It's 1955, and men in fedoras and overcoats patronize Times Square magazine stores, scoping the racks for titles like Titter and Wink, Escapade and Flirt. They peer sideways at one another, not quite acknowledging a common desire and sense of guilt (which only enhances the titillation).

"Do you have anything a little… different?", a narrow-eyed customer asks the clerk. "Anything with… unusual footwear?" When the inevitable raid begins, the men scatter into the night, heads down and clutching their coats around them.

This is the scene at the start of The Notorious Bettie Page, Mary Harron's smart new movie that is not, despite its title, quite about Bettie Page. Though Bettie (in a terrific performance by Gretchen Mol) appears in nearly every scene, the movie is more about the many forces that made her "notorious," the moral hypocrisies and sexual repressions that shaped the '50s and persist today.

That's not to say the film doesn't walk you through some biopic-ish steps. Bettie grew up in Tennessee, married a serviceman, moved to NYC where she met photographer Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer) and his sister Paula (Lili Taylor). But these particulars don't string together in cause-and-effect relationships; instead, they establish contexts for Bettie's popularity, scandal, and eventual turn to Jesus when she left the "special interest" industry.

A glimpse of the Senate committee hearings on what chairman Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn) calls "the effect of pornographic material on adolescents and juveniles" cuts to pinup queen Bettie, with white gloves and pert collar, waiting outside the chambers for her turn to testify. She's nervous, potentially the government's Exhibit A in its case against the scourge of porn (the actual case involves an adolescent boy who has appeared to hang himself, either in emulation of an s/m scene, or in despair inspired by his interest in smut).

From here the movie cuts again, to Bettie's childhood flashback: girls posing for photos for a boy their age, hiking up their skirts and laughing under the caption, "Nashville 1936." Even as a reverend's voice intones, "Come all you sinners and be not proud," Bettie hears her father's voice, calling the kids back to the house to "do your chores." It turns out that young Bettie is to "come on up" the ominous stairway, lurking in the background of the shot: her face goes pale in close-up and dad clunks up the steps behind her.

The rest of The Notorious Bettie Page complicates and contextualizes the themes laid out in these first three scenes. Bettie grows up in a culture that presents itself as pious, adult, and responsible to its precious children, but which actually exploits, abuses, and menaces those same innocents.

Which is not to say she appears here as a victim. Bettie is more a product of conflicting expectations and ideals. On one hand, she's the perfect, unthreatening pinup, glancing back over her shoulder with a big smile, welcoming the most insecure of viewers to imagine that she wants him. She's also a popular fetish model, spike-heeled and corseted, bound and gagged, exposing herself and posing oh-so-outrageously with fellow model Maxie (excellent Cara Seymour). Bettie embodied both and all, having "fun" in front of the camera, claiming innocence concerning any uses consumers might have for her image.

Of course, not all of her experiences are copacetic: during an early solo foray into city streets, she's approached by a sweet-seeming boy who asks her to go "dancin'" with another couple. She ends up in the middle of nowhere, where she's threatened with gang-rape. Telling the slick-haired boys, "It's that time of the month," she enrages a fellow who was looking forward to "getting some tail." She's forced to give them "some kinda satisfaction" as the camera pulls out and up.

Following the off-screen attack, Bettie appears in classic '50s-movie framing, running from the woods into the camera, tearful and afraid. She pauses, gathers her sweater around her, and heads back into the city: the camera watches her walk away, a survivor of hick cruelty yet again.

That she doesn't press charges or otherwise right this wrong indicates, again, the era's restrictions on "girls." Bettie finds another way to make sense of her experience, riding a Greyhound bus to NYC, competing in beauty pageants, and at last, stumbling upon her calling. An off-duty cop with a camera, Jerry (Kevin Carroll), invites her to pose on the beach. A crowd gathers, then a uniformed cop, displeased that she's white and he's black. Jerry starts to apologize, but Bettie soothes him, "They're just prejudiced. I used to be but I grew up and got over it." (The girl's a saint.) Jerry smiles, grateful for her kindness, and when they regroup in his studio, he comes up with tricks for "better" photos, padding for her bikini top and a new haircut -- Bettie's signature bangs, to cut the shine on her "high round forehead."

Harron's movie juxtaposes Bettie's personal and performative virtuousness with the smarminess of other early photographers, a men's "club" who pay to snap pictures of barely clothed models. "I saw it! I saw beaver!" gasps one to another, and it's clear you're in the land of perpetual adolescents, thrilled like Beavis and Butt-head over the mere hint of genitalia.

"It takes all types to make a world," Paula tells Bettie, offering a kind of instruction on self-preservation while also teaching her to pose for cheesecake, wear vinyl, and wield whips. "What kind of types?" asks Bettie, ever the naif, and ever lovely for it. When the Klaws' friend and director/designer John Willie (Jared Harris) wonders what Jesus might think about Bettie's profession, she pauses to ponder, then says she's been given a gift to make people happy. As the film illustrates, this means forcing her smile upside down when a customer murmurs nervously, "I want the young lady to look very strict."

When federal investigation pressures come to bear on the Klaws' business, Bettie sets off on vacation in sunny Miami -- these sections of the mostly black-and-white film are shot in color, suggesting the pulsing, vibrant life of the place. Here she poses for Bunny Yeager (Sarah Paulson), an erstwhile model who rejects the gear Bettie's brought along. "I believe the female form can stand on its own," she says -- and the perfect model has found her perfect photographer. "This girl has something special," Bunny notes in voiceover. "When she's nude, she doesn't look naked."

When one of their nude photos ends up on a Florida postcard, with yellow bikini added, Bettie feels like a star, and indeed, she's dubbed "The Pinup Queen of the Universe."

Certainly, not everyone loves her celebrity; her family worries that she's wasted her education (she wanted to go to college, and had the grades for it, but lost a local scholarship), and her boyfriend, actor Marvin (Jonathan Woodward) is shocked when he learns what's she's been doing for money (they met in an acting class, where he proclaims, "Acting is about truth"). But his stuffy response is set against a fan's question: "Does it make you sick to see guys like me grovel?" She smiles -- of course not -- because she's unphased by perverse devotions or Marvin's stern judgments. "Doctors write books about this sort of thing," he grumbles. "Do you understand what kinds of men buy these photographs?"

For Bettie, it's "just silliness." The condemnation and the masturbation both emerge from a lack of imagination, a desire to contain and possess "the female form." As Bettie works with Paula and Bunny behind the camera, or poses with Maxie (who's planning her own transition from model to photographer), The Notorious Bettie Page finds in these relationships mutual support, giddy fun, and familial trust. Without conventional melodramatic biopic trappings, the movie doesn't pretend to decipher the real-life Bettie Page (to this day, she's still preaching the gospel).

Men can ogle and evaluate all they want. The film's Bettie is what they've made, but she eludes them.

New York is everywhere in Spike Lee's sharp new genre-bending movie. Not just in the sweeping-through-the-streets or creeping-along-the-sidewalk shots, but also inside the Manhattan bank where the film is set, inside the minds of the cops trying to solve the heist, and inside the exit interviews they conduct in tight, white-lit shots. New York is outside and inside "Inside Man", but mostly, it's in the incisive focus, impetus, and consequences of the film.

Ostensibly a heist movie of the "Die Hard" sort, with colorfully ingenious villains who reveal surprising motives, Lee's film (scripted by first-timer Russell Gewirtz) works within and without conventions, juggling a number of balls both familiar and eccentric. The detectives on the case -- hostage negotiator Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) and his partner Mitch (Chiwetel Ejoifor) -- appear first at the station, oblivious to the robbery that you already know is in serious progress. You've seen the foursome in painters' uniforms and masks enter the bank -- located, the camera notes from an ominous low angle, at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway -- disable the surveillance cameras, and take all the customers, workers, and security guards hostage.

When the scene cuts to Keith, he's on the phone with his stunningly beautiful cop girlfriend, promising her an evening with "Big Willy and the twins." Not the role Washington usually plays, but Keith is clearly a man of his environment, seated across two desks from Mitch and crabbing about an Internal Affairs investigation into a missing $140,000.

And then comes the call. Mitch and Keith light up when they realize they've got a chance to prove themselves, to get out from under the clamor at HQ. The captain's other, favored team is somewhere else, and so, as Mitch exclaims, they're off to "the show."

The crime scene is already taped off, a mini-city populated by shooters and uniforms, hulking vans and vocal gawkers. But even as the outside scene recalls "Dog Day Afternoon" (which Keith cites by name); inside, the machinery is grinding along: the robbers dress the hostages like themselves, move them from room to room so they can't get to know one another, and dig up a wall in the storage room. While you and the cops wonder what they're up to, Keith has to make nice with turf-protecting Emergency Services Unit Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe), still mad at him for some case they worked years ago, but also anxious to get this one off quickly and successfully.

Keith's got bridges half-burned wherever he turns, which makes him intriguing, if cryptic. Among the bridge's he's going to be burning during this adventure is a relationship with bank board chairman Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), who shows up partway through the calamity to offer "support," whatever he can do. The robbers have asked for a jet, which the cops recognize as a ploy (no one ever gets a jet, not since Munich, and everyone's seen the movies that make this point), but which Arthur agrees to right away. The cops, huddled in the corner of their commander-trailer, exchange smirky looks and send him off, understanding he's powerful and rich beyond anyone's dreams, but has no clue how to how to talk with people or grocery shop.

And so Case sends a minion, a very well-dressed, perfectly coiffed, excruciatingly intelligent fixer, Madeline White (Jodie Foster), introduced as she's arranging for Bin Laden's nephew to purchase a condo (what's more, she puts him off, politely, as soon as she gets the call from Case, whom she's never met -- that's clout). "Miss White," as she's called repeatedly, gets exactly what she wants when she wants it, at least for a minute: she bribes Keith effectively, she plays Case, she knows how to reach the chief robber in charge, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen). And yet, she can't quite solve this puzzle, which involves a special personal safe deposit box inside the bank (though the answer to this puzzle is "Inside Man's" least effective move, by far).

Miss White's presence highlights a couple of ideas that drive the film. One, that folks with money do pull the strings, but they don't know (or want to know) the details of the wreckage they leave behind. This would be the purview of Keith, as well as Dalton, who has his own sort of insight into how the system works. Matching wits with the cops, he admires Keith's pluck and ingenuity, but presumes he is smarter, as all villains do. He spends some time with a couple of the hostages (mostly to beat on them and impress them with his virtuosity: "Anyone else here smarter than me?"), in particular, a small boy who plays a handheld video game, "Kill Dat Nigga" (the visual and plot basics recall the game in "Clockers"). Clearly, the violence exhibited by the robbers has nothing on what kids see and imagine every day in the city. Dalton voices his concern: "I've got to talk to your father."

Amidst the plotting, the film flash-forwards to exit interviews with the hostages, with Mitch and Keith cracking jokes and pressing them to confess their collaborations. Appearing in tight shots, the grainy hi-def exacerbates the interviewees' complexities: their pocked faces and the too-shiny surfaces surrounding them.

If this interview-pressurizing also recalls "Clockers" (where one suspect appears in Harvey Keitel's glasses), "Inside Man" makes smart use of Lee's other signature techniques (the street overview, the bystanders with attitudes, the moving sidewalk -- all deployed brilliantly here).

Tense, showy, and shrewd, the movie is -- like everyone's been saying -- Lee's most generic (i.e., "accessible"), but that's not what makes it brainy or galvanizing. Indeed, its cleverest moments involve odd, telling details: the credits sequence use of "Chaiyya Chaiyya," the white-guy who recognizes but cannot translate Albanian language, and perhaps most energetically, the Sikh who resents being profiled as "Arab."

Thinking he's one of the robbers, the cops tackle him, take his turban, then refuse to return it to him. When Keith and Mitch pull him into the diner they're using for headquarters to question him, he finally has enough. Tired of being profiled at airports and eyed on the street, the young Sikh wonders, "What happened to my fucking civil rights?" Keith smiles a little. "Bet you can get a cab though." Competing traumas, leveling oppressions, comparable resiliences -- it's definitely New York.

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky could hardly have known what they were in for when they set out to make a movie about Metallica. Though they had brief contact with the band previously (in securing permission to use some music for their film, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills), this time, the mighty rockers' label was paying the directors to document the recording of an album.

That album was "St. Anger," and it took nearly three years to make.

When Berlinger and Sinofsky arrived, the band was recuperating from the departure of longtime bassist Jason Newsted, who finally had enough of the group's perennial "creative disputes" and ongoing arguments between vocalist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. After 90 million records sold and more 20 years spent on the road and in studios, the hard-living pair appeared increasingly unable to collaborate, with guitarist Kirk Hammett's efforts at appeasement falling by the wayside. Their company, Q-Prime, decided to take drastic action, and hired "therapist/performance enhancement expert" Phil Towle (for $40,000 a month) to bring the boys back into some state resembling working order. Metallica, intones Towle, "needed to take a look at itself."

The film begins at the end of the process, with the band promoting the new record, acting almost as if it's like any other. Asked to describe "the span of his career" in one word, Hetfield is stumped and bored. The point is cut to emphasize how answering such inane questions, again and again, can become tedious, depressing, and daunting. At this point, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster turns the page, back to the moments when the album, Metallica's first studio project in seven years, looked like it wouldn't ever be completed.

Initially, Newsted's exit sends Metallica into something of an emotional, even existential, tailspin. In an effort to calm themselves, they bring on producer Bob Rock to play bass for the record, and set up a studio at the Presidio, apparently perceived as a restorative environment. Hetfield appears in his expensive sports car: "I really like going fast," he testifies. No kidding. The film repeats biographical information that will be old news for the band's fans. Since their inception in the Bay Area in 1982, the band notoriously careened from disaster to disaster, including the 1985 death of first bass player Cliff Burton. With ups and downs made incessantly public, they have endured a raucous blur of substance-abusing (they were once called "Alcoholica"), infighting, and raging at various external targets (their noisy campaign against Napster, in which Ulrich became most vocal, earned them a dubious distinction, as the "band most hated by their own fans").

As the sessions with Towle begin, the film patches together old concert footage and the Presidio rehearsal sessions, soon skidding to a kind of stop when Hetfield begins rolling his eyes at Towle's sketchy New Agey speak; when he asks if they can "sack" him, Ulrich says no, "the Phil stuff is important," an "investment in the music." Soon after, Hetfield removes himself to rehab (a stint that will last over a year), whereupon the filmmakers, band members, and management decide to pursue the project anyway. It's transformed into something else, a weird therapeutic exposé, partly self-defensive, partly confessional, and largely performative (it's no secret at any point that cameras are rolling).

One of Towle's first steps is to get the band to generate a "Metallica Mission Statement." Towle's sessions with the band take up a good chunk of Some Kind of Monster's 139 minutes running time (culled from some 1600 hours of footage shot). His techniques range from prodding his clients to "share" their feelings, to suggestions for behavioral changes. At one point, during Hetfield's absence, he convinces Ulrich to sit down with Metallica's former lead guitarist Dave Mustaine (who, on being fired by Metallica in 1984, formed Megadeath and carried a lasting grudge against Ulrich and Hetfield).

The filmmakers have never pretended to be "objective" documentarians, but in their earlier work, it was easy to take the sides they laid out, against the invasive news media Brother's Keeper (1992) or the prejudiced locals and self-serving legal system in Paradise Lost. Here, all the figures on screen appear flawed and vulnerable, by turns self-indulgent, spoiled, and struggling to make sense of their own perpetual adolescence.

Hetfield establishes that his family and home are off-limits (he not only restricts his work time to four hours a day, but also insists the other band members stop work when he does, all leading Ulrich to considerable spewing about what it means to be "rock band"). By contrast, mellow Hammett opens up his serene home amid rolling hills to cameras and agrees to cut back on guitar solos ("I'm actually very comfortable with my role in this band," he says, "I'm not a really egotistical person"). And by yet another contrast, Ulrich takes Towle to visit with his father, Torbin, once a professional tennis player, who leans on his walking stick and offers his blunt opinion of the record so far: "I would say, delete that." (Meantime, Ulrich is selling off his paintings at Christies for some $5 million, making the Napster business seem even more niggling.)

On Day 701 of the film's production, the band undertakes a video shoot, performing for prisoners at the California State Prison at San Quentin. (This would be used to promote the album's first single, ""St. Anger"": "I need my anger not to control. / I want my anger to be me.") Speaking to his tattooed, hard-bodied, mean-looking audience, Hetfield suggests that if it had not been for his music, he would have ended up in prison or dead. But it's clear that he's not like these particular fans here, that he's fortunate beyond words, if wounded in ways that he can't articulate.

By Day 715, Ulrich sounds nearly converted ("You can make something that's aggressive and fucked up with positive energy"), and the band is moving on, in part signaled by their search for a bass player for the tour: their selection of Robert Trujillo produces the film's happiest seeming moment, as he's giddy at the prospect. Shortly afterwards, the group does break with Towle, who's talking about accompanying them on the road. Hetfield puts his foot down: "We don't want to have our hand held through life." When he hears the news, Towle's upset is uncomfortable to see, as he accuses band members of denying their need of him and exposes what seems his own need of them. By this time, you've seen how complex and seductive their intricate pathologies can be, their strangely intoxicating and harrowing dynamic. More than anything, the film is perversely about itself, about producing analysis and performing selves.

Siddiq Barmak's film "Osama" begins looking like a documentary. Taking the firsthand view of a camera turned on a women's protest demonstration, the film observes hundreds gathered, in mostly light blue burqas, wielding signs and demanding the opportunity to work. A street boy, Espandi (Arif Herati), approaches the unseen filmmaker, offering to guide him and to bless him with a dose of smoky, protective incense, just as the Taliban arrive, shoving and brutally hosing down the women. As the women are dragged off, arrested, and worse, the cameraman also finds himself assaulted; the frame goes dark.

The chaos of this opening scene is surely jolting. But the composition and rhythm are simultaneously beautiful and abstract, the women's clothing wafting as they run or fall, the Taliban horde made up of turbaned and bearded, murky figures. When the camera takes up the perspective of a 12-year-old girl (Marina Golbahari) and her mother (Zubaida Sahar), who barely escape the brunt of the men's aggression, the film locates its protagonist.

With her father killed in "the Kabul war," and her uncle in "the Russian war," responsibility for supporting the family will soon fall to the girl. When her mother loses her temporary employment as a nurse (her elderly patient dies), the girl must cut her hair and pretend to be a boy named Osama in order to support not only her mother, but also her grandmother (Hamida Refah). Touchingly, Osama keeps one of her braids, planting it in a flowerpot she keeps by her bed.

The first film to be made in Afghanistan since the reported removal of the Taliban, "Osama" concerns the regime's many offenses, especially against women. Young Osama's endeavors to hide her identity are fraught with her own uncertainty -- she's not sure how to behave, as boys' routines and culture are so wholly different than her own. She has the wrong shoes, her voice is too high, and she has no concept of how to pray, as all boys must do daily, in groups. Though she's instructed occasionally by her employer, a man who knew and served with her father, Osama will never be able to keep up with the demands exacted by minute-by-minute surveillance.

Spotted at an afternoon prayer, Osama is rounded up the next day for Madrassa religious and military school: the Taliban trains all boys for Bin Laden's ongoing wars. Given that they know nothing else, the boys are all more or less eager to learn what it means to be "a man," that is, how to pray, how to fight, how to dominate, and how to perform ablutions.

Returning to her mother's house each evening, Osama changes gears abruptly, working as a girl, by serving food at a wedding (held with the groom in absentia, exiled to Iran), populated entirely by women. When the Taliban come by, the women cover themselves with their burqas and pretend to be wailing at a funeral, which, by implication, they might as well be -- whether married, widowed, or single, women have no say over any of their own activities or expectations.

Unsurprisingly, Osama is unable to maintain her deception. At school, though she does her best to act "tough," she is eventually dealt a traumatic punishment for tree climbing: hung by a rope inside a well for hours, as she sobs for her "mother." This incident leads directly to the onset of her menstruation. Hoisted from the well, she has blood on her legs, and while the Mullahs do not have her stoned -- as they do an unfaithful wife -- they do allocate for her a terrible fate.

Though the premise of Osama's tale is categorical -- life for women and girls is horrendous -- it is rendered in a series of telling images. When Osama's mother gets a ride home from her client on his bicycle, neglecting to hide her ankles beneath her gown, the Taliban stop them and accuse her of offense. Cinematographer Ebrahim Ghafuri's camera never even shows their faces, just her feet, at first with ankles visible, then covered, shrunk up into her skirt. Or again, when, following her mother's out-loud wish that god had never created women, Osama's grandmother tries to soothe her, stroking her head while she tells a story where gender is mutable (if you walk under a rainbow, you can switch to boy or girl), the camera holds on the girl's face. It hardly matters that the narrative is so overstated or that the tragedy is so overwhelming. Her face, haunted and grim, offers a simple, immutable truth.

A recurring image speaks to the life Osama will never have, though she imagines it. In this dream, she's in prison, the camera sliding across the bars, to reveal blue-burqa-clad women bowed down in horror and submission. And yet, she also sees herself, jumping rope, an activity she attempts in "real life," but never has space or time to practice. The scene is punctuated with the thunk-thunk-thunk of the rope hitting the floor, as the mobile frame emphasizes the irony of the space she has in the prison of her dream. The diurnal magic and utter impossibility of this simple child's game are unforgettable.

It's good to see N'Bushe Wright. That is, it's good to see her anywhere, because she's a smart actor who brings grace and sinuous affect to any part she plays. But it's also good to see her on UPN's splashy midseason hip-hop drama, Platinum, where she's got a choice part as Max, crafty, no-nonsense head of Conflict Records. Having inherited the label when her "man went inside," she defends her property and reputation fiercely. Acutely aware of the gender biases in her business, she will not be disrespected.

She makes this clear to her primary competitor, Sweetback Records owner Jackson Rhames (Jason George), during one of those fancy-joint lunch meetings that take up so much time on soaps about backstabbing rich people. On this occasion, Jax has come to discuss Max's recent dispatch of a pair of heavies to beat up on his white boy lawyer partner, David (Steven Pasquale).

What's different here is the tone, the hip-hop industry context and, importantly, the jokes. Platinum has lots of them, thanks to writer John Ridley (Undercover Brother). And so, when Jax protests that his hiring away of Max's star MC, Pharos, is "just business," she comes back: "Negro, please." She then proceeds to read him out for his bad behavior. She pauses only when he reminds her of her own thuglife tactics, noting, "Players like you are making us all look country."

Ouch. Chances are good you won't be hearing this sort of conversation on any other TV series. Nor will you be hearing episodes scored with tracks by Fabolous, Noc-Turnal, Prince, Brian McKnight, Slum Village and the Clipse (though you will hear the Neptunes, everywhere), courtesy of the eclectic Photek. The series' intelligent edginess is exactly what makes Platinum work, its capacity not only to exult in complicated characters operating in a hip, energetic, over-the-top context (this despite and probably because of frequent comparisons to Dallas), but also to get inside the foolishness produced by such a context.

The fact that the series looks closely at the excessive lives and appetites of hip-hop artists and producers is not in itself news; this is on display every day in bling-bling, poolside-hoochies hip-hop music videos. What is refreshing is that the attitude here is resolutely not straight: These characters are as complex and neurotic as any in The Sopranos or Six Feet Under (in fact, it's executive produced by, among others, Six Feet Under's Robert Greenblatt), and some are as campy as those in Kingpin or Dynasty.

Add to this that the scripts are willing to take on current (or at least recent) craziness in the business: bad behaviors, outrageous trends, inflated self-images. Among the more colorful instances in the first two episodes is the very first scene, where Sweetback's arrogant white rapper, Versis (played by white rapper Vishiss, who apparently can take a joke at his own expense), rebuffs his video director's suggestions by shooting him in the ass. Literally. Panic on the video set is followed by the arrival of Jackson's brother and business partner Grady (Sticky Fingaz), who ensures that the incident will be "taken care of" -- he agrees to pay the director, on a stretcher en route to the ambulance, a cool $75,000.

That everyone takes this insanity pretty much in stride is to the point. Platinum is about making money, at anyone else's expense. Versis is merely product, an investment worth "supporting" only until his earning power is played out. And this, coincidentally, is the verge on which Sweetback teeters as the series begins: The white rapper's sales have fallen off, the brothers owe money every which way ("Blacklash," explains Jackson, by way of being off the hook; nah, says a popular black artist, it's the company's fault: "You can't sell a white boy to white people"). So now, the Rhameses are feeling pressured to sell the company to Greystar, a major label headed by creepy Nick Tashjian (Tony Nardi).

Trying not to give it up to a white-owned conglomerate keeps the Rhameses busy, especially when a writer from The Source shows up, asking questions about Sweetback's poor performance lately. At this point, Grady's posse decides to help out, misunderstanding (or not) his encouragement that as "homeboys," they gotta stick together, have each others' backs. Following an afternoon spent smoking dope in the office, the crew of three heads over to the writer's crib and dangles him off his balcony. Shades of Suge Knight and, oh, Vanilla Ice (who has made something of a living off that dangling story); or maybe it's shades of Puffy, who reportedly delivered a beatdown to Blaze editor Jesse Washington back in 1998.

Either way, the joke ends up being on the tough guys (though it should be noted that the white boy victims of both these assaults come off poorly, too, posing in the business, and afraid when they need to be). Ooops: the dangler loses his grip and drops the writer on his head. He ends up in a cast in the hospital, promising the woulda-been contrite Rhames brothers that he'll never let slip what happened and never print a foul word about the company.

Still, and although Grady's visibly pleased that it's all turned out so well, Jackson doesn't go for the physicality. He wants to be a legitimate businessman, to do the right thing: He's married to a business lawyer, Monica (Lalanya Masters), and more or less looks after his NYU-attending little sister Jade (Davetta Sherwood). But the right thing doesn't always present itself in his world. And so, when he hears that Versis has been involved in a club shooting, with Jade along for the ride that night, Jax has trouble keeping his perspective. (This would be shades of P. Diddy, since acquitted for a 2000 club shooting, for which his artist Shyne is doing time, and after which J. Lo left him.) Lucky for Jax, Grady helps him to see what's really at stake, when they learn that Nick happened by the police station that night, to bail out and buy cover for both Versis and Jade. Owing anything to Nick is not good.

As if this is all not enough, Jackson has one more piled on problem in the early episodes. T-Ron (Ricardo Betancourt), a onetime aspiring rapper and Jackson's friend from back in the day, shows up to picket Sweetback, along with Alderman Ray (Walter Burden), an Al Sharpton type, complete with bullhorn, a speech about the definition of "niggers," and a tendency to extort cash money when he can; here he calls the Rhames brothers "evilish," which, yes, sounds rather like MJ's recent complaint that Tommy Mottola is "devilish," suggesting that Platinum sees fair game everywhere.

This target range includes the ever-difficult topic of black men with white women, especially when the men have made some money. Is it a sign of selling out to sleep with white girls? Is it a sign of giving over to the mainstream, white system of values? "How come every time a brother hits a white chick," asks one successful artist who has a white girl in his house, "Everybody's like: 'Yo, he sold out, he's gone snow blind'? But I'm thinkin' hittin' is just a part of playing whitey's game. You know, from slavery to Tiger Woods, that's just a white man fear for what a brother's gonna do. Brother's gonna get his. What's the most precious thing Whitey's got? His woman, right? Hit the man's woman. Ain't that uplifting the race? Ain't that bringin' us to the next level? Think about it." (Translation: women = property.) On hearing this discourse, Jackson and Grady agree to seduce the rapper, then shake their heads behind his back. Property's everywhere, and available for the buying.

In this and other instances, Platinum offers cagey, borderline obnoxious assessments of how worlds work -- the hip-hop world, the male self-loving world, the legal and the commercial worlds (and it goes at it in a more incisive way than, say, the movie version of Undercover Brother, which is exasperatingly diluted from the comic strip). If the show wisely avoids trying to be "authentic," it has other ideas to engage.

For example, it is visibly aware of its derivations and debts. Signs of clever biting and self-conscious surfeit are everywhere, in the plotting certainly, but also in the freeze frames, fast cuts, and smart compositions concocted by director Kevin Bray (who directed All About the Benjamins, the Ice Cube movie, not the Puffy video). If the executives and artists are suddenly, first-generationally, filthy rich, they don't handle their newfound clout or their cash much differently than did previous gangsters, from Al Capone to the Corleones (Francis Ford Coppola, by the way, is another of the series' executive producers, and Sofia, also wife of Spike Jonze, well-acquainted with hip-hop video-making, is co-creator, with Ridley). They spend unwisely, party wildly, front perpetually, and assume they have far more insight and talent than they do, especially when it comes to managing their daily lives and, perhaps more importantly, their careers.

Such decadence and acting out are surely not specific to hip-hop. But the show is under fire for its representations of that culture (as if said culture can be reduced to a singular designation), with a boycott of UPN and the series announced by Project Islamic H.O.P.E. Adisa Banjoko, the organization's North California Director, tells BET.com that the show doesn't show "all" that it might about hip-hop. If the makers were interested in a more complete depiction, they would "profile the DJ forced to play garbage music by his program director who is getting kickbacks by the label. They'd show you the hip-hop journalist who can't pay rent but still writes about hip-hop because he loves documenting the culture. Now that is real hip-hop drama."

To ask a single show to represent every aspect of a culture is probably too much, but the point is well taken, that Platinum, as its name implies, is focused on the big-stakes aspects, the costs of making money and leaving behind a belief in a culture, as a means of activist, collective, and creative expression. Hip-hop is a business in Platinum, an occasion for family drama and hijinks. As such, it's mostly familiar to viewers who don't know much about hip-hop, and occasionally frustrating for those who do.

Surely, the characters and situations are broadly drawn, and hardly representative of the culture or the people dedicated to hip-hop, but they do recall and send up the insanity and crazy hype that drives the business -- not just hip-hop, but music generally. Granted, violence, like beatdowns and shootings, is reported sensationally, and tied to hip-hop per se, as opposed, for instance, to involved authorities, as in the Biggie Smalls murder. And a "black" show, much like a "Latino" show, will be assumed to represent the race in ways that white shows are not. That said, the specificity of the protest speaks to the increased clout of hip-hop -- that it is a recognizable political, artistic movement, not just a business. And while hip-hop continues to accumulate force and focus to speak more truth to power, it is good, really, to see N'Bushe Wright.

Cynthia Fuchs, an associate professor of English, African American studies, and film & media studies at George Mason University, is the film/TV editor for PopMatters and film reviewer for Philadelphia Citypaper.

Gurinder Chadha is drinking tea. She's the liveliest tea drinker I've ever seen. Full of energy and ideas, she's not about to sit on a sofa in a nice hotel for an entire interview. She gets up to open a window, to check on her phone. She leans forward, then sits back. She answers the hotel phone, after wondering out loud if she should, and speaks briefly with her husband and writing partner, Paul Mayeda Berges. They're doing notes on their new movie, she explains, smiling broadly, a musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice she describes as "Bollywood meets Fiddler on the Roof."

It's safe to say that Gurinder Chadha loves her work. Born in Kenya, she began her career as a news reporter with BBC Radio, and directed short documentaries for the BBC. In 1990, she established her own production company, Umbi Films, and made her first feature, Bhaji on the Beach, in 1993. She directed What's Cooking in 2000, about four Los Angeles families on Thanksgiving, and now, her latest project, Bend It Like Beckham, about Jess (Parminder Nagra), and Jules (Keira Knightley), young footballers aspiring to play professionally. The film was one Britain's highest grossing films in 2002.

I'm glad to see a movie that doesn't condescend to its young girl characters, send them to the prom or make them want to take off their glasses for a boy.

That was one of the things that I wanted to do with the movie, was create a movie with images of girls who were all sorts -- tall, fat, thin, small, or whatever, but all looking really powerful and confident and happy with what they were doing and therefore happy with their bodies. There was this moment when we were cutting one of the sequences where the girls were all jumping over steel barriers, and the editor was trying to do it on the beat. He said, if we do it this one way, we get Jules, but we also get this really fat girl, and her stomach goes up and down and so do her breasts, and he was worried that wouldn't look "nice" on the big screen. I said, "Are you kidding? That's the best shot!" Probably no one will notice it, but someone might somewhere, so I made active choices to put in shots like that, because they are absent from the screen, usually.

It is the ultimate kind of girl power movie, because it doesn't belittle the girls' experience. As much as I love Clueless, it's a little plasticky, even as it is about being plasticky, and it is a mainstream Hollywood movie. Given those constraints, it did pretty well. What I wanted to do was create a story about teens, but a teen movie with balls, so to speak. I wanted to make something that really looks at what you go through at that age. And it's all so complicated, dealing with boys, your girlfriends, your parents, trying to be your own person. And she's Indian, so you have all the Indian cultural stuff, and race, since she's in London.

I wanted to show that you're dealing with a lot of things at that age. But at the same time, I wanted the film to feel like a rush, because that's what you're doing then, you're rushing to stand still, because your life is kind of going in directions that you can't anticipate. And the soccer plays into that, where Jess does look amazing. And, I wanted to bring in the parents, so you could understand their points of view as well. Usually in teen movies, the parents are portrayed as silly or absent. So, from a teen movie it kind of became a family movie.

The movie makes clear that there's a generational difference in understandings of race and communities. Where the parents are somewhat fearful and divided, the girls negotiate between communities.

Absolutely. What I wanted to show with the film is give you the nuts and bolts of integration. That's what it's about, that process of being second generation or third generation Indian, very specifically in London. And no one really has done that, show how you do balance, not only culture, but also gender and sexuality. By focusing on these two characters, you get a strong picture on the constraints but also the processes that allow them to be who they are.

It's very close to my story. And I was plagued all through school with people saying, "Oh, you must be in an identity crisis," or, "There's a big culture clash going on," which just made me bristle, because we just didn't feel that. Adults don't know that, because you don't really talk about boyfriends and makeup with your mom! You know who to talk to about what, and it's a process of negotiating your different experiences and expectations of you. Though I made the film for a British audience, I think it's done so well around the world because a lot of the world lives like that too. That's the predominant experience these days. Most cities have populations who have moved from one place to another and another. And most cities don't have the kind of space that America has. Most cities have people much more on top of each other, so you have to kind of take each other's agendas on board. So you end up being a tight-knit community. And what I wanted to show was that the diasporic culture, of second and third generations, is increasingly a predominant culture.

And you see this as a specifically urban phenomenon?

I do, and the media that emerge from urban environments influence other media. And so, there was a time in England when we would watch television, and see an Indian person and get excited. Remember that song, "Kung Fu Fighting" came out, and an Indian guy produced that song, called Biddu. I remember thinking that was so cool, the first Indian on a pop show. But now, when I go back, almost every show on the telly is full of Indians and black people. And they're in the industry, in positions of power, increasingly. And the fact that this film did so well in Britain, as a British movie, not as an Indian movie, surprised even me. Even the tabloids picked it up, called it a "great British comedy!" And no one said culture clash. And why has it taken the Sun and the Mirror to get over the race barrier, more than the highbrow papers? Those papers were more concerned with it being about an Indian girl in Britain today, that kind of qualification.

The film also uses a set of conventions -- sports movie, romantic comedy, family clash -- but also challenges some of those generic boundaries.

Yeah, this is a problem for me, but also a pleasure. I keep making films that don't fit genres, so they're hard to market. So, as we're traveling with this film, we went out to Chicago's suburbs, and they pitched it as "a soccer movie." And kids came, and they loved it, but all these dads and coaches were saying, "This is not a soccer movie. It's more than a soccer movie." It is multiple genres at once. But that's what our lives are about -- you don't think, today I'm going to just be a teenager, and tomorrow I'll deal with race. It's everything all at once.

Speaking of multiple experiences at once, I was wondering too about the burn on Jess' leg.

That was not in the script. I had seen Parminder, after seeing her in a theater production four years previously, and I loved her. Casting is such an important process, and then I work really hard at giving them space.

You talked with them a lot during filming?

Oh yes, you have to have that dialogue, especially with young performers. Because I write the script, I'm not precious about it. I give it to them and say, "Make it yours." And that's a tremendous amount of freedom for an actor, and then you start nudging them, and they think they're coming up with the ideas. But that's the trick of directing, though, isn't it, to let them think the ideas are theirs, but they're really doing what you want, even if you're figuring it out with them. Bless them.

With Parminder, I gave her the part, and then the next day, her agent called and said, "Uhh, I think there's something you should know. She's got a bit of a scar, and it's gonna be visible." So she came in, and I said, "Okay, let's have a look." So she took her trousers off, and I was like, "Whoa!" I remember saying, "Well, makeup's not going to hide it!" And she was really upset because she thought I wasn't going to give her the role. And then she told me what happened, and I said, "Okay, we'll put it in the script then." So, the scene that's in the film is exactly what happened to her. And these things happen, and it just works so well. When you see it, you think, "Well, that's not about race or color! That's about something else!" And then it worked with [the coach] Joe's scar: he always had one in the script. And I liked it because it gave the mum another layer: the reason she didn't want Jess to show her legs was because of the "deformity," as well as the Indian thing.

I came into films initially on this platform to challenge the representation of women and people of color in the media. That was my thinking, I wanted to use the camera, which is so powerful, to change the way that people are portrayed. My first film [Bhaji on the Beach] is quite like that, even if it's dressed up like a comedy. It's actually a film about domestic violence. But I've got you all suckered in by the time that becomes clear, so it's overtly political. This film isn't quite so overt, but it makes a point. Because I come from that platform, it's my instinct to pull the carpet out from you.

I was pleased, I confess, to see that faraway shot of (the fake) Beckham and Victoria at the end of the film, not so much because he's so clearly important to the film, but because of the Spice Girls, whom I find fascinating.

Yeah! Girl Power! Totally, that's what this film is about. One has to credit them for giving girls a sense of assertiveness and confidence and aggressiveness, which was absent before. And now, with the Britney thing, it's more insipid. The Spice Girls came along and were all in your face, and I thought they were great. They were the best thing to happen to nine-year-old girls.

A lot of adults read them as "ironic" or as sex dolls, or whatever. But girls used them differently, took them to heart.

And what was great was that they offered all the different sides of girls -- you could be sporty or you could be black, or you could be blond and girly, or dark and dangerous like Posh.

I saw them when they toured the U.S., and the audience was almost as compelling as the show, because the girls were so enthusiastic.

I had a similar experience when I went to the Rose Bowl to see the Women's World Cup. It was great to see the players, who were brilliant. But what was something else was to see 90,000 spectators, all mostly young women with their dads and mums.

And are you thinking of that audience, or another one, while you're working on the new film, a musical based on Pride and Prejudice?

That's so much fun. What we're doing with that is, that the Bennetts are now the Buckshees, and they live in Hicksville, in the north of India. And Lizzie is now Lelita, very feisty, and she'll be played by Aishwarya Rai, the most popular Bollywood actress, whom Julia Roberts has described as the most beautiful woman in the world.

She would know.

Yes, she would (laughs). The character is very feisty and strong, and Darcy is a Caucasian American, son of a rich hotelier family, very smart with old New York money. And his good friend Mr. Bingley is now Baraj. British Indian. And he's a barrister in London. The story takes place in India, England and America, and it's very subversive. In the novel, Darcy is very high class, and Lizzie is slightly lower class. But now the conflict is about Darcy being American and her being Indian, more like he's First World and she's Third World, the West versus the East on a global level.

I imagine the music is exciting to put together.

It's a voyage of discovery for me. One of the things that shocked me about Beckham when I first saw the whole thing, was how English it was. Now I'm more aware of that sort of effect, and with the music, I'm bringing to the music something inside me, but working with a composer from India, a cheesy Bollywood composer. So he's suggesting stuff he thinks I want, that will work in the West, and I'm telling him, no, you need to make it more Bollywood. I'll bring the influence of the West to it. And somewhere along the line, it's becoming Bollywood Grease. It's really exciting.

Do you feel that, even amid this good fun, you've maintained something of a testy relationship to the mainstream industry?

There's no question about it. The film is, again, about weddings and girls and marriage from another point of view: we're going to call it "Bride and Prejudice." But there is a part of me that does want to do something totally different. That said, even if I do a sci-fi movie, I'll bring my world to it, it will have the undercurrents of identity and culture and the sense of diversity or camaraderie, in metaphorical terms.

Do you anticipate doing a generic Hollywood film in the future?

You may be surprised. You know, I've got to buy a penthouse sometime! But then you see, that in itself, I see that as an incredibly political thing, someone like me doing it.

Moving on up

Yes (laughs). And I do secretly love films like Wayne's World, and incredibly stupid comedy, Austin Powers and all that.

Well, they're not totally stupid, are they?

No, they aren't. Not if you read them the way we read them!

The recent sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C. area made for a lot of TV watching. It wasn't because the story was always riveting or the news was always breaking. In fact, more often than not, the news briefings held by Police Chief Charles A. Moose of Montgomery County, Md., were uninformative. 

And yet, even as the shooters' range expanded to other jurisdictions and even as the timing of attacks was variable, Moose would, every few hours, make his way to the microphone at the Montgomery "command center," surrounded by reporters, camera crews, support staff and law enforcement types, to tell us what we already knew: The killer was still at large. The whole business had become "personal." Someone had seen a white van or a white box truck, somewhere.

As October wore on, and frightened locals were increasingly testy concerning what the cops did or didn't know, how they were handling the case, and what they were saying publicly, or leaking or refusing to leak to the camped-out press, Moose kept on. Now, in hindsight, the reasons for his cryptic tactics seem multiple and complex. You know that he was communicating more or less directly with the killer ("The person you called could not hear everything you said; the audio was unclear and we want to get it right. Call us back so that we can clearly understand") and responding to notes left at crime scenes ("Our word is our bond"). 

Exactly what Moose knew or when he knew it may never become completely known, but during those difficult 23 days, the emotional toll on him was visible daily. As he now describes the strategy, post-suspects-capture, "I'll talk to the devil himself to keep another person alive."

He wasn't the only one doing a lot of talking, of course. Television news shows trotted out legions of "profilers," professional, retired, amateur and increasingly annoying, lining up on TV and in print to tell everyone how to imagine the killer. Their occupations were varied -- legal correspondents, cable news hosts, professors, reporters, columnists, former lawyers, current lawyers, terrorism experts, former employees of the FBI, former cops and, in one sensational instance, even a former serial killer: David Berkowitz, interviewed by the Fox News Channel's ever intrepid, ever misguided Rita Cosby.

For all the (ratings-bumping) brouhaha that greeted Cosby's ostensible coup, the Son of Sam's insights were much like everyone else's -- the killer was shooting from a distance, he was moving about, he was angry. For all the lack of available information, these authorities and specialists dutifully wore their suits, appeared against book-lined backdrops or in maps-and-graphics-equipped studios, to proclaim what everyone knew, or worse, what they had no substantive grounds for asserting: The killer was white, male, of a certain age and station. He was taunting police, he wanted to get caught. He was ingenious, he was insane. He was a terrorist, an expert sniper, an expert first-person video game player, indicated because he used that odious and supremely unimaginative phrase, "I am god."

A few "news" shows included discussions of the "news" coverage. Was the coverage excessive and sensational? Was it fear-mongering? Ratings-mongering? Was it superseding other news? Was all this profiling bogus? (Recall how many times you heard someone set up his -- and it was mostly "his" -- opinion by saying, "Well, I don't have all the facts, but ...")

In most areas around the United States, the story was awful and upsetting -- and not the only news. Still, the cable news stations took it up as if it was, deploying expensive crosshairs graphics, interrupting themselves to "break" news that wasn't new. For Donahue, Jerry Nachman, Connie Chung, Bill O'Reilly, Dan Abrams, Geraldo, John Walsh, Chris Matthews, et. al., it was the story of the minute for almost a month, and that meant that the teams assembled beneath the Montgomery tents came from all over.

However, in and around D.C., where I live, the story was (and remains) local news, intensely. The wall-to-wallness was unavoidable. Morning to night, Sniper TV ruled. Schools closed in Virginia, interviewees explained why they were staying home or going to the mall, traffic stopped for hours following an attack, and the secret military high-tech surveillance plane was flying around, somewhere, sometime, maybe. And no matter where the violence and grief spread, Chief Moose came before the mic, to read his statements and (maybe) take questions. Politely, because, as he instructed one journalist, his parents raised him that way.

And then, shortly after midnight, on Thursday, Oct. 24, the news channels went nuts with "Breaking News" banners, splitting their screens and their experts' opinions across chopper shots of a backyard in Tacoma, Wash., and a liquor store in Montgomery, Ala. 

Suddenly, there was a license plate, then names and descriptions: John Allen Muhammad, a 41-year-old Gulf War Army veteran with a couple of ex-wives and several relatives who were all too ready to talk to Larry and Katie and Greta; John Lee Malvo, variously termed Muhammad's "stepson," his "teenage sidekick," or "a 17-year-old Jamaican immigrant with a sketchy past." He left his fingerprint on a gun-lovers' magazine in Alabama, which led ATF, FBI and local police investigators directly to the pair, as soon as one of them phoned the task force and told them about "Montgomery."

Suddenly, there were arrests at a truck stop in Maryland, a "courageous" truck driver, and ongoing arguments about who gets to prosecute first; as Montgomery (Ala.) Police Chief John Wilson put it, in a much-repeated sound bite, "We're going to make an example of somebody." 

Suddenly, there was a Bushmaster rifle and a blue Caprice with a hole cut in the trunk, a grim "killing machine." There were court reporter sketches, perp walks and home videos of martial arts classes.

Suddenly, there were faces -- black faces.

This last bit came as something of a surprise, especially if you'd been even half-listening to all the experts who were so sure about what to expect and presume of serial killers. But the surprise, disturbing and pause-giving as it might be, hasn't exactly stopped the experts from yapping. 

After all, now there are more stories to put together and tell: unhappy childhoods and military service records to dig up; last visits and ominous conversations to recall (Muhammad's six-months-ago question to an "old Army friend": "Can you imagine the damage you could do if you could shoot with a silencer?"); distressing anecdotes to relate (Malvo's diet of crackers and honey, and his "scared" behavior). And on Saturday, another arrest of another "material witness," Nathaniel Osbourne, 26-year-old co-owner of the Caprice, whose picture appears on TV screens, seemingly cut off from a snapshot that once included someone else.

Presently, all terms and assumptions have changed. Most of the stories emerging have to do with this unexpected turn, this unexpected blackness.

Item: One note from the sniper closed with five stars. Says Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post: "This case hardly lacks for bizarre elements. Who would have thought that the ... suspect's notes would reference a 'duck in the noose' fairy tale or a Jamaican band called the Five Stars?"

Item: Muhammad converted to Islam in 1985. "This is a politically incorrect thing to say," announced "Terrorism Expert" Steve Emerson on The Abrams Report (Oct. 24), "but the bottom line is, [for] the devout Muslim who believes in taking action in jihad, it's a short line for them to go into carrying out violence."

He added, not quite as an afterthought, "Again, we don't know what motivated this particular shooter."

Item: Muhammad may or may not have been sympathetic to the 9/11 hijackers, and reportedly worked "security" at the Million Man March. This last bit has been denied by Louis Farrakhan, who adds that if Muhammad is convicted of murder, he'll be kicked out of the Nation. CNN reports: "Farrakhan noted that Oklahoma City bomber 'Timothy McVeigh confessed that he was a Christian, but nobody blames the church for his misconduct.'"

Item: "I am god" now doesn't designate video game prowess, but, reported Fox News Channel (for a minute), it may refer to a belief held by members of the Five PercentNation (also here). According to the Associated Press (Oct. 27), Robert Walker, "a consultant based in Columbia, S.C., who helps police identify gangs" observes of this coincidence: "I'm not saying he's a Five Percenter. I don't know that. Only that 'I am God' is something a Five Percenter might say. All black men who are followers and members of the Five Percenters refer to themselves as God and will even refer to someone else who is a Five Percenter as a God also."

Item: Geraldo and others are scrambling to make their tabloid points, loudly. The Oct. 27 edition of At Large With Geraldo Rivera led with the reporter's announcement that this "angry loser" (Geraldo is colorful, as always) is linked with human smuggling. In April 2001, it comes out, Muhammad was detained by immigration inspectors at the Miami International Airport, who suspected him of trying to smuggle two undocumented Jamaican women into the country.

Item: On Saturday, Oct. 26, Malvo, handcuffed in his holding cell, made an awkward effort to climb out through the ceiling. There wasn't a chance he might have made it, but responses from Virginia's (painfully named) Attorney General Jerry Kilgore and still more "experts" were immediate and harsh. Keep him in shackles, in waist chains and leg braces. And, most emphatically, make sure he gets tried in Virginia, where he can be tried as an adult and eligible for the death penalty. So that someone, somewhere, can "make an example of somebody."

Looking back on the past month and looking forward to the feeding frenzy that the court cases will inspire, journalists persist. Time magazine has called on Vietnam War veteran, essayist, and novelist Tim O'Brien (Going After Cacciato) to ponder "the difficult task facing soldiers returning to society."

His insights are at once predictable and weighty. In war, he notes, "The capacity that you could do terrible things is awakened." It's difficult to come back to the world, to a civilian life. At the same time, O'Brien indicts the U.S. media and its consumers: "I was disgusted to see this country transfixed by a sniper while a war's being planned in Iraq," he writes. People in "the rest of the world ... could be dying by the thousands and we'll go on with our business with no fear or personal stake. I never fail to be stunned by our appetite for atrocity and violence."

As if to illustrate (or feed) same, this past weekend's TV (Oct. 25-27) has been rife with efforts to describe, reframe and sensationalize the sniper story, not to mention to justify the previous attention paid to all those so-wrong experts. In addition to underlining (and amplifying) the obvious drama of the case, these shows are also explaining their own existence on the scene(s). The sniper mounted "an attack on the fabric of life," says reporter Jean Meserve, on CNN's Manhunt: Cracking the Case (Oct. 27), while she stands on a street in the "D.C. metropolitan area," the same area where so many D.C.-based reporters live.

Manhunt goes on to trace events: The first day's shooting spree, the ensuing tensions and tactics, the sites of attack, the daily reports by Chief Moose (these images enhanced to grainy digital close-ups to enhance horror-effects, say, when he reads from the postscript, "Your children are not safe, anywhere, at any time"), the amassing media coverage. 

At its peak, reports CNN, the ratings for networks covering the story "more than tripled," helped along, no doubt, by the startling cross-hairs logos and galvanizing theme music. "Marketing murder or serving a public need?" asks the reporter. "In fact, it was both." In fact.

As might be expected, given his reputation, his man-in-action opening credits graphics, and his penchant for reporting on all-things-gigantic-that-will-enhance-himself, Rivera's show Oct. 27 obscures fact in favor of high emotion and low tabloidism (his set for the past couple of days includes a mock-up of the "killing machine," a 1990 Caprice his "expert" has outfitted to resemble that of the killers).

First, Rivera beats down any effort by his guest, John Mills, Muhammad's lawyer during a custody case in 1999, to suggest that Muhammad's (alleged) violence may have been long in the making, a function of building frustrations. Geraldo wonders why Mills wants to probe into the past (even though Geraldo has, again, invited him onto the show). Mills attempts to state his case: "It's important to understand what happened, in order to prevent this from happening in the future." 

Rivera rejects that. Mills tries again, noting that the talking-head-guest-psychologists Robert Butterworth and Cyril Wecht are diagnosing a man they've never met (they're commenting on Muhammad's sympathy for the 9/11 terrorists, while the man who knew him then, Mills, observes, "He wanted to see his kids"). Rivera scoffs. "There are 13 bodies here, 10 of 'em dead. Maybe you're the oddball here, maybe you're the one who's wrong."

Not one to stop when he's (even nominally) ahead, Rivera moves on to the next segment: Former prosecutor Wendy Murphy declares, "The death penalty isn't enough. We want them to suffer more ... How else do we vindicate the interests of the entire region?" At Rivera's (seeming) invitation, attorney Geoffrey Feiger attempts to inject sanity into the proceedings, suggesting that this "thirst for blood ... speaks volumes about this country. It makes us as uncivilized as [the killers]." Yet again, Rivera passes judgment: Muhammad and Malvo, driven by their "diabolical chemistry," deserve to die. So much for due process.

None of this is to say that the murders are not heinous or the murderers not horrific. The process of media story-making, however, is hardly transparent. 

When, also on Oct. 27, Greta Van Susteren interviews Chief Moose and his wife, Sandy Herman-Moose, the focus is not on lust for punishment, sensational violence or perpetual horrors. Moose, humble, gracious and looking rested at long last, focuses instead on his "pride" in the cooperation between departments and individuals, the ongoing mourning of survivors' families, and the role of the media in the investigation (and still, he doesn't blame or make noise, only notes, quietly, his view of what happened). Moose is no longer in charge, since prosecutors in Virginia, Maryland and Alabama have jumped on the self-promotional bandwagon. And the case looks increasingly hysterical and sad.

A decent and now much respected man, Moose's prominence in this lengthy "show" -- not to mention his enigmatic messages to the sniper ("You have asked us to say, 'We have caught the sniper, like a duck in a noose'") and brusque behavior with reporters -- now appear to have been motivated by some knowledge that he could not disclose at the time.

Pete Hamill speculates in the New York Daily News (Oct. 25), that this knowledge had to do with the killer's identity; that is, his race. Hamill writes that Moose's "anguish seemed to intensify as communications were opened with the killers. Almost certainly this was because he knew they were black. He is clearly a decent, tough, disciplined black man, an American before he is anything else. But he also must have known what my friend knew yesterday: Black people didn't need this. He almost certainly knew one other large truth: Race had nothing to do with it."

But of course, race has everything to do with it. No one has to say it to make it so. 

Still, several major newspapers (among them, the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Baltimore Sun) have run stories on reactions of "black community" members to the news that the suspects are black. Black call-in radio shows (like Tom Joyner's) were inundated with responses, as was BET.com (read the messages here); Tavis Smiley plans to do a show on the subject, and it's a good bet that Ed Gordon will do so as well. (Johnny Cochran, however, has already begged off the case, telling Donahue that he felt "fear" when in D.C. during the period of the attacks, so he's no longer objective.)

This is a discussion that "white community" members will never need to have. They don't feel that a Timothy McVeigh, an Eric Harris, or a Ted Bundy represents them, that others will perceive them differently because someone of their race commits atrocities. Rather, white folks tend to see these criminals as "evil," deviant or otherwise not like them. 

To be sure, most black folks will not identify with a Muhammad or a Malvo, but fear being identified with them. Amid all the fears available out there, this is one fear that white people in the United States won't need to confront.

Cynthia Fuchs is an associate professor of English, African American studies and film and media studies at George Mason University.

"Why are people scared?" 

This question lies at the heart of Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's filmic essay on gun violence in the United States. Taking Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's 1999 assault on their classmates and teachers at Columbine High School as a point of departure, the documentary considers a range of contexts -- legal, cultural, political and media -- in order to complicate this profound and difficult question. That it comes up with no simple answers is to its credit.

At first glance, the reasons for fear seem numerous and overwhelming: Images of violence pervade U.S. media (news, fiction, videogames, etc.); ideals of masculinity are premised on aggression and possession; guns are readily available, as well as a "right" granted by the Second Amendment. 

Moore's film notes each of these reasons, yet argues that they don't constitute definitive answers. In fact, Bowling for Columbine, the first documentary in competition at Cannes in 46 years, and awarded a special 55th anniversary jury prize, offers up yet another possible, disconcerting, and compelling reason, one that has not been privileged in its promotional campaign: Race and racism continue to divide and frighten Americans.

Partway through the documentary, Moore offers up an animated "Brief History of the United States of America," by Harold Moss of Flickerlab, which outlines the ways that racial fear has shaped U.S. sensibility. The story goes, briefly, like this: Pilgrims cross the Atlantic to escape persecution; in the New World, they run into scary Native Americans whom they proceed to massacre. Importing free labor from Africa ("the genius of slavery"), the New World denizens find more reason to be afraid, arm themselves against rebellion, and soon the U.S. is "the richest country in the world." Increasing internal resistance to this particular economic system is met by the invention of multiple shot weapons, and when the KKK is declared illegal (a "terrorist organization"), the NRA is born. As blacks migrated to cities, "whites ran in fear to the suburbs, and once in the suburbs, still afraid, they bought millions and millions of guns" in an inevitably failing effort to preserve their property, privilege and sense of "order." And so on.

As antic as the images may be -- crowds of little white folks running from one section of the cartoon map to another, waving their weapons, with stricken looks on their flat little faces -- the point is made. Much fear in the United States is racially based. Moore goes on to point to a variety of examples, some more clearly related than others -- "Africanized" killer bees, racialized designations of the "evildoers," Willie Horton, Susan Smith (who accused a "black man" of carjacking the children she killed), Charles Stuart (who accused a "black man" of murdering his pregnant wife), and the ongoing fear of perps "of color" inculcated and promoted by the long-running TV series "Cops".

As is his custom (see his previous films, Roger & Me and The Big One), Moore's own story is interwoven throughout his consideration of the nation to which he declares serious loyalty. His response, for example, to Columbine begins with himself, a lifetime member of the NRA, and native to Flint, Mich., "a gun lover's paradise." He recalls his own childhood interest in guns, both toy (Sound-O-Power) and real, used for hunting.

In and around his immediate environs, Moore finds alarming and mundane links to the broad-based gun culture he's investigating. He comes on a savings and loan that gives a gun to anyone who opens a new account ("Do you think it's a good idea, handing out guns in a bank?"), and heads out into the fields with members of the Michigan Militia. He also spends time with former Militia member and current "tofu farmer" James Nichols (brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols), a visit that ends with Moore agreeing to an off-camera retreat to Nichols' bedroom, to get a look at the .44 magnum he keeps under his pillow (inside, you hear Moore saying, with understandable distress, that Nichols has cocked the gun and put it to his temple).

Descending on Littleton, Colo., Moore observes that Harris and Klebold went bowling, for a class, on the morning before they started shooting. On that same morning, the United States launched its most devastating air attack on Kosovo. He also observes that Lockheed Martin employs many of the kids' parents, that they make a living building weapons of mass destruction. When he asks one employee to comment on the apparent irony of this situation, the man is incredulous, unable to see a connection.

Moore, however, sees connections everywhere, tracing the culture of fear, seeking corroboration from a range of interview subjects. Littleton native Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park, observes that the NRA committed an act of astoundingly bad taste when it refused to alter its plans for a convention in Denver, days after the Littleton shootings. Marilyn Manson, heaped with blame for this and other episodes of school violence, intelligently (and in full "scary" face makeup) remarks on the perpetual "campaign of fear and consumption," by which people are convinced to buy products in order to stave off rejection as well as attack. To exemplify the danger of this connection, Moore brings a couple of Columbine survivors down to the local Kmart to convince the chain to stop selling ammunition: Much to everyone's surprise, Moore included, the managers agree to stop.

As startled and grateful as he is at this moment, there's no question that Moore has an agenda. He's never pretended to be objective, but instead sees his filmmaking and TV work as a kind of pop-cultural agitprop. He pursues his subjects -- GM's Roger Smith, Nike's Phil Knight, and here, NRA president and voluble spokesperson Charlton Heston -- with a relentlessness that is sometimes funny, sometimes grating, and always disquieting for someone (usually the subject). Here, Moore finally talks his way into Heston's L.A. gates, whereupon he asks him pointedly about his NRA speechmaking (in the wake of Columbine and again, during a rally in Flint just after the shooting of 6-year-old citizen Kayla Rolland by another first-grader). Heston insists he didn't know about Kayla's murder and refuses to apologize.

Moore pushes on, pressing Heston to come up with possible reasons for the States' inordinate rates of gun violence, Heston hems and haws, suggests "historical" proclivities (until Moore points out that Germany and Japan have violent histories and remarkably low gun violence stats), then finally blurts that it must be bound up in American "mixed ethnicity." Moore doesn't wait, but repeats the phrase back to Heston, who blanches when he hears his own words come back at him. He cuts off the interview and shambles off, his back retreating from the camera as Moore asks him to look at little Kayla's photo.

Certainly, Heston, virulent and nonsensical, is an easy target, and hardly worth the amount of time that Bowling for Columbine spends on him. But his slip speaks to the slippery workings, unconscious or hyperconscious, of U.S. culture, politics and morality, an inexorable campaign of fear and consumption.

Cynthia Fuchs, an associate professor of English, African American studies, and film & media studies at George Mason University, is the film/TV editor for PopMatters and film reviewer for Philadelphia Citypaper. Her reviews appear in PopMatters each week

Lift opens like a rowdy action movie.

A handheld camera follows a small group of thieves as they run through an upscale department store, the focus chaotic. Within seconds, the heist falls apart: 5-0 is on the scene, and everyone runs every which-way, fleeing to the dark streets as fast as possible. Cut to daylight -- the camera moves in, from the Boston skyline to neighborhoods, where people live, headed to work, wheeling their kids in strollers, hanging on street corners. On the ground, real life is complicated and crowded, full of unmet needs and frustrations.

These clashing introductory scenes establish the two worlds inhabited by Niecy (Kerry Washington). In one, she works a legit job at that upscale department store, Kennedy's, designing floor and window displays; in the other, she's a thief. But she's not like those guys in Lift's first scene. She doesn't break into stores at night. She does her stealing in broad daylight. Niecy's a shoplifter, a booster. And she knows her shit, from Marc Jacobs and Versace to David Yurman and Christina Perrin. She knows what's in and what's not, what's going to be hot each season.

Niecy's gig at Kennedy's is a good way to keep track of trends and surveillance systems, as well as a way to keep her illicit activities in check, as it gives her a schedule and a certain perspective. When she does lift, Niecy is filling orders for clients, taking just enough and just the items she knows will sell to her friends, family and women who frequent a particular beauty salon.

She doesn't take chances, but she thrills to the risk: Scenes where Niecy steals -- by cutting tags or paying with false credit cards -- are shot in slow motion and blasted through with edge-blurring light, and images appear under waltzes or classical music.

In one instance, as she sets up the perfect distraction -- she drops a security tag in a white shopper's purse and the unknowing decoy is stopped on the sidewalk outside -- Niecy floats on by, her girdle barely bulging with stolen designer scarves, her own heart-pounding pleasure emphasized by a local kid's beating on his plastic-pail drums.

It's easy to see how this thrill might become addictive. Even more alarming is the way this thrill is so easy to come by. Niecy's fellow thief, Christian (Todd Williams), the one who organized the group robbery at the beginning of the film, is philosophical about it, noting that the retail industry expects -- and the security industry depends on -- some loss, planning that 10 percent of department store merchandise will be stolen each year. He flashes his platinum jewelry, pressing Niecy to come work for his expanding operation, whose numbers include the extra-smooth and easily violent Quik (Sticky Fingaz).

Niecy, however, wants to work on her own, in large part because she understands her self-image and individuality in relation to the work she puts in. She's afraid to accept help, and more afraid to stop working.

Premiering June 26 on Showtime, Lift, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at New York's 2001 Urban World Film Festival, examines our consumer culture in a way that is less venal and less macho than the usual heist movie. Yet its insights into that culture are keen. The film takes as its ground a complex of entangled and codependent industries, from fashion to garment to advertising, from magazines to runways to department store exhibits, that encourage endless and endlessly changing desires, unfulfillable by definition.

Not unlike drug addiction (which is, as William Burroughs observed, the perfect consumer product, as the user, once hooked, never needs convincing again), the fashion industry manufactures need in order to convince consumers to feel it, pay for it, and then seek it out all over again, year in and year out.

Niecy is aware of this, at some level, but has her own need: to please her distant mother, legal secretary Elaine (Lonette McKee). Very particular about what she wants and when she wants it -- the DKNY jacket, not the coat that Niecy has been able to steal -- she makes clear that she disdains Niecy's efforts to make her happy, no matter how gorgeous the necklace or expensive the blouse. The film goes to some lengths to outline Niecy's dysfunctional family, as she's feeling torn between Elaine, whom she desperately wants to please, and Elaine's own wise and generous mother, France (Barbara Montgomery). Where France supports and encourages Niecy, Elaine repeatedly makes her feel inadequate.

As if these emotional imbroglios aren't enough to make her head spin, Niecy is also struggling to make sense of her inconsistent relationship with Angelo (Eugene Byrd), father of the child she's just discovered she's carrying (and is unsure she wants to keep, given her fear that she's also destined to be a bad mother). A former thief himself, Lo is elated to learn he's a father to be, and instantly promises to get straight (in this case, that means he'll stop smoking weed) and go back to school. He also starts making what she sees as demands, namely, that she stop stealing, as it's too dangerous "for the baby."

Lo goes on to suggest -- again -- that she break free of her mother's demands, which Niecy rejects absolutely: "I'm the only one who can make her happy," she cries. Lo is dumbfounded: "So that means it's your job to do that?" Unfortunately, Niecy does think it's her job, and she takes it very seriously. While she's a great talent when it comes to stealing, she's completely unable to see past her own fears and self-doubts when it comes to Elaine. Boosting and family infighting are inextricably connected for Niecy, related means to a sense of identity and agency.

Certainly, these are familiar ideas: You're defined by where you come from as much as by what you do, and both involve lifetimes of work, whether you're living up to expectations or resisting them. And the film is weighed down by its use of pregnancy as a plot device (Niecy must come to terms with her bad choices), not to mention its moralistic and too-neat finale (which comes too quickly and too predictably).

More importantly, Lift approaches commercial culture not by the usual route of disrespecting its consumers, but by examining what's at stake in consuming for those who haven't had access to it all their lives. The film's take on these complicated processes is part poetic and part cumbersome, but buoyed throughout by the grace of the performers, particularly Washington.

Whether Niecy is standing off against Christian or stumbling over her own words when trying to convince her mother not to abandon her yet again, Washington makes this girl's troubles at once nuanced, complex and sympathetic. "I can talk it and I can walk with it," she tells Christian, underscoring the film's interest in performance as work, the ways that consumption is a function of appearance, the effort to look a part. Consuming is performing and vice versa. You only need to take a step back to see how the system works.

Cynthia Fuchs, an associate professor of English, African American studies, and film & media studies at George Mason University, is the film/TV editor for PopMatters and film reviewer for Philadelphia Citypaper.

Keep that funk alive.

Between NBA commercials, Snoop videos and the recently increased visibility of Bootsy Collins and George Clinton, the funk seems to be everywhere, including the net, where "Undercover Brother," John Ridley's celebrated animated series, has been holding it down at urbanentertainment.com.

The titular hero wears purple bellbottoms and a large medallion, delights the ladies and works for the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D., going undercover as "mild-mannered Anton Jackson, harmless enough for white people to trust him," in order to fight The Man.

A suave, stack-heeled superhero, Undercover Brother has fought discrimination in network television (Episode #4: "Going Prime Time"), college basketball corruption (Episode #8: "Sir Dunkalot") and Eminem (Episode #12: "Melts in Your Bleepin' Mouth"). When Anton spots trouble, he transforms into Undercover Brother, peeling off whatever disguise he's wearing, casting off his glasses and popping loose his gigantic Afro. Though he likes to believe the best of people and sincerely wants everyone to get along, he's not afraid to whoop ass when necessary. In Em's case, this meant ripping his head off, literally.

Aggressively clever, the series earned a tight following on the net. It was only a matter of time before its success would cost. And so, here comes "Undercover Brother," the movie, from Imagine Entertainment (Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's company) in collusion with originator Urban Entertainment. In this incarnation -- which is all about entertainment, in case you were wondering -- the hero is played by Eddie Griffin, a fellow brash and self-knowing enough to ward off concerns that (oh my!) the movie is full of stereotypes.

Indeed, as director Malcolm D. Lee recently told BET Tonight's Ed Gordon, this is the point. And what if, asked Gordon, certain viewers -- say, white ones -- don't get all the jokes? Well, that's OK. "The jokes," said Lee, "are for who they're for."

They're also damn funny. Yes, they're watered down for crossover consumption, no matter Gordon's apprehension. But they're simultaneously wide-ranging and specific enough to hit some well-deserving targets. The film begins with a familiar framework, taking up subgeneric conventions already worked over in "Charlie's Angels" and "Austin Powers," including the wink-wink overstatement regarding throwback fashion, music and plot. In this case, the underpinning is '70s blaxploitation, turned inside out and smoothed over. Even his disguises are cute: 80-year-old man, office nerd, all-smiles Jamaican caddy. Still, as written by the series creator and novelist John Ridley and Michael McCullers, the film makes its points.

It opens with a bit of pseudo-doc background, not exactly Undercover Brother's origin story, but a good reason for him to feel committed to the cause. Dennis Rodman, Erkel, Mr. T. You couldn't have picked easier targets, and they do their work. "These seemingly random events," intones a documentary-style voiceover, "were in fact orchestrated by The Man." Enter Undercover Brother, who first appears on screen in his gold '74 Coup de Ville, spinning in accident-avoiding circles so extravagant that even passersby are tripping over themselves and dropping their drinks. But he's smooth as can be, palming the power steering wheel and not even thinking about spilling his orange Big Gulp.

Undercover Brother's a solo act, doing right for the community and earning a slamming reputation to boot. But then he breaks into a bank's computer system in order to erase mortgage payments records for those in need of relief. Doing his good deed, Undercover Brother is espied by members of the underground B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D., who haul him into headquarters (under Roscoe's Barber Shop). Here he meets the crew: the Chief (Chi McBride), Sistah Girl (Anjanue Ellis), Smart Brother (Gary Anthony Williams), Conspiracy Brother (Dave Chappelle, always excellent), and a hapless intern named Lance (Neil Patrick Harris), who performs blackness when called on, and sometimes when he's not ("We're gettin' all racial up in this piece!"). Pledged to squash racism and fight for social justice and the African American way of life, the group convinces Undercover Brother to join them.

Their first collabo: to beat back Operation Whitewash, wherein The Man devises to thwart the political career Colin-Powellish General Boutwell (Billy Dee Williams), by means of some dastardly mind-controlling drug. Boutwell abandons his campaign plans and starts selling fried chicken, licking his lips and extolling the virtues of hot sauce. Down at B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. HQ, the dumbfounded crew watches the general shuck and jive on TV. Conspiracy Brother's worst fears are confirmed: "Sometimes," he observes, "people -- mostly white people -- make things happen." The brothers -- and Sistah Girl -- all agree that it's time to send in Undercover Brother.

Before he can infiltrate The Man's office building, however, Undercover Brother must be trained in the wiles of Caucasian culture. Smart Brother wires him up with Caucasiavision, loading up his mind, Clockwork Orange-style, with images from Murder, She Wrote, as well as shots of square-dancers, the Backstreet Boys and Riverdancers. Stop! Stop! "Too much white!" whimpers Undercover Brother. Even for the cause, there's only so much you can take. Still, at the end of the process, he can eat mayonnaise sandwiches and recount the minutest of "Friends" details.

Where Undercover Brother's mission is to pass into the foreign culture, The Man's plan is to remain out of sight completely. Unfortunately, his major minion is excessively visible: Mr. Feather (Chris Kattan, who needs a leash, please) prances and bugs out his eyes when fretting that "they're taking over all aspects of our culture." When he hears a little Mary J. ("Family Affair," the Dre-beats), poor white boy just can't help but feel the funk. "Word. Fosheezy my neezy," he blurts, then claps his hand over his mouth, horrified that he's been so infected by the alien culture.

Tit for tat. The Man's counter-plan is to infect Undercover Brother back, to destroy his mojo, if you will. They send in their secret weapon, Penelope Snow, a.k.a. the White She Devil, a.k.a. the Black Man's Kryptonite (all bundled up as a big-haired and repeatedly hair-flipping Denise Richards). Though they're supposed to be working to opposite ends, the two hit it off. On one date, they rightfully butcher McCartney's "Ebony & Ivory" at a karaoke bar, and soon find themselves getting on the Love Train.

Within days, she has her short black superheroic man chowing down on drugged mayonnaise sandwiches (other examples of the demise of Black Culture, brought on by his descent, include an album full of Jay-Z covering Lawrence Welk hits and John Singleton directing a remake of Driving Miss Daisy). Lucky for Undercover Brother, lost and confused as he is, he has Sistah Girl to come save his ass.

Peppered with Chappellian hilarities (and the man can riff), Undercover Brother is more like Austin Powers than a hard-hitting satire, minus Mike Meyers' mania, plus Lee's deft direction and Griffin's own brand of energy. The film is raucously incoherent (a series of skits, really), granting equal time to ridiculous characters and genre-deconstructive insights. It's not going to change minds, but it reflects and satirizes an increasingly integrated, increasingly tense, and increasingly chaotic world. There's no turning around. As White She Devil puts it, "Once you've had Undercover Brother, there is no other." Or perhaps more clearly, as Conspiracy Brother corrects her, "Once you go black, you never go back." Perhaps she knows what she means.

Cynthia Fuchs, an associate professor of English, African American studies, and film & media studies at George Mason University, is the film/TV editor for PopMatters and film reviewer for Philadelphia City Paper.

Shakira won me over when she complained about her killer spike-heeled boots. All dressed up to shoot the video for "Underneath Your Clothes," she sat down as lunch was announced -- a 1/2 hour break at 7:46 p.m. Tossing her gorgeously tangled bleached-blond mane, Shakira looked straight at the Making the Video camera and announced, "My feet hurt!" As proof, she held up a frighteningly stylish boot, spanning what looked like five-inch heels with her perfectly manicured fingers, and asked, "Pretty high, no?"

High indeed. Actually, it looked like a weapon. But, she added, smiling, "It's fun. It's been very fun ... so far." So, OK, she sounds like she's trying to convince herself of how much fun she's having. But this is what passes for candor in the superstar business: Everyone knows the job involves pressures and expectations, emotional ups and downs.

Shakira's been thinking about all this lately. Asked to describe her inspiration for the new video's visual concept, she put it this way: "I think in every artist's life, when, right after a performance, we get to feel a certain loneliness and solitude; after receiving so much attention and love from your fans, suddenly everything stops."

For Shakira, however, everything at the moment is pretty much non-stop. An overnight sensation who has been years in the making, she's possessed of obvious commercial appeal, with serious pipes, considerable talents as producer and songwriter (taking into account the rather seductive peculiarity of her English lyrics), and remarkably swiveling hips, not to mention a name that seems destined for stardom. Indeed, Madonna may be the only other first-name-only star who has come so spectacularly equipped. And while Shakira's emergence as part of the "Latin Explosion" -- along with J. Lo, Marc Anthony, Enrique Iglesias and Mr. La Vida Loca himself -- might seem at once too calculated and too predictable, well, calculation is the name of this particular game.

At the same time, Shakira has better reason than most to be playing said game. Where, for instance, Christina reclaimed her roots just in time to jump on the Spanish-language record bandwagon with 2000's Mi reflejo, Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll has been working across cultures and languages since she was a child, born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia (her father is American born, of Lebanese descent, her mother Colombian). Impressing everyone with her youthful talents, Shakira -- whose name means "woman full of grace" in Arabic -- signed with Sony Discos and released her first album, Magia (Magic), in 1990, when she was only 13, followed by Peligro (Danger) at 16.

From the start, however, she felt frustrated by attempts to frame her as "Latin pop," insisting on her rock inclinations (she lists Iggy Pop, Led Zeppelin, The Cure, the Police and Nirvana as favorites, and composes on the guitar). She's did some acting (on the Colombian soap opera El Oasis between 1994 and 1997), but ended up focusing most of her energy on making two more records, Pies Descalsos (Bare Feet) (1996) and The Remixes (1997). Under the auspices of manager Emilio Estefan, she recorded her last Spanish-language studio album, Dónde Están Los Ladrones? (1998), as well as 2000's MTV Unplugged, winner of that year's Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album.

She also became a favorite cover girl for Latin and Spanish language magazines, including Latin American Time back in August 1999, when, still dark-haired, she was heralded as part of the new "Era of the Rockera," or more recently, the Latina magazine that asked whether the newly blonde performer would be the "next Madonna." Shakira, on the other hand, sees herself as distinctive, telling the English language magazine Blender, "I don't feel that I'm artistically similar to anybody right now. I have a unique musical proposal."

Her self-confidence is surely admirable, but imagine how difficult it is to remain "unique." According to professional publicists and the labeled bins at Tower Records, Shakira has to fit into a saleable category, whether "Latina songbird" or pop princess. And so, while pre-blonde, she was compared repeatedly to Alanis, she of the resonant vocals and spiritual sensibility. Since the switch to blonde-tressness, Shakira has been serially compared to Britney, Beyonce and Christina (it's probably also worth mentioning that grabby Pepsi signed Shakira for its Spanish-language campaign).

And when the new album dropped, she did the usual rounds -- TRL, Rosie O'Donnell, Today, Tonight and Mad TV. All this self-promotion can get to be a grind, of course: Think of all those hours in high heels. And that's not even counting her engagement to Antonio de la Rua, son of the ex-president of Argentina who has recently been charged with treason (undaunted, as of February she was looking forward to marriage and motherhood).

Shakira isn't really your standard pop star. Though MTV, VH1, et. al., have worked hard to make her one, she keeps maneuvering just beyond their (global) reach. Knowing well the history of U.S. (commercial and political) relations to Colombia and other South American nations, Shakira insistently performs her nationality alongside her increasingly international stardom. She makes her appearances bilingual whenever she can, and -- however consciously or unconsciously -- uses her celebrity to showcase her multi-raced background.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (the Nobel laureate) describes her as a singular wonder: "No one can sing or dance like her, with such an innocent sensuality, one that seems to be of her own invention." While you may quibble with the details of this origin myth, there's no doubt that Shakira (who learned to belly dance as a child) has a certain -- how to put it? -- intimate relationship with her own body, one that apparently titillates U.S. audiences no end.

The process of translating that relationship for her first mostly English-language album, Laundry Service, was in part a matter of changing managers, with Estefan's blessing, to Freddy DeMann (perhaps most famous for his work with Michael Jackson and Madonna). The album came to U.S. consumers' consciousness via an astounding Francis Lawrence-directed video for the first single, "Whenever, Wherever," in which she dances amid digitized horses and dust (a video that was, by the way, retired from TRL in February, meaning that it made the countdown for 65 days).

Boosted by incessant video airplay, Laundry Service -- so named, she says, because "I went through a stage when I felt cleansed, renewed, thanks to love and music, which are like soap and water" -- entered the Billboard chart at No. 3 in November 2001, and by now it's gone well past double platinum sales. And just because singing in English is necessary to secure international superstar status, it's not necessarily easy. As Shakira told the Washington Post, "To me, writing, expressing my emotions in English was an adventure. I can think in English, true, but I feel in Spanish."

The adventure continues. Shakira is the first star to appear in VH1's new series, Being, which premiered March 4, in which said star must walk around (for days, apparently) wearing a pair of sunglasses mounted with a teeny camera, so that the resulting footage allows "you, the fans" to experience what it's like to "be" said star. Much as she does in Making the Video -- only more so -- Shakira looks like an enormously good sport throughout this undertaking. In addition to the point of view camerawork, the show also involves, of course, being filmed from every which-angle, at all hours, with all her friends, stylists, and even her parents: It's MTV's Diary meets MTV's Fear. (Just kidding: It's not nearly so frantic as either show.)

In the series' first instance, you get to "be" Shakira while she and her band are appearing at the 2001 Jingle Ball in Miami: she rides in a limo from the hotel to the arena and back again, gets her hair styled (though she works with so many people, she laughs, "At the end, I'm a dictator"), and sound-checks the arena ("I love it when it sounds like this!" she exults, swaying with her hands in the air, on the floor in front of the stage, as her own music surrounds her). She insists that she is an "artist," as opposed to an "entertainer," and even though she laughs sweetly as she says this, you get the feeling that she means it.

One of the more effective sunglasses-shots has you stepping into a veritable herd of reporters, many of whom are Latino, asking her "how it feels" to "cross over." "How does it feel to conquer America?" one young man asks, mic thrust toward that camera on her sunglasses, as her blond hair falls across the lens in lovely wisps (so this is what it's like to be Shakira!).

The camera cuts from the POV shot, to show her smiling graciously, her eyes hidden behind the sunglasses. "Bueno," she says, then continues, in Spanish that's translated to English subtitles, "Little by little I am stepping on this new territory." Happily, the girl has a sense of humor. A few minutes later, she's in a backstage hallway, greeting fans and signing autographs. When one young English-speaking fan tries out his Spanish, awkwardly asking her to pose for a snapshot, she encourages him, while her voice-over (to you) observes wryly, "I'm conquering my first American fans."

For all the silliness of the glasses-gimmick, Being does suggest that Shakira has a solid and self-preserving sense of how all this celebrity stuff works. During one of several carefully intercut on-the-couch "confessional" moments, she poses perfectly, her hair arranged and the light aimed just so. "I'm hoping," she says, "at some point, I'm going to be considered like an artist and not like an alien." She makes no bones about the relentless pressures of performance: "You have to be clever, and you have to smile, and you have to, you have to, have to, have to, have to ... you must always look good!"

Shakira's current single, "Underneath Your Clothes," ponders this dilemma -- feeling like an alien, being made up to look like one -- from another direction. That is, while it is clearly a love song, the video has a different specific focus -- the difficulties of being on the road, separated from a lover. Directed by Herb Ritts, it includes grainily sincere black-and-white footage as well as playful handheld camerawork, and colorful onstage imagery, all tumbled together to emulate what Shakira calls a "documentary feel." She says that it was "destiny" that she and Ritts had a similar approach to the video, in wanting to show the "life of an artist on tour."

"Underneath Your Clothes" opens on Shakira's encounter with a "local reporter" (the meaning of this term is not entirely clear: somewhere between "smalltime" and "unsophisticated," maybe, not "in the know"). Finding her in an alley behind whatever venue she's just played (she has her guitar with her), he sticks out his microphone and asks her to comment on her "crossing over" to English language stardom. She doesn't pause, but keeps on striding while answering the question -- in Spanish, untranslated in subtitles -- as the exasperated Local Reporter follows along with his tape recorder bouncing on his hip. She says that she was especially keen to get this scene into the video, though it has little to do with the love story per se, because it sets the context for her loneliness and her desires.

And yes, poor dejected Shakira appears the very picture of loneliness, she leaves Local Reporter behind and boards the tour bus. As her band plays in the background (apparently being on the road with Shakira is all about rocking out 24/7), she gazes sadly out the window and begins to sing:

You're a song Written by the hands of God. Don't get me wrong cause This might sound to you a bit odd. But you own the place Where all my thoughts go hiding. And right under your clothes Is where I'll find them.

Granted, the translation of her "feelings" to English is an issue here, as it is throughout the album, which covers all kinds of generic and thematic ground, erratically. But in this song and others, the awkwardness makes a weird, endearing and insightful sense. OK, it's a little corny to call a lover "a song written by the hands of God," but it lays down the thematic focus on creation and material. And if the pile-on of the metaphors concerning property and territory becomes increasingly "odd," there's still something admirable about the lyrics' sheer chutzpah.

First, "you" may own this "place," but second, whatever is "underneath your clothes" is all Shakira's. For there lies "an endless story. / There's the man I chose. / There's my territory." Given traditional male attitudes toward girls' bodies, not to mention historical Euro-U.S. attitudes toward Latin resources ... Shakira's declaration of her "territory" is not a little compelling.

The video reinforces her self-affirmation by never quite showing the so-sorely missed lover's face. He's surely very pretty, but he's also 1) incidental, and 2) hers. For most of the video, Boyfriend is actually off screen altogether, alluded to when Shakira gets his phone call and joyfully rolls around on her hotel room bed, happy just to hear his voice (that you don't hear); and she looks simultaneously delicate and vital in her pink sundress, as the camera caresses her bare foot (no painful boots here). When Boyfriend does appear, gazing so prettily out the window, or embracing her so sensuously, he remains hidden, a body that longs for her and comforts her, but without an identity of his own. He is her territory, "And all the things I deserve / For being such a good girl, honey."

And she is good. As uneven as Laundry Service may be, the breakout material is fun, smart and promising. It's likely that her self-awareness, self-confidence and self-confessed "stubbornness" are as much a function of her dedicated PR team as her celebrated hips. But as commercial images go, Shakira's blend of tough-minded frankness, ambition and independence is as refreshing as it is admirable. It's surely possible, as Shakira herself notes, to read "Underneath Your Clothes" as just another sexy ballad. But look again, and you might see one of the more inventively self-assertive pop songs to come along in some time.

Cynthia Fuchs, an associate professor of English, African American studies, and film & media studies at George Mason University, is the film/TV editor for PopMatters and film reviewer for Philadelphia Citypaper.