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I went from loving the chaotic Spice Girls movie to dismissing it in college. Now, I appreciate it more than ever before.
In the summer of 1998 “Titanic” was six months into its marathon run in theaters, revelations about President Bill Clinton’s infidelity were hurtling him toward impeachment and I, a kid living in a small English village, was subjecting my younger brothers to weekly screenings of “Spice World” on DVD. I had recently turned 8 years old and believed, quite simply, that this film was the best thing adults had ever created.
“Spice mania” was at its peak: A typical music magazine cover at that time shouted “Spice Girls: We’re the biggest pop band that ever lived!” I was all in, playing Geri in schoolyard concerts and daydreaming about clomping around in platform shoes once I became old enough to be the mistress of my own wardrobe. I loved that they were also British, that they were cheeky, that they talked about being best friends. Their music itself was almost incidental to what they represented to me.
Their first (and only) feature film was announced, shot and released in a span of eight months, coinciding with the group’s second album, “Spiceworld.” The music industry machine around the Girls was churning out content as fast as it could, and tastemakers were not wholly impressed. In his review for the British movie magazine Empire, Ian Nathan wrote, “the shock here is sheer dullness.” The film critic Roger Ebert gave it half a star, musing, “What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names?”
Actually, I think there’s quite a lot to say. Should you need a refresher: Geri Halliwell (Ginger), Melanie Brown (Scary), Emma Bunton (Baby), Melanie Chisholm (Sporty) and Victoria Beckham (Posh) go on a completely illogical adventure in their Union Jack-painted double-decker tour bus. Their progress is tracked by a ragtag assortment of men: a documentary film crew, an evil tabloid newspaper editor and some cynical movie writers from Hollywood. Everyone wants to make money off the Spice Girls, but the Spice Girls just want to be there when their best friend, Nicola (Naoko Mori), has her baby.
But first loves rarely last. As the years passed, my world — and the lenses through which I understood it — became more complicated. I took literary theory classes at university. I discovered feminism’s overlapping waves, how ecological and human distress intersect, the way colonialism has shaped the world’s imagination.
The Spice Girls’s relentless pep and revealing outfits became a little embarrassing, an easy shorthand for my childhood naïveté. Who needs “girl power” when you have roll-up cigarettes and Luce Irigaray? This was England at the turn of the last decade, and the indie rock bands I loved were mostly made up of scrawny white men with artistic bangs. When people asked me which album I bought first, I was evasive, loathe to name the “Spice” cassette that I had played until it broke.
The Spice Girls was, after all, a pop group assembled by hungry music-industry executives, and managed, during the years of their stratospheric rise, by Simon Fuller, who went on to found the “Idol” reality competition franchise. They leaned into merchandising and endorsement deals with an intensity quite unlike any group before them, putting their name on advertising campaigns for candy, soft drinks and even supermarkets. What did “girl power” even mean? Making as much money as possible? Now that I was firmly in that stage of life when you have “lofty” ideals and understand the world better than people both older and younger than you — also known as your early 20s — that hardly seemed original or feminist. When the group announced reunions in 2007, 2012 and 2016, I wondered what they really had to offer beyond nostalgia.
Recently I spent a few weeks at my parents’ house, and came across the beloved “Spice World” DVD. I watched it, surrendering to the same impulse that a few days earlier had led me to reread my teenage diaries. It was a delight — a silly, uncomplicated delight that hit my brain like the first cool fall breeze.
Directed by Bob Spiers, who also directed the original “Absolutely Fabulous” episodes, the film is much smarter and more self-aware than I once gave it credit for. It pokes fun at the mainstream cultural institutions the group’s success brought them into contact with — the movie industry (both Hollywood and independent filmmakers), London’s tabloids, the music world, the British class structure. Best of all, “Spice World” satirizes the Spice Girls themselves.
The question always hovering around industry-manufactured pop acts — especially female ones — is the extent to which they’re driving their own brand. In “Spice World,” the Girls want us to know that they are fully in on the joke. “Do godmothers get stretch marks?” Posh asks. “Do you think I’m always going to be seen as Baby Spice?” Emma asks, “even when I’m [gulp] 30?” The plot climaxes with Posh taking the wheel of their tour bus in her strappy stilettos, and saving the day. (Despite this convincing show of unity, all was clearly not well in the real Spice world: Geri quit the band before the movie came to DVD, citing “differences between us.”)
As the credits roll, we cut to the set of the movie we’ve just watched with the cast members milling around, discussing their roles. “They want me to play their road manager,” Richard E. Grant says into his cellphone. “Well, I don’t want to end my career.” The Girls know all the reasons you dismiss them, and they’re forcing you to laugh with them, instead.
The Spice Girls were absolutely working the (very sexist) system, and making a lot of money off it, but they were doing it slyly, with a wink and a grin. They were, I think, misunderstood at the time, and I wonder if an irreverent, breezy group like theirs could even exist today.
So much of the conversation around present-day pop stardom has become serious and fraught, with debates over whether to “cancel” artists for saying the wrong thing. Mainstream feminism has morphed into yet another set of rituals for women to perform in public, another abstract standard by which to judge them. “Spice World,” speaking to me from the ancient pop past (a.k.a. the ’90s), was a reminder that there should be space for many ways of being a powerful woman in public.
No, “girl power” is not going to fix structural gender inequality. But a fun film telling young girls to look after each other and beware of creepy men seems fine to me. And maybe fine is enough. Maybe it’s disingenuous to demand more of our pop stars than that.
