In addition to serving up Catwoman vibes (someone please cast this gata), Anitta’s visuals for her latest video in support of Versions of Me, “Gata,” harken back to what Madonna was doing in the David Fincher-directed video for 1989’s “Express Yourself.” And it wasn’t just chaining herself to a bed nude amid some very overt Metropolis-inspired set designs. More than that, it was also very “cat”-centric. With Madonna later commenting on the presence of the black cat (a central character) throughout the video, “Pussy rules the world.” Even if only “undercuttingly” at this point.
Anitta, who has collaborated with Madonna before (specifically on 2019’s “Faz Gostoso”), would tend to agree. And, as her sixth single from the album, even now Anitta continues to pull out all the stops (as she did for videos like “Envolver” and “Boys Don’t Cry”) with both choreo and budget. Though certainly not as high a budget as the five-million-dollar one Madonna allotted for “Express Yourself.” Yet, even if the concept seems “simple” (though honestly, you probably couldn’t pop your booty like that), there’s no denying some highly elaborate stunts, dances and editing techniques to create the final product (directed by another regular M collaborator, Giovanni Bianco).
The title of the song itself is suggestive of Anitta’s usual brand of lascivious messaging (complete with lyrics like, “Dance and snatch” or “Single women/Dancing they get better”). For what is a “gata” if not meant to infer a “pussy” (as Madonna pointed out via the aforementioned quote)? And the black one that appears throughout the video definitely has some strong energy akin to the one in the “Express Yourself” “mini-movie.” For Madonna wouldn’t have cast any other kind of cat—she herself declaring she was involved in every facet of the video: “Casting, finding the right cat—just every aspect.” Except the one where she came up with the idea to lick the milk out of the bowl during an “in heat” sort of moment.
Initially, she viewed Fincher’s suggestion with disdain, remarking, “It’s great but believe me I fought him on that. I didn’t want to do it. I thought it’s just so over the top and silly and kind of cliched, an art student or a film student’s kind of trick. I’m glad that I gave in to him.” And so, too, was someone like Anitta, who obviously must have caught sight of the video on more than a few occasions. For it’s clearly trickled into the aesthetic and theme of “Gata” through osmosis. Right down to the “Metropolis” backdrop of New York—namely, the Empire State Building.
But before that, Anitta riffs on the “cat burglar” idea made glamorous (in terms of femme fatale cachet) by Brigitte Auber in 1955’s To Catch A Thief. And resuscitated anew by Zoë Kravitz in The Batman. Thus, the video opens with a close-up on Anitta’s eyes being alternately superimposed over a cat’s before she slinks up the stairs of an apartment building. This in between shots of Anitta in black lingerie as she writhes around on a bed (also très Madonna-esque). Soon, she’s on the rooftop in a bondage-y “Justify My Love”-approved getup: a black lace body suit topped by a black leather beret. Interspersed moments of Anitta approaching the cat like an animal herself are then contrasted with scenes that look plucked out of Chicago’s “Cell Block Tango” as Anitta engages in some more choreo with her backup dancers while inferring that her cat burglar days might soon be mitigated by arrest.
Regardless, she keeps displaying her “cat-like” ways (mainly by licking a lot of different objects arbitrarily). She then scales a water tower and jiggles her butt cheek some more (in honor of the lyrics “the ass bounces”) before spraying her vag with some perfume—which is probably better than the inverse act of vabbing. The pace picks up with a barrage of scenes designed to titillate as we’re bombarded with an onslaught of Anitta “visions”—licking her lips some more, bouncing up and down in a dance clearly made to be TikTok-ready or just smacking her own ass because she feels like it (again, “the ass bounces”).
So no, it doesn’t quite possess the same “subtlety” as Madonna chaining herself to a bed and waiting for one of the factory workers to bring her “pussy” back to her before they then quickly decide to fuck in her bed. But one might actually say that Anitta updates the form of female empowerment Madonna was speaking to with the “Express Yourself” video in 1989 by dispensing with the appearance of men altogether.
And while Madonna was touting the message shown at the end of Metropolis—“Without the heart, there can be no understanding between the hand and the mind”—Anitta instead seems to be more overtly saying, “Without a feral cat manner, there can be no understanding between the pussy and another’s ability to dick it down.”
