There are many moments in “The Boy Is Mine” video that require more than just “a little” suspension of disbelief. But chief among them is “The Boy” in question, played by Mekhi Phifer, thinking he can actually get away with balling two women who live right next door to each other. This embodies either peak arrogance or peak stupidity. One tends to believe the latter. And it seems that the song it riffs off of, “The Girl Is Mine” by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, did well to eschew a video altogether. Even if Jackson and McCartney probably would have had an easier time sharing a woman as neither one shared the same taste in domiciles (Jackson having a very specific flavor indeed with regard to his residences). As such, “The Girl” of their tale likely never would have encountered them living next door to each other the way “The Boy” does in the Joseph Kahn-directed video from Brandy and Monica.
Evincing the set design aesthetic of Britney Spears and Madonna’s “Me Against the Music” video long before it was released, “The Boy Is Mine” was shot in such a way so that we can see each “cube” a.k.a. apartment that Brandy and Monica inhabit at the same time, with the “strip” of a wall dividing their abodes as they hear different goings-on in the other’s apartment. Though, thankfully, never the familiar moaning sound of “The Boy” orgasming too soon. They don’t even seem to hear the sound of the other girl’s TV as they war for airwave frequencies the same way they do for “The Boy.” Brandy wants to watch The Jerry Springer Show (still endlessly relevant in 1998), while Monica wants to watch a generic black-and-white old movie or show (so generic it seems unidentifiable). As they go back and forth on switching each other’s channel without comprehending their next-door neighbor is responsible, it serves as the symbolic first “instance” of the women fighting over something—in this case, use of their TV. Because we’re evidently to assume that it must be an electrical wiring shitshow in that building.
Not that it matters, so long as “The Boy” shows up to keep one of them company. When that doesn’t happen, Brandy is obliged to invite over three extremely disinterested friends to sit in her apartment and regale them with her spiel about how “The Boy” is hers, not yet suspecting, for whatever reason, that “The Other Woman” lives right next door. Meanwhile, Monica is also talking to her own trio of friends as she, too, ruminates on how “The Boy” is hers, playing the “McCartney” role in the permutation. And yes, “The Girl Is Mine” is a far milder, “sweeter” song, with Jackson lightly “asserting” in the opening verse, “Every night she walks right in my dreams/Since I met her from the start I’m so proud I am the only one/Who is special in her heart.” McCartney quickly debunks Jackson’s delusions of heterosexuality with, “I don’t understand the way you think/Saying that she’s yours not mine/Sending roses and your silly dreams/Really just a waste of time.”
Eventually, Jackson is pushed to screaming, “But we both cannot have her/So it’s one or the other/And one day you’ll discover/That she’s my girl forever and ever.” So much for polite declarations like, “The doggone girl is mine.” A cheesy line, to be sure. Which is probably part of why Brandy and Monica wanted to update the concept with a far more believable lyrical display of jealousy as they go mano a mano with, “You need to give it up/Had about enough/It’s not hard to see/The boy is mine.” But when we’re actually first introduced to “The Boy,” it’s clear he belongs to no one as he flashes a winsome smile at each friend set leaving Brandy’s and Monica’s respective apartments. It is in this moment that we must ask ourselves: why wouldn’t one of the friends mention something about this sighting? Only further adding to the incongruity of the idea that Brandy and Monica wouldn’t catch on sooner to the fact that “The Boy” has been visiting each of their apartments regularly (granted, it’s not any more incongruous than Jackson and McCartney being similar enough in their “predilections” to like the same woman). As though the idea of being caught by one of them gets him off all the more.
If one was looking for signs of who he actually prefers, however, he seems far more interested in ogling Monica’s friend trio than Brandy’s. So maybe that means Monica is more his type? Who knows? It often feels like men are attracted to anything with a womanly shape, with no discernment regarding face. In that sense, “The Boy”—and all the boys he represents—has something tantamount to prosopagnosia. A convenient excuse for not caring who a person is so long as their vag feels slightly different when fucking.
The addiction to “experiencing” different pussies for men like “The Boy” is part of what might come across as bravado, but is ultimately as simple as a total lack of concern for the emotions of the woman who’s bought into the yarn he’s spun for her. Believing him when he whispers sweet nothings like, “Without you, I couldn’t make it through the day.” Of course, there’s no mention of the night, when he has manifold punani options. A.k.a. what “The Boy” has in Brandy and Monica. For we soon see him with his arms around each woman in alternating crosscuts. That he’s wearing the same cornball shirt (rife for being worn by Will Ferrell or Chris Kattan in A Night at the Roxbury) in each scene indicates this is all one evening. He’s so out of control that he’s seeing both of them in a single night. Though, again, the logistics of this are highly implausible, for why would the first girl he visited “let him go” so quickly? What’s more, even if he pretended to leave by making a big show of walking down the hall and getting on the elevator, there’s no way Brandy or Monica wouldn’t hear him knocking on a different door when he came back. For they can certainly seem to hear one another during the back and forth that ensues later on that night when they’re both flexing their silk pajama set game.
As Kahn pans rapidly between the rooms divided by a thin wall, they each appear to be having a conversation with one another through that wall as Monica announces, “What we have you can’t take… I can tell the real from the fake” and Brandy shouts back things like, “When will you get the picture?/You’re the past, I’m the future.” Brandy even makes the universally understood gesture for “crazy” when she says, “I’m sorry that you seem to be confused.”
In the next scene, however, it’s Brandy who looks confused when she hears the phone ring and goes to answer it, only to realize it was coming from Monica’s apartment (once more, we have to ask: where was this ability to hear everything going on through the paper-thin walls when “The Boy” was yukking it up in the other’s apartment?). After Monica hangs up from her conversation with “The Boy,” he then has the audacity to call Brandy to confirm plans with her as well, with both women having put on their “going out” ensembles. This, too, presents a great risk to being caught. Moreover, wouldn’t the girl who was scheduled for the ultra-early or ultra-late date be suspicious about the timing of the get-together? How does he honestly think he can carry this off?
The answer is that he clearly can’t as Brandy and Monica finally get wise (way too late in the game, if one considers realism) to his two-timing and decide to have a little fun of their own with the dirty bastard. But not before each woman gets rid of her framed photos and photo albums featuring pictures of them with “The Boy” (as well as any “trinkets” or “tokens of affection” he gave them)—this indicating that the relationships have been going on for at least months, prompting the viewer to continue scratching their head on how he wouldn’t have been caught coming or going from one of their apartments by the other far sooner. Tossing all of the romantic ephemera out at the same time at their front door, Brandy and Monica still want to blame the other one briefly for what is “The Boy’s” fuckery and betrayal—which neither woman is responsible for. And yet, perhaps because of the scarcity of hot straight men, they want to fight just a bit longer over who he really belonged to.
In the final moments of the video, “The Boy” hints anew at who he might truly prefer (and not just because Phifer would also star with Brandy in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer that year) as he decides to knock on Brandy’s door (Apt. 6) first, only to be blindsided by Monica also answering the door with her. Was he really so deluded as to think this wouldn’t happen sooner or later? Signs point to yes as he appears genuinely surprised to not only see both of them, but then have the door slammed in his face.
Nonetheless, the video offers no truly satisfying resolution. One really wants to know, did “The Boy” end up smooth-talking his way into a threesome? Did he choose to home in on one girl and convince her to stay with him? If so, did that result in one of the girls having to move out of her apartment to avoid the awkwardness of such a situation? If not, did Brandy and Monica claim sweet revenge beyond just a slammed door by throwing him out one of their windows? Whatever one’s fan fiction chooses to lean toward, the fact remains that “The Boy” is emblematic of the level of arrogance many “single” straight men still possess because they believe themselves to be “at a premium” for their rarity. Not to mention that no one involved in the video’s concept thought about how daft it would make Brandy and Monica look to not instantly pick up on the romantic con.
Genna Rivieccio
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