Björk – Venus as a Boy
Björk – Venus as a Boy (1990)
Directed by: Sophie Muller
The music video was directed by Sophie Muller and features Björk in a kitchen, fondling and cooking eggs. The using of eggs was inspired by the singer’s favorite book, Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille, a novella which deals with the bizarre sexual perversions of a pair of teenagers. In one point of the book, a girl, Simone, uses boiled eggs for sexual stimulation.
The story of the egg comes as Björk explains:
“ She [Sophie Muller] kept going on about it being fried. I was saying, ‘No way is that book about a fried egg! I’m sorry. Poached? Okay. Boiled? Okay. Raw? Okay. But not fried.’ [And a fried egg is unsuitable because……?] Because it’s too hard. It’s rough and it’s greasy. It should be about being sort of liquidy and wet and soft and open… ”
She gave Muller a copy of Story of the Eye a couple of days before they filmed but didn’t insist that she read it. Muller didn’t have the time. After recording the video and then reading the book, Muller admitted to Björk that “Fried was the wrong egg!”
Much of the cutlery featured in the music video came from Björk’s house.
