Soman's In The [K]now

In recent years, the business of Hollywood and the entertainment industry has almost become as fascinating as the creative output itself. You might see a doctor reading Daily Variety on the T, or perhaps a teenager memorizing the new Billboard magazine. And for some odd reason, box office grosses are fodder for everyday conversation. Why the urgent desire to go behind the scenes?

This new column in Arts will hopefully give us a chance to investigate trends in pop culture and ruminate on why people do the things they do. It's not about being pretentious. It's not about being academic. It's about understanding mass culture and trying to figure out why art (which is increasingly becoming synonymous with entertainment) is so schizophrenic these days.

DOPPELGANGER

Cynics complain about the state of music these days, carping over and over that image supersedes talent and the scene consists of one-note artists barreling through their fifteen minutes of fame. But it could be much worse. Remember New Kids on the Block? They had a virtual monopoly on the teen beat during their reign in the early nineties. And the music was bad. Real bad. (I doubt you will ever hear "Step by Step" on the radio in the near future.) But nowadays, music acts seem to come in pairs--a fascinating and, surprisingly enough, beneficial twist. For instance, the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync (add in 98o, Boyzone, Five, etc.), Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears... Without the opposition, each type of act would grate on us--like the Spice Girls who quickly dissolved when we tired of their singular prissiness. Having a popular nemesis who takes away your market share (though I'm pretty sure, contrary to what record execs think, that most Backstreet Boys fans hide N'Sync albums in their closet and vice versa) drives an artist --or at least makes him or her try--to be innovative. The public seems to be figuring this out too. It was virtually against the law for boys to buy NKOTB albums. But word on the street is that the continuing sales of the bubblegum pop albums are being driven by teenage boys.... Now that, Alanis, is ironic.

MILLENNIAL FEVER

Yesterday, while walking down Mount Auburn in my orange vest, a friend of mine eagerly pointed out that I was being trendy by wearing the "Official Color of the Millennium." Yes, my friends, orange is the official color of Y2K. And no one knows why. Surely, the spokesperson for orange didn't bribe the Official Millennial Committee (though I have a feeling that this committee is helmed by the Gap CEO who made orange trendy in the first place). If anyone knows how orange was chosen as the most important color of 1000 years, please drop me a line. I'm sure the world would like to know.

SUMMER TRENDS

It's kind of funny how movies seem to follow such odd trends even though the scheduling usually is coincidental. The Blair Witch Project, Stir of Echoes, Stigmata and The Sixth Sense were all filmed so far apart from each other that there was practically no chance of them ever opening within the same season--let alone the same month. But strangely enough, August was a spookfest every week at the local cineplex. It's ironic, of course, since the true flood of copycat movies will begin in the next six to seven months as Hollywood execs try to capitalize on the trend (i.e. rapid filming, diehard editing, rush to theaters). Last time that happened, Scream planted the deadly seed in the mind of studio heads. As a result, we had lame-O drivel like Urban Legend, Idle Hands, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc. etc. polluting our theaters for months. Don't go see scary movies next spring. I promise you, they will be very bad.

PITCHING CAMP

There is a disturbing trend in Hollywood to obliterate camp - even though campiness is a chief asset of a cult classic or any movie that acquires legendary status. But suddenly, movie execs want purity--"truth" at all costs. The latest victim is Barbarella, that terribly cheesy but wonderfully entertaining 1968 film starring Jane Fonda; Fonda vamped it up as an astronaut in the 41st century trying to save a positronic ray. Audiences ate it up. Drew Barrymore has signed on for a remake, but the new Barbarella will dump the camp factor and tell a very serious scientific story about this positronic ray. No one is going to care. It will just be another embarrassment--like The Mod Squad and Lost in Space which were remade as "straight" stories. Bah. Both films stunk. They didn't have the camp factor, they didn't have the cool factor--and justly, they both tanked.

CONVERSATION STARTER?

Have you seen the previews for The Minus Man? They had audiences buzzing before The Blair Witch Project when they pictured a young female lifeguard returning late to her job to find two dead people floating in the pool. Word is that the film is just as unpredictable as The Sixth Sense and more edgy than any of the summer spook-a-thons. Our team is hitting the Boston premiere and afterparty this week. We'll give you our report on the movie and the scene in the next issue.