Charli XCX Doesn't Want Pop Stars to Become Products

This story contains spoilers for The Moment. Minutes into The Moment, Charli xcx asks a question that defines the entire mockumentary. Speaking to her manager, Tim (played by Jamie Demetriou), she posits if the Atlantic Records-backed director Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård) “makes adverts for women." Tim responds confused, assuming the pop star is referring to Johannes’s commercial work he’s unaware of. But Charli is, in fact, talking about the glossy, controlled tour movies and pop docs he’s known for; she just sees them as no more than A-listers carefully curating their image. “No, like the woman is the advert.”

The Moment may very well be Charli xcx’s own form of brand management—but it’s also an anti-capitalist critique of the music industry and its proclivity to turn female artists into sellable brands. While the A24 film—set after the release of the British artist’s 2024 album brat, as she prepares for a tour—has seen rightful comparisons to This Is Spinal Tap and Spice World, it’s also like the less referenced early ‘00s spon-con, subliminal messaging send-up Josie and the Pussycats. Much like Josie, Charli's film is a pop machine reckoning, and it most shines in all its neon, strobing glory when she satirizes how quickly a musician’s art can be stripped of its meaning to become a parody of itself.

Throughout The Moment (in theaters January 30), almost everyone around the fictionalized version of the avant-pop musician tests how far they can push her into being an “advert,” rather than an artist. So while Charli xcx could’ve made a traditional tour movie like many before her (and as her label originally approached her to), she, co-writer/director Aidan Zamiri, and co-writer Bertie Brandes seemingly took the opportunity to depict how detrimental it can be to musicians, fans, and culture at large when female artists and their art become a product to milk for all that they’re “worth.” As The Moment illustrates, even if a woman has crafted a cultural moment deemed bankable by industry insiders and marketing execs, she’s nothing to them if not continuously exploited.

In a time when “the pop girlies” run music, the film feels like a timely, cautionary statement.

The Moment essentially imagines what could have come of the pop cultural phenomenon sparked by brat, were it to have fallen out of Charli xcx’s creative control. Early on in the movie, the singer is made to participate in an overtly outrageous (if on-the-nose) capitalist scheme: launching a lime-green credit card in collaboration with her label and a bank. Signing up comes with a tie-in to secure tickets to the brat tour, ensuring the label’s excitement, and it also helps the bank reach its absurd goal of targeting younger, queerer clients. But only Charli is to blame when the rollout doesn’t go as planned.

In another plot line, the hitmaker is told her concert film must appeal to a wider audience (read: garner as many viewers on Prime Video as possible), rather than speak to her own fan base. That means that any decision she and her creative director, Celeste (Hailey Gates)—the genius behind brat’s original success—try to make is ignored and side-stepped by a man who seems to think he knows better.

In these scenes, it’s hard not to empathize with the real Charli xcx when she, too, became a mockable trend for brands to cash in on. As much as the star in the film wrestles with whether she should fear the end of “the moment” she’s been having or go to dangerous lengths so it never dies, one thing she seems certain of is what a loss of self feels like when her art is no longer hers. It’s an especially pertinent message coming from the “Von Dutch” singer, who, for years, was considered a hyperpop pioneer solely because of her talent. Now, with a platform, she seems to be saying, if the music industry is going to revel in the women leading the charge, that shouldn’t come at the expense of their artistry and personhood.

By the end of The Moment, Charli loses herself, too, saying she’s doing so in a concerted effort to “kill” brat. It’s not unlike the movie’s purpose in reality, ushering in the next phase of the musician-turned-actress’s career while also reclaiming ownership over a project that became bigger than itself. In many ways, it feels just as much like the artist making a promise to herself. But at the very least, she’s laughing at the possibility that she could buy into whatever “advert of a woman” that the industry might try to make of her. After all, that’s pretty fucking brat.