

Further, Bjork went on to wear this dress for the Vespertine album cover just one month after the Oscars and she wore several other versions of it for the live concert tour that accompanied the album that fall [18]. She used the fuel created from what often amounted to negative press about the red carpet incident to add to her creative repertoire. Not only were people who may not have even heard about Bjork talking about her, she was carving out a niche for the swan dress (with its distinct style, as well as any and all symbolic meanings that may have been attaching themselves to it) as yet another collaborative piece in her artistic puzzle. Surely, when the publicity shots from Vespertine circulated, the public at-large was bound to remember something about Bjork unleashing it onto the world on the red carpet at the 2001 Oscars ceremony. The swan dress and the egg dropping made an impact on viewers and produced difficulty for some and/or meaning for others.

When we consider that assessing difficulty is a highly community contextual and collaborative activity, we understand that it can be used as a tool by those who stand to gain from its deployment. Bjork is keenly aware of the power of celebrity, performance and worldwide media coverage, especially since she is a product of a globally created and marketed music industry who relies on the power of image to sell herself. As a global cultural product, she is aware that the Oscars, especially in 2001, was an opportunity to create difficulty that would resound globally. Bjork welcomed this occasion and used it to extend her range of influence artistically and politically. Artistically, she can still be regarded as one who puts creativity above all else—even to the point of risking being written off for her difficulty. And politically, she has become associated with transgressing the fetishized space of the red carpet in some memorable and perhaps meaningful way. The red carpet is the world stage for global cultural products (like film, fashion and music) to come together. The film industry, Bjork and the fashion designers took advantage of this global market via awards shows like the Oscars, where television beams their products into homes across the world. Bjork saw her opportunity to not only thwart the tradition of the red carpet—and upset standard fantasies of commodity fetish—but to also enrich her own cache by underscoring her experimental artist status on this same fetishized space. In the meantime, she produced difficulty for those outside of her core fan base by dressing and behaving outside of the realm of red carpet expectations.

 

Works Cited

 

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