Game Recognize Game

If you were asked to come up with a description of Mya Harrison, it's unlikely that "rebel girl" would leap to mind. At the time of her first album's release, in 1998, Mya was actually working against the then dominant girl-type. She wasn't looking for money or vengeance, she wasn't threatening anyone, she wouldn't even say nasty words. Her sound was sweet and smooth, her lyrics falling somewhere between hopeful and melancholy (she was looking for the right boy, and more often than not disappointed). Her early videos reinforced this image: she wore modest costumes and looked polite, even demure. In "Movin On," for instance, Mya dressed up like a high school student — in short skirt and sweater — but she never had that Britney "hit me baby" thing going on, obviously quite in vogue at that moment. Mya was a sober school girl, sad that her boyfriend was mean to her, but also seeming to expect it (which seemed reasonable, actually, since he was played in the video and in the remix track, by Silkk the Shocker).

Because of this earnestness and her tendency to blend music genres — hiphop, R&B, pop, and more recently, reggae — it's been difficult to categorize Mya. And her new album, Fear of Flying, on which she collaborates with Beenie Man, Swizz Beatz, Lisa Left Eye Lopez, Wyclef, and Jadakiss, doesn't exactly nail her down. Mya describes the new album as "more mature" than her previous work, but it's clear that she's still experimenting, borrowing from other artists and sounds, looking for a style that might be identified with her And while it's obvious that the currently rotating video for the album, "Case of the Ex (Whatcha Gonna Do)," derives images and themes from other popular texts, its most striking aspect is its assertion of what it is not. If "Movin' On" was the not-Britney video, "Case of the Ex" is the not-Christina video.

The video opens in a Mad-Maxish desert setting, where a posse of well-muscled girls stands before a group of somewhat nonplussed boys. At first they look like they're going to perform for the boys, like the Spice Girls in "Say You'll Be There," or maybe taunt them a bit, like Janet Jackson and her crew in "You Want This." But there's another story here, having to do with the juxtapositions of the post-apocalyptic environment, the athletic survivor-girls wielding their martial-arts sticks, and the song's lyrics. These last concern Mya's query to her man, wondering why another girl is calling his phone "after midnight." This caller, says narrator Mya, is "Saying come over / Cause she's all alone. / I could tell it was your ex / By your tone."

At first it might appear that boyfriend's busted, straight up. But it's more complicated than that, especially as you see Mya and her girls engaged in their own energetic calisthenics, then (apparently) commanding their male admirers to hit the ground and perform push-ups, constructing a kind of reciprocal relationship that, for instance, Christina Aguilera's video for "What A Girl Wants" can not do, in its celebration of the most excellent boyfriend whose job is to be endlessly appreciative of his girlfriend's super-gloriousness (see also, Christina's video for Genie in a Bottle," in which she also dances seductively with a group of girls for a group of boys). Director Diane Martel has done her share of conventionally alluring Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera videos, but here the terms are shifted. Mya and her girls — in moves recalling Janet's — don't pretend to be charming or enticing. Instead, they present themselves as young women with demands and desires, proudly hard-bodied and self-possessed.