Kitty Conspiracy: Revisiting Josie and the Pussycats 20 Years Later
An ominously prophetic anti-consumerism masterpiece? Another teen girl movie that ascribes to the misogyny it aims to criticize? Both?
With shows like Riverdale and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina rousing fandoms and ship wars on Twitter, the Archie Comics franchise has been reincorporated into the contemporary lexicon. Characters that have been all but forgotten are gaining fresh vivacity through teen culture, merchandise, and rebranding. But what if there was a live-action revival of these stories that mocked the media attention and merch selling that could aid in it’s success? One that ridiculed, yet critically analyzed the same commerciality it would eventually become a product of? Henry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan’s Josie & The Pussycats was that movie. And it was far too frivolously exuberant and femininity-driven for its own era.
Initially, the irony of 2001’s Josie & The Pussycats was written off as poorly-executed; a revival lacking substance that fell flat amongst it’s audience. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert likened the film to another cinematic
personification of musical feminism, albeit in a rather chauvenistically biting manner. In one of the kinder excerpts from his scathing review, he compares the two as if they were carbon copies of each other. “Josie and the Pussycats are not dumber than the Spice Girls, but they’re as dumb as the Spice Girls, which is dumb enough.” Ebert only amplified a looming sexism by completely missing the disparity between what Josie and The Pussycats and the Spice Girls serve to represent.
Pushing itself to the forefront of the late millenia was Riot-Grrrl, the DIY punk scene teeming with 3rd wave feminism. Born out of the same anti-establishment philosophy as the more male-dominated Grunge movement, Riot Grrrl was a changing paradigm that focused on girls declaring agency over their existence in the music scene. The Spice Girls are largely responsible for helping shift that paradigm into the mainstream. By beautifying the edgy anarchist aesthetics of the 90s underground, they created a polished and more palpable ideology.
However, The Spice Girls commodified the “Girl Power” movement whilst simultaneously playing into the very same commercialization Josie and The Pussycats served to castigate. So whilst both films and groups, fictional or otherwise, are intrinsically related in terms of structure, the intent of Pussycats scratches the plexiglass surface that the Spice Girls pioneered.
Even the most commercially known artists of the early aughts (like the Spice Girls) were praised and popularized for the same attributes that would ultimately lead tabloids (and critics like Ebert) to singularize them as trivial. The early 2000s lionization of hyper-femininity was paradoxical, The most popular aesthetics were also the ones considered the most vapid and unserious. Correlating with the rise of bubblegum pop was a modernized misogyny that insidiously became a barometer for artistic merit. And while the glittery, babydoll characteristics of the Y2K era were globally idealized, they were simultaneously objectified and demeaned.
This movie is a product of its time, and semi-misogynistic in it’s own right. It’s one of the many pieces of media that highlighted the strictly enforced chasm between “cool”, “down-to-earth” girls with substance and “cool” girls who are interpreted as hostile, shallow, and vogueish. The ‘Not Like Other Girls’ trope has been a long cultural chapter in the epic that is misplaced feminism. There was Lizzie McGuire’s Kate Sanders. In Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, it was Megan Fox’s Carla Santini versus Lindsey Lohan’s Lola Cep. Another Lindsey Lohan movie that is arguably the cultural catalyst responsible for solidifying this trope is none other than Mean Girls, the echoes of its permanence still ringing in our ears over 15 years later. Pitting women against each other was such a focal point in the mainstream that it was often considered progressive. Under the guise of being independent and defiant, hating the effeminate stereotypes ascribed to our gender somehow made us more radical. Josie and the Pussycats is no exception to the rule, and it’s important to note that even some of the more dynamic movies centered around girl liberation harbored an engrained praise of bellicosity between women and the societal categories enforced on them. That same societal categorization and the inherent sexism behind it worked to this movie’s hindrance.
This movie, like many others of the early 2000s, suffered the Jennifer’s Body Curse. Starring Megan Fox of Confessions, Amanda Seyfried of Mean Girls, and created by Oscar-award winning Diablo Cody, Jennifer’s Body was another metaphorical feature that focused on sisterhood, internalized misogyny, and the villainization of women in mainstream media. It was a fresh take on the “Monster Girl’’ genre, frequently paying homage to its cinematic predecessors like 2000’s Ginger Snaps and 1976’s Carrie.
Its targeted demographic was so severely disregarded that it became a commercial failure; poorly rated and harshly critiqued. In an oddly similar fashion to Jennifer’s Body, Pussycats’ was perceived by audiences as just another depthless film, which speaks volumes to the overall denigration of anything seeped in femininity.
Although its candor and wit was unrecognized until more than a decade later, its subject matter is only more relevant now in the era of mass consumerism, fast fashion, and social media. Ironically, this parallels the manic premise: advertisements, marketing, and mass media have the potential to both persuade and exacerbate social influence. In a sense, Pussycats has evolved into a cutting-edge examination on the superficiality of popular media and the deep-rooted connections between commercialism, popularity, and internalized misogyny, which is arguably something it’s been all along.
In a social culture driven by capitalism, a commercial-esque parody full of superfluous product placement can often be mistaken for the same concept it’s satirizing. But doesn’t that say more about the ever-present commerciality in pop culture than it does about the production itself? By hyperbolizing a media-driven phenomena that already has become commonplace, Pussycats critiques both the significance of advertising, and it’s inviolable hold on youth culture.
A major hallmark of Pussycats is it’s nearly distressing amount of logo oversaturation. Merchandise for television programming, electronics, and nearly every recognizable fashion brand available are intentionally littered throughout, either blatantly or in the background. But why? How can a film based off a major franchise, whose creation is heavily laden with it’s own antithesis be so fault-finding without contradicting itself?
When interviewed in 2020 by screenwriter-slash-journalist Maria Lewis, it was clear that filmmakers Henry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan always knew what kind of premise they wanted Pussycats to have. “I think the first idea was ‘oh, wouldn’t it be funny if we said all the music that seems so kind of bland and generic … everyone is loving it because they’re being brainwashed,’” says Elfont. “And then we thought ‘okay, well, what if they’re selling things?’ and the whole satire of consumerism, all of the pop culture and capitalism, came from that.” Kaplan goes on to detail how Pussycats was birthed out of an exhaustion with pop star sameness, and a bizarre wonder as to how this could all occur just a short time after one of the most anti-consumerist, anti-conformist youth movements in recent history. “To us, it seemed very clear. Again, I guess having come out of college during Grunge and then suddenly seeing everything get sanitized, people in matching outfits… it felt weird. It felt like something nefarious was going on, even if it wasn’t. It felt like we were being fed something we didn’t want and people were dining out on it.” Both Kaplan and Elfont were acutely cognizant of the juxtaposition between what they considered to be the authentic and the manufactured. Instead of blindly embracing the repetitious monomania, they were deeply unsettled by it. That same sort of unease radiates in between the lines of the script. By exploring notions of celebrity, particularly female iconicism, Kaplan and Elfont highlight a peculiar type of idolization, a clandestine wickedness and a vehicle for mass-influence.
Paired with a humorously inflated spin on rising stardom, Pussycats contains both an amusing hyperreality and a darkly Orwellian truth, arguably making it one of the most vatic cult classics of its generation.
Josie & The Pussycats possesses a quiet kind of wackiness. The tongue-in-cheek execution of the plot is self-aware and hilariously deadpan almost to a fault. The writing alternates between mocking both the industry and the movie itself in a fast-paced manner that can be hard to read if the audience isn’t vigilant. Peppered throughout its runtime are small windows of dialogue that serve as a larger commentary on the mass media maina depicted. These cracks in the fourth wall are delivered with such an explicit level of sardonicity that one can’t help but notice myriad culturally relevant parallels. The titular characters aren’t always at the forefront of this delivery, though. Parker Posey and Alan Cumming play villainous record label executives Wyatt Frame and Fiona. They’re owners of the fictitious label, MegaRecords, which is often used as a stand-in to represent the music industry as a whole.
Fiona is essentially the determining factor and the epitome of everything cool. She’s later revealed to be a “reformed” social outcast, whose need for normalcy and acceptance led to her unbridled quest for iconism. Intentionally or not, Fiona’s character serves to illustrate how popularity and internalized misogyny are often positively correlated. She pushes beauty ideals and standards heavily in order to sell products, and later her own popularity through adverts that essentially belittle teenage girls, stripping them of their agency.
Armed with her comically secretive office and an audience of media moguls and corporate executives, the mononymous Fiona launches into a flamboyant presentation; “The fads, the fashions, the product placement; from this command center we control the most influential demographic of the entire population. This is the epicenter of all trends. We turn your world into one giant TV commercial!” Not only does this scene reveal both the overarching theme and the character motives in a succinct and farcical way, but it also serves as a self-referential quip. To insert an entire scene detailing how commercialism is being used to influence the masses, by a woman who was once a social outcast, in a movie that is intentionally oversaturated with brand logos is a clever irony, illustrating how easily the lines between actuality and the dystopian premise can become blurred.
The following scene, an “educational video detailing the operation,” features a cameo from Eugene Levy playing himself as the narrator. “For years, the government has been planting small subliminal advertising suggestions in today’s rock music. The results? We can make these kids buy just about anything, chasing a new trend every week. And that is good for the economy…!” The subliminal messages are in the form of hidden tracks beneath the music voiced by Mr. Moviefone, and contain phrases like “Conform! Free will is overrated! Jump on the bandwagon!” In an effort to dull those who rebel against the status-quo, MegaRecords and the government collaborate to forcibly drive their most profitable commodity: conformity. Unbeknownst to both the musicians and their fans, they’ve become pawns in a massive, economically-driven ploy. Even though the jest-heavy premise was somewhat far-fetched for it’s time, this fictional plot holds some water in our current culture, even more so than it did during its release. And few articulate that better than Kay Hanely.
Kay Hanely was not only the lead vocalist of 90s alt-pop band Letters to Cleo; she was also the lead vocalist for Rachel Lee Cook’s titular Josie. Through a near encyclopedic collection of interviews from vital contributors, actors, and most notably Hanley herself, a succinct yet comprehensive history of the film was accounted in Graffiti With Punctuation’s limited series Josie & The Podcats. In the sixth and final episode “Legacy,” the focus shifts to the insurmountable impact of this quintessential cult classic. Although it’s satirical premise seemed facetious twenty years ago, Hanley chronicles how Pussycats has gradually developed into a foreboding cautionary tale, one laced with an unintentionally daunting prophecy.
“For a lot of reasons, that movie was ahead of its time… and really misunderstood… At the time, it was so anathema to take money and sponsorships and branding from corporations that it was just a very cartoonish villain like, ‘that would never happen!’ And now of course artists don’t care about getting on MTV or anything like that, they wanna know where their fucking Nokia deal is… Artists and branding are so intertwined now that you forget that when Josie And The Pussycats came out, that wasn’t even a thing, so it was predicting the future in this unbelievably precinct way… Just a year before [my involvement with the movie, Letters To Cleo] had turned down money for a Kool-Aid commercial because I thought that was a terrible thing to do… I’m looking for my fuckin’ Kool-Aid money now, let me tell you that.”
Because it’s so effortlessly meta and cognizant of its own absurdity, Pussycats has aged into an increasingly-relevant, sharp-witted commentary of modern mainstream consumerism. But to a culture oblivious to the idea of influencers and brand ambassadors, and a time where major media hadn’t yet reached it’s current level of brand oversaturation, the looming omnipresence of commerciality was disregarded by many. By coupling ostentatious product placement with the sardonic aggrandizement of achieving celebrity status, Josie & The Pussycats perfectly encapsulates the metaphorical and physical plasticity that surreptitiously infiltrated every aspect of early 2000s girl power culture. And if it weren’t for the metallic baby tees, Zima references, and flip phones, it’d be absolutely timeless.
Written by Faith Green