It’s safe to say that, of all the pop stars working today (apart from, of course, Madonna), Ariana Grande is the one most blatantly enamored of postmodernism—wherein no distinction exists between high and low art, and references galore are placed in a “pastiche blender.” Even more than her contemporaries, Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift, Grande is the most obvious in how she’ll take a piece of pop culture and “reinterpret” it. Though perhaps some would say she’s merely recreating it, shot-for-shot, à la Gus Van Sant with Psycho. That much can practically be said of the video for her second single from Eternal Sunshine, “we can’t be friends (wait for your love).” This following her other pastiche-drenched video for “yes, and?,” which is a knockoff of Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted” video.
As with “yes, and?,” Christian Breslauer also directed “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” marking their second collaboration. Perhaps they didn’t end up working together sooner due to Grande’s long-standing devotion to Hannah Lux Davis, who has brought us so many Grande music videos over the years, including “Bang Bang,” “Love Me Harder,” “Focus,” “Into You,” “Side to Side,” “breathin,” “thank u, next” (also filled with movie-related pastiche), “7 rings,” “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored,” “boyfriend” and “Don’t Call Me Angel.”
But “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” has a different vibe from all of those aforementioned light-hearted videos (of which, even “breathin” was more light-hearted than this). Suffused with the kind of melancholia and restraint that comes in the wake of a breakup, Grande and Breslauer take what Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman did in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and distill it down to four minutes and forty-three seconds (something Kaufman would likely be horrified by). Starting with Grande being in the waiting room of “Brighter Days Inc.” (dumbed down from the more “esoteric” company name in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lacuna Inc.—lacuna meaning “an unfilled space; a gap”), Grande’s penchant for pastiche might even extend to the 2004 (also when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released) video for Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For?” In it, Stefani also finds her in a dubious, nondescript waiting room filling out a form filled with odd questions (e.g., “Do you like the smell of gasoline?”). Except it isn’t to help erase her memory, but rather, “be inspired” a.k.a. get rid of her writer’s block. Grande doesn’t tend to have any issues with that, especially when she’s in her “after a breakup/new relationship” phase.
Riffing on Clementine Kruczynski’s (Kate Winslet) look, Grande sits in the waiting room of Brighter Days Inc.—an air of uncertainty about her—styled in a fur-trim coat, tights with knee-high boots (featuring a 70s-esque flower pattern) and a flower flourish drawn in white around her eye. This particular detail gives more Katy Perry than Clementine vibes (especially in the former’s hippie-dippy “Never Really Over” video), but it’s part of Grande’s own spin on the character. Which now also incorporates some version of herself thanks to her recent experience of wanting to erase the memory of a botched relationship. Namely, the one that resulted in her two-year marriage to Dalton Gomez. Hence, like Joel Barish (Jim Carrey, who Grande is a well-known fan of), we see Grande-as-“Peaches” (a none too subtle allusion to Clementine) filling out a form that basically denies Brighter Days Inc. any legal responsibility for what might happen after the procedure—including a lingering and barely dormant sense of regret.
So it is that we see “Peaches” checking the “Yes” box under the statement, “You have given extensive thought behind your decision and give Brighter Days Inc. the exclusive permission to remove this person completely from your memory.” Clementine herself, of course, didn’t give much extensive thought to it, later telling Joel, “You know me, I’m impulsive.” Peaches is likely the same way, simply wanting to rid herself of the pain that comes from remembering a failed relationship. Thus, despite seeing the anxiousness radiating from her as she resolves to go through with the decision, Peaches knows that it’s “for the best.”
Watching the “technicians” remove key mementos of the relationship from the box she brought in (the same way the patients in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind do), viewers soon see the wall of the “operating room” open up behind her (kind of the way the wall opens up behind Miley Cyrus in the “Used To Be Young” video) to reveal the first memory to be scraped. The one that relates to the tiny teddy bear in the box. A bear plucked from what the Brits (and Arctic Monkeys) call a teddy picker by Grande’s ex, played by Evan Peters…who is labeled simply as “Lover” where credited (how Swiftian). The memory then starts to black-out around her (the same way it does for Joel just as he’s remembering all the “good stuff” he loved about being with Clementine). Startled by the abyssal nature of the process, this is the moment where the lyrics, “Me and my truth, we sit in silence/Mmm, baby girl it’s just me and you.” And as the very “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn beat swells again, the blackness around her is replaced by another memory, one in which Lover’s back is turned to her in bed. While she sits up in the place next to him, it’s as though the two are at the point in their relationship where things have become strained, and words have lost all meaning.
From this memory, Grande runs out to open the door, leading her into a snow-filled landscape where “Brighter Days” of them making snow angels together exist. This being Grande’s version of Joel and Clementine lying on the ice of the frozen-over Charles River (though, in actuality, that scene was filmed in Yorktown Heights). A “cut” is then made by way of a sheet falling over the scene to transition us from Peaches lying on the snow to Peaches lying in bed with Lover (side note: the sheets’ pattern gives off a decidedly “hospital bed” feel—maybe an unwitting allusion to how love makes you crazy). And in the same way that Clementine is literally yanked away from Joel while they’re lying on the ice together, so, too, is Lover while he and Peaches are looking at each other with the same loving fondness in bed.
In the next scene, Breslauer cuts to the memory box again, as a technician picks up a framed photo of the two arranged in “Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) and Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) pose” with a cake between them, exactly as it was in John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. It is at this moment that viewers might realize Grande is incapable of sticking to just one movie as a visual reference point (even with “34+35,” she couldn’t “only” refer to Austin Powers with her fembot aesthetic….there had to be a Frankenstein premise as well)—something we saw at a peak in “thank u, next.” A video that, although it wields Mean Girls as its primary inspiration, also sees fit to devolve into nods to Bring It On, Legally Blonde and 13 Going on 30.
While it’s unclear if Lover is doing this Sixteen Candles homage deliberately because he knows how much Peaches adores the movie or it’s simply another instance of Grande incorporating a pop culture reference apropos of nothing (which is understandable, as many women and gay men’s minds function that way), the point is that Lover disappears from the picture just as they lean into kiss one another over the birthday candles (something that was just as stressful to watch in Sixteen Candles for those fearing a fire hazard). Sitting there alone as the lyric, “So for now, it’s only me/And maybe that’s all I need” plays, Grande blows out the candles before we see the map of her brain again. In the style of Joel freaking out when the “eraser guys” manage to find Clementine hidden within a memory of his childhood (a suggestion made by Clementine so that he could hold onto her in some way even after the process), Grande starts panicking and crying before the computer flashes a sign that reads, “Relinking.”
In another memory still, we see Grande on the couch with Lover as he presents her with a necklace that then turns into a dog collar before Lover himself is transformed into a dog (for, as Birds of Prey taught us, dogs are the animals women are most likely to replace men with). This is where Grande takes the most liberties with her reinterpretation of the movie, for it seems that Brighter Days Inc. isn’t just capable of erasing memories, but also reworking them entirely. As such, the interior decor around her continues to, let’s say, shapeshift, while the TV in front of her plays back the memories one last time before we see Peaches shaking hands with the doctor and nurse for doing their job, the procedure now over.
The image of the box of memories, teddy bear and all, being incinerated then leads into Peaches walking down a street with a new boyfriend and passing Lover with his new girlfriend, neither party registering any kind of recognition. And just like that, Peaches forgets all about her pain. Just as viewers might forget all about the original Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But that’s what pastiche is about: subverting collective memories for the sake of consumption.
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