Britney

[poliphilo]

Elsewhere on LJ I got into a conversation about Britney Spears. This morning- as usual- the papers are full of her.  I'd rather not look but I can't help myself. It's a bit like watching a public execution. 

Or like going to Bedlam to gawp at the mad folk. 

Why are we so angry? 

I think it's because we know we've been manipulated. Here's this dancing doll who has been presented to us as something she's not  (a dewy fresh Southern virgin, a great performer, America's sweetheart) and we've had her marketed at us and marketed at us and we've bought her records in spite of a suspicion that they were kinda tacky and false- and now we've seen what's going on behind the scenes and we want revenge. Part of our anger is anger at ourselves for letting ourselves be taken in so.

Because here she is releasing another album that promotes her as this sexy thing wrapped round a dance pole when we know she's an orphan of the storm with an armoury of facial ticks who neglects her children and barely knows night from day. We'll buy it because the brand is so powerful but at the same time our consciousness of the disjunction between image and reality breeds rage.

She has come to symbolise the Lie. The Lie about human nature and the state of the world that is being continually pushed at us by politicians, advertisers, preachers,  journalists and entertainers- the Panglossian Lie that all is for the best in the Best of all Possible Worlds and you can be part of it too if you vote for me, me, me or buy this, this, this.

Britney lives the Lie- and we can see how it's turned into a nightmare for her- and yet she keeps on selling it.  Of course we're mad at her.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We create these monsters- Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, Britney- and then we destroy them. There's a mythic dimension to the story.

And as I was writing this I suddenly had a vision of Boris Karloff running for the old mill with a baying mob at his heels.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

An excellent image.

[mokie]

We create these monsters- Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, Britney- and then we destroy them.

I don't know that I believe that.

She was a factory effort, tightly controlled by a team of wranglers who wrote her music, taught her how to gyrate for the masses and gasp provocatively, and I think even she bought into the idea that she was an artist.

But then adulthood hits, and the team reluctantly pulls back because adulthood means responsibility, and now the package is falling apart because she was never an artist in control of the final product--she simply was the final product.

Interesting article recently suggested that Britney was marketed from the very start not as talented but as sexual; she was a teen tease, not a singer. A couple of kids, a few too many nights partying, and she's still trying to sell us the same story but it no longer fits, so she's just a bit of a nostalgic spectacle now.

For someone once proclaimed Madonna's heir (yay qos!), she is remarkably inept at reinventing herself.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she's talentless- or pretty much so- and that makes it even sadder. Because she has no resources to fall back on. The media pursuit of her is like a blood sport.

Madonna was always in control. She's a monster too, but a divine monster- largely self-created- and capable of trading punch for punch.