If you are a certain age, you might remember Milli Vanilli. I still have a cassette tape of their album that I could have resold for the same price I probably bought it for … since it was officially recalled. Back at the time, that fact alone made me want to keep it. In case you don’t know the story, Milli Vanilli was the name for a German singing duo who had exotic looks, long hair and a catchy pop sound that got popular quickly in the late 1980s. The rapid rise ended in flames once it was discovered that the two singers were lip-synching the whole time and their record label offered refunds to anyone who had bought their album.
This week a new trailer was just posted with two actors cast after a multi-year long search who seem perfectly suited for their roles. The emergence of the biopic, though, is raising some new questions about the role or importance of authenticity in the same way we once defined it. In a world where influencers are virtual, media can be deepfaked, and we watch films with “de-aged” actors … could Milli Vanilli have succeeded today if they just told the truth? Or even if they didn’t? It’s an intriguing question that shines a spotlight on just how much our standards when it comes to “real” entertainment may have shifted.
