Analysis Christina Aguilera's Beautiful
Artists use music video’s to visually show the meaning behind of the song and how they want it to be portrayed. Some music video’s use socio-cultural codes to construct the visual narrative and structure of their work. For example the music video of Christina Aguilera’s song ‘Beautiful’, ‘packed with a message of holding one’s self up against criticism from the outside.’¹, shows the insecurities people have with what society portrays to be beautiful. Such as showing characters throughout the video struggling with body image, sexual preference and bullying. The characters develop throughout the video, showing that they accept themselves for who they are and understand the meaning of inner beauty.
Music videos are created for multiple purposes, the main is to promote the artist. Another purpose is to express the artist’s intentions of the song visually instead an otherwise audio medium. Such as in Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’ music video, the use of the multiple story lines and sequences about the characters struggles and developments, show the songs meaning of inner beauty and self-acceptance.
The video opens with self-image related sequences of individuals, such as a young girl looking in her bedroom mirror and a young boy lifting weights with the walls covered with pictures of bodybuilders around the room. The cultural codes showing through these characters are the struggles with anorexia as well as with body image. The young girl is shown to be anorexic and unhealthy because of the exposed ribs being shown and the worn out, pasty complexion on her face. As she examines herself in the mirror she views herself from different angles, showing her feeling her undernourished body, in particular the exposed bone that is showing from being underweight. The young boy is small and thin and is shown lifting weights in hopes to gain more muscle and look more like the pictures on his walls. His walls are covered with pictures of bodybuilders, possibly showing what he
Music videos are created for multiple purposes, the main is to promote the artist. Another purpose is to express the artist’s intentions of the song visually instead an otherwise audio medium. Such as in Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’ music video, the use of the multiple story lines and sequences about the characters struggles and developments, show the songs meaning of inner beauty and self-acceptance.
The video opens with self-image related sequences of individuals, such as a young girl looking in her bedroom mirror and a young boy lifting weights with the walls covered with pictures of bodybuilders around the room. The cultural codes showing through these characters are the struggles with anorexia as well as with body image. The young girl is shown to be anorexic and unhealthy because of the exposed ribs being shown and the worn out, pasty complexion on her face. As she examines herself in the mirror she views herself from different angles, showing her feeling her undernourished body, in particular the exposed bone that is showing from being underweight. The young boy is small and thin and is shown lifting weights in hopes to gain more muscle and look more like the pictures on his walls. His walls are covered with pictures of bodybuilders, possibly showing what he
References: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/christina-aguilera-gay-fanbase-_n_2206578.html ⁴ Sal Cinquemani, November 2, 2002, Slant Magazine ⁵ glaad. February 28, 2003. http://web.archive.org/web/20030818043825/http://www.glaad.org/media/release_detail.php?id=3283 ⁶ Hollow Verse