Keeps Gettin' Better?: Christina Aguilera Reflection
The Music video to Keeps Gettin’ better is interesting because it places Aguilera as a girl next door/one of the boys figure, while at the same time making social commentary on the sexual depiction of females in forms of digital media. The main central focus of the music video has Aguilera dressed in a hoodie behind the controls of what appears to be an editing system. She is conservatively dresses and has knowledge of the technical controls, giving her a nerdy girl vibe that fits very well into the girl next door category of pop star. The clips in which she seems to be editing all contain her in a very sexualized fashion. This disparity between the editing room Aguilera and the videos she is in draws attention to the ways in which the media causes female artists to have to present themselves in s sexual light in order to gain the attention and following that will make them successful. This juxtaposition of different presentations of herself also causes the viewers to ask themselves the question why can’t Christiana present herself in both a girl next door and a sexual way?
According to Kristin Lieb a female pop star can only fulfill one of the categories that enables a female pop star to be famous at a time, but this video is a direct contradiction of this ideology. Even the commenter on YouTube see the ability of Aguilera to hold multiple personas at a time and are not turned off by the concept. Commenter Corijuan Reese said “love the symbolism behind this video.. the way Christina's just chilling behind the circuit board while she controls everything that goes on.... this was a point in her career where she really had nothing to prove to anybody and I just love it. For 2008 standards, this song is actually pretty good.” However, not all of the people that viewed this video on YouTube were able to either understand the complexity behind the images of the video or they did not agree with what Aguilera was trying say with the imagery in the video.
Carlos Arturo Aguilar Colmenares for example stated in his comment that “The song is good but the video could be better...” this comment does not elaborate on why he disliked the video but his dislike of a video in which the star is trying to break away from the convention of limiting oneself to just one identity does, in in itself, help to uphold Lieb’s idea that a pop star can only hold one persona or identity at a time if they want to maintain as large a fan base as possible.
I myself and more compelled by this complex display of identity because I find it to be a more accurate depiction of who xtina probably is because humanity in and of itself is not something that can be forced into one flat identity, it is instead a complex and flexible dynamic that I feel this video captures while at the same time criticizing the system that tries to make female artist less interesting and dynamic individuals.
