Culture of cleanliness

After weeks at No. 1, "High School Musical" has finally relinquished its title as top-selling album in the nation.\nTo which everyone older than age 12 asks, "What the hell is 'High School Musical?'" Well, "High School Musical" is the most popular Disney Channel original movie ever. It's the first full-length film ever to be sold on iTunes. Its soundtrack has unleashed six top 100 singles and a platinum album. \nAlso, it's pretty terrible. For one thing, the songs are cookie-cutter pop drivel, and the characters in the movie are as up-tempo, clean-cut and bland as the wannabe show tunes. The movie is so loaded with clichés -- the big game, warring cliques, jock-guy-brainy-girl-romance -- that it wanders into self-parody. I mean, the big production number is called "Stick to the Status Quo." How much more conformist could you ask a \nmusical to be?\nNevertheless, there's something altogether likable about this movie, and its democratic, Web-based rise from iTunes and Amazon makes it a Digital Age model. Because of its bright color palette and cheery songs, I feel like I should despise "High School Musical," but it comforts me somehow.\nWhy does America, myself included, find it so irresistible? Even before the allegedly catastrophic events of Feb. 1, 2004 (a.k.a. "Nipplegate"), America wanted good, clean fun, even if it didn't resemble reality at all. With the news pumping in nonstop images of evil and deceit at every turn, the conservative return to "values" has prompted a similar turn in popular culture. We want our battles fought bloodlessly in fantasy worlds, our pop stars born without nipples and now, our teenage musicals drained of sex and hurling colorless pop tunes. \nMainstream pop culture has suffered some serious whiplash since the oversexed '90s, and "High School Musical" represents part of a movement back to benign themes. Generation-defining musicals used to be sexed ("Grease") or at least violent ("West Side Story"). The raciest thing happening in "High School Musical" is a peck on the cheek.\nWhere Frank Rich sees a veil of "truthiness" laid across America, I see a veil of "cleanliness," an attempt to cover up the unseemly truth of the world around us. One might think that pop music's darker rap and rock alternatives were obscenity-riddled, but thanks to a crackdown on obscenity laws in popular music, all radio play has been bleeped into incomprehensibility. Truly subversive songs have been replaced with censored copies of "Laffy Taffy."\nThe return to the cultural security blanket of bland pop like Barry Manilow and "High School Musical" extends to other realms as well. We're sweeping everything unpleasant under the carpet to keep it out of sight, out of mind. Guantanamo detainees? Corruption in Congress? Deteriorating social programs? We're shocked -- shocked! -- to find such malfeasance. Instead of real outrage, we have resigned to feeling a mild discontent before switching back on a simpler, plainer, nicer world. \nIs all hope lost? I'm not too worried. The blandness of 1910s pop music gave way to the glory of jazz, and the pasty boredom of the 1950s was broken by the hip-swiveling insurrection of Elvis. The grit and dirt of discontent will overflow soon enough, and the moment of "High School Musical" will come to pass. \nEnjoy the peppy, cheerful addiction while it lasts.