A little over a year ago, I sat down to write the definitive critical analysis of 2001 cult classic Josie and the Pussycats for that most prestigious outlet, my Huffington Post blog. The final product—nearly 4,000 words of insight, wit, and deranged rambling—was ultimately rejected by HuffPo (for being too long), so it lives in perpetuity on my Tumblr.
TL; DR: While many writers begrudgingly concede that the soundtrack is banger after banger (true!) and note the film's self-aware, purposely campy, ironic humor, ultimately most publications will not rank it among the best films ever made, and that's wrong, for reasons I'll outline below.
You see, the world is a different place than it was even six months ago, and so relevant, politically charged cultural touchstones like Josie and the Pussycats are worth being revisited—especially on this, the sixteenth anniversary of the film's release.
In case you haven't watched Josie and the Pussycats recently, it's not really about the Pussycats but about a nefarious United States government colluding with the music industry and most major corporations to brainwash the youth of America and promote capitalist conformity. Like The Stepford Wives or Get Out, it's a (pseudo-)horror film wherein, instead of a monster trying to destroy you, an evil societal plague wants you to join it. It was prescient AF.
Let's start with the world of the film. Like the Riverdale of Riverdale or the sunny small towns of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and American Beauty, there is something bad lurking in the shadows of Riverdale's suburban bliss. But it's not murder or the angst and ennui of the American male. It's something far more sinister: capitalism. Rather than suggest that the nondescript fry cook at McDonald's has gone crazy from the monotony of his life and will soon take to killing, Josie and the Pussycats posits that the very existence of McDonald's has driven the world mad, that the endless advertising messages and the corruption of art by corporations have turned us into a society of automatons, programmed only to consume. All is the mall.
The city is no better. Sure, this is not what downtown Manhattan actually looks like. But if the companies housed in the skyscrapers hung glowing billboards on the outside of their offices, this is…what it would look like.
And this is, actually, what Times Square looks like.
When Fiona (played to perfection by Parker Posey)—high priestess of the brainwashing operation who, during the final fight, wears a dress made literally of her company's logo, plus a logo temporary tattoo—presses a button that causes her office to sink into the building's secret basement, the epicenter of the brainwashing operation where oracles from "Team Slang" and "Team Fashion" come up with new trends, I am reminded not of a Bond villain but of Titanpointe, the very real NSA spy building in NYC's Financial District. It's not a question of if or when or even how power brokers set up secret meetings in New York to influence the "free" market, but whether or not we're finding out.
And really, what about any of this is unbelievable? At the time of the film's release, many critics were bothered by—even if they understood the joke—the ridiculous level of product placement. Melody's shower is sponsored, as is Val's bedroom, as is Josie's apartment. This was a joke in 2001. It is not a joke now. The Pussycats' music is being used to sell, we find out, Skechers and Big Macs. Just like this Lady Gaga video is also a commercial for Verizon:
(For even more product placement, see: every Ariana Grande music video and the film Fifty Shades Darker.)
Of course, 2001 wasn't the start of the product placement age, and Josie and the Pussycats isn't the first story to mock it, but I think it says something that the film's biggest bad is its own parent: MTV. When the scheming Wyatt Frame (played with Maleficent-level villainy by Alan Cumming, who looks at the camera again and again, just in case you thought this movie wasn't in on the joke) kidnaps a "free thinker" seemingly immune to the brainwashing messages on his "Slave Mix" (LOL) CD, the van she's been stuffed into pulls away to reveal a big logo: mtv.com.
Next, can we talk about commodified resistance? Coming right off the heels of the being-sexy-is-empowering rah-rah Girl Power feminism of the Spice Girls, The Pussycats are a musical group with exactly two messages: "Yay you" and "Buy stuff." Wyatt Frame (I think) is the first character ever to utter the term "pussyhat," though of course, that's a coincidence; he's mispronouncing pussycat (OR IS IT A COINCIDENCE? IS IT?). Look at that Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad. The coolest anti–The Man brand is still a brand, and all brands want the same thing: to sell you something.
But it's not just that the government and big businesses are colluding to brainwash you and sell you loads of crap; if you try to stop them, they will have you murdered. And not with some elite Special Ops team either, oh no. The deaths will be mundane (drug overdoses, car crashes), and the culprits will be the usual suspects: MTV and some other people.
Real MTV News anchor Serena Altschul cameos as herself in the video news segments, explaining the deaths of misbehaving musicians (we find out these deaths are manufactured, and the news bulletins pretaped because corporate influence over the press is a given), and MTV's biggest star at the time, Carson Daly, tries to beat Tara Reid to death with a bat.
The powers that be will drain you of your money, your free will, and if they need to, your life force. And the more you resist, the more they will use you.
Josie and the Pussycats ends with a big concert (as every movie should) that brings all of the characters together and ties up the story threads with a simple but important message:
The villains (now in love!) are hauled off by the government, Josie and Alan get together, Les and Alexandra get together, and all is well in PussycatLand.
But this ending is a red herring. The corporation that the gals were trying to save the world from, we learn, was about to fold anyway. Instead, the government will insert its subliminal messages into movies. Josie, Mel, and Val miss this part. This is going to happen. They stopped nothing.
So no, the moral has nothing to do with being yourself. The moral of the movie (which came out pre-9/11) is that corporations and the government always have and always will brainwash and control the population, and they will kill to do so. And why? Sure, to get you to buy things. But money for money's sake and power for power's sake are poor motivations for villains, of which Fiona is a great one. We find out, right at the end, that her ego comes from great insecurity; she is, in fact, using Josie to sell Fiona, to make herself seem cool, popular, powerful, important. Perhaps she should have run for president.
