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« A Beautiful Fraud
Zac Efron: The New David Cassidy?
Cover photos: Zac Efron by Matthew Rolston for Rolling Stone; David Cassidy by Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone
It's really really hard for me to even fake the slightest bit of interest in High School Musical 2 and its unprecedented success. As TV Guide Channel's Nikki Boyer put it so succinctly the other night on Watch This!, if the record-breaking numbers prove anything, it's simply that kids love crap. But like a lot of people, I was struck by the recent cover of Rolling Stone and the magazine's positioning of HSM2's squeaky-clean "hunk" Zac Efron as "America's Latest Heart Throb." I realize a lot has changed over the years, and Rolling Stone is hardly the countercultural force it was in the early '70s, but the Efron cover — and the toothless interview within — immediately brought to my mind the staggeringly popular teen idol David Cassidy's appearance on the cover of the same magazine back in 1972.
Already a huge star thanks to the runaway success of The Partridge Family — and the grueling, nonstop touring schedule he endured over his weekends away from the set — Cassidy had begun to realize teenybopper stardom can quickly become a trap. Fave rave Cassidy hoped to use an interview in Rolling Stone as a means to transform his image into something more mature, and give his own clean teen-dream image a little bit of edge. The attempt backfired, and the cover photo became notorious. Shot by a young Annie Leibovitz, the portrait shows an obviously naked Cassidy sprawled on his back on a patch of grass, arms thrown over his head, eyes blissfully shut and a sly smile offering a small hint of what might be happening just outside of the frame, which cuts off right above the pubic line (the inside spread would provocatively drop that cut-off point about an inch). The headline was Beat and brilliant: "The Naked Lunchbox: The Business of David Cassidy." (You can listen to Leibovitz discussing the cover here.)
Robin Green's interview inside came as an even bigger shock. Revealing even more skin — and pubic hair — and making comments about the "sticky seats" left behind by his female fans, Cassidy let loose his deep anger over being so ruthlessly exploited without fair financial recompense (welcome to the jungle, David), and went so far as to make disparaging remarks about the Partridge Family's music. The effort was a serious miscalculation. However justified, Cassidy's griping sounded like the grumblings of an ungrateful 21-year-old hand-biter, and his sexy provocations only alienated his core teenybopper audience, many of whom probably had no idea that grown men even had hair, you know, down there. Worse, the image-changing strategy didn't work. It turned out that alienated core audience was Cassidy's only audience.
But what a difference three-and-a-half decades and one post-sexual revolution evolution can make. Pretty young men are now free to be displayed like pretty young women, but without the lewd catcalls someone like, say, a barely legal Britney Spears endured in 1999 after she posed for her own sexy RS cover in a black bra and polka-dot panties, a phone in hand and a Tinky-Wink babyishly clutched in the other (cue The Knack's "Good Girls Don't"). Rolling Stone has also evolved, becoming the kind of magazine that would cynically bank on attracting a certain young demographic with the same imagery it once used to repel it.
In a camera-phone-ready age when a vast segment of Internet users knows exactly what Britney's vagina and Pete Wentz's penis look like, posing like a twink porn star on the cover of Rolling Stone is a way of establishing your image, not challenging it. Sex can no longer be used to threaten (unless of course, it's same-sex sex), not when it's expected, even demanded. And while Neil Strauss' profile within the Efron issue allows Zac to sound downright Cassidy-esque about the appeal of the HSM songbook ("If I had to hear the High School Musical songs anymore," he tells Strauss, "I probably would have jumped off something very tall."), he knows exactly on which side his slice is buttered. "As long as I stay boring, I think I'll be fine," he opines, right next to a half-page nipple-baring photo. No worries there, Zac, no worries at all.
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Aug 22, 2007 6:57 PM
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I was a pre-teen during the David Cassidy blow-up. It seemed to me that the whole teen idol thing was much more prevalent in the early 70's than it is now.
I do have a question though - if anyone can remember. There used to be a TV show before The Partridge Family that was set in Seattle in the late 1800's I think. It featured another teen idol who I cannot remember the name of. His first name is Bobby. I believe that he was a singer also. All I can remember is a few words of the theme song "the skies are the bluest skies, in Seattle" or something like that. Does anybody remember the name of the show?
Okay - I finally figured this out. The teen idol's name was Bobby Sherman and the TV show was Here Come the Brides.
Now everyone knows just how old I am!
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Aug 23, 2007 12:47 PM
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Great essay, Ken. Yep, the "teen idols of today are a lot more sexy than was allowed back in the '60s and '70s.
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Aug 24, 2007 9:08 AM
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Amen! High school-focused entertainment doesn't need to be so bland and sugary! If only TV Guide would inject the refreshing frankness of this post in more of it's articles then I would eagerly subscribe. Unfortunately much (but definitely not all) of your articles seem to serve as a tool for network publicists and offer no real analysis. Your last several soap columnists, for example, easily prove this. I only wish the name of the author appeared so I could watch for more from this person. Good job!
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Aug 26, 2007 12:25 PM
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Why is it that most mainstream critics continue to trash HSM2? What is wrong with a wholesome, family-oriented TV movie made FOR kids? I think it's a great thing for kids to watch, to learn great lessons about how to make the most of High School. And it could create a new generation of *gasp* musical-theatre fans. Maybe that's what scares all you TV folks...
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Aug 26, 2007 4:54 PM
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It's perfectly fine to have guilty pleasures in your entertainment choices but you do need to recognize HSM for what it is. To put HSM up on a pedestal with the likes of quality musicals like Oklahoma, Oliver or West Side Story is really insulting to those films.
"Learn great lessons" from HSM???? Seriously??? Anyone that thinks teaching kids that high school life is like a Disney movie is only going to harm them down the line. If I want my kids to really learn valuable lessons then I'll have them continue to watch DeGrassi.
I'm glad the critics can eat through the sugar that is High School Musical without thinking it's not going to cause cavities.
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Aug 26, 2007 6:14 PM
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"Learn great lessons" from HSM???? Seriously??? Anyone that thinks teaching kids that high school life is like a Disney movie is only going to harm them down the line.
It's not like HSM is also portraying kids as if they're all supposed to be
jr. supermodel-fashion plates, now is it?
nevermind....................
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Aug 26, 2007 6:33 PM
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Yes, they can learn lessons from HSM. Like you don't have to screw someone on the first date. And at least HSM2 has a few characters in the forefront that don't look like models ('overweight dancer girl' and others...). And how about just a nice warm fuzzy evening of entertainment with really catchy hooks and admirable choreography (HSM2). They can get all their dark Degrassi realism every day of their teenage lives. How about letting them have some sugar and smiles. Lighten up critic(s). BTW couchcritic, the author's name IS posted (Ken Fox) -maybe you'd like to track him down and give him a big kiss.
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Aug 26, 2007 10:13 PM
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> It's really really hard for me to even fake the
> slightest bit of interest in High School Musical
> 2 and its unprecedented success.
As TV Guide
> Channel's Nikki Boyer put it so succinctly the other
> night on Watch This!, if the record-breaking
> numbers prove anything, it's simply that kids love
> crap.
If you're so above it all then how about you simply not write about it? This kind of patronizing elitst garbage makes me see red. You can be sure that I will never again read anything this guy writes.
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Aug 27, 2007 1:47 AM
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I wonder what Mr. Cassidy thinks of all this now especially with Efron's HSM 1/2 girfriend/co-star Vanessa Hudgens's nude pics being revealed for all to see on the internet...
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Sep 7, 2007 1:31 PM
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hey Ken....I couldn't get the Liebovitz link to play. Not through Quick Time, Windows Media Player or even Cool Edit Pro. Any tips? Thanks
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Sep 20, 2007 4:55 AM
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Sure there was a lot of crap available when I was in high school but things like High School Musical (and HMS 2) make David Cassidy come of like a cross between Bob Dylan and Steveie Wonder.
It's the blandness of the project (and its stars) that make it so worthless.
It was while in high school that I became aware of and sought out the films of Fassbinder, Herzog, Cassavetes, Arthur Hill, Jean Renoir, Duvivier and Ken Russell. When I wanted silliness and great humor I turned to Mel Brooks, The Marx Brothers and Robert Downey Sr.'s Putney Swope.
As for music, my high school years where when Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Gordon Lightfoot, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Van Morrison joined the Beatles, The Stones and Motown as part of my regular listening rotation.
High school was when I expanded my reading to include Phillip Roth, Rudolph Steiner, Arthur Rimabaud, Ismael Reed, Ovid and James Baldwin.
And I wasn't alone. I could always find significant numbers of my contemporaries to discuss the above subjects with. And I don't think we were neccessarily any more intelligent than high schoolers of today. But we may have been more curious. We were more suspicious of censorship and more daring in our resistance of it and we weren't always sure that the information we sought would always be available to us.
Yes, there was plenty of crap and I can't say I never availed myself of any of it. The difference between then and now might be, though, that I was or we were, more inclined to make a distinction between the wheat and the chaff and to know when and why to choose one or the other at a particular time.
Zac Efron is who he is and I don't really blame him for what his handlers and fans have made of him. But popularity and artistic worth are not the same thing. Britney Spears has sold more records in a few years than Miles Davis or James Booker sold in a lifetime. That certainly doesn't mean she is better. She is most definitely, absolutely not. This is true no matter whether one does or does not like or buy her product. This is as a ripe fresh apple is better than a Big Mac no matter how the Big Mac may delight one's tastebuds. And, given enough of a chance, that apple may even become the food one prefers over that Big Mac.
The same pricnciple is in effect with HSM and HSM 2 compared to the quality fare that exists but is increasingly hard to find.
I don't suggest that parents or others not indulge their kids interest in something like HSM but next time you pick up the soundtrack for the kids, slip a copy of Rubber Soul in the gift box with it. You never know.
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Sep 20, 2007 5:22 AM
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DaMess -- just to keep this in perspective: The appeal of HSM is in the youth/pre-teen group. My daughter is 9, and is all over it. My son is 11 and finds it laughable. High school kids wouldn't be caught dead listening to or watching the HSM movies. So don't write the high school youth of today off just yet.
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Sep 24, 2007 12:58 PM
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Next time, no fair referencing your old issues of Tiger Beat during trivia, 
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