Although Christina Aguilera is a trailblazing pop culture icon in her own right, there’s no denying that, at times, there has been some overlap with her primary contemporary and “nemesis,” Britney Spears. From their “scandalous,” midriff-baring ensembles that the cast of Euphoria (save for Rue) would happily rock in the present to their shared history on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, it seems Christina and Britney have always been inextricably linked. And maybe that’s why Christina couldn’t help but “subconsciously” channel Britney just a little bit in her latest single from La Fuerza, “Santo” featuring Ozuna. And then, of course, there are the unavoidable moments when she can’t help but go all “Like A Prayer” video for the occasion, what with this being a song about salvation and a saint. Therefore the inevitable donning of crucifixes as fashion and standing behind a gate as a metaphor for Catholic repression.
It’s only right that Aguilera should unwittingly borrow from these two women, what with both of them haunting her ever since the 2003 VMAs, when the trio proved that someone always gets blatantly excluded in a ménage à trois. And while Rolling Stone might try to deem the setting Xtina and Ozuna find themselves in as showing off “Adam and Eve’s wild side,” this clearly ain’t no biblical garden. It’s a Britney perfume ad garden—specifically the one from the commercial for 2005’s “Fantasy.” As Xtina opens the gate to a seemingly abandoned theater, her tequila bottle (which reads: “Xtina x Ozuna”) crashes to the floor, somehow helping to magically transport her to this alternate realm. A fantasy, if you will. One in which it’s easy to imagine the same narration that Britney got in her commercial with, “Beyond the world we know, there lives a goddess with the power to transform herself. Few have seen her, but still they dream of the moment when she lets herself be found.” This alludes to Britney transforming into an owl in the short “narrative,” which, yes, come to think of it, is pretty much a rip-off of the Ladyhawke storyline.
There’s also more than a dash of “Like A Prayer” as Xtina is displayed by director Nuno Gomes behind a gate that resembles the very one Madonna’s own Black saint (santo) stood behind before she brought him to life with her raw sexual energy. After all, like Britney said, “Fantasy. Everybody has one.” Including fucking “holy ones.” In another version of said perfume commercial, Britney again seems to be describing the goings-on of the “Santo” video against a similar idyllic garden/forest backdrop as she remarks, “Once upon a time, there was a goddess and a hunter.” Sounds innocent enough—until it gets much rape-ier with the line, “She was beautiful, and he couldn’t help himself. There wasn’t a single part of her he didn’t wanna touch.” Cut to Britney running through the forest as this hunter, “unable to resist,” proceeds to chase her down. “But she was leaving soon, on a Goddess World Tour. So he did something kind of crazy.” Now cut to the K-Fed lookalike shooting her in the back with a “Magic Love Arrow.” Britney concludes, “And they lived happily ever after” (as we all know, they did not).
The forest of Xtina and Ozuna’s “fantasy” also has the sweltering, sexually-charged aesthetic of what Britney was aiming for with the set design of her 2001 VMA performance of “I’m A Slave 4 U”—complete with the slew of backup dancers writhing around nearby behind the duo. Apparently, the “devilish” nature of it all takes hold of Xtina strongly enough to warrant a spontaneous costume change as we soon see her in a skintight latex red number, followed by dancers dressed like plants enveloping her in a circle.
By the end of her torrid jaunt in the garden, it’s no wonder Xtina is left looking conflicted and disoriented—yet, at the same time, as resolute as Madonna deciding to report what she witnessed of the crime that ended up getting the wrong Black man (a foil for the saint) locked up. In any event, what Xtina really seems to be saying with this video has nothing to do with the endless rabbit hole of giving in to temptation, so much as a not so latent message to both Madonna and Britney that she secretly wants to collaborate again in some way. Perhaps in time for the impending twentieth anniversary of the trio’s indelible VMA performance together.
