Dark story of the star-making machine

Privilege, released in 1967 and starring Manfred Mann lead-vocalist Paul Jones, is a compelling look at stardom and media manipulation. Jones plays Steven Shorter, a sullen, withdrawn, brooding and childlike rock star who turns out to be a puppet front man for a business he doesn’t control. His choices of music, message, performance, clothes and endorsements have been usurped by the media machine that created him; he’s a ghost within his own life story. Shorter is lent to whoever will pay for his services, whether it’s an advertisement for apples or a Christian crusade.

The film is structured as a quasi-documentary with a dispassionate narrator and interview clips. There’s also an air of behind-the-scenes authoritarianism that parallels the tone of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. Shorter is trapped by his totalitarian masters, and his manufactured popularity is used to influence and control the masses via media manipulation. Shorter himself turns out to be just another cog in the mass, as he emotes through a cynical rock take on “Onward Christian Brothers” and finds himself posed as a faith-healing messiah for a Nazi-styled Christian rally. He’s a scripted prophet whose awakening from ambivalence is his final undoing.

Superb art design, staging and photography complement by a tartly cynical script that would play well with other media critiques such as Ace in the Hole and A Face in the Crowd. This edition includes the film’s original trailer and a 1961 short, Lonely Boy, that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the career of Paul Anka. Director Peter Watkins apparently drew from the short’s style, particularly the narrator’s tone and the use of voiceovers, first deploying them in 1965’s The War Game and again here. The DVD offers subtitles, but unfortunately, no commentary track. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]