For the girl who once said, “I am bi, always have been, it’s nothing new,” perhaps an homage to Diablo Cody’s beloved 2009 “camp classic,” Jennifer’s Body was inevitable. And now, here it is in the form of the video for her latest single, “Make You Mine.” Co-directed with Aerin Moreno (who has previously worked with Beer on the Silence Between Songs hits, “Spinnin” and “Home to Another One”), the visual opens on a familiar scene from JB, one made all the more recognizable by the fact that, these days, Madison Beer looks more like Megan Fox than Megan Fox does.
The scene, of course, is Beer in a cheerleader outfit (the varsity letters on the front of her shell top read “MYM” for “Make You Mine”), prancing around as the Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried) of the video, played by Sadie Scheufler, watches in awe and appreciation. Credited as “Best Friend,” Scheufler’s Needy-esque character isn’t the only one gawking. There’s also a jock in the crowd, referred to as The Boy (Nikolaos Madouras), staring at her with a lascivious look. As though to drive home the point that this is a video with nothing but love for 00s pop culture (something Beer also recently showcased in “Sweet Relief”), Best Friend is outfitted in a crop top with the Pepsi logo—except that “Pepsi” reads “Sexsi.” In other words, it’s a nod to Britney Spears’ 00s style.
What’s more, there’s even a nod to another movie that Beer can’t help reference within the context of a cheerleader in a gymnasium: American Beauty. For there’s a moment when the gym goes slightly dark as The Boy fantasizes about the way Beer is touching and caressing herself in a manner similar to Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) when Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) has just such a fantasy while observing her from his own set of bleachers (Beer doesn’t get heavy-handed with the allusion by making rose petals start coming out of her chest though).
In the next scene, Beer does her best impression of Jennifer Check sauntering sexily down the hallway of the school while dressed in her own take on what the cheerleader-turned-succubus might wear instead of all-out imitating the pink, heart-patterned zip-up hoodie and jeans that Jennifer famously wears during this moment. And yes, Beer, like Check, relishes every second of knowing that she’s turning heads as she walks by. Apart from outfit distinctions, another crucial difference in Beer’s reinterpretation of the movie is that she actually has a willing partner in crime…in lieu of someone like Needy, who wants to stop Jennifer from something as innocent as “killing boys.” Best Friend, instead, is an eager accomplice in Beer’s pursuit of boys as literal sustenance.
This is exactly why, after Beer works some more seductress magic on The Boy while the two are alone in the locker room, Best Friend swoops in to help her ostensibly “clean up” once she’s made a meal out of him (though, really, the dastardly duo just leaves his bloodied body in the shower). Interspersed scenes of the two friends dancing together lesbianically in a sweaty nightclub also serve as an additional “flourish” on Beer’s part that deviates entirely from the movie. And that’s sort of refreshing considering that, whenever musicians make a specific film reference the core of a music video, it tends to be a shot-by-shot re-creation just for the sake of it (e.g., Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Glad,” Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s “Fancy” and Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next”). Even though, not too long ago, Olivia Rodrigo also referenced Jennifer’s Body in an ever “subtler” way (i.e., that particular manner in which Jennifer swims in a lake after eating a boy) via the Petra Collins-directed “good 4 u.” Indeed, one might argue that Beer and Rodrigo have very similar “aesthetic tastes” considering they also shared a man in the form of Zack Bia.
As for Beer’s references to her own oeuvre, a discreetly placed flier for the “Did the World Stop Spinnin Astronomy Club” is taped to a locker next to where The Boy is standing and continuing to ogle Beer. Alas, those are in the fleeting moments before Beer gets him alone, flashes him her demonic eyes and then has her way with him. In truth, the lyrics of “Make You Mine” are far better suited to a Jennifer’s Body-centric video than the ones of “good 4 u.” After all, “Make You Mine” is a song of seduction (Circe, it would seem, has nothing on Beer). This includes titillating verses like, “See it in my eyes/How they never lie/Just a little bite/Are you dreamin’?/Now I got you up/Would you look at us?/Fantasy to life/And I’m screamin’, screamin’,” “Closer I get/Can you resist?/It’s relentless” and, of course, the chorus, “I wanna feel the rush, I wanna taste the crush/I wanna get you goin’/I wanna lay you down, I wanna string you out/I wanna make you mine.”
Unfortunately for the boys she wants to make hers in this scenario, it refers to making them her little snack. In the final portion of the Jennifer’s Body homage, Beer uses a swimming pool not only to allude to the prom night when Jennifer ate Needy’s boyfriend, but also to re-create her own “swimming sensually in the lake” scene (again, as Rodrigo also did with an actual lake). So it is that she swims “just so” with her head slightly above water as she stares both dead-eyed and determined ahead. Soon after, Beer and Moreno decide to go all out on simply making this a thirst trap opportunity as Beer continues to swim in a writhing/floating fashion that allows an overhead shot to take in the extent of her Jennifer Check-esque “assets.” From there, the video provides a montage of the shots we’ve already seen, including the ones that feature Beer “in da club” and cheerleading in the gym.
The final scene is of Beer getting out of the pool and wrapping a towel around herself that reads “The End.” Thus, for now, it would seem her appetites are satisfied. But who knows when “the urge” to make another boy hers will come again? Because, obviously, she’s not about to target women for consumption (even if Jennifer herself declared on prom night, “I go both ways”). Or at least not consumption of the cannibal variety…
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