Spice Girls - "Wannabe"
Slam your body down and... kind of wiggle?
A couple weeks ago I dreamed that I was watching a trailer for a biopic about Melanie Jayne Chisholm AKA Melanie C AKA Sporty Spice of the Spice Girls. I can’t remember much about it, but I know it was very serious and slightly gritty as if Paul Thomas Anderson were at the helm. I also can’t remember what it was titled in my dream version, but I really want it to be called MEL C, so let’s pretend that’s what it was.
The more I ruminate on this dream, the more it makes sense to me. Sure, a full Spice Girls biopic would be an easy cash grab for millennials and would be a great opportunity for five twenty-something singer-actors to shine.1 But let’s be real: Sporty is the heart of the Spice Girls. And if I were in charge of MEL C, the “Wannabe” video—the song that put all the Spices on the map and incessantly on the radio—would of course be prominently featured:
I was in 8th grade when their debut album Spice came out. I was very much into “alternative rock” and stubbornly against Spice Girls and any kind of “girly” pop music. But they were unavoidable. By the middle of high school I could begrudgingly accept that they were OK and learned Ginger’s and Scary’s rap bridge well enough to lip sync to at a summer camp talent show.
I can also now admit to myself that I felt both jealous of and threatened by their aggressive girly-ness. My go-to look at the time was a boys t-shirt over a long-sleeve thermal and baggy corduroys, so the idea that a cool gal could wear tighter, shorter clothes but also… be powerful and in charge?? Tantalizing. Secretly, I wanted to be Baby Spice: cute, blond, comfortable in heels, and drenched in pastels. These days I aspire to be Sporty: she’s always wearing comfortable clothes, can do backflips, and she gets to sing the powerhouse, belty parts of every song.2
So let’s get into the moment you’ve all been waiting for from MEL C, the biopic that only exists in my dream brain but which this post will hopefully summon into existence.
For a raucous celebration of girl power, this video starts SO quietly. They’re barging their way into a fancy-looking hotel, but I guess on like… a Tuesday?? How is this city street so peaceful? Even when Baby steals a hat from a seemingly homeless person (RUDE) and they all shove their way past the doorman, the only sounds we hear besides their giggles is the soft scuffling of shoes. Everyone’s being way too nice to these troublemakers!
I also love this moment of them walking side by side with this fancy family:
You know he’s important because he’s got one of those Prince Charming sashes on and you know she’s important because she looks like Tilda Swinton in space. Their kids are PUMPED.
They get into the hotel and our girl Sporty kicks off the verse. The lobby seems to be solely populated by young men in loud suits just waiting for something to happen. Good thing these ladies showed up! And for those who didn’t notice them yet, they run to the staircase to show off their fancy footwork:
THIS moment on the stairs is the Spice Girls’ exact moment of arrival. “HELLO! We’re cute! We wrote this catchy song! We have coordinated dance moves and yet we also have individual and distinct personalities!”
Speaking of those personalities: allow me to rank everyone’s nicknames and corresponding style from most to least understandable:
Sporty = tracksuits, sneakers, sports bras, ponytails
Baby = babydoll dresses, pastels, pigtails
Posh = little black dresses, fierce bob, resting bitch face?
Scary = animal prints, neon, big hair??3
Ginger = glitter leotard? Union Jack dresses?? red hair ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe my brain decided on a Mel C biopic solely because her persona is the strongest one.
They dance their way off the steps and make their way to a fancy dining room where Sporty casually does a perfect backflip and then marches out of it:
And again: no one shrieks at her or tries to pull her down or yells “you just smushed your trainers in my carefully roasted chicken!!” The most we get is this woman looking mildly overwhelmed:
Perhaps in MEL C we’ll get a voiceover narration of this moment, where everything moves in slow motion and Mel C says something like: “We knew all the parents and the media would say we were endorsing destruction and irresponsibility, but we knew what we were really endorsing: girl power.”
They dance their way around to different corners and the clientele at this hotel gets even more interesting. Everyone is dressed so nicely, there’s a banquet in the works, there’s a priest chilling at a table with another sash man. It feels like they’ve stumbled into a secret society.4 The girls also start to recruit some like-minded party folks:
Then we finally get to the part of the song that seems to clearly spell out some choreography: “Slam your body down and wind it all around.” But apparently that move is just… stomp your leg and do a little wiggle?
Apparently “zigazig ah” is the more important one, where everyone moves their knees in what feels like an add-on to the Time Warp:
It looks like they’re finally about to get busted for their shenanigans so they run back outside to a conveniently empty and waiting bus, which feels like a perfect foreshadowing of their Spice World future.
In the final moments, Sporty beckons us to come with them and I wish we could. I wonder if the girls all got to ride around on the bus in celebration of nailing this video or if it was right back to work writing hits, learning choreography, and finding new outfits for their specific personalities. I guess I’ll have to wait and dream the next trailer of MEL C to find out.
Thank you all for reading! Friendship never ends!! See you next month with more sweet moves.
Love and jazz hands,
Molly
I heartily welcome your casting ideas in the comments. I weirdly keep imagining a brunette Sydney Sweeney as Sporty? Can she sing??
I have to credit this Trash Theory video for giving me a whole new perspective on Melanie C and the Spice Girls in general. It’s worth the full 23 minutes!
Not a good look to name the only Black member “Scary,” you guys!
Also: I just realized this video is trying to look like it’s all done in one shot. Why isn’t the The Studio giving “Wannabe” its due flowers??
In my mind, this video was full of Janet Jackson-level choreography. Clearly, I've got on some nostalgic rose-colored glasses. The song still hits, though!