Group: Justin Bieber Reinvented

In his initial rise to fame as a 16 year old created a meta-narrative of an innocent and somewhat playful normal young boy, this arguably promoted his image teen icon particularly for adolescent girls. His activity of bowling has connotations of young people having fun and this further implicates the primary audience is the age demographic that would carry out this activity – young teenagers.

In his most recent video, “What do you mean?” Justin Bieber has clearly reinvented his public image. This has been done through the actions involved in the video – sexually driven action and events that are shady: replicating a drug deal. The opening scene shows Bieber as a hooded character besides a motel that has a selling point of “ADULT MOVIES//COLOUR TV/AM/FM//WATERBED”- rich in connotations of potentially adverse behaviours. In this presentation of himself I feel Justin Bieber is trying to promote himself as a risk taker and mature and so because of this – to an extent explicit – video the audience interested will have changed, along with the metanarrative of Justin Bieber. This is an example of how music videos in particular can be used as a platform for artists generally to reinvent themselves and change their target audiences.

This also happens in another of his new videos, “Where Are Ü Now?” Whilst in this one he doesn’t take part in any activities deemed ‘mature’, he is in almost every frame. This means the audience has to consume him primarily, and in this case his new image and character – the change from a sweet and innocent young boy with brunette bangs to a tattooed risk taking alpha male with blond ‘floppy’ hair. His new image is littered with connotations of being fashionable and trendsetting whilst also providing him with a rough edge – the tattoos are the biggest symbol of this: they are growing in popularity in today’s society whilst maintain some archaic connotations of criminality on a smaller scale of subtle rebellion. In this light, Justin Bieber’s new tattooed body could be to suggest he is edgy, but also lacks care for authority. Both videos also contain an air of mystery through remaining somewhat unsolved and, as Dyer explores, provides a question of which audiences want an answer to – and so will buy products; this demonstrates how videos are a useful tool in recreating a star and star qualities and so promoting them to a new audience, but also drawing this audience in and influencing them to become consumers.

This same idea appears again in the album cover and artwork, as seen below. This fulfils Dyer’s criteria of a Pop Star on multiple levels – subtly providing Justin Bieber with characteristics that both differ from his old self and promote his new constructed personality to consumers. This image has had huge exposure recently, cropping up in magazines, videos, and general web adverts including those on YouTube and Pop-ups. This could be seen as showing how major record labels will constantly remould their stars to deliver to an audience that has ever-changing desires. Moreover it suggests he is well groomed, a trait which audiences have been identified to respect by Dyer. Consumers also want to believe stars convey real emotions and are ‘real’ humans, and I feel that in the NVC of the longing gaze, Bieber implies he is somewhat upset, as does his sign reading “What do you mean?”, as if he has just heard something he did not want to hear. The fact he is 'real' is reinforced by the lack of any props of much editing, with a black and white filter being the only blatant after effect. This is just all idle speculation however, and this does reinforce the fact questions are left answered and the audience will in fact be the ones asking this question, and so will purchase merchandise of the newly invented Justin Bieber in a bid to make sense of this unsolvable mystery – constantly leaving them wanting more and making him (and the major record label he is signed to) money.