Britney Spears and the Market of Celebrity Meltdowns
Britney Spears may not have become more famous in the past few months, but it certainly seems that way. Press coverage of her every wobbly move seems more pervasive than ever. Once again, Britney Spears is major business. This time, however, her music is not the commodity being exchanged in the marketplace; it's her life, or, to be more precise, the unraveling of her life. In other words, she is losing her mind, and other people are profiting from it.
What does it say about us as people when we delightfully feast on the destruction of one person's life? Why is there so little sympathy for someone who is clearly in the midst of a complete nervous breakdown? Granted, none of us asked to have Britney Spears in our lives, but is this fair payback? Does this merit the glee with which her meltdown is being consumed? We're all so busy ogling her downward spiral that we're forgetting to ask what's brought her to this point.
Spears rose to the top of the charts by commodifying her voice and, more convincingly, her body. Her very being was transformed into a product, but this is standard. The female pop artist is a product, and the product must perform in order to maintain market dominance. Call it Glamour Darwinism. The female pop artist must constantly reinvent herself in order to survive. Take Madonna: she has stayed alive by unveiling a new and improved product every few years. There are exceptions, of course, your Meryl Streeps and Norah Joneses, women who have not had to commodify themselves in order to succeed in showbusiness, but these are two names in a sea of objectification, and it is this sea that Ms. Spears is currently drowning in.
Britney Spears has been reinvented as a defective product. She is New Coke. She is the DeLorean and the Corvair, and she is in the middle of a major factory recall, but unlike GM, she will not have a team of lawyers or managers to bail her out. It's a fire sale, and everything that is Spears must go.
But that doesn't mean people can't make a ton of cash while the ship is sinking. Enter the Disaster Capitalists, the carpetbaggers who have shown up to sell marshmallows fresh-roasted on the Britney bonfire. Meltdowns of the Rich and Famous is a fabulous business model, provided that the rich and famous self-destruct slowly and painfully, the slower the better. The worst nightmare in the minds of those "news outlets" covering Britney's long march to the bottom is that she'll die before they're able to wring every last dollar out of her tattered life. They want a prolonged, videotaped custody battle, more inebriated photo shoots, more dazed live performances, more flab (even though she's hardly fat), more bad songs, more pantless public appearances, perhaps a failed suicide attempt or two during the holidays -- anything except death itself, because they want this product to stay on the market forever, or at least until their profits go down.
This is the sad fate that awaits Britney Spears. No one is looking to understand what's happening to her, no one is looking to help her, everyone simply wants to look, to curl up on the couch and watch the train wreck that is her life. And when the flames have been put out and the paramedics have thrown a sheet over her immolated remains, we'll speed up and be on our merry way, her pain and suffering forgotten before we reach the next rest area.
This isn't simply a matter of "pop stars are people too," or some sappy call for sympathy for a poor little rich girl. This is simply a call for honesty. This is nothing to celebrate or get excited about. This is not a comedy. This is a tragedy, and a common one. People have mental breakdowns and traumatic custody battles every day, and no one asks for it. The fact that it's happening to someone famous should not make any difference.
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i believe the word is "schadenfruede"....google it
Rise by Glamour Darwinism, fall by Glamour Darwinism. The shallow values she promoted (and promotes) through her work are the same shallow values she is being judged by.
Another empty spectacle to distract the masses
you could start as early as Judy Garland, (perhaps Fatty Arbuckle) ; who knows/, but the particularly American fascination of building up then tearing down of their idols is certainly nothing new.A shallow national "self-concept" and envy can be wicked.
I am not a big fan of fluffy blond celebutants.
But I think something serious has happened to Britney. After less than a day, she fled rehab, shaved her head, beat on a car with an umbrella & tattooed herself. I know, from past reading, that women who suffer serious sexual assaults frequently freak out - and those freakouts frequently involve cutting off or shaving hair. Especially because this seems to have been done in this frantic way, not as part of some sort of publicity/album tour/career re-invention, I suspected from the moment the news broke, that the poor girl had suffered some terrible event.
TrishR,
I see your point, what was the trigger to set Britney off? Brit's been sexually exploited all of her short life, so odds are it was more of the same. That is very astute of you.
You're right to say it's pretty despicable of us to have no sympathy for this young woman. I agree with you on that.
I think it's because most of us, most of the time, live in a state of denial. We can't cope with the truth about what we have become as a culture, or as a country, so we just dope ourselves up with "entertainment" in all its various forms, which includes the entertainment of watching someone destroy herself in public.
As for the some of the comments made here: It's a little unfair to say that Britney has absolutely no talent. I agree she's not much of a singer but she can present herself on stage, she has some presence, and that requires skill (just try to go out on stage and perform live if you don't believe me.)
Also, she actually can dance -- or at least she used to be able to, when she spent a little time rehearsing first.
As for her "teenage hooker act" -- yes, that was how she marketed herself. But its success was more of a statement on the men in this culture than on Britney. I work with a lot of men in their 30s and 40s and they all used to drool over Britney when she was 18, and they would justify their obsession with her by trying to claim she was some kind of "breakthrough artist."
Gimme a break. Men in this culture believe they're entitled to be titilated nonstop, and at the same time, entitled to be shielded from "realistic" looking women.
That's what male privilege is all about -- it's about keep men oversexed all the time, which leads them to believe they're entitled, which leads them to believe they deserve to be titilated all the time....and so on, in an endless, moronic cycle.
That's what you get when you have a culture based on gender inequality: an unsustainable way of life that sends everybody into a constant state of denial.
"Take Madonna: she has stayed alive by unveiling a new and improved product every few years."
like her or not, this is true of madonna. it's because she actually has some talent, a working brain and an artistic perspective.
britney nicole spears? all bun and no wiener, so to speak. there's a certain fascination watching a fraud come unraveled and exposed for what they truly are.
at first I thought "hey, live by the sword, die by the sword." she courts public affection with what seems like every breath, while blithely ignoring the potential disdain and ridicule that occupy the same space. but what or who is really to blame? she, willingly one must assume, was commodified and sold to us. we the consumers bought the product. and like every product she has a shelf life, at least until she is repackaged and resold, and we, zombie-like and unquestioning, reach out for another mouthful. it's the dicotomy of consumerism: it dehumanizes everyone who is party to it. and the human cost of this continuous consumption is immaterial, because the machine is in motion and, save for some global catastrophe that hits the restart button for us, will continue to be long after britney spears is supplanted by the next product.
and poor britney, who has more of every material thing and every means to help herself than anyone who has bothered to read this, ANOTHER story detailing her post-expiration date, slow motion plunge into self-destruction, is flailing in front of us while the first and last exploiter, the media, sells every gory detail. and the hungry masses piss and moan with every gulp.
I for one feel sympathy for a fellow human being who is struggling like everyone else, life is hard, but feel no sympathy for anyone, myself included, who continue to consume without concern for the consequences.
Life has been more than fair to Britney Spears. That sounds like ridiculous understatement, but it's no more ridiculous than the premise of this piece. I have no sympathy for one of the world's most privileged people refusing to take any responsibility for her actions.
NO Dude..Im in the middle of a complete nervous breakdown, my good job went to China, I work 75 hours to pay ever escalating bills, oils at 82 dolla a barrel and winter in CT is here, the planet is on the verge of drowning, I have cancer with a shit HMO that I pay up the ass for, my toilets clogged and a plumber costs 100 buckas to step in the door, we're going to start another war, which may bring on Armaggen, my once great country is turning into Stalinist Russia before my eyes, and Im supposed to feel SORRY for a rich talentless shit for brains like BRITiNY SPEARS...CHRIST
Thank You wanked for stating it so well! I know us liberals are suppose to feel sorry for everyone(our albatross), f**k that. Spears is a big supporter of Bush. There are millions of Britneys who did not make it. Remember the cheerleader who got knocked up by the football captain who blew out his knee in the first college game he played and then kicked the shit out of her due to his lack of success? You can find them at thousands of bars accross this country. That's America, that's reality.
"Spears rose to the top of the charts by commodifying her voice and, more convincingly, her body. Her very being was transformed into a product, but this is standard. The female pop artist is a product, and the product must perform in order to maintain market dominance."
I think you've answered your own question. She's not a "person" in the sense that if it were happening to someone you knew personally, you'd be concerned. She's a product. One that was shoved down our throats, I might add, and one that further cheapened popular music. She is really a brand, and since we've never known Britney Spears the person, we can only watch her fall and flame out brightly as a corporate media creation. The humanity of it is hard to see, since she was completely fake from the beginning.
Britany Spears, Anna Nicole Smith, Marilyn Monroe, Lindsay Lohan - It's our version of stoning. We don't bury these women up to their necks in dirt then gather round and throw stones at them until they're dead. That would be too kind and efficient.
Instead, we pursue them like pack dogs, sticking cameras up their skirts, in their faces, blinding their drivers, peeking in windows, secretly taping their sex lives - all for the purpose of good clean entertainment. Or not. The actual goal is to drive the person to destroy themselves, a public suicide.
You know how the cops are never accused of killing anyone anymore. Now everytime the cops kill someone, 52 rounds in the 79 year old blind woman, it's always "death by suicide." Lucky for the cops. No more tedious inquiries.
We need to attack these women because they are not virgins, they are not dependent on any particular man, they have money which means power, they go where they want when they want, and in all ways they threaten the male dominance of our society. So they must be destroyed.
Either they drown when we lower the log into the lake, or they get religion, are "saved," and join the crowd to find yet another woman to stalk and murder. Great fun. All we need are cold sodas and popcorn.
And it does distract us from that nasty little business they call the selling of the government. And that war thing.
NABNYC: I agree with you that celebrity watching is a big distraction from what's really relevant, like the war and the undermining of the constitution.
Yet I don't think people attack Britney because she threatens male dominance. Quite the opposite, what made her famous was the clever way she (or rather her managers) played on the double stereotype of women in a patriarchy: that women must be either virgins or whores. Just look at Britney's videos, especially from her first album: It's virgin, it's whore.
I think Britney finally collapsed under this contradiction. After all, she was just a young woman trying to have some fun. So when the whole virgin business got impossible to maintain, she tried "mother" as the new (conservative) female stereotype. But society just does not accept a woman who is a "mother" and a "whore." It just didn't work this time.
Not that I believe Madonna did much for the women's liberation movement, but she at least took control of her ever changing image. Britney just doesn't have that business sense. Somebody should have told her to stop. But that would have meant less revenue.
Britney's fall from grace reminds me of America's fall from grace in Iraq: we thought we were virgins (American's don't do empire, we don't torture, we bring freedom), but now the world sees as as whores for power. And we can't stop either (failing forward toward Iran).
Poor pathetic Britney. Poor pathetic America.
Britney Spears wanted nothing more than to be famous. She got her wish. We're talking about a girl who broke through with "Hit Me Baby One More Time." The world ate up her teenage hooker act and now she's surprised it all went bad? What's sad is that she got rewarded for doing that stuff in the first place. Now it's just a matter of watching a disease run its course.
The ghoulish milking of Anna Nicole Smith's notoriety in death is evidence that even if Britney does die, there is not likely to be any let up in the exploitation.
what she makes is about $800k a month, not $80k.
Though she's not as talented as Judy Garland, somehow Britney's story reminds me of Garland's. Someone molded at a young age by the star-making machinery with little thought to her abilities to function in the world as an adult. Kids that emerge sane from that process seem to be the exception to the rule.
I was thinking about this just the other day, and about Jackie Cooper's comment about Judy (who was his friend) when she died. She said, "She was just a little girl who was used and used and used and hardly ever loved at all."
Yea, I generally disagree with the premise of this article. Most people who are covering britney actually want to see her succeed. They liked toxic as much as the next person. They remember when she was a young teen singing and dancing her heart out. And, they are just as disappointed as you are in her current state. There was a point where it was entertaining, but now it has become sad, much in the same way that it did with Lindsay Lohan.
I don't think that there is a person on the face of the planet who would suggest that she doesn't need help. Her current antics and the fact that she blew a huge opportunity to kickstart her career are proof of this enough. While celebrity media can be cruel, it knows when to quell that snark and replace it with genuine concern for someone's well-being.
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