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Men II Boyz | page 1, 2
Now, before I start getting angry letters from fans, let me say that I actually like the Backstreet Boys; I'm a sucker for a well-turned pop single, and you couldn't find a better one last year than "I Want It That Way," with its luscious star burst of harmonies and dreamy, rolling chorus. Mmmm. I can deal with the Backstreet Boys' music -- it's the pantomimed passion, the eager embrace of the promotional machinery, the baby-butt softness of these boy bands that bugs me. Sure, O-Town is not the first boy band manufactured via a TV series. But even the Monkees understood that pop music couldn't be divorced from interesting wrinkles like rebellion, sex, badness; they wanted the chicks and the drugs and the street cred of the big boys in the real rock bands, and it eventually destroyed them. Alas, it's a different world now. The members of 'N Sync, for example, suggestively pump their pelvises, but wear "What Would Jesus Do" bracelets, copies of which they toss out to fans at their concerts; apparently, neither the band members, nor their fans, see the contradiction. (Coming soon, the dreamiest boy band of all -- Jesus and the Disciples!) Of course, Elvis Presley was a religious man, too, but not only was he aware of the contradictions, he got off on them.
Joyce Millman Joyce Millman's column appears every other Monday in Salon Arts & Entertainment. But 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys, O-Town (and Britney Spears and her underage clones too) are part of the creepy Disneyfication of pop -- and pop sexuality. They're like automatons from some Disney World "history of rock and roll" pavilion, where sex is infantilized, "the devil's music" is wiped clean of sin and history is rewritten to begin with Michael Jackson, who racked up so many album sales during the '80s that everybody was willing to overlook the fact that he was, um, a little weird. "I wanted to be like Michael Jackson ever since I saw 'Captain EO,'" gushed Jacob Underwood in the "Making the Band" pilot. Here's something to ponder: To the 19-year-olds in these boy bands, who danced to their mommies' "Thriller" albums when they were toddlers, Michael Jackson is Elvis. What a surprise, then, that "Making the Band" seems more interested in sneakily deconstructing the boy-band genre than in breathlessly plugging it. For one thing, the filmmakers let us see just how dehumanizing this boy-band star-making process is. The first episode had a startlingly ironic segment where several auditions were shown at the same time on a split screen, all of the guys singing the required piece of music -- 'N Sync's "Tearin' Up My Heart" -- and all of them mimicking the original in exactly the same ways. The O-Town contenders' interchangeability was further underscored when the eight finalists showed up late for their first session with a vocal coach, and were reprimanded for their tardiness with a tart, "You can be replaced, quickly." Under the inescapable gaze of the "Making the Band" cameras, the members of O-Town are shown being groomed like debutantes, but treated like schoolboys or assembly-line workers (or slaves); they're simultaneously rewarded and humiliated for their lack of individuality, their pretty facelessness. The same tactic worked with the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync -- for a while. But, you have to figure that by the time O-Town finds the cojones to mutiny against Pearlman, he'll already have his next big thing waiting in the wings.
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