| To what extent have The Spice Girls
distorted feminist ideology for young women? An in-depth independent study by Tanya Blackwell |
Contents Please scroll down Page 1 of 6 Go to 2 3 4 5 6
So what's so contentious about the Spice Girls?
So who do the Spice Girls think we are?
Introduction Please scroll down Page 1 of 6 Go to 2 3 4 5 6
Since the advent of cable television and the VCR in the early eighties, popular culture on our television screens has, arguably, corrupted a whole generation of young people. Television, in increasingly desperate attempts to win ratings, has become a showcase of ‘talk’ shows, courtroom TV and docu-dramas. It has become the equivalent of the Victorian freakshow - only now the ‘freaks’ are willing volunteers, seeking their fifteen minutes of fame at the cost of selling their soul to a nation-wide audience.
The revenues available from video sales have created an entirely new market, and children of all ages are able to consume, rewind and freeze-frame their favourite images with alarming frequency. With these images so freely accessible twenty four hours a day, the market has had to increase pace to continue fulfilling and creating demand. MTV, with its strobe-style videos that assault the viewer in an orgy of noise and colour, set a precedent which was followed by advertisers, magazines and film-makers. Even now much of the media looks to MTV for guidance and inspiration as to how to appeal to a teenage audience. Baz Luhrman’s highly successful adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (20th Century Fox. 1997) speeds along like a music video, with disconnected images, rapid edits and a rousing soundtrack.
Furthermore, never before have children had such consumer control. A child without her own collection of videos, CD’s, and a weekly magazine, is a child who (feels she) is missing out on parental understanding, friendship, fantasy and fun. She is likely to feel she is missing out on social interaction and, more importantly, acceptance from her peers. And boys who do not know the ‘moves’ in the latest computer games are as socially outcast as the girls who do not know the ‘moves’ to the latest Spice Girls single.
Although this market expansion began in the eighties, it was not until the formation of Take That in 1990 that the power of sell-through merchandising was truly realised in Britain. No pop group since The Beatles has had so much marketing potential. There followed a series of copy-cat ‘boy bands’, but none superseded ‘the That’s’ until they relinquished their throne in 1996, when a telephone hot-line was set up for grieving fans to talk to someone who cared. The realisation that boy bands were not the only option was successfully pioneered by an unknown music manager in 1995. Simon Fuller saw a gap in the media market which had been left wide open, because the media had under-estimated the needs of its market.
The idea that a teenage girl needed an object of obsession, and that that object should be male was an oversimplification of the market. What ‘90’s girls want, like girls of every generation, are role models. Until 1995, Madonna was the only woman who had successfully conquered the MTV generation, but after ten years at the top she had not only proved her staying power, she had grown up. She had become a business woman, and her fans had graduated University and gone out to work.
When The Spice Girls appeared on Top of The Pops in July 1996, they taunted the camera with their aggressive sexuality, and sent pre-pubescent schoolgirls into ecstasy with strobe-a-scope sound-bytes of their gaudy glamour and their primitive scream that they’ll "tell you what they want, what they, really, really want." Simon Fuller and five unknown girls-from-next-door became millionaires. And undeniably, Madonna was forced to abdicate.