POPSCREEN: Call Me Maybe

If pop culture today held a mirror up to itself, what would it see? A five second clip from the music video for “Sexy and I Know It”? Nicki Minaj’s head on Taylor Lautner’s body? Any amalgamation of various cultural sensations is bound to be jumbled and confusing. However, sometimes a cultural phenomenon comes along that gives us the opportunity to take a good, clear look at ourselves. This music video of Carly Rae Jensen’s “Call Me Maybe” does just that for today’s youth, and we see spontaneity, quirkiness, and lots of fun.

The viral video features Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez along with Ashley Tisdale, three of four leads in Big Time Rush, and other music and television stars such as Martin Johnson of Boys Like Girls singing and dancing along to Carly Rae Jepsen’s recent hit. What they have in store for us is three minutes of head bobbing, booty popping action. Its unscripted, carefree nature gives us a more intimate side of these celebrities that we can relate to.

But is the video really undirected and unscripted? What are the chances that these performers, whose ages range from 18 to 26 years old, met up just to have some fun and, oh, I don’t know, film a quick video that currently has twenty million hits on YouTube? Subtle hints in the video seem to suggest, however, that the making of the video was, in fact, largely spontaneous. One of the most obvious is that everything is flipped horizontally: letters on shirts and books are reflected and Dustin Belt’s guitar appears left-handed, implying that the video was probably shot with a laptop computer rather than with a camera. The video also only goes up to a resolution of 480p, unusual for a professionally produced music video. These clues make the video seem geniune as opposed to being a product of the pop industry.

Ultimately, the video was made for fun and mirrors the mentality of the young generation of America. When Ashley Tisdale and Justin Bieber make fools of themselves dancing to this song, they look just like me and my friends when we do the same—and being able to see into the lives of celebrities and realizing they might not be so different from us is very aluring to many watching at home. Celebrities and Youtube-watchers alike just want to have a good time—speaking of which, Selena, if you’re reading this, call me, maybe?