Because “alien legitimacy” apparently wouldn’t be complete without Grimes, Doja Cat has continued her outer space motif from the “Kiss Me More” video (more than merely “inspired by” Britney Spears’ “Oops…I Did It Again”) featuring SZA via “Need to Know.” While the former video ended with her playing video games, this one commences with her playing them—yes, once again as an alien. Because apparently humans lack the imagination to fathom that aliens couldn’t possibly be as dull and predictable as their own kind.
The persistent theme makes sense, of course, what with Doja’s imminent third album being called Planet Her. Even in spite of it sounding an awful lot like Gaga’s fictional planet, Chromatica, with Doja Cat describing the place as “the center of the universe [where] all races of space exist and its where all species can kind of be in harmony there.” Yeah, uh, Lady Gaga just did that shtick (and this listener isn’t usually one to stick up for that particular pop star), but whatever. Guess everyone will just forget that only last year, Lady G said that Chromatica was a place that is “inclusive with all the colors, all the people, and when I say, ‘All the colors, all the people,’ I mean way more than we could possibly fathom.”
Any who, Doja obviously doesn’t have much vision (nor does any human who believes it will take another world for harmony to become a reality). Not just because of the Chromatica rip-off component (after already grafting from Britney and, now, too, The Fifth Element—like Ava Max also recently did in her video for “Naked”), but because her version of alien life differs very little from that of humans’—at least pre-pandemic. And if the “human experience” is this banal, why would we really want create it again elsewhere?
Directed by duo Miles Cable and AJ Favicchio of SixTwentySix Productions, the first segment of the video features Doja wearing a NASA logo t-shirt that replaces the letters in the acronym with DOJA. She sits among her proverbial “bitches” on the couch of her “futuristic” (apparently what alien apartments are supposed to look like) abode while Grimes is off to the side appearing decidedly uncomfortable and out of place for someone who is supposed to be at home in otherworldly realms.
Doing their cliché pregaming routine, the alien-girls then call an Uber—meant to be an “alien Uber” because it can fly—and head to the club. Yawn. Can Planet Her really be this dried up in terms of ideas for how to “have fun”? But what does one really expect with lyrics like, “I just wanna fuck all night”?
In addition to Grimes, Jazelle Straka-Braxton, Josephine Pearl Lee and Ryan Destiny also join in on the night’s festivities, and as the car flies through the city, it passes over a theater with Chinese writing. Is this meant to be the language of aliens, or is there even a Chinatown in Doja’s prosaic version of the extraterrestrial world as well? Who knows?
Upon arriving to their destination, their faces are scanned by a Terminator-looking head at the otherwise discreet entrance of the club. Doja and her crew subsequently enter to find a garden variety cesspool of humanity, or rather, “alienanity.” Standing at the bar with Grimes, one of the sleazeballs across from them starts to make eyes, surprisingly more interested in Doja being that Grimes is supposed to be the archetypal manic pixie dream girl, whether alien or human (just ask Elon). Soon, after some dance floor action, the two are alone together in a private room, where Doja seems more concerned with singing into the camera than writhing on the guy’s lap like she’s a stripper (though she does that, too).
By the time the “after hours” moment of the late night/early morning arrives, she doesn’t end up going home with him as they all walk out of the club, but instead whispers something salacious in his ear. This causes his eyes to light up like he’s having some kind of alien equivalent of an orgasm (here, there’s a certain Barbarella characteristic to how sex is interpreted—and the guy briefly looks a bit like Pygar). Yet even this doesn’t infuse the concept of what alien life is supposed to be like with enough originality to make us want to take the risk on being experiments for Elon’s new colony. And yes, we all know this was secretly Grimes’ undercutting advertisement for the supposed “glamorousness” of how that colony could be (provided none of the poverty-stricken ilk make the cut for a flight, which of course they won’t).
The thing is, what’s really the point of not sticking around on Earth to watch it burn if we’re only meant to be living a similar existence elsewhere? Clearly, changing the setting won’t change the trap of living among society.
