Kutcher is a respectable actor. He might even be a very good one; it's tough to tell given the material he's had to work with thus far. What isn't difficult to discern is Kutcher's ease with himself and his ability to have a good time in front of the camera. He has a clear talent for physical comedy that doesn't feel forced, and an easy, natural way of delivering his lines, two qualities that make him a perfect sitcom star. No wonder he's always stood out among the talented cast of "That '70s Show."

But Kutcher's recent rise in popularity begins and ends with the image he presents on his show "Punk'd," a "Candid Camera" for the young celebrity set. The show features the kinds of scenarios that are hell on Hollywood's hothouse flowers: getting strip-searched by aggressive security guards, having their personal space invaded as they try on free clothes at a designer boutique, being informed by the valet that their car was just towed. While the rest of the world navigates a gauntlet of bounced checks, parking tickets, mildew-encrusted showers, and daunting electric bills, Kutcher nudges us and chuckles while we watch Jessica Biel made slightly uncomfortable by a trash-talking 8-year-old boy. What a tragedy, to be at a loss for words just a few minutes before your appetizer arrives at Campanile!

Which points to the real purpose of "Punk'd." While it pretends to focus on publicly shaming high-profile celebrities, the show actually offers viewers the illusion that they're hanging out with a crowd of hip young stars. "I'm gonna play a little joke on my friend Wilmer," Kutcher might tell us with a wink, inviting us into his party-boy good times. Next, a few more celebrities arrive to watch with Kutcher behind the scenes. Soon, it's almost as if we too have a lot of time and money and nothing better to do than play little jokes on Justin Timberlake and Jessica Simpson between the visit to the stylist and dinner at the hottest restaurant in town.

It's a brilliant angle, particularly at a time when reality TV has made audiences more impatient than ever with the idea that anyone who appears on TV deserves special attention or respect. And naturally, the layers of truth and fiction distract the viewer from what amounts to an elaborate, ultra-hip, self-powered publicity machine. Maybe Kutcher dreamt up the show for MTV, as he implies on the show, or maybe that's a creation myth along the lines of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon dreaming up the idea for "Project Greenlight" -- you know, while they were sitting around on that same ratty couch where they stayed up late nights, tapping out the first draft of "Good Will Hunting"?

Maybe Kutcher secretly loathes these clueless celebrities, jeering at them as they find themselves in slightly frustrating or mildly taxing situations, or maybe he instinctively knows just the right chord to strike to pull audiences into the spectacle. "God, celebrities are suckers for free stuff!" Ashton intones, making us feel comfortable joining him on the sidelines, when really we're just looking for an excuse either to stargaze without shame, or to enjoy the illusion of being cool enough to hang with the stars ourselves. Part of the backlash against celebrities, after all, is our resentment that so many people who aren't all that interesting or special have such posh lives, as evidenced by the celebrity profiles we've read, the obsequious fawning of which our jaded minds cut through without much effort. Still, there are times when you can't decide whether to cheer Kutcher on or to call bullshit on the whole enterprise. We're supposed to trust a popular celebrity to mess with other celebrities? What a scam!

Of course, the best moments on "Punk'd" are those that play with celebrity image-creation itself. In one prank, Kelly Osbourne is lured into meeting with "Punk'd" regular Dax Shepard, posing as an MTV image consultant. Telling Osbourne that MTV wants her to go from "Shut Up" (the name of one of her songs) to "sexed up," Dax trots out girls modeling fashions "designed by Christina Aguilera's designer" to which Osbourne responds, "She deserves to be jailed, that woman." Later, he pitches a fake relationship to Kelly and her mom, Sharon, in order to attract tabloid attention:

Dax: But if you just had, like, a temporary marriage, for like a month, with, like, an Ashton Kutcher ... Can I set up a hypothetical? Let's just say we took a handsome celebrity type -- whatever, whoever your pick would be, which we can arrange. Like a Justin Timberlake. Then we have a blurb -- we have you guys leaving a hotel room in the morning, but nothing really happened ...

Sharon Osbourne (playing along): No sex, right?

Dax: And then you divorce a month later. No sex.

Sharon: Look at Britney. She had one picture taken with that Irish actor ...

Dax: Colin Farrell.

Sharon: And it's on every front page.

Dax: That was us. We did that.

Kelly: Who gives a fuck about Britney Spears or Colin Farrell? I'm not them, I don't do that ...

As funny as this scene is, somewhere between the point where Kelly pronounces the image consultants "douche bags" and Justin Timberlake emerges, saying that "When [Kelly] came and sat on my lap at the VMAs, I told her that I was gonna get her back ... so I got her back!" the whole thing gets so dizzying and strange that it's impossible to tell which layers are real and which are constructed. Is Osbourne really being punk'd, or is she pretending to be punk'd? Is this cutting-edge television, or sophisticated P.R.? Is Kutcher's relationship with Demi Moore a publicity stunt, or does he really like her? Is he punking us all?

This kind of confusion is essential, of course, to keeping sophisticated audiences, who've been soaking in celebrity culture for decades now, off guard. When we're suspicious of everything, including even the qualities that seem the most genuine and natural about a celebrity, then blurring the lines between fact and fiction is the only way to win acceptance for a celebrity who, by dint of being in the public eye at this time in history, by dint of having a publicist and a stylist and a manager and an agent and a team of image consultants, is a fraud by nature.

In the face of all this artifice, Ashton Kutcher somehow comes across as 100 percent real.

What a scam!

Recent Stories