What better way to sift through all the popular culture of 2002 than to invent a new TV reality show -- let's call it "Pop Go Your Eyeballs." The judges could include some snarky Brit in love with his own wit and a good-looking Midwestern lummox with the charisma of a Formica countertop. ("American Idol" meets "The Bachelor" -- think of the ratings!) We'll strand them on a desert island, make them eat gross stuff, play them a highlight reel of the year, and we'll all watch it till our brain stems melt like candle wax.

Look, there's Ozzy Osbourne fumbling the TV remote control, Michael Jackson dangling his baby and the tattered shreds of his career over a hotel balcony railing, Kirsten Dunst peeling off Spider-Man's mask and Nelly asking, over and over, if it's hot in herre. There's "Big Fat Greek Wedding" and big fat Anna Nicole Smith, Weblogging and "The Lovely Bones," a drug-free Snoop Dogg and that cute, cute Ty from "Trading Spaces," Winona-Shania-Mariah and Kurt Cobain, back from the afterlife, just like Elvis (happy 25th anniversary of, uh, your death), because no one is ever truly gone in pop culture, except for Vanilla Ice.

Small wonder, as Todd Gitlin wrote in his book "Media Unlimited," that we suffer from "national attention deficit disorder."

And everywhere, as ubiquitous as f-bombs on "The Sopranos," are those pinup poster kids of 2002, the odd couple with nothing and everything in common: Halle Berry and Eminem. Their differences are glaring: she the classy Oscar winner who landed on the cover of Cosmo and in bed with James Bond in "Die Another Day," he the crass white rapper with the No. 1 CD of the year, the most challenging song ("Lose Yourself") and the dog-ate-my-remedial-anger-management-homework glare.

But Berry and Eminem are emblematic of the most important current flowing through the culture right now, a fluidity about race that is way beyond white housewives watching "Oprah" while their husbands root for Tiger Woods. As Charles Barkley said, "You know it's all going to hell when the best rapper around is white and the best golfer is black."

He's not saying that's bad -- it's more of a "what-a-world" comment. Not only that, but the president of the United States is black (on TV's "24"), as is the actor (Kenny Leon) playing Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" at the Alliance Theatre, and the new movie action heroes are of indeterminate heritage (Vin Diesel and the Rock -- all things to all demographics), and Austin Powers is hittin' it with Beyoncé Knowles, and Justin Timberlake suddenly seems to believe he has a lot more melanin than he really does.

Don't think for a moment that this is just another "Kumbaya"-singing liberal celebration of multicuturalism. This is capitalism -- the cold, unfeeling hand of the marketplace. We are looking at the future, and the future is a Gap commercial, bopping to "Love Train."

So argues Leon Wynter in "American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business and the End of White America" (Crown Publishing), an important book that came out in September and should have received more attention.

"It's the bottom line that's allowing these things to come through," says Wynter, regarding the whole blur of race in the entertainment-industrial complex. "2002 was a watershed, if you will."

Boiled way down, Wynter's argument is this: Baby boomers don't matter nearly as much as they think they still do; the conglomerates that control what we feed our minds are focused on winning over the youth, and much of the youth market is comfortable in a culture where many peers are racially mixed, where there is the "sense that identity is rooted in cultures that can be freely traded in the marketplace, not imposed by race or ethnicity at birth," and where neither a white prince of hip-hop (Eminem) nor a mixed-race Vogue cover model (Berry) is necessarily an oxymoron.

"We're talking a big wave that's been rolling since the '80s and continues to reshape the landscape," Wynter says.

"Crossover is not even a useful way of looking at these things any more," he adds. "It used to be artists were black and their initial following was black and every now and then they would get airplay on white radio. But nowadays something comes out, they get on MTV, it's just there and everybody comes to it."

Like two of the year's biggest summer action movies, "The Scorpion King" and "XXX." "Scorpion" starred the Rock, the pro wrestler formerly known as Dwayne Johnson, who is half-black, half-Hawaiian and all attitude. Vin Diesel, who starred in "XXX," wouldn't even answer questions about his racial background (black and Italian, according to reports). They stepped up just as Hollywood was wringing its hands over the aging of action stalwarts like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It doesn't matter what Diesel's cultural background is, Wynter argues. "He belongs to the culture that's particularly hot right now, whatever you want to call it, not some amorphous 'multiculture.' It's not an ethnic group, unless you consider 'American' an ethnic group."

And why not? White-bread Kelly Clarkson may have won "American Idol," but it was mixed-race Justin Guarini who made the girls bounce on the sofa cushions all summer long and helped drive the ratings. His ethnicity mattered a whole lot less than his cuteness.

Justin (and all of "American Idol" for that matter) represented another important trend in 2002 -- the up-from-nowhere phenomenon. Avril Lavigne elbowed Britney Spears aside and was hailed for her authenticity because she wrote her own songs and played her own guitar, which mainly shows how low the bar has been set. The low-budget independent movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" trampled dozens of films with bigger advertising budgets, while unknown author Michel Faber's "The Crimson Petal and the White," an 800-plus-page tome about Victorian England -- the best novel Charles Dickens never wrote -- rode the best-seller list. Norah Jones and John Mayer, welcome aboard the Success Express; you can have the seats that used to be occupied by Limp Bizkit.

In a world where the culture increasingly flows downward, from the big conglomerates at the top to the consumers at the bottom, these were refreshing examples of success by word of mouth. People shared their love of Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" (the biggest-selling novel of the year) or "Greek Wedding" with one another, almost obsessively, and no mega-marketing campaign was required. Sure, virtually anything that caught on, whether it was "The Osbournes" on MTV or

"Urinetown" on Broadway, had some kind of push, but they all cut through the clutter mainly because they generated a genuine buzz from fans rather than a manufactured one from profiteers.

That's not to say the conglomerates don't still have a hammerlock on most of the culture. The AOL Time Warners and Disneys are so diversified that the old model (turn a book into a movie, turn a movie into a TV series) is now turbo-charged. Video games become movies and movies become video games; comic books and graphic novels feed TV and films; and remakes of old movies are now what keeps Broadway alive. Everything is a brand, and then it becomes a brand extension. If it's good enough for Coca-Cola, it's good enough for James Bond, who was the subject of a new movie, new CD soundtrack, new video game and several new books this year.

Finally, what strange force decreed that 2002 would be the Year of the Urp? Everywhere you cast your eyes -- or everywhere you averted your eyes, for that matter -- folks were tossing their cookies, vomiting for our, uh, entertainment. Reality TV drove the trend, especially "Fear Factor" and its forced ingestion of animal body parts that most people wouldn't touch, let alone eat. But players also lost their lunch on MTV's "The Real World," "Survivor: Thailand" and "The Anna Nicole Smith Show," as well as in the movies "8 Mile" and "Jackass."

The most spectacular spew of the year was probably Adriana La Cerva's on "The Sopranos," cornered by the FBI, letting loose on their nice, clean conference table. Even in the PG-rated "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," young Ron Weasley spent a lengthy sequence urping up slugs.

So why all the blowing of chunks all of a sudden? Here's as good a theory as any: Television in particular knows that when it's transgressive, people notice. They've temporarily hit the limit on sex, violence and profanity, so being more graphic with a non-sexual but somewhat taboo bodily function is just another way to rouse you from your couch stupor. You may react with an "Ewwww," but you're reacting.

Let's click back to our TV show surveying the scene, "Pop Go Your Eyeballs." Our judges have come up with a hypothetical perfect scene that would encapsulate the year. It would be set in a world of racial fluidity, say an inner-city nightclub devoted to cutting-edge hip-hop, but with a white boy ready to perform. It would be about brand extension: a musician crossing over to movies. Hyped to the heavens, but with good word of mouth. And then the lead character throws up.

Snap back to reality -- that was the opening scene of "8 Mile." All that was missing was a cameo by Halle Berry.