After 1,999 years of pursuing novelty and canonizing change, we've finally succumbed to innovation overload. In 11 months, our cosmic warranty will expire, and the general feeling appears to be: Why bother adding anything new to the imminent bonfire?
On TV, reconditioned screensavers like Love Boat: The Next Wave, CHiPs '99, and Star Trek: More Phasers and Crap compete with simulations of other shows like Sports Night and LateLine. If a movie's an original, it invariably arrives with a twin, but for the most part, sequels and cover versions rule the multiplex. Avant-garde engineers employ the same approach, using colorized, shot-for-shot remakes of '60s classics, like the VW Bug.
In the arenas of celebrity high-tech and celebrity politics, counterfeit Bills earn as much as US$2,000 per personal appearance. Unlike most other celebrity simulations, they don't even have to sing or dance. In these times of increasingly precious mindshare, it's enough just to starjack those sectors of our consciousness which the real Bills occupy and associate them with some rogue products and services.
While hyper-permutation, as pioneered by 3M's infinite variety of Post-It Notes, is phenomenally profitable, it's also decidedly old wave. Of course, the general principle animating the practice still holds true. After spending so much time and money making an impression on consumers inundated by choice, it's foolish to introduce anything but slight variations on originals that have already proven successful. In the wake of 72 different iterations of Furby, however, one can't help but predict that consumers will soon be afflicted with such debilitating brand fatigue that even relatively insignificant product differentiations will emerge as barriers to sale, more static for weary shoppers to descramble.
Thus, today's most forward-thinking entrepreneurs understand that the ideal is a changeless, perpetually familiar original, sold again and again and again. While Gus Van Sant's Psycho was a fairly disappointing proof-of-concept in box-office terms, grossing only $20 million so far, it nonetheless remains as the most ambitious example of the new order. Yet how many people have fully grasped its implications?
Take the fading semaphore formerly known as Prince. For years now, he's been enchanting us with his bipolar entrepreneurial style, where strong ideas (a logo instead of a name, the Web as record-company wrecker) are executed in abysmal style. His current effort to capitalize on the timeliness of his old frat-party staple, "1999," sounded good at first: Initially it was reported that the funky nihilist was planning to release "a note-for-note copy" of the original recording that Warner Brothers now owns, perhaps simply using the masters and altering as little as one vocal track. But the actual product shows a greater resemblance to Ty Inc.'s Beanie Babies than Van Sant's Psycho: "Seven brand-new flavas of the classic track" that unfortunately go down about as smoothly as a 14-year-old can of vintage New Coke. There's the reggae version, the hip-hop version, and probably the extra-rare Royal Purple Peanut version as well, and none of them are likely to make Warner Brother's accountants and lawyers particularly jealous. In the past, artists tried to avoid the one-hit wonder label, but today those who embrace it -- those who forsake growth and innovation and reinvention and simply churn out the same stuff that made them famous in the first place -- are the ones who stand the best chance of surviving in a mercilessly over-saturated market. As Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath, discoursing in Spin with telling honesty (even his resignation is disposable!) put it, "'Fly' has shown us what we're best at. I don't want to say, 'Don't bite the hand that feeds you,' but don't bite the hand that feeds you, you know?"
To this end, it was incredibly short-sighted of the normally visionary Van Sant to abandon his project after just one movie. He could have been the first director ever to remake a sequel: Richard Franklin's taut 1983 thriller, Psycho II. And if Van Sant found it so edifying to occupy the mind of famous director Alfred Hitchcock, why not also occupy the mind of famous actor and director Anthony Perkins, who helmed Psycho III in 1986?
Stubborn eclectics may decry the creative limitations of such thinking, but in truth, the public has little interest in Meanie Babies or Preemie Babies or Puffkins. They want Beanie Babies, and that's it, even if they're not actually genuine Beanie Babies. Actual products remain as hard currency for those who still balk at the idea of paying something for nothing, but of course, what really matters is the messages and associations that underlie these products.
That's why alleged aficionados are happy to smoke fake Cuban cigars rolled from banana leaves, hair, dog fur, and string. The display of hedonistic connoisseurship matters more than the actual experience.
In the same manner, the idea of venerable gravitas apparently matters more to TV newsmagazines than actual news does, which is why 60 Minutes II features as a core component of its programming mix previously aired 60 Minutes segments, which presumably lost their status as news the first time they were broadcast. For students of contemporary copycatting, 60 Minutes II is of particular interest. While Paleozoic correspondents Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney were partially cryonicized in the early '90s in an effort to slow their inexorable deterioration, time is running out on them. Will the clone of 60 Minutes eventually feature actual standalone life forms created from the still-vital index finger of Wallace and the generous jowls of Rooney? Perhaps Dr. Richard Seed, who's been working diligently in a $15 million, Japanese-funded cloning lab, has the answers.
Indeed, cloning will likely play a larger role as the trend toward exact duplicates accelerates. At the same time that manufacturers increase their efficiency by focusing on a smaller number of products, cloning will allow them to increase their target audience. In other words, one of the many ethical dilemmas associated with cloning -- the notion that the process would be used to create a new strain of broom-pushing, organ-donating, service-economy slaves -- is fairly unlikely to materialize. There's already plenty of actual people to fulfill the world's McJobs. What's really needed is a new strain of super-affluent spendthrifts. For example, think of the impact a dozen Jerry Seinfelds would have on the fortunes of Porsche.
But what about the rest of us, who lack the money it would take to breed and maintain a stable of profligate doppelgängers? How can we help keep the engines of commerce humming? Look to the nation's desktop counterfeiting hobbyists for guidance.
In 1995, less than 1 percent of the counterfeit cash recovered by federal authorities was computer generated; last year, approximately 40 percent of the more than $100 million in fake cash that authorities recovered was made on computers. Personal computers have democratized what was once a specialized profession. While counterfeiting has never posed a significant threat to the economy, that could change when the practice evolves from a few hundred skilled forgers minting millions of dollars each to millions of desktop counterfeiters minting a few hundred dollars each.
Despite the illegality of the act and the threat it poses toward economic stability, we can't help but think it has its rightful place in a world of pervasive duplication. After all, what better way to pay for a ticket to Gus Van Sant's Psycho or a spurious Beanie Baby than with a shot-for-shot remake of a $20 bill?
