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Love 'em or loath 'em, the Spice Girls are the mass media, pop culture phenomenon of the moment, stoking the fires of adult tabloid fantasies and teenage aspirations. Their success is largely due to canny manipulation of the various branches of modern mass media, such as advertising, teen magazines, tabloid newspapers, television, music, the Internet and now movies. Thanks to a behind-the-scenes male Svengali and critical saturation of the airwaves they have climbed further in the space of two short years than many of their pop predecessors. Far from being 'Spice for the socially inert', as Iain Shedden would have it, the Spice Girls are role models for teenage girls and working-class brides of Frankenstein, created by tabloid barons.

For me, Spice music has about as much appeal as the best of Kenny G or Mariah Carey, which is to say, none at all! Spice music is bland and tinny, regurgitated from thousands of prefabricated hits past and true. Their music percolates along with

just enough bubble and squeak to hold your attention while it's playing, and then it's on to En Vogue and Human Nature -- but I love their in-your-face, take-control cheap girl cheek. It's the very quality that appeals to teenage girls sick of conforming to sweet-as-pie stereotypes, particularly girls of ethnic origin who have been dressing and behaving like this for years.

The Spice Girls look as deliciously tacky and vampy, overly made up and looking for a good time, as the suburban, working-class girls, with middle-class aspirations, who flock to inner city discos on weekends, simultaneously attracting and intimidating boys. Similarly, the Spice Girls' brashness and cheap joke telling is derived from their earthy, roll-up-your-sleeves backgrounds. In a recent "Tatler" fashion spread, Posh Spice, trying to live up to her namesake, came across with all the social graces of Carry On's Joan Sims. It's no surprise Madonna, an Italian, was first embraced by ethnic girls and then by middle-class girls

looking to break loose from their stifling upbringing. Interestingly Madonna's popularity has declined since she dumped her street persona for an elusive ultra-couture look. Echoes of the Spice Girls' collective personas can now be seen in the uzi-wielding, cyber-raider character of Lara Croft and the Greek big-hair, loud-mouth harridan, Effie, as satirised by the brilliant Australian comic Mary Koustas.

In his haste to down-play their popularity, Iain Shedden inaccurately reports that outside of Britain the Spice Girls have not been a success. On the contrary, as Euro-trash, the Spice Girls are popular in several European countries and are coveted in Canada and, to a lesser degree, in
Japan. Here in Australia, where their album "Spice" finished at No. 4 on the 1997 charts, they are on constant airplay on popular youth stations such as Hitz FM and Kix FM, where competitions for ticket giveaways for their film get a huge response.

Most significantly, "Spice" finished at No.1 in the 1997 American pop charts. This despite the fact that the Spice Girls' boppy tunes and dance steps are old hat in the land that first gave us the stunning pop choreography of Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul. Even the Spice Girls' 'girl power' manifesto has seen various incarnations over there. As cultural critic Camille Paglia said in her recent "Salon" column, '. . . the rest of the world clearly needs radicalization, so more power to the Spice Girls!' [www.salon1999.com]

Shedden's monocultural and ageist look at the Spice phenomenon is at its worst in his shallow analysis of tabloids. He would have us believe that the Spice Girls fail outside of the United Kingdom because that island's rapacious tabloid culture has not spread its tentacles across the channel. Think again. A glimpse at the magazine "L'Espresso" would show that Italy, the country which invented the paparazzo, has a tabloid culture which mixes lurid sex with astute political and cultural analysis

not seen anywhere else in the world. Not to be outdone, Germany exports magazines that publish the unpublishable about celebrities in Anglophone countries; ditto Japan.

Shedden is right, however, when he observes that 'The vast majority of Britons who buy the tabloids are working class' -- though he is looking down his nose when he says that they serve the purpose of brightening 'up their otherwise miserable existence.' A more accurate reason for the popularity of the tabloid press is that they telegraph working-class dreams of success and escape from poverty -- a fact that holds true around the world, Australia included. Should Shedden ever abandon his affluent haunts and cross over to the wrong side of the tracks, he would find that the hoi polloi generally prefer to read tabloids, not because they are 'socially inert', but because these newspapers and magazines speak directly to them in a language and phrases they can digest. And, despite claims to the contrary, the great unwashed

will get the joke when "The National Enquirer" announces 'Scary Spice Eats Manager' or 'Baby Spice Gives Birth To Alien'.

Particularly since the death of Princess Diana, it's become the fashion to denounce the tabloids. Desperate to join the flock, Shedden fails to see that tabloid newspapers also quickly pick up and relay working-class wants and concerns in ways that mainstream media does not -- a fact clearly demonstrated by the rapid reshuffle for a 'people's funeral' for the Princess of Wales. Though often exaggerated and painted in lurid colours, the tabloids also break sensitive news long before mainstream newspapers pick up on it. Long before Pauline Hanson's right-wing One Nation party appeared on the scene, for example, the lower rung of Australia's newspapers were reporting murmurs of blue-collar unease with our Asian intake and cautiously hinting at a right-wing backlash.

Desperate to hold back the tide of vulgar working-classes, a relieved Shedden reports that Australia has 'no entrenched tabloid culture.' He assures us that we're a tasteful middle-class melting pot way beyond page three girls. You can hear him breath a sigh of relief as he announces, 'It exists but you won't find it lying on your doorstep.' Maybe not on his well-appointed doorstep, but when was the last time he went to Victoria's La Trobe Valley, Queensland's uncharted regions, or nearer to home, Sydney's outlying suburbs? It's there that the tabloid press helps seed the gospel according to Sporty Spice, and you can rest assured, its greedy little eye already has the next blink-and-you'll-miss-it fashion accessory waiting in the wings to replace the girls. The twist in the tale is that the cheap working-class girls now have enough pocket money to be part of the tabloid reviling middle-classes -- at least on the surface.

If you are interested in reading other articles by Dmetri Kakmi, email him at dmetri@eisa.net.au