Backup Dancers From Hell: Willow Smith - “21st Century Girl”

We start off in some desert-like area that could be anywhere, from the African plains to Dallas on a really dry day to that place where U2 did the photo shoot for the “Joshua Tree” album cover. Some older woman comes tromping along in a billowing black outfit, navigating about the sand until she spies what looks like a pelvic bone just lying there in the dusty nothingness. Most of us would steer clear, because who wants anything to do with dead body parts, but the woman drops to her knees and snatches up the whatever thing with cackling enthusiasm. (These things happen when you don’t get out much.)

Granny then proceeds to do something ceremonial with her find, muttering incantations and burying little tidbits in the sand, objects she just happened to have in her mysterious satchel that grannies always have because they remember the Great Depression and never throw anything away. Then we learn that Granny has some pretty awesome superpowers, because she waves her hands just right to make the sand shimmy and suck up her offerings. I’m thinking I don’t ever want to get on this woman’s bad side. Just sayin.

So the ceremony continues for a bit, then we see the sand re-open and a pretty floral scarf gets belched out of the ground, making it very clear that this is not your average safari. Granny mutters further voodoo somethings and the scarf appears to be taking human form. (This is the point where I would run screaming to the nearest bar and order everything on the top shelf.) Granny whispers something into the Scarf Being’s ear, which causes Willow to wake up and look around sleepily like a cat who is really not impressed with having her nap time interrupted by pointless humans.

Granny mysteriously disappears, which allows Willow to take center stage and grab a handful of sand. Said sand begins to percolate in her palm, another indication that decent people should be running for the border. But Willow thinks the odd sand behavior is pretty hip, especially when a butterfly bursts out of the sand and her latest single kicks off on the soundtrack.

Then Willow, because she’s all about the drama, rips off her scarf outfit and starts strutting around in a quirky-cool getup that is reminiscent of, well, nothing we’ve ever seen. She tromps around for a bit, belting out the song, until she gets to a special place where she can reach into the sand and pull out a guitar. (What is going ON in this desert? Why are people burying so much crap?)

Willow decides it’s time for a track meet, so she and a bunch of wolves race along the sand to get in a good cardio workout. Then, for whatever reason, the wolves turn into a bunch of Willow’s gal-pals, all of them sporting creative outfits that indicate some people have WAY too much time on their hands. (Seriously, did they cut up a bunch of clothes and then run through a wind tunnel with glue on their skin?)

Short bit where Willow channels Rihanna, Kesha, and anybody else who thinks couture trumps everything else. Then Willow’s little friends (why is that one girl wearing balloons on her head?) also start digging in the sand and pulling up very interesting artifacts that have nothing to do with reality in the desert. Skateboards, bicycles, parking meters, David Hasselhoff’s career. (Okay, fudged a bit on that last one.)

Then things go a little crazy. Now people are pulling really BIG things out of the sand, like cars and buildings. I guess it didn’t occur to any of these charming but too-exuberant urchins that you’re really screwing with the time-space continuum if a 9-year-old can casually drag the Statue of Liberty out of the ground. (And really, why would they want to? Is this a skill that they learned from watching “High School Musical 17: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Glee?”)

Anyway, the youngsters keep pulling on chains and such, managing to erect a city of skyscrapers in the land where Simba once ruled and Jane Goodall made a lot of people uncomfortable with comparing chimpanzees to humans. Willow struts about with her friends, happy to be involved with municipal redistricting. Then Willow gets bored and changes outfits.

This prompts some street scenes with Willow and her posse dancing about in what should be a really busy intersection, but all the traffic has been conveniently re-routed so musical expression can take place. Willow and friends do a lot of energetic dance moves, which is all very uplifting, but I’m more concerned with the slogan on Willow’s t-shirt that I can’t really read because she won’t stay still. “Boys Need”… something. Well, yes, boys need a lot of things, but I can’t understand your particular concern if you keep pirouetting about like your sugar intake is out of control.

These youngsters dance for a really long time. I haven’t had that much energy since Jimmy Carter was President.

Eventually, Willow’s peeps hoist her on their shoulders, and there’s an all-out celebration of the freedom that comes from, well, having parents that have the financial resources to protect you from reality. (Sorry, tried to steer clear of that issue, but I slammed into it.) To balance things out, Willow then introduces a cute little toddler and whispers something into her ear. Said toddler then produces a butterfly from the sand in her hand, and then chases after it. And that is a mighty fine way to end things…


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Backup Dancers From Hell: Willow Smith - “Whip My Hair”

Editor’s Note: Yep, Willow is the daughter of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. She’s nine years old, people. Nine! And here we go…

We start off in a sterile school cafeteria, where everything is black and white and the kiddies have very boring hairstyles. Everyone looks really sad, because their non-colorful lives are so empty and meaningless. Well, we can’t have that. So here comes Willow, dragging a boom box that is basically bigger than she is, and sporting a hairdo in the shape of a heart.

The school kids watch her set up shop at one end of the room, curious about what Willow is going to do, because anything is more exciting than eating broccoli. Willow calmly dips the ends of her braids into paint cans, pushes play on the box, and, as the music begins, she starts wind-milling her head around like she’s taxiing down a runway.

Next thing you know, paint is flying all over the room, magically adding color to the furniture and students. Instead of screaming and running from the room like most people would do, (paint is wet, and who knows where that mess has been), the students all light up with joy, their lives having been transformed by the kid with the whirlybird head.

After dousing everybody with gallons of goo, Willow breaks into her song, and she’s got more swagger than people three times her age can only dream about. (And there are clearly no restrictions on sugar-intake in her house.) The kids are so inspired that they start ripping off their white coveralls, exposing hip little outfits bursting with color. Who knew that unzipping could be so much fun?

Now we have folks jumping on the tables and doing interpretive dances. Since the room isn’t big enough to contain all this youthful energy, we cut to Willow and some select classmates dancing in another room. I guess they’ve been practicing, because they all know the same dance moves, which has something to do with brushing ants off their bodies.

We also get lots of close shots of Willow’s lips, and she has some jewelry on the upper one. I don’t know if that’s a piercing (surely not, the pain alone would stunt your growth) or if it’s just an appliqué, but if Willow can sing and dance without that thing getting in her way, she really is beyond talented. Her hairdo in this scene isn’t really good for whipping around, but that doesn’t stop her from trying.

Quick scene with everybody in the cafeteria doing synchronized head-banger moves, like they took the audience at a Kiss concert and threw everybody into the dryer, shrinking them all down. (The guys are trying to whip their hair along with the girls, but let’s face it, it doesn’t look nearly as cute and exciting. Girls are just better at certain things. Word.)

Cut to a sterile school hallway, where we have some more folks wearing the boring white coveralls and lethargically getting books out of their lockers so they can go to yet another useless class and continue not being satisfied. Here comes Willow, apparently having just survived a run-in with a cotton-candy machine. She struts her way down the hallway, and the life-transforming paint goes flying again. Everybody really loves their new, colorful outfits, so they start dancing in frenzied tribute to the liquid couture squirting from Willow.

Willow jams in this hallway for quite a while, giving us time to cut back and forth to other scenes, most of them featuring Willow and her “can’t look away from it” upper lip, including some business where Willow is all alone in a totally white room, whipping, with paint splattering everything like somebody lost control of a paint-ball machine gun. Oh, and the special classmates are still dancing in that other room, their actions getting a little more frantic, probably because they can’t find the door and need to tinkle.

Our next big set is a classroom, one that is already mostly painted so Willow does not have to fire up her hair jets. But she still wants to dance, and she does so while the rest of the class throws paperwads all over the place as accompaniment. (The teacher is nowhere in sight. Would you be? She’s probably in the janitor’s closet, drinking.)

We go into a long montage, catching up on what everybody has been doing in all the rooms, and most of the folks are now doing an intricate handclap/body slap routine that coincides with the current rhythm of the song. And there’s still some whipping. Always with the whipping. Sprinkled in with all of this are some cameos by adults, but I’m not quite sure who they are, maybe family members or people from Child Protective Services checking up on things. Whoever they are, they also like to whip it real good.

(There’s also a tiny toddler, who I believe has been instructed by her agent to shimmy with the other folks in the dance line, but she seems more interested in just sitting down and waiting to be fed.)

And that’s about it as the video finishes up. Dancing, whipping and the constantly-flying paint, with lots of people getting solos to perform personal moves, but none of them can really compare with the dynamic Miss Willow. After all, she’s the only one with an apparent open line of credit at Sherwin-Williams. (But I will have to say the runner-up star of this show is the woman who does a few cameos in the classroom, wearing skin-tight red pants and doing interpretations of farm animals gone insane and the Great Hurricane of 1935. I bet she stopped at Starbuck’s on the way in.)

The song ends with a close-up of Willow, grinning from ear to ear. She’s clearly ready to make another video and these people need to snap to it. Don’t make her turn that hair back on….

　

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