Gendered Luck and Looks in “Make You Mine” Music Video by PUBLIC

PUBLIC is a music band led by John Vaugh on vocals/guitar, Ben Lapps on drums, and Matt Alvardo on bass. They are a young band from Cincinnati, Ohio. I must confess, I do not know much about PUBLIC. I am not a superfan, yet I sincerely scoured the internet like one. The internet tells me that PUBLIC is a genre-bending classic-rock-indie-pop band that is famous for their viral (think: TikTok videos and soundtracks) music, and in this thought piece, I describe the music video of their song “Make You Mine.” A 3-minute, 55-second video, released on October 14, 2019, is directed by Brandon Chase and John Jigitz, starring male lead Manny Spero and female lead Ashley Puzemis. The music video and song “Make You Mine” (not to be confused with the more popular song by Madison Beer with the same song title) is about love: teenage romance, to be specific. 

Video Description: The video starts with a close-up of the male lead looking around and into the camera awkwardly, lips pursed. He’s a cute, teenage, shy boy with fluffy jet black locks on his lightly pimple-prone head. He’s light-skinned, white-passing, but ethnically ambiguous. He looks East Asian or mixed. And he’s chubby. The camera zooms out, and the audience sees that he’s at a party. The camera follows him; it’s his story. He’s holding a red solo cup; there are young people around, all talking to each other, but he’s not talking to anyone. He drinks from his cup, and at 18 seconds, the pretty blonde female lead walks into the party. She literally walks into the party after pushing party streamers away from her face, and is followed by a group of similarly pretty friends. She’s wearing a green top, blue jeans, and has a fresh and full blowout. She’s conventionally attractive and is confident in her smile. The camera flips to the male lead. We follow his gaze, eyeing the girl with a sense of yearning and longing. He walks away, and the camera pans to the singers of the band PUBLIC. They’re almost always in the background. juxtaposing and adding to the story that is unfolding on screen.

He’s walking across the party to get another drink and notices her looking at him. He raises his drink to say hi! A pull focus shot shows the girl’s reaction: she motions with her hand: Come here! Cue: Slow motion of the girl smiling angelically. He’s elated. He can’t believe it. He crosses the band PUBLIC playing at the party, and they’re hanging out at the party now! Cue: Chorus.

“It’s nothing funny, just to talk. Put your hand in mine.

You know that I want to be with you all the time

You know that I won’t stop until I make you mine

You know that I won’t stop until I make you mine

Until I make you mine.”

They dance in slow motion and smile at each other till one of the blonde girl’s friends pulls her away. Before being politely yanked away, she taps the left side of his chest with her pink, freshly done nails. White men throw ping pong balls into red solo cups. Battling against these pretty white men in black tank tops and t-shirts are the girl and the boy. There are more montage scenes of white girls, primarily blonde, dancing and swaying to the music in the disco-lit house, followed by several shots of the boy and girl chilling by the pool and then in a bathtub with two more friends. Their hands are close. Then we see wide-angle shots of the boy and girl at a tennis court. They’re playing tennis while the band is in the foreground. They’re at a park. At a beach.

Then, skateboarding. Holding hands at the beach. Running around. The light changes to a pinkish purple. It almost feels like a memory. The video is interspersed with shots of the band PUBLIC. The three men in the PUBLIC band are sitting on the beach, playing their respective instruments.

The camera zips back quickly to the present – coalescing all the romantic shots of the boy and the girl into the shots in a quick four-second montage. We now see that all the scenes of the girl and boy being cute and romantic were just a fantasy in the boy’s head. The camera re-focuses on the boy, who is still at the table, getting a drink. He looks at her again, from afar, and shakes his head. She’s talking to another boy, yet she steals another glance at him. The camera pans back to the band and they sing:

“You know that I won’t stop until I make you mine.” 

The boy walks back across the party with his second drink. And he bumps into her accidentally. In slow motion, she looks shocked. She mouths an apology, “I’m so sorry!” and he shakes his head again, smirking and smiling, affirming that it’s okay.

The band continues: 

“Until I make you mine.”

Balloons appear, falling from the ceiling, and she’s dancing again, with him. They’re both smiling and there is no denying that there is a spark of hope – end scene.

Analysis: The music video is geared at younger audiences – teenagers. The two lead characters are young high schoolers at a party. The red solo cups, LED lighting, a band playing in the background, friends talking, and jamming to music are reminiscent of a quintessential American High School culture portrayed in popular media. I know that the video follows the boy’s gaze. And in his gaze, I follow the girl too. Vicariously. I understand longing and yearning. I understand that this music video, although seemingly innocuous in its message, makes me feel more frustrated about the narrative of teenage love. 

It’s a boy and a girl. Boy likes girl. Boy can’t really have girl. Oops! 

A cis-hetero lovers’ tale as old as time. 

To add more context, in this video, it’s a shy, unconvetentionally attractive boy who yearns for the popular, conventionally attractive, nice girl. How will he ever fulfil his desire? Will it just be in his head? The narrative is certainly framed by his view, his longing. I infer that this story is set up in a way that reminds the audience that while you may have a shot at love, it may also be contingent upon gendered themes of luck (are you a boy? or a girl?) and looks. The video shows that she’s popular, always surrounded by friends and guys trying to talk to her. Yet, she is nice enough to steal glances and smile at the boy who yearns for her. She isn’t mean or pretentious. She’s skinny, able-bodied, blonde and simply beautiful. She is the archetype of the female protagonist in an American movie. There is nothing duplicitous or multi-dimensional about her character. She exists, without any depiction of how or why she is yearned and wanted. She is simply wanted. We know that. We can glean all this information. She’s pretty. Of course, she’s wanted. 

All we see her as is the girl who is wanted. The girl that the boy dreams of – skating, playing tennis, running around the beach with. She has no say. No lines, besides mouthing an apology when he spilled his drink on himself by bumping into her at the crowded party.

In contrast, the male lead, the boy, isn’t the conventionally attractive man that one would see in movies. He’s asian(ish), a little chubby, and doesn’t have an entourage of friends surrounding him at any given moment. Yet, there’s something about him that I find appealing. I am a romantic, and I love, love. I yearn for it in all forms and shapes. I make no provisions or exact criteria for who I love, yet while reflecting, I notice that I have never ever, loved or yearned for a person who may have been considered ‘ugly.’ I must note that being beautiful has a highly racialized context to it. I’m an Indian person, on the lighter end of the skin color spectrum. I dress and dye my hair in ways that scream: ethnically ambiguous. Yet, I am also seen as a girl (regardless of my non-binary gender identity), who is also a little chubby. I’ve been in the same position as the male lead is portrayed in. I implicty know how boys and men would find me more attractive (see my confessions above).

Except, I’m no man. I can fantasize, and I have fantasized about boys in just the way the male lead in the music video fantasizes about the unreachable, untouchable, too-pretty-for-him girl. But I can’t chase. I have never expected to bump into a man I yearn for, and then have him take me to a beach for a romantic adventure, or a tennis court for a friendly love-all match, or a park for an elaborate date. Here’s the key: take. Why did I, as the girl in my story, expect these actions to be done by a boy? Would it sound ridiculous if I were the one who took responsibility? The responsibility to chase and to attract does not solely belong to the male figure. Or does it? I certainly see the male protagonist do the ‘chasing’ more often in pop culture.

Additionally, I am frustrated because, as a girl, I cannot see myself in the female protagonist. I know, inherently, that I cannot be the skinny, pretty blonde girl that is so obviously wanted and undeniably, overrepresented. Representation matters. I am woefully aware of it, because I almost never see people like me represented in the mainstream media that pervades (my world and) the world of pop culture. I understand that teliologically, mere representation is not the same is fixing the cause of the issue. It will take more than an accurate representation to change the way we think about sexuality and maleness and femaleness, and how deserves to be on screen. Yet, perhaps, implicitly, I know that my attempt at looking more ethnically ambiguous stems from my desire to seem closer to the normative identity of whiteness (in America) while internalizing the exoticism of my skin, tongue (language), and culture to seem palatable and appealing to men I deem attractive. I know that true love will see past the attraction. Yet, it is the first thing I see. You do too, don’t you? You see that it’s always the boy chasing the girl. You know that no matter what the boy looks like, she’s definitely going to be pretty. And in most cases, she’s going to be white. 

I notice my otherness. I sense it refelcted in the boy. I know I can never be her. I know I could probably be him. Our social locations are too far apart. But I understand the sentiment of the video. I know what yearning and love feel like.

Beyond the racialized lens, I also noticed how I view the world through my consumption of teen romance (primarily Western-dominated) that shaped the better half of my life. And for most of it, I viewed it through the male gaze. Like the boy in “Make You Mine,” I saw the boys and men in romance movies looking at women and girls as desirable beings and things to chase. John Berger’s 1972 monograph Ways of Seeing sums it up nicely: Men act and women appear. I noticed how I looked at the woman in the video and recognized that I wasn’t just looking at her, I was looking to be like her. I was informing myself of how to be desirable. What is it about her that makes her the object of a man’s desire? I found nothing, besides luck and looks. 

Am I selfish for this cutting analysis? Perhaps! This reflection speaks just as much about the perspectives I hold due to my unique positionality and lived experience. Have I judged a relatively sweet and cute teen romance through an unforgiving lens and racialized critique of masculinity and femininity? Perhaps. A cute romance may make us all swoon and kick our feet in the air. I love romances. I am a soft, sentimental sob at heart. “Make You Mine” made me smile and cry, and it also reminded me that many love stories in the mainstream aren’t actively made for me or people like me. I simply cannot, on a temporal level, connect with the characters. Perhaps I am too cynical, and I should settle for the symbolic representation of young love and hope. But, for once, I would like to feel full – full of the I know you feel when you watch a love story unfold. Then, perhaps, this is the right class to take for such a quixotic task to happen!