Spice rack revisited

Hey, I've got a movie idea. It's called Spice Fever (or) How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Spice Girls.

Like most music critics, I scorned the Spice Girls. Here was another frothy bubble in the roughly five-year cycle of kiddie pop that has spat out New Kids on the Block, the Bay City Rollers, the Monkees and so on and so forth. When Spice, the album, came out last year, the record company didn't even send it out for review.

"We figured it was just a candy floss record, so we didn't bother," said the label rep. "Who would've thought they would sell so many?"

All I heard was that song on the radio, Wannabe. It's an infectious little number, the musical equivalent of the Ebola virus: "If you wanna be my lover/you gotta get with my friends/love, it lasts forever/friendship never ends" or something like that.

Like, wow, how deep can you get? Love lasts forever. Friendship never ends. Take your pick.

The thing was, I secretly liked the song. It has a good beat and you can dance to it, as Dick Clark might say, and the lyrics were no more insipid than "prick your finger it is done/the moon has now eclipsed the sun/the angel has spread its wings/the time has come for bitter things" (from Antichrist Superstar, Marilyn Manson). A lot of other people liked Wannabe, too. The 20 million people who eventually bought the album weren't so secret about it. The group is still No. 1 a year later, a feat not equalled by any British act since the Beatles. Never before has an all-female group attained such success.

The legend spread. The Spice Girls formed via audition staged by avaricious svengali, group turfs manager, hijacks its own destiny, becomes a pop phenomenon - five lower middle class, not exactly gorgeous gals from England make good. They all claim to be in their early 20s, too.

Like pro wrestling, you believe it because it's fun.

More than their music - which is harmless, unabashedly commercial and about as spicy as a pinch of white flour - Spice Girls' true fame came from their cartoon-like personalities. (I've finally figured out which is which): There's Baby Spice, the blond who looks like she stepped out of a pornographic version of To Sir With Love. Posh Spice is the brunette who can't seem to smile or sing, while Sporty Spice, to distinguish herself from Posh, smiles a lot and does kung fu kicks. Scary Spice is the black one who may actually have a future when this is all over. And Ginger Spice is the chubby one who talks too much. Despise them if you like, but their girlish antics have endeared them to millions.

Lolita-like, they promote "Girl Power," not to be confused with "women in rock," since Spice Girls will never get a slot on the Lilith Fair tour.

Girl Power, Ginger explained, "is whatever's your bag."

As she told The Toronto Sun recently, "Girl Power is being a strong, single parent mother. It's being in a pop group and having a say. It's control of your own destiny and supporting your friends" and so on.

Individuality, confidence, having fun. Such simple, positive values made the Spice Girls heroes among young girls. Adolescent boys like them, too, though maybe not strictly for their music. Even grown men with big, important jobs melt in their presence. South Africa president Nelson Mandela said meeting the Spice Girls was "one of the greatest moments of my life." Banishing Apartheid must've been a close second.

The inevitable backlash that followed only served to fuel the Spice Girls' fame. Vibe magazine's Sleaze column on the Internet had daily updates on spicy doings, all delivered with sneering glee. But nothing could stop Girl Power. The more overwhelming the hype pouring out of every media orifice on the planet became, the more their charm increased. Massive overexposure is part of the Spice Girls' phenomenon itself.

It doesn't matter whether it's a parody or not. Spice Girls have transcended irony, gone past the point of being enjoyed by cynical smartasses for how "bad" they are.

In the Spice World film that opens here Friday, the girls say they are "taking the mickey" out of themselves, satirizing a world-famous bubblegum sensation by being one.

The line between art and reality is getting blurry.