Killing the Audition: Ariana Grande’s “Petal” Video

Ostensibly set during a time when “cattle calls” were still the norm for casting, the opening to Ariana Grande’s “Petal” video (directed by her go-to ever since Eternal Sunshine, Christian Breslauer) begins with an almost The Substance-like scene as the camera focuses in on a blank star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a dandelion growing out of one of the cracks. It’s a fitting movie to reference (along with a hint of Maxxxine, which will also come out again later in the gore), whether consciously or not, in that Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) contends with her own “pretzeling” for executives as she grows older and less like “the person her audience first fell in love with.” This being the major theme Grande seeks to emphasize by the end of the video.

It’s also a theme, incidentally, that her fellow pop star (and fellow songwriter that frequently homes in on relationships as her topic of choice), Taylor Swift, explored in the video for 2017’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” This by taking some of the key criticism and commentary from the media and fans at that time, and funneling it into the dialogue that occurs between the various Taylors of different “eras” in her career (this well before she made the word “eras” such a thing by calling her 2023-2024 “greatest hits” tour as such). Grande isn’t so “on the nose” about it, but instead chooses to have it out with the public as represented by the various “old white men” casting agents that keep telling her she “not good enough” every time she comes in. Doing everything she can to somehow appeal to these twats.

The first time around, she assumes her best bet is showing up to the audition looking “virginal,” sweet and, well, decidedly like Sandy Olsson in Grease. Which means, of course, that, when her “sweet” appearance fails, she has to come in looking like Sandy during her “after” moment, when she decided to make herself over to look “worthy” of dating a T-Bird. Before Grande tries to do the same, she walks into the building of “Fame Inc.” (a heavy-handed reference to the increasingly corporate business of becoming famous) and brightly tells the wizened receptionist, “Hello, I’m Pepper. I’m here for the audition today.” So it is that Grande goes from “Peaches” to “Pepper” for this album cycle. Either way, the receptionist, smoking away without even looking at her, rotely tells her, “Take an application, pick a number and get on line.” Of course, that latter “New York/New Jersey way” of telling someone to get in line doesn’t make this feel like an audition that’s taking place in Hollywood, even though the Walk of Fame is supposed to be outside. Or maybe this “broad” just couldn’t shake her East Coast manner of speaking after moving out West.

In any case, Grande does as she’s told, taking a seat with all the other women dressed in early 1960s-style attire. Though “sitting” isn’t really what they do as Grande joins in a choreographed “musical chairs” type of “dance” while each woman robotically moves down the line of chairs with her application in hand. In the next scene, Grande is belting her heart out in front of an apathetic group of men observing her as she sings the lyrics, “‘Cause all of my favorite stories/End in some kind of catastrophe/But I don’t need someone to save me/‘Cause this music and I will never die.”

Alas, her earnestness and talent aren’t enough to move any of the talent scouts watching, with one writing in his notes, “Lovely voice, very kind but—nothing special. Boring on the eyes, a little HOMELY! Couldn’t hurt to lose a few LBS.” That latter assessment perhaps being Grande’s own nod to how her body image became warped enough to feel that her current level of thinness is perfectly “healthy.” Or maybe she’s simply mocking how Hollywood never feels a girl can be “too thin” until she’s practically knocking on death’s door (à la Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie essentially swimming in their respective dresses while walking around together circa 2005).

In any case, the scout stamps the “Final Recommendation” with the label, “NOT GOOD ENOUGH.” Grande sadly but acceptingly takes back her application, then scurries past the same blank Hollywood star on the pavement outside, whose dandelion keeps shedding petals almost as if to mimic the rose in the glass encasement from Beauty and the Beast. And, to an extent, that metaphor applies here as well—for it’s no secret that, in matters of Hollywood, it’s always a race against time for women. And even Madonna told her first manager, Camille Barbone, that it was taking too long for her to become famous, that she was getting “old.” This said in her early twenties (by 1982, at the age of twenty-four, she would get a record deal).

As the “Petal” video progresses, it’s obvious that Grande can feel that pressure too, continuing to take a number and wait to audition so that she can prove she’s “good enough” before it’s “too late” (i.e., she’s “too old” to be considered at all). For her next “performance,” that’s when she goes all “Sandy post-black and leather makeover,” trying to play it sexier in the hope that such a tried-and-true method will finally convince these men to let her “join the club” that is fame. But this doesn’t do it for them either, with the latest round of notes criticizing, “Still very talented, too much makeup now. No SEX APPEAL! Should get some work done and maybe a NEW HAIRSTYLE!”

Taking back her application this time, she looks far less accepting of the result and much more upset about it. Still, she walks past that Hollywood star and the dandelion growing out of it again so that she can come back, take another number and try to impress them in her cow-print getup (an animal print that only a thin person can get away with sans the risk of mockery…and also, it’s appropriate for the “cattle call” setting) and blatantly artificial tits that are in total contrast to her bony chest from the last time she was there. But now, the criticism is, “Too much work done. DESPERATE!” Thus, she’s still branded (no cow pun intended), “NOT GOOD ENOUGH” as the lyrics, “It’s such a fucked situation/Petal in the pavement/Just as long as she keeps getting it right/Heartbreak won’t bite/Here in paradise.” However, since “Pepper” isn’t getting it right at each of these auditions, heartbreak is definitely biting. That is to say, the heartbreak of not being “chosen,” of constantly being told she has to make some kind of improvement in order to enter the fame game.

Showing up to the last audition of the video, Grande and the women in the waiting room move in a more beleaguered manner, as if they’re literally going through the motions while knowing full well that they’ll never get what they want. Though not for lack of trying (this, whether meaning to or not, alluding to all the ways in which capitalism is a scam in that it insists if you just “work hard enough,” you’ll eventually achieve “all your dreams”). And as Grande keeps trying in her next (and final) audition, back in her more “virginal” style, she gets cut off by a record scratch sound effect that amounts to her being vaudeville hooked off the stage, followed by an executive telling her, “Unfortunately, this one fell a little flat. You know, there’s something about you. You give off this feeling that is completely—” Another scout then chimes in, “It’s unmarketable!” The first scout then says the real problem is that she’s “inauthentic.” Yet another one adds, “The way you used to be, I miss that.” And then, the last one with an opinion decides, “We miss the old you. Maybe you could go out and find her and, uh, come back and give it another shot.”

Needless to say, these are the types of comments meant to mirror the echo chamber of what fans and critics keep saying about her. And obviously, Grande is quite sick of it, pulling her own Swift maneuver in the spirit of, “I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ‘cause she’s dead.” This done after she fake smiles (despite having once said, “Fuck a fake smile”) at them and saying, “K. Thank you.” That’s when the scene becomes Quentin Tarantino-esque, complete with the cartoonishness of the ensuing gore. For she takes a chainsaw that happens to be conveniently nearby and proceeds to decapitate them against a blood-red backdrop that she and the scouts are now silhouetted against. This intercut with the shots of her getting blood splattered all over her clothes and skin as she eliminates the peanut gallery.

Walking out into the waiting room soaked in their blood, the waiting hopefuls gasp at the sight of her and then give her the standing ovation she’s been wanting all along. Thankful that she’s done away with the gatekeeping old guard. Even the receptionist breaks her stoicism to commend, “Good for you, bitch.” Grande gives a slight nod of satisfaction before Breslauer cuts to her sitting in a Chinese restaurant (still wearing her blood-covered dress) and breaking open a fortune cookie that reads, “You bloom wherever you are planted.” The camera begins to pan out slowly, which is when Breslauer can be heard from offscreen saying, “That’s it. Give me dreamy. Hopeful. And…cut!” Which is when the scene then cuts to show the camera crew that’s been shooting all of this the whole time. A quintessentially meta moment.

As Pepper walks off the set, her take completed, Breslauer (playing a version of himself) tells her, “This town deserves a star like you.” She replies, “Thank you, Mr. Breslauer.” Back on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Grande is met by two separate crowds: fans and photographers (a.k.a. paparazzi). She opts only to engage with the fans, sighing autographs and smiling. The camera then slowly zooms in on the star, which is now filled in with the name “PEPPER,” still with the same cracks in the pavement that have a pair of dandelions growing out of them. The indication being perhaps that, even when a girl finally gets what she wants, it’s still not necessarily all that it’s, er, cracked up to be. And perhaps no one knows that better than Grande.