There are a few ways to look at the music video for "Toxic." The first is that Britney Spears is playing a spy, or some sort of assassin, who steals a poisonous chemical from a lab in Paris, gets her cheating boyfriend to ingest it, and then disappears undetected. In doing so she dons multiple disguises, enlists the help of a fellow spy to transport her to the laboratory, and uses her training and experience in the field to do things like dodge laser sensors and scale skyscapers with suction cup-like devices. Exciting and adventurous? Sure. But all in a day's work for a spy or highly-trained assassin.
The other ways to view this video are ... darker. Much darker. Like, "midnight in a corn field" dark. But we will get to those in a minute. First, feel free to watch the video below and join me on the following pages for a discussion of its very sexy, occasionally confusing plot.
Before we start digging through the video, though, let's take a brief trip back in time, shall we?
The year is 2004. Provided you are willing to characterize her shotgun New Year's Eve Vegas wedding/annulment two weeks earlier as either an innocent mistake or all in good fun (and I am, because I am hopelessly in the tank for her), Britney Spears had been on a one-way bullet train to superstardom when the video for "Toxic" was released. The only minor blip had taken place a few years earlier, when she and Justin Timberlake went through a messy public split and he absolutely ethered her in the music video for "Cry Me a River." But still, even after that, she famously opened the 2003 VMAs by smooching Madonna, and she released her next record, In the Zone, which received generally positive reviews and debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. Things were all -- or at least mostly -- coming up Britney.
Here are some things that happened between this video and 2007: KFed. Rehab. The whole shaved head umbrella rampage thing. This performance. Etc. etc. etc.
All this brings me to my point: Do you think, on the way home from this video shoot, Britney Spears accidentally ran over an evil genie's foot in her Porsche, and he put a curse on her? This is my working theory.
The video starts out on an airplane with Britney as a stewardess. She spends the first 30 seconds or so doing things like spilling champagne on people's crotches, kissing children on the head, and making sexy faces at the camera that is following her up and down the narrow aisle between seats.
You know, stewardess things.
PICTURED: A very reasonable reaction to being propositioned on an airplane by an impossibly attractive stewardess who is half your age and looks suspiciously like a very famous multi-millionaire pop star. Especially when said proposition involves this advanced seduction technique:
This guy got paid for a day of work that consisted almost entirely of Britney Spears rubbing up on him and sticking her tongue down his throat. I hope he sent his agent a very nice fruit basket as soon as he got home.
But anyway, back to the plot. Why is Britney Spears rubbing up on him and sticking her tongue his throat, you ask? BECAUSE HE'S ALSO A SPY. She rips off his to mask and GOOD NEWS he was actually a very handsome guy all along! This is important because very pretty people should only kiss ugly people if they have ulterior motives or assurances that the ugly person is secretly attractive. Please make a note.
While she is making out with the very handsome be-ponytailed man, she reaches into his pocket to remove this device, then she marches out of the bathroom. Two quick things:
1) My favorite part of this scene is that, after she runs off with whatever device he was carrying that was apparently important enough that he was traveling with it in an extremely elaborate and life-like disguise, he just looks at the camera and shrugs, like "Eh, whattaya gonna do? She was pretty." This tells us (a) he is not a very good spy, and (b) we should begin diverting billions of dollars toward a program that recruits devious bikini models to work at the CIA.
2) Uh, where did she go after she stole this from him? They're trapped in a metal cylinder that is cruising at 30,000 feet. Couldn't he have just followed her back into the cabin and taken it back? I don't think she thought this through. It worked, sure, but it still may not have been the best plan of action.
Oh, also, she periodically pops up throughout the video wearing nothing but underpants and diamonds. I probably should have mentioned that earlier. My apologies.
CUT TO: Paris.
Britney has switched out the stewardess uniform for a leather catsuit, red wig, and hilarious sequined sunglasses that I'm pretty sure she can't see through, and has enlisted the help of male model Tyson Beckford to transport her to her desired location on a motorcycle. Given what we learned about Mr. Beckford's motorcycle driving skills in the first 20 seconds of the video for Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart," let's just say I might have looked for a different driver to whip me around the sidewalks of Paris at 200 mph.
And speaking of questionable spy-related decisions, I'll also go out on a limb and say blowing a giant hole in the front of a laboratory and strolling in wearing a red wig and leather get-up that doesn't cover your face might not be the most subtle way to make an entrance. But hey, what do I know, right? I mean, I've hardly robbed any laboratories.
Britney uses the gizmo she stole from the guy on the plane to enter a restricted area and swipe a vial of green poison. Which is just, like, sitting on a table, out in the open.
Scientist: Hey, what should we do with this vial of top secret green poison?
Other Scientist: Just put it on the table.
Scientist: Uh... shouldn't we put it in a safe in case the dude transporting the key -- which he is just keeping in his pocket, by the way. Not in a steel reinforced briefcase with a 30-digit combination or anything. IN HIS POCKET -- gets it taken from him by a sexy spy posing as a stewardess, and she blows a huge hole in the building and ends up walking off with the vial tucked between her boobs?
Other Scientist: Pfft. Like that could ever happen.
So this is where Britney does a dance version of the scene in Entrapment where Catherine Zeta-Jones slinks and dips beneath the lasers. Okay, fine, got it. Just one thing...
These lasers didn't get triggered until she accidentally stepped in front of a motion sensor on her way out of the room where the vial was stored, which means these lasers WERE NOT triggered by her blowing up the whole front of the building when she first got there. This security system is both confusing and terrible.
We then get a quick shot of a guy (her boyfriend, presumably) making out with a girl in the shower. This is why Britney is doing all this. For revenge against her other-lady-smooching beau.
The lesson here is that Britney Spears does not tolerate extra-relationship making out unless said making out is part of a plot to kill the other person in the relationship for their original making out-related transgressions. Seems reasonable.
nbd just scaling a tall building with suction cups while dressed like a fancy gypsy
Britney enters her lover's apartment through the window and confronts him, first throwing him on the bed, then whipping him on the floor, then kissing him a bunch. He doesn't seem all that concerned to this point, which brings up an interesting question: If he wasn't gonna fight her on this one, why didn't she just take the elevator and knock on his door ? Could have saved her a whole lot of suction cupping her way up a building. That's all I'm saying.
p.s. I selected this screencap so I could point out that Britney Spears sticks her tongue out like that every time she says the letter "L,", which is something I noticed on my third consecutive viewing of the video as I was working on this post. My job is weird.
After she kisses him, she pours the poison into his mouth (NOTE TO SELF: If you happen to be dating a spy or assassin, do not cheat on them), then...
... leaps off the balcony to make her escape.
Okay, but...
Remember how I said there were other, darker ways to look at this video besides "Britney Spears is a spy and she uses her spy training to kill her cheating boyfriend"? I mean, that's pretty dark on its own, seeing as it involves a spy risking an international incident and blasting off the front of a laboratory as part of a plot to murder her lover, but here are some other possibilities:
- What if everything between the first shot of Britney (where she's on the phone in the plane) and the last one (back in the plane after she jumped off the balcony) was part of a daydream she had at work? What if she knew her boyfriend was cheating on her, so she spent the whole flight conjuring up a scenario where she seduced the schlub on the plane, rode a motorcycle through Paris, stole a vial of poison, and murdered him in his apartment? And what if that leap off the building at the end was actually her committing suicide? That would mean this stewardess was having vivid, elaborate visions of a murder-suicide, and should probably see a psychiatrist.
- What if she wasn't a spy? What if she was just a normal stewardess who found out her boyfriend was cheating on her, and spent months -- maybe even years -- teaching herself amateur spy techniques (seduction, laser-evading dance movers, how to scale a building with suction cups) and researching her plot, all while pretending nothing was wrong and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Then, when the time came, BOOM, she followed her plan to the letter, killed her lover, and jetted off on the next flight. That would be downright psychotic, and it would explain some of the amateur hour spy mistakes we saw throughout the video. It would also be diabolical. After all, who would suspect a simple stewardess of such a plot? Not the overworked cops on the beat, that's for sure. Someone needs to get Columbo on this, pronto.
Anyway, those are some things to think about next time you watch this video. Did I just blow your mind a little? I feel like I did.
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Mostly I remember this as being the first time I realised she probably didn’t look like that in real life. Seriously, she was at least 50 per cent CGI in most of this video.
(Also, vial. Vial. It means a small bottle)
Yup. Fixed. I am an idiot.
I was really hoping the next video breakdown was going to be DMX’s “Party Up”.
I just assume all of these are a warm up for a R.Kelly/Mr. Biggs extravaganza.
Not a bad theory.
But clearly the real “plan” was to get “college kids” to play this “song” every “third” song, in between “In Da Club” and “Hey Ya” at “frat parties” so that the “students” would “dance all up ons each other” until “campus police” came and “shut them down” for “underage drinking.”
A plan which was carried out to great success.
devious sons of bitches.
But yea Danger my world was changed, nobigdeal
It’s actually not that bad a song, if you can get past the fact that your girl cannot sing. At all. She can’t even hit the opening notes. Therefore, this recap would be the optimal way to enjoy this video, as I always have: muted.
Local H covered the song and it’s actually decent. I had it as my ringtone for a couple months. It was always fun to see the confused faces of my friends when they heard it.
Yeah, because having Local H as your ringtone is WAY cooler than having Britney Spears as your ringtone…
Yeah, I just looked in my phone and found covers by Or, the Whale and Portland Cello Project. Apparently my iTunes addiction is getting out of hand.
I dream of the day that Immortal covers Hit Me Baby One More Time.
I will die that day, fulfilled in every way possible.
Danzig would also be acceptable.
I am impressed that they managed to fit as many plot holes into a few minutes as was in the whole of Terminator: Salvation.
How the hell did Britney make it thru her meltdown years without a sex tape and the majority of her money?
She had a LOT of money. And I’m sure there’s a sextape; it just hasn’t been released and probably won’t ever be. Whoever’s got it can’t make money off it without Britney’s signature.
Her dad stepped in and saved her ass.
Yea she’s lucky she has family who cared enough to stop her downward spiral unlike some stars(Blohan). She’s thanked her dad many times for stepping in.
I’m really impressed by DG’s breadth of knowledge when it comes to music videos – to remember that Tyson Beckford also drove a motorcycle in the Toni Braxton video is some Rainman-level recall.
And Toni Braxton stayed, um… excited even has he was dying in her arms.
I love Un-break my heart but that is the worst motorcycle accident in a video ever. It was entirely non-lethal and if that were real life he would have gotten up dazed and brushed the dirt off his clothes and then punch the dumbass driver lol
18-year-old me was very grateful for this video when it first came out
Bra-vo.
I’ll also go out on a limb and say blowing a giant hole in the front of a laboratory and strolling in wearing a red wig and leather get-up that doesn’t cover your face might not be the most subtle way to make an entrance.
Not a fan of Alias I see.
I’ll be looking forward to your retrospective on Nookie by Limp Bizkit next week.
Thats where you’re going with this, right?
I hope so.
There is never any reason to discuss Limp Bizkit … not ironically, not even to make fun … There are some shameful national moments that should forever remain unspoken …
Limp Bizkit is the USA equivalent of Nickelback.
The only appropriate discussion to be had re: Limp Bizkit is the Homeland Security conversation about how to prevent that from ever happening again.
If you have a time machine, you should handle the Limp Bizkit situation immediately after dealing with the Hitler situation.
“This tells us (a) he is not a very good spy”
Do you not watch Archer?
I’m not proud that I know this (okay, a little bit) but Womanizer was the sequel to this video. I think it’s a different guy though.
As a female, I kind of have to love me some Britney. This was great.
Wow, I can’t believe we’re almost a decade in the “Britney Spears used to have an amazing body and was the IT girl of the world.”
Her decline happened way too soon.
Oh god, I’d blanked out that Gimme More performance.
The last great Brit vid. After this, it was just the sound of the toilet flushing. Props to JT for the bang-and-run job. His timing was rather good on that one.
I like the last and darkest option best. If you think about ask the crazy shit that Britney has done over the years, wouldn’t that be the most logical interpretation?
Btw, the first time I saw this video, my mouth was literally open the entire time. Between the see-through dress and the rest of her outfits, nothing else existed.
All.
I agree. It was like another dimension when I first saw this video. Her rubbing her butt on that guy was a killer.
It’s a given that no one on this board “knows” me well enough to take any of my recommendations seriously but do yourself a favor and check out Yael Naim on youtube. She does a cover of this song that is about 50 times more seductive than Britney’s version. Which is really amazing considering that there is no accompanying video on which to sell her sex appeal.
Thanks for the head’s up. No joke – she is nice.
When I first saw her, I had a feeling she would go down hill fast. She had a certain white trash “I’m going to pump out a couple of kids before I’m 25 and you will wonder why you ever found me hot” aura about her.
Oddly enough, I expected her career to nosedive significantly faster than Lindsay Lohan’s. Just goes to show that she might have a better “team” around her.
hopelessly in the tank for her
Yep.
That just made my day. Hilarious. And terrifying.