It's Time To Admit Josie And The Pussycats Is The Greatest Movie Of Your Childhood

The plot of Josie and the Pussycats revolves around music executives placing subliminal messages into pop music to turn teens into voracious consumers. The plot satirically mocks the way teens jump from one trend to another and how they often worship celebrities.

Not only does the movie eschew subliminal messages, it pokes fun at it in within the universe of the Pussycats. The film advertises products for major companies like Target, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Coke, which becomes a hilarious running gag throughout the movie especially when you learn that companies didn't even pay the movie to place their products in the film. It conveys the idea that subliminal messages are evil while ironically broadcasting exaggerated, not-so-subliminal messages to its audience.

While other films have explored the relationship between celebrity culture and consumerism, few have done so as bluntly or as sharply as Josie and the Pussycats. After achieving fame, Josie recognizes that she's “a trend pimp," and she finds herself disturbed by her position as the 2001 version of an influencer. She realizes that if you're a celebrity figure, especially in American culture, people will buy whatever it is you’re pushing whether they need it or not.

The film ends with Josie and the Pussycats playing their unfiltered music to a crowd. The Pussycats are worried the crowd won't like the songs without subliminal messaging, but all the songs are super catchy, and the crowd goes wild. The soundtrack for the movie is full of bops, but it does feel fake given the movie's messaging.

Josie and the Pussycats is about three musicians wanting to make their music without having to push products, but it seems that the soundtrack itself is a product being pushed; it doesn’t feature any songs written or performed by the three main actresses, but the stars of Pussycats appear on the cover of the CD. Just as Josie and the Pussycats were used to push products onto teens, the three actresses were used to push this soundtrack, which they actually had no part in making. It's hard to tell if this incongruence is a point of hypocrisy or if it's another ironic statement on consumerism.

At its core, Josie and the Pussycats is a film about female friendships, which is an evergreen message that women of all ages can appreciate. It’s the friendship between Josie, Melody, and Valerie that propels the whole film. Fiona and Wyatt try to destroy the band, as they’d prefer Josie to perform alone, but Josie values her friendships too much to go solo.

The film in many ways portrays female friendships as they really are; none of the leads have a petty argument over a boy or get into a cat fight. There are arguments among the group, but they always revolve around trying to keep their music authentic. The movie is dedicated to demonstrating the girls' close bond.

Josie and the Pussycats was released in 2001, but its anti-capitalist message still rings true nearly 17 years later. One of the reasons the film feels so relevant is that the villains, Wyatt and Fiona, played by Alan Cumming and Parker Posey, respectively, are evil capitalists. Wyatt and Fiona manipulate America's youth into spending money on their products, thus making the pair richer while depleting teens' little allowance money.

Of course 2001 was not an era of much financial distress. It wasn’t until the Great Recession hit in 2008 followed by the subsequent bailouts offered to large banks and corporations that people started to become aware of the negative effects of capitalism, and the phrase "the one percent" entered common vernacular. Portraying Wyatt and Fiona as the movie's main villains who prey on the poor to get richer was a decision way ahead of its time.

At the center of this film is an actual economic theory. Yes, seriously. Wyatt and Fiona are in cahoots with the government — their subliminal messaging is implemented to help ramp up the economy. This scheme draws on the theory that the economy grows too slowly when you rely on adults to spend more money since they have bills to pay as well as other financial responsibilities. Therefore, the best group to target is teens, as they have disposable income. Marketing to teens has been practiced for quite some time because hooking a teen increases the likelihood that you have a lifelong customer. From an economic and marketing standpoint, there is real value in the idea that teens are the best group to market toward.