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Conclusions

Antonin Artaud, founder of The Theatre of Cruelty in Paris in the 1930’s, would also have approved. The ‘theatre’ of The Spice Girls epitomises his avant-garde vision to redefine theatre by using his actors merely as tools, "Artaud’s spectacle would be so immediate that it could largely dispense with any textual element." He believed in spectacle and chaos. "For Artaud, the Theatre of Cruelty is a precise action in which the final impact swallows all the means.  It is a dangerous theatre, which threatens the identities and bodies of both participants and spectators". However, as Robert Wilson points out "we can regard spectacle as the literal incarnation of capital, for, prior to any ‘message’ a work may seek to convey, spectacle first tells us what it cost."  So that lavish concert stadiums, sumptuous costumes and prolific lighting and effects, ‘signify value, but a value which is purely economical.’

Adorno and Horkeimer’s paper on mass culture in the mid 1940’s was a vision of things to come.  They accuse the controlling power of capitalism of reducing all culture to business and profit, with no individuality, or room for imagination.  They site that ‘culture now impresses the same stamp on everything.  Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part.’  Need is created through all aspects of teen culture; magazines, advertising, radio and television.  Even Paglia, for all her love of popular culture, bemoans the music industry for the same reasons: ‘Vulture managers who sanitize and repackage’.  A product of the sixties, she remembers musicians who ‘read poetry, studied Hinduism and drew psychedelic visions in watercolors.’   Her comment that artists must not ‘become a slave to the audience, with its smug hedonism, short attention span, and hunger for hits’ is however, laying the blame on the victims of popular culture rather than the perpetrators.  It is our children who should be urged ‘to read, to look at paintings and foreign films, to listen to jazz and classical music.’  Then perhaps they would not be so eager to passively receive these vapid images.

At the height of their popularity The Spice Girls endorsed products for teens and adults alike.  Sweets, soft drinks, perfumes - Cadbury's, Pepsi, Impulse and everything in between.  It is claimed that their records were given maximum air-play on radio and MTV - but not released for at least a month in order to create frantic desire in young fans to buy it on its first day of release and thus sending it straight to Number One.  Sponsorship and Spice merchandising has contributed largely to the girls' fortune (estimated at £12 million each). This year (1999) they just missed featuring on The Times list of richest women, but are predicted to feature next year.  Despite this they have all become tax exiles, and while it is impossible to know the intricacies of their personal finances, it looks unlikely that the children who made them their fortunes will benefit.  And if they succeed in avading pay tax they will be a contributory factor in denying children valuable medical and education opportunities through the welfare state.  And of course deny girls the freedom that they so vehemently claim to advocate.

End

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