What Price Fame?

As I watched this remake of the 1980 classic Fame, it occured to me that, thanks to a decade of American Idol, our culture has been dumbed down as far as the expectations from, and just plain hard work required, for a career in the arts. People, "Gee, you've sung really well at our family party. You should go on American Idol!" just dosen't cut it in the real world. As Debbie Allen, star of the original film and subsequent TV series as Miss Grant, says in the series opening montage, "Fame costs. And right here (the New York City High School of Performing Arts) is where you start paying, in sweat!" The students in the original film deal with such issues as homosexuality, rape and sexual harassment, and the fact that though you may idolize a TV star, there is no guarantee that you will have that TV star's career...even if you work as hard as you can.

In the new film, the students deal with the following:

1) The hot girl from the wrong side of the tracks has a romance with (gasp!) the rich hot guy.
2) When a girl goes to see the one guy who happens to (unbelieveably) make it on his soap set, he (gasp!) makes a pass at her.

3) Teachers who unfortunately studied at the College of American Idol, unable to offer much beyond "Follow your dreams and work really hard" . This is especially tragic in the case of Kelsey Grammer, playing the idealistic teacher. He's the one adult in the cast with the chops to play the hell out of whatever backstory that would be there...except it's not.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Here's the Fame TV opening and 1980 movie trailer:








MTMG