20 years on, Josie and the Pussy­cats sharp­ens its claws

Com­pris­ing four har­mon­is­ing young men and cheeky innu­en­do, DuJour ticks the box­es for an ear­ly 2000s boy band. The mem­bers bick­er, but reminders that ​“DuJour means friend­ship!” and ​“DuJour means team­work!” resolve their squab­bles. Embark­ing on a world tour, the band seems unstop­pable – that is, until the mem­bers come to man­ag­er Wyatt (Alan Cum­ming), per­plexed over a mys­te­ri­ous back­ing track on a new remix. Offer­ing no expla­na­tion, Wyatt and the pilot para­chute out of the band’s plane. ​“DuJour means seat belts! DuJour means crash positions!”

The chang­ing def­i­n­i­tion of DuJour is played for laughs, but the joke reveals a key truth to Har­ry Elfont and Deb­o­rah Kaplan’s musi­cal com­e­dy Josie and the Pussy­cats, a hyper­aware satire of Y2K cul­ture that cen­tres around a con­spir­a­cy between a major record com­pa­ny and the US gov­ern­ment. Manip­u­lat­ed and mar­ket­ed to sell end­less trends, DuJour real­ly could mean any­thing. Above all, DuJour means disposable.

Loose­ly based on the Archie Comics series of the same name, the film spot­lights the epony­mous band, made up of spunky lead singer/​guitarist Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook), ditzy drum­mer Melody (Tara Reid) and dri­ven bassist Valerie (Rosario Daw­son). On the sur­face, the plot paints by num­bers. The band unex­pect­ed­ly sky­rock­ets to fame; they clash when Josie seem­ing­ly eyes solo sta­tus; they make up and reaf­firm their friend­ship. It’s all capped off with a sta­di­um con­cert where Josie beseech­es the audi­ence to be true to them­selves and snags a kiss from her cook­ie-cut­ter love interest.

Rather than a mean clique, how­ev­er, the band square off against some­thing far more insid­i­ous. Unbe­knownst to the Pussy­cats, they’re DuJour’s replace­ments and the new cen­tral cog in an oper­a­tion to con­trol and exploit teenagers by plant­i­ng son­ic sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages into pop­u­lar music. Head­ed by Fiona (Park­er Posey, hav­ing an absolute ball) and Wyatt, Mega Records and its Pen­ta­gon back­ers have been doing this for a long time, and DuJour’s plane crash is the lat­est ​‘acci­dent’ tar­get­ing artists who know too much.

Voiced by an omi­nous Mr Movie­fone, the sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages direct lis­ten­ers to con­form and pur­chase the lat­est fads, turn­ing them into pro­gram­ma­ble cash dis­pensers. It’s a twist that turns decades of moral pan­ic over the sup­pos­ed­ly sin­is­ter influ­ence of rock music and MTV on young peo­ple into a real­i­ty. Yet rather than blam­ing the musi­cians or the teenagers, the film con­demns the cor­po­ra­tions who stand to make the most profit.

Elfont and Kaplan satirise con­sumerism with glee, but there’s an aware­ness that they’re also tar­get­ing teens – after all, the film’s sound­track sold over 500,000 copies. Josie and the Pussy­cats play­ful­ly skew­ers this irony by com­mit­ting the same sins as Mega Records. With­in the open­ing scene, no less than sev­en brands pop up in DuJour’s Tar­get-themed air­plane. This relent­less bar­rage of faux prod­uct place­ment con­tin­ues through­out the film, rang­ing from a 7‑Eleven bowl­ing alley to an Evian-brand­ed aquar­i­um. Wyatt breaks the fourth wall with know­ing glances to make the meta joke clear.

Despite the film’s exag­ger­at­ed tone, it’s nev­er cyn­i­cal enough to sac­ri­fice the joys of cheesy teen fare, even find­ing space to cel­e­brate the trio’s heart­felt dynam­ic. Still more eupho­ria comes from the indul­gent music video sequences show­cas­ing the delight­ful pop-rock pro­duced by Baby­face and Adam Schlesinger (‘3 Small Words’ espe­cial­ly is an ear­worm worth repeat­ing). Where a less­er film might have made the Pussy­cats’ gulli­bil­i­ty the butt of the joke, it’s telling that Wyatt nix­es their sus­pi­cions by admon­ish­ing them on how oth­er bands dream of tak­ing their place – a chill­ing reminder of their expendability.

Ulti­mate­ly, the cycle con­tin­ues when the gov­ern­ment offi­cial throws Fiona and Wyatt under the bus, escap­ing cul­pa­bil­i­ty. After he remarks that they dis­cov­ered sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages work bet­ter in movies any­ways, text flash­es across the screen pro­claim­ing, ​“Josie and the Pussy­cats is the best movie ever. Join the army.” It’s a gag that’s down­right pre­scient giv­en the recent wave of mil­i­tary ties to Hol­ly­wood. Remem­ber the Cap­tain Mar­vel cross-pro­mo­tion­al ads with the Unit­ed States Air Force?

Against this back­drop, Josie’s final plea to let the music speak for itself is noth­ing less than an anti-cap­i­tal­ist ral­ly­ing cry. Per­haps this helps to explain why Josie and the Pussy­cats ini­tial­ly flopped, mak­ing back less than half of its esti­mat­ed $39 mil­lion bud­get. Yet the film’s themes have only grown more acute with age, and its sub­se­quent cult sta­tus is ful­ly deserved.

The pro­to-dystopi­an world of Josie and the Pussy­cats might seem far-fetched, but it’s clos­er than we think. Armed with data-dri­ven adver­tis­ing, cor­po­ra­tions take every oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther embed them­selves in our lives. Our Twit­ter feeds can’t escape from over­ly friend­ly, curat­ed brands cos­play­ing as real peo­ple. Such tar­get­ed ads might not be sub­lim­i­nal, but they car­ry that same insid­i­ous feel­ing of sur­veil­lance. Here’s hop­ing a McDonald’s sky­scraper doesn’t hijack the Man­hat­tan sky­line next.