The arrival of Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen is perhaps the least sinister kind of genetic engineering I can think of
When I think about Leonard Cohen, the first thing I imagine is death. This is not a cheery introduction to an article on singing babies, but it gives you a sense of the Cohen motif. And, in an act of genetic engineering that would make the GlaxoSmithKline lab burst into tears, it may endure. Leonard Cohen's daughter Lorca has had a baby with the singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, who is the son of a Canadian folk singer and an American singer-songwriter. Baby Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen will be brought up by Cohen, Wainwright, and Wainwright's partner J�rn Weisbrodt. It is a gothic equivalent of Barry Manilow's non-existent daughter having a baby with Englebert Humperdinck and his non-existent gay lover and it begs the question: is talent, like a nose, hereditary?
Celebrity genetic engineering is, at first glance, perhaps the least sinister kind of genetic engineering I can conceive of, probably because it has nothing to do with sheep. It also has nothing to do with adoption, or surrogacy, or Woody Allen. I don't really want to mention the Lebensborn programme but, should this trend catch on, it may provide a use for the now derelict Fame Academy mansion in Highgate, which, re-designated as a breeding lab for talent, could conceivably produce a splice between Ronnie Corbett and Bj�rk.
But that is fantasy. Baby Cohen Wainwright is interesting, because it is rare for the child of a famous singer to marry another famous singer and even rarer for them to spawn. The only example I can think of is Lisa-Marie Presley and, because she was married to Michael Jackson, it failed, for obvious reasons.
So what happens when talent mates with normal? Usually the apple is slighter, and meaner, than the tree. Lorna Luft and Liza Minnelli were dust in their mother Judy Garland's wake, even if Minnelli is a fantastic screamer. This family is the three bears of the pop-blues ? they get ever smaller. Michael Douglas's career is an homage to the looming shadow of Daddy Kirk and his appearance as Einar, son of Ragnar, in The Vikings. Every wince of Michael, son of Kirk, speaks inadequacy; his career is made of it. Kiefer Sutherland is inferior to his beautiful father Donald, although faintly, and even Martin Sheen, so bulging and manic in The West Wing, is a better actor than his son Emilio Estevez.
Jamie Lee Curtis too shrivels before her father Tony at his best, even if his best is impersonating Cary Grant in Some Like it Hot, and even if she is topless or running from Michael Myers ? the killer, not the comic actor ? in Halloween. And then there is Rod Hull's son Toby, who is now operating Emu. Emu's career, once so glorious, has collapsed.
When we move to child with different expertise from parent, the runes are muddier. For instance, the only insight from Liv Tyler and her father, Aerosmith lead singer Steve, is we now know what Steve Tyler would look like if he were a 33-year-old woman dressed as an elf. Even so, the trend is clear. Original is best, partly because of the powerful psychological weapons of the parent. Minnelli spoke of being on stage with Garland. Garland treated her as a rival, and it was bloody.
I call Andrew Pomiankowski, professor of genetics at University College London, and tell him about Baby Cohen Wainwright. After he stops laughing he assures me the creative future of Baby Cohen Wainwright is unknowable, because there is no research in this field. There are only dusty records, DVDs, and me. He thinks the creative environment is important, because if parents are headbutting guitars and shouting at agents, the child will think it normal, and embrace it. "As a rule of thumb," he says, "the heritability of anything is 50%. In this case, we do not know. It may be zero." And that, I think, is a Leonard Cohen song.
? This article was amended on23 February 2011. The original said that Rufus Wainwright is the son of two Canadian folk singers. This has been corrected.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/22/wainwright-cohen-superstar-spawn
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