A mockumentary about Charli XCX presents consistent self-irony as calculated image cultivation.
Charli XCX’s mockumentary, “The Moment,” is highly entertaining. The film attempts to make the nervous tension under which Charli XCX stands in the first half palpable: being shuffled through meet & greets and having to digest in five-second intervals that fans tell her they wanted to kill themselves – but then the “Brat” album came along, and life made sense again.
Around the midpoint, the film shifts, showing how the artist and her team’s idea is run into the ground by the record label, Amazon, and various sponsoring services. Patricia Arquette plays Charli XCX’s label head at Atlantic Records. Alexander Skarsgård embodies the concert film director hired by the major label: an overbearing, repulsive, pseudo-spiritual type with disgusting NLP media language, full of phrases like “Let’s talk about it” or “I see your point.” It’s so exaggerated and slimy that it’s great fun to hate him.
Universal
Nevertheless, Charli XCX doesn’t take a big risk with “The Moment” because irony is a well-established business model and basic tone. That’s also why Amazon has no problem being portrayed as a producer of crappy, unnecessary, meaningless concert films according to the same old scheme. Record companies also no longer seem to have a problem being portrayed as evil companies that don’t understand and suck the life out of their artists. Everyone is happy to play along in “The Moment.” It’s a film produced by the music industry that talks about how bad the music industry is. Charli XCX functions as an artist, but clearly operates within an established system.
A Summer of “Brat”
Even those who haven’t heard a single song from the album: the word “Brat” glowed in social media feeds, comment columns, and on advertising screens for one summer against a toxic green background. “Brat” was used for memes, large corporations tried to profit from the hype, and Kamala Harris’s campaign even used the aesthetic to let the world know: I’m a brat, an immature spoiled person, and I say that ironically.
In “The Moment,” a bank on the verge of bankruptcy introduces a “Brat Credit Card” for queer people that Charli is supposed to promote.
What “Brat” actually stood for is not entirely clear: a nihilistic, hedonistic “I don’t care, I love it – where’s the next line?” That’s the raw club vibe that characterizes the British musician Charli XCX’s sixth studio album. Irony and indifference have stamped out the cultural markers that were so important to parents: an Aphex Twin t-shirt meets a Britney Spears mini-skirt.
“The Moment” takes place in September 2024, when the album had already been on the market for three months, the “Brat Summer” had been celebrated – but the machine has to keep running. How can a “Brat” summer be turned into an entire “Brat” era? The Spice Girls-esque girl power of the 2020s, which writes “cunt” on its forehead instead of “bitch.”
“The Moment” Functions as a 90-Minute Image Clip
In “The Moment,” Charli XCX is nervous and always in character. She plays it safe and doesn’t reveal her cards. Charli XCX, or Charlotte Emma Aitchison, plays it confidently and contradictorily. “The Moment” functions as a 90-minute image clip. We see a Charli XCX who is boss enough to press the emergency stop button during tour preparations, drive her team to despair, and escape to a holistic spa in Ibiza.
There, she falls victim to Kylie Jenner, a cosmetic/shaman from self-optimization hell, and allows the industry to swallow her work out of fear of becoming irrelevant.
Universal
What you see in the mockumentary “The Moment” isn’t particularly new or revealing. But the absurdities one hears from the music industry and from the environment of creatives sound authentic. Director Aidan Zamiri has made many music videos for Charli XCX and knows the right tempering of ironic breaks.
Whether all of this is consistent self-irony or merely calculated image cultivation ultimately remains secondary. Whether it says Bitch or Cunt or Brat makes no difference.
We see what it is. And that seems surprisingly empty despite all the energy.
