I don't normally discuss pop culture because of a prejudice I have that it is junk. I admit freely and openly that I have a closed mind when it comes to much of the slop offered by corporate media. Perhaps I am a snob, but I just don't think Gretchen Wilson holds a candle to Loretta Lynne, or Garth Brooks should even be mentioned in the same breath of Merla Haggard, or Justin Timberlake should be mentioned at all. As this particular post involves one particularly over-exposed female celebrity (in pretty much every sense of the word), I also have little time or patience for Ashlee Simpson, the travails of Nicole Ritchie, or (ugh!)Paris Hilton. There are just some things better left alone.
Having said all that, I am going to dive into a topic I find fascinating, I suppose in the same way as a boy I was fascinated by the strage creatures I found under rocks in the creek that ran behind my parents' house - Britney Spears. For someone who has not produced an album in several years, and for someone who has yet to produce an album worthy of any more than cursory notice; for someone whose talent is nil, who has been packaged and managed and propped up by parents and mangers and producers and spokespeople and publicity agents, it is surprising how much ink and megabitage (is that a word?) is spent on her various ups, downs, ins, outs, and now her divorce travails. It is almost impossible to swing a digital-dead cat on the internet without tripping over a photo of Britney with her nipple hanging out, Britney lighting a surreptitious ciagrette on a shopping trip with "friends", and now Britney flashing an unshaved pubic area as she exits a car (and who should be the driver of that car but the original bald beaver flasher herself, Paris Hilton).
I feel bad for Britney. I do not mean to suggest her problems, such as they may or may not be, are more serious than those a single-parent household trying to make ends meet. I do not mean to suggest her problems are more serious than a recently-returned Iraq vet who can't find good mental or physical therapy because the Army doesn't care and a Republican Congress has cut funding. I feel bad for Britney because, since her childhood (by all appearances and from what reports I have read) she has been prepped and preened, coddled and modelled and prepared for the day she was to become a star. Packaged and promoted by the team that brought us N'Sync and Christina Aguilera, the shallowness of her vocal talent was overcome by production values that created a huge sound not only behind her but around her as well. Multi-tracking, overdubbing, echoing and reverb are Britney's best friends when she has a mic.
I doubt if, with one notable exception, Britney has done a spontaneous thing since she was ten or eleven. The exception, of course, was the drunken rush to Las Vegas to marry on Saturday, only to have the marriage ended on Monday. When spontaneity is crushed so thoroughly and publicly, one should wonder about the psyche of the person so effected. Of course, there is also the constant barrage of over-sexualized imagery, starting with her very first music video that played upon latent male pedophilia to portray her as a school girl who was, in the words of the title song, not that innocent. Since that time, she has played upon her sexuality over and over again, learning to move not som much sinuously and provocatively but like a stripper in a road-side club. She has a song written for her last album that suggests masturbation (where would she find the time to be alone?). She makes sure there are enough pictures of her flashing skin, without ever actually posing for Playboy or another men's magazine to keep the tittilation factor high. Of course, with her recent, er, slip as she got out of a car, there will be no end to it. There is no way anyone could convince me that was not a coldly calculated move on her part - flash a little bit of her pantyless crotch, keep her in the news, that's the important thing. There is no such thing as bad publicity.
Except, of course, there is this bubble that forms around people like Britney Spears. This bubble creates this zone of unreality. We witnessed earlier this year how Tom Cruise has become less and less, er, normal, because of his status as a celebrity. How much moreso has Britney been effected by what is essentially a lfetime cut off from real human contact? The falseness of her entire life is hardly mitigated by the fact that she has a lot of money. The fact that her one spontaneous act was a ridiculous marriage that was forcibly annulled less than 72 hours after it was contracted; the fact that she has to smoke surreptitiously - these are, or should be, danger signs to anyone who cares, not about Britney in particular as a "star" or celebrity, but about any human being who is so manipulated that he or she has very little room for maneouver.
I say all this merely to show that I am not suc a total elitist snob that I completely ignore pop culture. I just view it slightly different from other people, that's all.
Virtual Tin Cup
