Chosen video:
Christina Aguilera - Beautiful
This highly powerful music
video was directed by Jonas Åkerlund and premiered on December 9, 2002.
Christina Aguilera’s presence in the video adds to realism of the lyrics and
emphasizes the meaning of the song to the artist. She features in the video
between shots of self-image related sequences of an anorexic girl, a teenage
boy weight-lifting, an African-American girl ripping out pages of a magazine
and throwing the pictures of white women into the fire, a Goth sitting at the
back of a bus and having people move away from him and a transgender person
putting on makeup, clothes and a wig. However, the most powerful part of the
music video is the two gay people portrayed by Jordan Shannon and Justin Croft,
kissing on a bench and ignoring the stares of people who pass them. This highlights
the problems that homosexual people have and Christina Aguilera justified this
by saying "this song is definitely a universal message that everybody can
relate to – anyone that's been discriminated against or unaccepted,
unappreciated or disrespected just because of who you are." This music video was all
about making people recognise that it was acceptable to be who you wanted to be
and by having an empowering music video to go alongside it made the song a
global success.
From the moment the video begins we are
plunged into the deep meaning of the video as Aguilera speaks the words “don’t look
at me.” These words speak depth as she is portraying the inner words that many
people who are discriminated against, unaccepted or unappreciated feel but also
feel they cannot say. The camera shots within the music video help to support
this, for example there are close up’s of Christina Aguilera to emphasize her
confidence and passion about this subject. This is then contrasted by camera
shots of the performers in the music video, as most of the time they are shown
they are in wide camera shots, making them look extremely small, helpless and
alone with their problems.
The clever thing about this music video
is that when the shots are of the artist, she is speaking the lyrics for
example “trying hard…”, then when she says the word “emptiness” they flash to a
shot of one of the performers, in this case the anorexic girl in the mirror.
This is very effective as the words that need to be emphasised the most are
sung in the exact same tone and pitch as all of the other words but feel so
much more realistic and meaningful because of the shots of the discriminated
against, unaccepted or unappreciated performers. Mise en scene plays
a huge part in this music video as the lighting has so much meaning. For
example the shots of the performers mostly use low key lighting which signifies
darkness, aloneness and suffering. However, when the artist is featured on
screen she is in a room with bright panels all around her. This signifies that
there is hope and ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ and identifies with the lyrics
as she is saying that ‘you are beautiful, no matter what they say.’ The low key
lighting represents the ‘they’ in ‘no matter what they say’ and the high key lighting
represents the ‘beautiful,’ she is trying to move people into the light and
help them be comfortable with who they are.
The
narrative develops as when the music builds up and the artist voice becomes
deeper and more longing, we see each performer face the camera straight on and
look directly into the camera with confidence and smile. This is a major
improvement from the wide shots the performers were in at the beginning of the
music video which represents progress and therefore progress in the real world,
creating a sense of realism. In the final scene, the narrative is supported by
the lyrics ‘don’t you bring me down, today.’ As these lyrics are spoken by the
artist, we see a flower that has blossomed beautifully. This represents that
the people who are discriminated
against, unaccepted or unappreciated can too blossom like the flower, as they
are all beautiful in their own way.
This video offers performance (in the
sense of the self-image related sequences of the performers with self-problems),
a relationship between the music video and the lyrics which illustrate the
lyrics and a clear powerful story. It is ultimately about the artist making
people recognise it is more than okay to be who you want to be.
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