Fake out

Ever since bubble gum pop took over the mass media in the late ’90s (having since declined – thank God), I’ve had a theory about the genre’s secret origins. It’s an absurd, mad theory with absolutely no evidence – but I like it. It goes something like this:\nBritney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, the rest of NSync, the Backstreet Boys, Lindsay Lohan, perhaps Mandy Moore and Hilary Duff are all products of a secret cloning project run by the Walt Disney Company. \nBuried a mile beneath Orlando, Fla., in a discarded Cold War bunker complex is a laboratory where rows upon rows of protoplasm-filled tanks are linked to a computer-controlled life-support system. There, “imagineers” in white lab coats splice together genetic material gathered from the cast of the original 1955-1959 run of the “Mickey Mouse Club” – and possibly its later incarnations and other teen idol projects as well (I’m looking at you Hayley Mills). \nAfter the desired combination of genes is selected, it’s injected into a blank egg, then treated with rapid-development hormones – and, once the brain is sufficiently mature, it’s subjected to constant subliminal programming to make it docile and receptive to choreography. Once the clone has grown to the equivalent of a 15- to 18-year-old human, it’s fished out of the tank, cleaned up, sent to wardrobe, taken to the studio to lay down some vocals for the producers, directed to gyrate its sweaty abs in a music video – then unleashed into the wide world of “TRL,” “Now That’s What I Call Music!” CDs, Pepsi commercials and ABC Family programming. Voila: instant pop star!\nOK, this might be a bit of an exaggeration. But Britney’s decidedly Frankenstein-monsteresque, dome-denuding meltdown this past weekend got me wondering whether, as a culture, have we finally turned a corner – whether we’ve reached the point where the species of tightly-controlled, perfectly-polished, wholly-manufactured celebrity is doomed to extinction. \nThere are three patterns that make me suspect this. First, technology has made the public eye virtually inescapable (anyone with a camera phone can be a paparazzo). Second, if there’s one theme to YouTube and reality TV, it’s making celebrities out of people for being themselves (sort of) instead of building them a perfect, focus group-tested image and making them abide by it (although some reality TV still tries). And third, it’s worth noting that those celebrities pressed into being perfect plastic-image creatures keep unraveling in spectacular fashion – it’s not just that they’re undergoing their regular divorces and drug addictions, it’s that they’re exploding, spiraling off in all sorts of strange and disturbing directions. Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson and now Britney – all seem kind of scary to be around. \nNow, I don’t expect the world of public relations flacks and marketers to disappear, but, maybe, just maybe, all these things are adding up to a world where it’s simply too hard to be fake. At least, until Disney perfects its clone recipe.