Music Video
The music video for "Pagan Poetry", directed by Nick Knight, which as stated on its making of page "is about a woman preparing herself for marriage and for her lover". It was also one of Björk's most controversial because of the highly blurry and stylized images of explicit sex it contains, including fellatio and ejaculation, and also images of big needles sewing pearls to the skin. The second half of the video features Björk in a dress designed by Alexander McQueen, which covers only the lower portion of her body. The upper portion of the dress consists of pearls piercing her skin, which is shown throughout the first half. The video was banned by MTV in the United States, but was eventually shown in unedited form on MTV2 in a presentation of the "20 Most Controversial Music Videos".
About the video, Nick Knight explained "I wanted to strip her down. She's actually quite raw, womanly and sexy. There's a different side to her that doesn't come across normally in her videos. That's what I asked her to do and that's what she did." When asked if Björk was the one who plays the sexual acts as well, he explained "I gave her a Sony Mini DV camera and asked her to shoot her own private scenes She asked me to make a film about her love life, so I merely gave it back to her and said 'Film your love life'."
Read more about this topic: Pagan Poetry
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