‘Dirty Pop’ Makes an Awkward–and Controversial–Attempt at a Reckoning

By Alison Lanier | TV | August 5, 2024 |

By Alison Lanier | TV | August 5, 2024 |

So who knew the Backstreet Boys were a step in a Ponzi scheme? There are plenty of revelations in Dirty Pop, the Netflix docuseries with the enticingly vague The Boy Band Scam slapped on as a juicy descriptor. But what we end up with, despite a maze of interviews and nostalgia-igniting ’90s and early ’00s footage, is a limp, easy narrative trotted out less for the sake of investigation and more for the sake of snagging Netflix eyeballs.

Here be spoilers, so be warned.

Dirty Pop is the story of Lou Pearlman, the infamous producer and con man who handcrafted the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and seemingly endless other boy band projects as explicitly a money-making venture. But red flags started popping up when the superstar bands finally saw their checks … for about $10,000, after years of performances and albums. It all unravels from there, a slew of lawsuits revealing Pearlman as a serial grifter, continually deep in debt to apparently very frightening people.

The endless boy bands and reality TV attempts were all designed to boost as much revenue as possible in a desperate Ponzi scheme that funded Pearlman’s extravagant lifestyle. A criminal and hella expensive LARP, basically: Pearlman playing the rich-mogul character he coveted. The band members appear as talking heads, clearly still juggling hurt and conflicted feelings. What we’re left with is the unsettled aftermath of a long con under the spotlights of the music industry.

Then, there is the far more pertinent controversy within the docuseries itself. Lou Pearlman died in prison in 2016. And yet the Netflix docuseries has him sitting at his desk, reading from his book Bands, Brands, & Billions for the camera, with ’90s-style tape static rolling periodically over the screen to gesture toward some physical-media authenticity. The irony is that this footage of Pearlman is an AI deepfake from beyond the grave.

Grotesque is one word for it. It smacks of the same ugly, slippery slope as the use of AI in What Jennifer Did, where a young woman suspected of murder didn’t post enough pictures of herself on social media for Netflix to grab, so instead they made their own images of her in a red dress using (not very good) generative AI.

So you know how documentaries —even sensationalized documentaries, like so many true-crime recountings— are supposedly based in … you know, documenting verifiable events? I get there’s no such thing as objective representation, but damn, having this dead man, whom the show is essentially (justifiably) vilifying, look meaningfully into the camera while “he” “reads” the most damning lines from his book? No, no thank you. Even though Netflix announced its AI use upfront this time (unlike with Jennifer), it isn’t a reasonable use case in my mind. Puppeting the images of real people who can’t, for whatever reason, give their consent within the already thorny genre of true crime takes the technology’s exploitative tendencies to a whole new level.

Unfortunately, most people don’t seem to mind: Dirty Pop sat pretty in the Netflix top 10 for long enough to make that clear. So, odds are we’ll keep seeing it until legal or cultural backlash catches up to AI’s unethical deployment in true crime.

Dirty Pop is streaming on Netflix.