The video was produced by Joe Pearson and was written and developed by him and Altieri with input from McFarlane and Vedder over the course of 4 months.
The video premiered on August 24, 1998 on MTV's 120 Minutes and received a 1999 Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Video, Short Form.
Collage of scenes from the "Do the Evolution" video featuring an archetypal representation of death as a seductive female among other scenes of post-apocalyptic industrialization.
Throughout the video, a black haired woman (similar in appearance to the character Death from the DC comic book series, The Sandman) dances and laughs, representing "Death" as it follows mankind through all of its history. The video is misanthropic in its underlying message. The video begins with the evolution of life, from the smallest cell to the extinction of dinosaurs and reign of homo sapiens. The video then cuts back and forth throughout human history, depicting man's primitive, violent nature as essentially unchanged over the centuries. Such depictions include a knight preparing for the coming slaughter during the Crusades, a ritual dance by America's KKK (the dance is repeated with other groups throughout the video), a rally by Nazi-esque troops (with a symbol reminiscent of the Sig Rune instead of a swastika), Auschwitz-like prisoners with the stripes going vertically instead of horizontally on their uniforms, carnage upon a World War I-era battlefield (apparently a tribute to Peace on Earth, a 1930s MGM anti-war cartoon directed by Hugh Harman), the apparent rape of a woman, and the bombing of a Vietnamese village by an American jet, the pilot of which removes his mask to reveal a skull laughing wildly. Every scene portrayed complements the song's meaning and tightly follows the lyrics. When Vedder sings "Buying stocks on the day of the crash," a scene is shown where businessmen are committing suicide by jumping from buildings, similar to Black Thursday and the resulting suicides from the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Other social and environmental issues such as whaling, Manifest Destiny, vivisection, pollution, genetic modification and techno-progressivism are included. The music video blames humankind's brutality on leadership; with various scenes depicting a cardinal or priest, an American President, and an Asian leader. It is eventually revealed that the world leaders are being controlled as puppets by the hand of Death. The video concludes in what seem to be future scenarios of the self-destruction of the human race, including the carpet bombing of a city of clones by futuristic aircraft, computers hijacking the human mind, and finally a nuclear explosion which leaves a city in ruins. During the sequence of flashing images near the end of the video an image of a yield sign being smashed at the corner can be seen, which references the album title and cover art.
Absolutely fenomenal animation work, going along nicely with Mr. Vedders screams of "IT'S EVOLUTIONS, BABY!". And don't you just love the female character acting as "Death" in the video?
Just as eery as she is cute...and vice versa!
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