Not So Much: State of the Nation; More: State of Beyoncé

If there is one thing I can say for the Bush Administration, it's that it has trained me to practice, daily, the skill of quietly counting and deeply appreciating my blessings, to relish whatever good in the world I can see. I knew this was a habit to live by before 2000, but by now it's become, as for so many of us, an absolute, everyday necessity in order to retain sanity. For every sadistic illegal legislation, Halliburton payday, creationist idiocy, and senseless loss of life, we can either go numb, despondent, or furious, or, we can gather a little hope as it comes along to keep our spirits up for fighting the good fight.

This is all to say that Tuesday night, I blew off you-know-who on TV because I didn't want to squander my happiness from hearing the Oscar nominations. Two of my favorite films of the past several years, the powerful documentary Jesus Camp and the irresistible, slyly deep, and far-reaching Little Miss Sunshine (not to mention the revolutionary Al Gore movie) were honored, but that wasn't my only glee: I must confess, part of my little pool of hope was that Beyoncé didn't get nominated for Best Actress.

Yes, I feel a little guilty, but I realized quickly that it's more than just that dependable old American love of Schadenfreude. The truth is that Beyoncé freaks me out. The rest of our nose-jobbed young TV women dancing half-naked and styled to the gills--they are what they are. They are as superficial, as messy, as silly, as uneducated, as "adequite" as they can't help but come across. Sure Jessica Simpson is smarter than she looks, naive yet savvy, funny, has a creepy relationship with father and is overly dependent on her hairdresser--fine, but she adds up. The played-up "dumb blonde" earns her gazillions, fine--we get it that she's not that dumb. But Beyoncé--Beyoncé has never made an undignified or unscripted move. There was never any thinking Chicken of the Sea was actually chicken for her. Beyoncé never looks like crap in the tabloids. (In fact, she's so disciplined about posing in a way that makes her look thinner that blogger Perez Hilton has recently catalogued photo after photo of her with her arms held aloft, elbows out, in a sort of elegant-pin-up manner that only looks ridiculous when you see how she's done it on every red carpet she's ever walked).

Beyoncé's public image is so perfectly controlled there has never been a snafu: she speaks mostly modestly and quietly and isn't flashing her pantilessness out of the limo, has never been called "Firecrotch" by an heiress's armcandy or photographed exiting a Scientology center. Her business sense, endorsement deals, hit singles just expand and expand and expand. The only boyfriend we hear of, mogul rapper-king Jay-Z himself, has been with her for years and is as solid and successful as they come. The girl not only simply doesn't seem to have an ounce of the Courtney Love in her, she has barely made a stumble. I do not understand this. The thing is: for someone who has worked this hard for so long in an industry so famous for gobbling its young, by now she should either be like an emaciated Olson twin running around the East Village in a granny schmatte, barely able to carry her Starbucks, or she should be as seamless, careerist, and dead-eyed as Tom Cruise before he jumped the couch.

What freaks me out most is that when she talks, most of the time, you can still see a sliver of a very real girl in there. She seems a little shy, and a little concerned about everyone liking her, and her voice sounds down to earth in a way, even when she's just spilling out an obvious, practiced, bland soundbite. We are so used to the unbelievably superficial by now that anything polite and normal and compassionate stands out in high relief: she's still got this in her. It's sort of astonishing. We are so used to Paris Hilton as a new, dependable norm, as our reliably trashy contrast from the horrors of what is actually going on (and the coffins we're not allowed to see), that anything real, compassionate, earnest, is so upsetting to us on the television they barely even show it to us anymore. (Except on HBO. Oh, and that amazing new British psychic on Lifetime.)

I think I see this old-fashioned thoughtfulness and compassion in Beyoncé. I think. I can't totally tell, of course, from snippets I catch on the TV once in awhile. Despite her unbelievable grip on her career, the uber-attended-to styling and makeup and the canned quality of her remarks, there is something deep and real in there. When she talks about God I don't think she's lying to boost her brand. Sure, on television she seems a little bit deadened, rehearsed, convinced of her bland soundbite, but not totally: and that is what gets my attention. The stark contrast of this groundedness just does not compute with the sheer scope of her ambition, with the Warrior Glam Queen of All Media that she has become by the age of 25.

Because despite this quality of realness that she seems to have, she is carefully constructed and as impervious a brand as can be. She says:

"I am very conscious of how I look and my image and how I am with people. I have a team and we've been working together since I was 15, so every show, every earring, every shade of eye shadow is all something that comes from me and my team. I'm very much a perfectionist . . . I was always that way. Always!"

And:

"I just love talent and entertainment and I want to be a real entertainer and I want to eventually win an Oscar, I already have three Grammys but more Grammys, I want to do Broadway, I want to win a Tony Award, I want to be the first black woman to have all three. I know I'm only 22 so I have 20 years to go to accomplish that."

It's the J-Lo school of celebrity--we haven't had a major diva interested in pushing cultural boundaries since Madonna. The desire is blatantly, publicly, for the awards in and of themselves. Beyoncé and J-Lo inherited Madonna's astounding drive, but the complexity of pushing any risky content got lost as music and celebrity became more and more systematized. Madonna was in it to shake up the closed-minded, not just to stack up the bling. Madonna got herself banned off a Pepsi commercial, shocked us with those Gaultier bullet bras which still, in the Girls-Gone-Wild internet porn era where we probably can't be shocked too much more, pack a weird androgynous punch. None of this for the newcomers. Their big scandal is that they have a size six ass rather than a size two. Yawn.

And at least J-Lo had her Gigli, at least J-Lo was called "Bennifer" for awhile. Beyoncé, however, has simply never stepped out of line. (Has anyone even been tempted to mash up her name with her boyfriend's? Why not? She's that good at this game.) She's like the Martha Stewart--pre-prison stint of course--of MTV. Running a business with absolute control and determination.

Minus Martha Stewart's obvious terse, clipped chill. Which just fascinates me: is Beyoncé like the opening of David Lynch's Blue Velvet? All fifties picket fence perfect-updo-housewife veneer with some awful horrific secret we can't even fathom beneath it? Is there a sad equivalent of Camp Cupcake in Beyoncé's future? I can't imagine it.

How has she managed to beat the VH1 Behind The Music Syndrome we know is so largely inescapable for people whose childhoods, burgeoning identities, and parental relationships were completely sold out to the nastiness of our entertainment industry?

Will she end up in Betty Ford when she is thirty-five? Or will she surprise us as Chelsea Clinton's running mate by then?

The only way to know how real that girl inside is is to see how she handles disappointment, handles not being the golden girl to end all golden girls. Not getting that Oscar attention--this seems a hopeful start. If she stays golden through not being the Queen, through the disappointments that life--and certainly a career in the entertainment industry--inevitably hands out, she might well be some sort of Buddha herself, albeit dressed in those Texas-glam outfits designed by her mother, two pairs of Spanx, and committee-coordinated eye makeup.

I wonder.

Beyoncé's recent comments about not being upset that most of the attention for Dreamgirls (justly) went to her (very deserving and far from creepily-constructed) Oscar-nominated costar Jennifer Hudson seem a little brittle, a little false, in that she makes sure to remind us that she doesn't need the attention, that she already has precisely nine Grammys on the mantle of her Barbie town house. Thank you very much.

The obvious role to snatch Beyoncé her Oscar would have been Jennifer Hudson's character, Effie, whose weight of course is such a big deal it becomes the major plot point of the film. Beyoncé says she'd have loved playing that role but didn't think director Bill Condon would have considered her for it: but I bet if she'd really wanted Effie for herself, she could have gotten it. She seems to achieve everything else she puts her mind to, no?

So maybe she's already got more compassion and openheartedness and patience and flexibility and groundedness than seems possible for someone with such astonishing ambition and control. How fascinating is that? Has that ever existed before without developing some sort of debilitating drug habit? Maybe forty years into the second wave of feminism a woman can have that relentless ambition and a serious, actual career throughout her childhood without her emotional life crumbling under the pressure? I haven't seen it before. Will she be our first child star never to tumble? Time will tell.

I am hopeful today that there is a real girl in there, and that as she gets older she can turn this intense, never-mistepping ambition to deeper waters. She has said in interviews that she thinks she is an old soul, and I think it's the only time I've heard that from anyone but Shirley MacLaine and thought--sure, why not. I am hopeful that in our vapid bedazzled culture this young woman who promotes and profits from booty-shaking and elaborate hair extensions and occasional starvation diets yet still sings about being a survivor and paying her bills and replacing a loser guy means it. I hope she is deeper than her glam squad. If she is as solid inside as she seems she could be, is there any doubt that paired with (we can only hope) the longevity of her ambition and determination, she could take down any future Karl Roves who are lying in wait--that is, once she gets bored filling up the Barbie mantle?

Like I said, find the hope where you can (and a little imagination doesn't hurt).