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Many people I know watch "Biography" religiously, regardless of who's being profiled, which is a testimony in itself because the show casts a stupendously wide net: one day it's Julius Caesar, the next it's Jim Carrey. Or Adolf Eichmann. Or Jean Harlow. Or the Dalai Lama. I suppose "Biography" does serve a purpose: How many of us are inclined to read big, scholarly biographies? Or, for that matter, thin, sleazy ones? With its skillfully woven blend of genuine insight and voyeurism, "Biography" neatly fulfills both needs. But, then, so does a typical issue of People. People, though, gets access to its profile subjects (most of the time). Very few of "Biography's" living subjects ever appear for on-camera interviews; their stories are told through old newsreel, TV and movie clips and the comments of scholars, biographers (official and unofficial) and people identified only as "friend." This whiff of second-handedness envelopes A&E's 10-month-old Biography Magazine as well. Recent cover stories on Madonna, George Clooney and Brad Pitt were strictly clip jobs peppered with butt-covering lines like "as he told the Los Angeles Times" and "as she has said." And while the show puts on PBS-wannabe airs, with its musty nostalgia and portentous narration (from the show's elder-statesmen hosts, Jack Perkins and Peter Graves), the effect is less Ken Burns' "Civil War" than Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run." How do the filmmakers manage to work newsreel footage of the Depression and Pearl Harbor into every episode, even when the subject was born in 1960? Truly, "Biography" is ripe for parody, but so far the only major shot fired at it, Comedy Central's recent satire "Unauthorized Biography: Milo, Death of a Supermodel," was a mere BB when it could've been a cannonball. This parody "Biography" of a '70s fashion model credited with starting the heroin-chic look got the narrative tone right (that first black-and-white portrait of a baby in turn-of-the-century frills was dead-on), but the writing fizzled out long before "friends" Debbie Harry, Buster Poindexter and Cyndi Lauper had uttered the last of many "she was such a bitch" reminiscences. Anyway, a little satire is unlikely to derail the "Biography" express -- people can't seem to get enough of the show. Maybe it's the soothing allure of examining lives in hindsight, where every curveball can be seen coming and fate is no surprise. Or maybe it's "Biography's" cheat-sheet version of history -- it's hard to resist the sense of closure provided by an end of-the-century cram session. Or maybe the show's popularity is the result of plain old clever marketing. "Biography" is a public relations and product-branding marvel. There are "Biography" videos for sale at the end of each episode. You can also buy the videos in a special "Biography" section of Barnes & Noble. You can order biographies about each week's subjects from Barnes & Noble via the huge "Biography" Web site. The site also offers a 20,000-name searchable biography database. A&E just launched a Sunday morning edition of the show called "Biography International." There are "Biography for Kids" specials and "Biography" miniseries like the recent five-part "Hail, Caesar!" A line of "Biography" books, published in conjunction with Random House, hits the stores today; the first subjects are Muhammad Ali, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. A&E has a trademark on the title "Biography," but it's clear that the network intends to associate itself, in people's minds, with the genre "biography" as well. The trouble is, in order to achieve this, "Biography" biographies have to be readily identifiable, they have to adhere to a formula. And so, every "Biography" (unless it's a profile of a heinous mass murderer), follows the same predictable trajectory of fame: Unhappy childhood, early character building failures, resounding success, troubled personal life, late burst of creative energy, true love at last, cruel mortality. And every profile is topped off with a coda of eulogistic remarks and positive vibes, so you won't go away sad. There's a moralistic (or is it sadistic?) undertone to "Biography," the well-worn and Puritanical lesson being that fame, talent, genius, success and wealth are no guarantee of happiness. "Biography" both fuels and benefits from our love/hate relationship with celebrities. It fawns over the famous and the extraordinary, then smugly strips them of their magic, reducing them to real people after all. The motto of the "Biography" empire is "Every life has a story." It may as well be "Every life has the same story."
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