|
Originally written October 24, 2005. In this unauthorised biography, Sean Smith sets himself the task of discovering which of the two Britneys has achieved dominance - the natural, fun-loving, friendly girl who makes lots of mistakes like everybody else, or what he calls "the Britney Spears", megastar icon who threatened to take over and suppress the real Britney.
Things get off to a good start with a remarkable star chart for Britney written by Madeleine Moore. She observes that although Britney may appear to be little more than the embodiment of the candid, fun-loving modern woman, with a positive outlook full of optimism and frankness, she is in fact "a smart and complex woman who has traveled quickly but still has a long way to go". She's outspoken, determined and self-motivated, yet plagued with low esteem, anxiety and guilt. Her work as an artist may appear spontaneous, but she gets where she's going through patience and application. Motherhood is "unlikely to quench the public ambition of this very professional and extremely creative young woman".
Sean Smith then takes over to guide us through the events of Britney's life. Unlike some biographers, he spent a lot of time in McComb, Mississippi (where Britney was born and went to school) and Kentwood, hanging out with the locals and trying to get the feel of the area and what made it seem, to him, so much more foreign than France. From these experiences he compiles a picture of the influences, values and standards that have shaped Britney's life, career and personality, and colored them all with such a range of contradictions.
Along the way he uncovers a few surprising facts, such as that Britney actually did pretty well at school, getting mostly A's and B's and having few problems with her academic studies, and was a student at Parklane Academy, on and off, from first grade right through to ninth. Although the school set extremely high standards in its spiritual and religious teaching and values, it never opposed her development as a child performer or her entry into the very unreligious life of showbiz.
Britney may have been a fair enough student at school, but as a student of showbiz she was exceptional. Her original New York agent Nancy Carson called her "a little sponge" because she absorbed everything so well. She has always known how to enjoy herself, but in this most important area of life she applied herself with the utmost seriousness. Ms Carson is still annoyed over Britney's Star Search defeat, complaining that it was the show's producers who made her sing "Love will build a bridge", a song that did not show her talents off to their best advantage.
The Disney years are given a thorough examination, but here Sean Smith has little new to offer. The next phase of her life, the awakening of her attraction to boys and her years with Reg Jones, is handled in a more interesting way, not just because of the detailed picture the author builds up of her relationship with Reg, but also because he shows that even then, when she was only 15, she was thinking about marriage and was ready to marry Reg if she'd been old enough. However - and this is another of Smith's discoveries - they ended acrimoniously in 1999, leaving the way clear for Mr Timberlake.
Meanwhile, the life of "the Britney Spears", Megastar, was well under way but Smith rarely sounds particularly enthusiastic about the hypersexualised pop icon. She had, he says, "progressed into an image that was all about sex on the one hand, and denying anything sexual on the other. In the playground she would have been labelled a prick-tease." And he seems somewhat cynical about the use of PR stunts throughout her career.
A surprising amount of space is devoted to Crossroads. Taking a realistic look at the figures, instead of the tabloid legend of its failure, Smith discovers that it was actually a resounding success, recouping all its costs and turning a 40% profit in its first week alone. Reviews of Britney's performance were mixed, with some writers trotting out the obligatory savaging with the predictability of Pavlov's dog. However, BBC Online found her "natural, endearing and extremely likeable". Nevertheless, he thinks the film was released for no other reason than to tick another box in Britney's superstar curriculum vitae.
Unsurprisingly, the latter part of the book is dominated by Britney's break-up with Justin Timberlake and its unfortunate aftermath. Smith doesn't take the easy way out of blaming either party. The conclusion he comes to is that the breakdown of their relationship was caused by intellectual and temperamental differences and a long-standing failure by both parties to ensure that regular physical contact was maintained. But there were further dimensions. Timberlake appears to see problems in his relationships in extremely unforgiving, black-and-white terms, always portraying himself as the victim. But his two earliest girlfriends do not see it that way at all. Britney herself said that "technically I’m not saying he's wrong, but technically I'm not saying he's right either". The truth, according to Smith's researches, appears to be that they were on a break, but that the break was interpreted very differently by Justin and by Britney.
Smith gives full weight to an appraisal of Britney's artistic progression through "Britney" to "In The Zone" and his summary is that Britney did indeed make the jump from teen queen to authentic artist, and no longer a girl but all woman. And his conclusion, and the outcome of his own challenge to himself, appears to be that the real Britney is now in control and the mechanism of the old, legendary "Britney Inc." has been dismantled. Looking to the future, he believes she will be a lot less accessible to the media from now on. He warns that her career should not be written off, but he hedges about exactly what he thinks will come next - a long break perhaps?
It's a fair biography, easy to read, and a lot kinder to its seemingly sweet and harmless subject than Larry Getlin's vindictive "Britney: Not That Innocent". It does as much as is realistically possible in 300 pages, but it's far from perfect. Smith seems too ready to accept the tabloid accounts of the misadventures and misdeeds of "the Britney" without question. He doesn't, for example, bother to investigate why her final Mexico concert was halted and he seems simply to accept that she had a boob-job just because so many people said so - no matter that the evidence is against it - her boobs, while often changing in size, have never behaved in any fashion other than a natural one.
And although he answers most of the questions likely to be put by celebrity watchers, he fails to satisfy the curiosity of her more committed fans about questions concerning her artistry and the substance behind her career. Why does she sing the way she does? When did she change her singing style? Can she sing in other styles if she wants to? Has she got a good voice? What are her own tastes in music? What does she add to studio productions she's involved in? How good a dancer is she? How good an actress is she? What do other professional artists think of her as an artist? Such questions, sadly, go unanswered.
(Britney: the biography, by Sean Smith, is published in the UK by Sidgwick & Jackson, 2005. Hardback. ISBN: 0283 07030 7)
 |
