After watching Christina Aguilera’s new music video for Not Myself Tonight I started to realize what is fundamentally holding Christina back from competing amongst the most elite women in music; there is something evidently missing from the genuineness of Christina’s image as a performer. Even though she has been performing publicly for twenty years, since being released from Disney, Aguilera’s image and personality have never quite coincided. It’s as if she’s created a public persona, a double consciousness, even a split personality, that she renews every few years. The way I see it, Christina’s image has drastically changed three different times: from “Genie in a Bottle” innocent and naïve Christina à “Xtina” à innocent, a little boring, a little older Christina à renewed “Xtina” but a little less ghetto and a little more cliché “bondage is edgy” type feel. Now, as Madonna has proved for ages, there is nothing wrong with a little artistic renewal. But when it becomes as calculated and predictable as it has in Christina’s case, it becomes only confusing and monotonous. The problem is that when Christina first came on the scene as a teenage solo artist, people questioned why she was so falsely innocent, when she tried to be more sexy people questioned why she took it so far (I mean, naming the song “Diiirty” was a little over the top), and now her return to that raunchier version of Christina has people shaking their heads once again, wondering why a wife and mother is wearing bondage and having sex with another man for the whole world to see. It feels “diiirty” but not in a good way—it feels just… wrong. Christina seems to have two parts that she cannot reconcile, and she is simply “not herself tonight”—onstage or off. And if she’s ever going to survive in an industry that relies so heavily on that very same image, she’s going to need to reconcile these two sides, and fast.
If you want to see what I’m talking about, watch the new video here:
No comments:
Post a Comment