So last night I caught the rebroadcast of NBC's new superhero-ish drama Heroes. It was firmly ok. This first episode wasn't that great, but it has potential and I'm interested in seeing how some of these characters develop.

Most interesting to me was the character Hiro, a pudgy, dorky Japanese salaryman with a Star Trek fixation who suddenly learns he can manipulate time and space. There's a scene where he tries to explain his newfound abilities to a coworker over a few beers at a karaoke bar. The scene opens with two Asian youths in red basketball jerseys on stage lip synching The Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way."

First I have the obvious complaint that The Dormitory Boys are Chinese, not Japanese.

Second, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about a major network using prime time for a shout-out to a viral video. Is this a quiet acknowledgment of the growing power of the internet as an entertainment medium?

Third, the recursiveness of the thing gives me a headache. The Backstreet song is fiction, which makes it art. The song pretends to be autobiographical, which makes it art imitating life. The Dormitory Boys are real, which makes them life. But they parody/karaoke the song, which becomes art. So we have art imitating life imitating art imitating life. Heroes reproduces the scene, and that reproduction is art. But the new layer of art is itself a new layer of imitation. So we have art imitating life imitating art imitating life imitating…

Fuck. I lost track. And now my head hurts.