“Bon Appétit” is a great pop song with terrible cover art. We were hoping that the video might put the Katy Perry and Migos in the black, but it looks like we were asking for too much. Katy Perry’s latest video is an absolute mess that manages to hit a million wrong notes even as the ultra-slick song plays over the top.
First, let’s start with the general conceit. In the video, Katy Perry is quite literally a piece of meat being passed around by chefs (including Roy Choi!) so that they can add ingredients to her body. It’s gross, but Perry could manage a weak defense of it given the buffet themes of the hook.
There is also an insane amount of body horror in the video; at one point, they boil Perry alive. The image of Perry’s skin being kneaded until it turns into dough that they can pull off of her body in chunks is some Holy Mountain-level ish. One of the chefs twists her entire leg off. I don’t know about ya’ll but that not going to leave the space behind my eyelids anytime soon.
The video gets worse as it goes along, morphing into a strip club in time for Migos verse (because rappers, amirite?) and featuring a shot of a woman having her clothes surprisingly ripped off against her will. But don’t worry, her arc ends with her tied down with an apple in her mouth. Everything is just peachy. All this makes the fact that Katy Perry is trying to spin the song as a bit of female empowerment even stranger.
Hot and ready to serve, but make no mistake I'm not your piece of 🍖 🔪 ☝🏻🍒https://t.co/9eVUJojSDP #sexualliberation pic.twitter.com/mOLp2W5LCX
— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) May 12, 2017
It doesn’t help that the moment she turns the tables on the men of the video is the least-lovingly shot scene, with a frankly terrible cartoon person pie contrasting with the effects of the rest of the clip. Check it out up top. While it’s certainly not her greatest work, it does have fans making plenty of cannibalism jokes.
