Simone; Work It Out
Writer-director Andrew Niccol (notorious for writing The Truman Show) teases pop intellection with this story of egotistic Hollywood director Viktor Taransky (Al Pacino), who loses his leading lady and stumbles upon a computer-generated replacement. Whether or not he gets away with this charade is supposed to be suspenseful, but it is so only if one has never seen a movie or tv show during the past 80 years. Taransky's cgi automaton looks like the conventional Hollywood starlet. In fact, the title figure Simone (a conflation of the techy term "Simulation One") has the facial molding, skin and hair color of Cameron Diaz. (Ten years ago she would have been modeled on Michelle Pfeiffer.) Niccol never deals with the implicit cultural (racial) conventions that give preference to white blonde looks. By accepting those stereotypes Niccol overlooks worse things about media influence than simply the pressure of advertising.
Ironically, Simone gainsays and never investigates the issue of ideological hypnosis-the media's allegiance to Caucasian phenotypes-and audience subjugation to media hype. (How many Vanity Fair subscribers questioned white Jennifer Connelly being celebrated on the current cover instead of the bigger Oscar winner biracial Halle Berry?) Niccol intends for viewers to be distracted by the predictable, sci-fi hypothesis of the masses falling for the shtick-the image-of barely talented mannequins and Taransky having to sell out his artistry for such crude commerciality. But none of this is surprising when you consider the number of people who think Madonna can actually sing or that Winona Ryder (who plays Taransky's frustrating diva) can act. Pop consumers sometimes seem like nothing more than a congregation of dupes.
Niccol can't bring himself to contemplate why particular images appeal to people. Feeling superior to the ordinary workings of pop media, he presumes his smugness is news. That's because he's distanced from the demi-phenomenon, enjoying his comfortable, ignorant collusion with Taransky, sharing allegiance to Hollywood prevarication. It's pathetic that only a month ago another "bold" movie (Full Frontal) evinced the same banality while purporting to rip the lid off the film industry.
If you want a story that reveals why Hollywood professionals resort to doing crap, claiming to pay for the swimming pool, the Jaguar, the spa, the whores, the child support, you're better off watching HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Niccol contrives Simone to distract from such guilt-ridden political critique. It's truly an appalling sight to watch Al Pacino, the man who, as Michael Corleone in The Godfather films embodied the boldest self-examination in the history of American movies, pretend that lying to the public with a non-human animated graphic represents a moral dilemma you can take seriously. Fully animated films like last year's Final Fantasy showed that Hollywood is not beyond attempting any kind of deception, but it only works with an audience that is psychotically gullible, that is so used to special effects they can't appreciate any nuanced emotional display. Niccol's sci-fi audience, worse than old fan-magazine addicts, willingly accepts the artificial for the genuine. If Niccol were honest (or a real thinker) Simone would show the emotional alienation implicit in the marketing of stock images. Perhaps Taransky would reject the use of even two-legged cliches. But this movie fails because Niccol (and apparently Pacino) doesn't recognize that there is such a thing as insincerity, that Hollywood thrives on deception. Underneath Simone's fake "brilliance" is the tragic sameness of Western cultural cliche.
The smiling, come-hither, objectified female image in Simone is a dime-a-dozen Hollywood blonde (an Aryan ideal if you must) that has come to stand for the most marketable type of sex attraction. That she represents nothing beyond people's acquiescence to white racist hegemony gives the film a sour undercurrent. But my fear is that its appeal to herd-mentality critics and viewers has a lot to do with the near suppression of Beyonce's far more interesting Work It Out.
Despite her hair being dyed Simone-blonde, Beyonce represents an Afro-American body type. Work It Out is remarkable for the way it highlights her ample figure, her facial fullness, her evident (long-developed) multiraciality. She's such a challenge to the Pfeiffer-Diaz-Simone convention that perhaps this is why the video has received such little airplay. But wait till you see it...somewhere. The rhythmic song "Work It Out" evokes Aretha Franklin's "Rock Steady," giving barely subliminal erotic enticement, but the video's eyes-wide-open sexual display combines Tina Turner's brazenness with Marilyn Monroe's all-out availability. Director Matthew Rolston, a music video-fashion magazine adept, knows to highlight Beyonce's figure. (Like Pharell Williams of the Neptunes, Beyonce illustrates the ecstasy of being in your 20s, famous and hot.) She is the right-now embodiment of American culture's changed-upfront-attitude toward multi-culti sexual attraction. No longer does the Aryan ideal dominate; a multiracial seductiveness prevails. That's why it was silly for the makers of Austin Powers in Goldmember to limit Beyonce to portraying an update of Pam Grier; she was obviously far too young, too innocent and unencumbered by the social pressures Grier armed herself against when unloading her black feminist bombs.