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Originally written June 10, 2005. The tabloids have recently taken to calling Britney Spears "the former pop princess". What do they mean - that she's out of the game? that she's a woman now so she can't be a "princess" any more? Or that she's a has-been? Probably a mixture of all three.
The funny thing is, Britney on a break does more than most stars when they're working. In the last year alone she's released an album and two singles with new videos, launched a top-selling perfume, made a reality TV series, and, according to reports from reputable sources, signed contracts for new albums and a movie. She also seems to have been working quietly away recording new material, with yet another new single and video set to launch next week.
So is it just wishful thinking on the part of the media? Their wish to be rid of her, surfacing in a kind of Freudian slip? Could be, but I'm guessing the explanation is this: Celebrities are the oxygen that the media need to breathe. The "best" celebrities are the ones that keep them supplied with shock-horror stories, and for six years Britney Spears has been the Celebrity For All Seasons.
Whether by accident or design, her world is constantly rocked by earthquakes and eruptions. In a typical year, the National Enquirer has the name "Britney" in a cover headline two weeks out of three. And when there's no Britney around it creates a void. Like the Manhattan skyline without the Twin Towers, something big is missing. And it demands a dramatic explanation. Life lessons must be drawn from it.
Strange, isn't it? Because, from everything we know about Britney Spears, she's really just a humble, family-loving smalltown girl who never managed to grow the normal protective showbiz shell around herself. She tried to distance herself from the madness by increasingly compartmentalizing her life till she didn’t really know who or what she was any more. Many people, from Christina Aguilera to Will Smith, commented that she seemed lost. Her heart was broken and, like many of us, she rebelled and went a bit wild for a time, but this was still that same lovable and loving little girl underneath. Does she deserve unending criticism and abuse - or understanding and compassion?
Recent times – and the reality TV series “Britney and Kevin: Chaotic” - have left her vast army of followers confused and uncertain. A majority of those who post on Britney forums seem to be saying they aren’t as big fans as before. What has happened to the straightforward, girl-next-door, pretty blonde pop princess who made those funky songs with Max Martin, who was everywhere, turned up at everything, wore those crazy clothes and illuminated every award show with her dazzling, outrageous presence?
As she sits now, becalmed and serene, on a semi-break of seemingly indefinite length, and contemplates her life, she must be horrified and ashamed at those bad times and all the things that put her in the headlines. Things that were SO not the real Britney. Jason Alexander says she’s returning to her roots now, and it’s something she has wanted to do for a long time. It’s a pity she had to live out those wild years in the full glare of international public scrutiny - and under the disapproving gaze of so many people who still called themselves fans.
Has she lost the plot, as many people claim? Well, yes, in a way. She has lost the simple plot of being a shiny, smiling, pretty, blonde, ambitious, energetic, omnipresent pop princess. But was that plot ever her reality? It’s easy for us to forget now, but in those seemingly golden early years of her career, the media constantly mauled her for being untalented, lacking in intelligence, poorly dressed, a “pop puppet” and nothing more than a highly successful marketing phenomenon. But worst of all, she was a bad influence on children.
Low self esteem among teenage girls in the face of unattainable celebrity beauty? That’s down to Britney. Anorexia in the face of impossibly toned celeb bodies? That was Britney too. Bare midriff? Low rise jeans? Visible underwear? Thongs? Yep, Britney again. But those are trivial charges compared to her worst crime.
Rabbi Schmuley Boteach called her a crass and vulgar degenerate. UK Channel 5 newsreader Kirsty Young wanted to include her in the horrors of “Room 101”. And the Royal College of Nursing blamed her for the rise in teenage sex-related disease. These attacks are all recent, but the crime that provoked them is old - once upon a time Britney Spears made the infamous video for Baby One More Time, and many people have never forgiven her for it.
With that one action, she joined Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Madonna in the exclusive pantheon of great American sexual subversives. Little Richard introduced clean-cut white American teenagers to the concept of frenzy and abandon. Elvis was so sexy that mothers wouldn’t let their teenage daughters watch him on TV. Madonna showed that women have sexual desires and fantasies too and were no longer shy about revealing them. And Britney Spears was Lolita made flesh.
When Britney told the splendidly-named Nigel Dick her idea for the BOMT video she had no notion of being controversial. She had no clear idea of what the outside world would think of her, or who her target audience might be. She simply wanted to be sure that her video would at least appeal to her peers, and her idea was a typical schoolgirl's daydream. Funny though it seems now, at that point in her life she was more into sport than sex and even her basketball was present in the video.
But people see what they're minded to see, and a lot of people saw a schoolgirl looking far too sexy for her uniform. Britney wasn't slow to pick up on the added value this unexpected controversy brought to her "package", and photographer David LaChappelle has recounted how, in defiance of Larry Rudolph's wishes and instincts, she was a very willing participant in the notorious Rolling Stone photoset that cranked her paedophile appeal up to a new and disturbing level.
Her career scarcely begun, the American Family Association called on "all God-loving Americans to boycott stores that sell Britney's albums", the Church of Scotland called upon Britney herself to behave responsibly and Nestle, one of the sponsors lined up for her first headlining tour, pulled out.
To conservative America she was, and still is, the spawn of the Devil. She made it difficult for mothers to know if their daughters really were sexually precocious teenage sluts or if they were simply imitating Britney Spears. And, if they were imitating Britney Spears, were they imitating a genuine teenage slut, a shameless attention seeker, or a nice girl who didn't really know what she was doing? To blur the boundaries was irresponsible, or wicked, or both.
But the right-wingers were struggling against some powerful forces. The New Puritanism was not yet upon us and for a while it was seriously uncool NOT to like Britney, this shiny, new, intriguing phenomenon loved by the kids and celebrated by the hip fashionistas of the day. She wasn’t just in pop mags but in GQ and Esquire and Rolling Stone too. Our would-be moral guardians took it upon themselves to question her wholesomeness, but nobody wanted to be stuffy and old like them.
However, there were many other aspects of Britney Spears that critics soon began to pick at. Everything about her launch, her music, her whole career to date seemed so calculated, so planned. Her ambiguous image. Her PR stunts. The symbiosis of messages delivered by her songs, her videos and her own statements. There was no way a 17 year old girl-next-door could dream up all that stuff! And so was born the legend of the Pop Puppet - a legend that took such deep root that Britney was still wrestling with it five years later.
Problem was, her story was well-known and left the door open for the myth-makers. Here was a girl whose life had been lived in a bubble. She never had a normal childhood. She had no urban sophistication. She lacked both life-skills and street-smarts. From the earliest age, dreams and ambitions and visions were her life. She never even had the space to wonder what “normality” was, never mind practise it. Normal life was as strange for her as stardom would be for us.
Protest as she might that she was in charge, this was a delusion. She was like the Captain’s little daughter on a cruise ship - she could yell at a deckhand, stamp her foot, vent her frustrations, and feel like the boss for a moment or two, and everyone would look on with an indulgent smile. But no matter how loud she yelled “Stop!”, the ship sailed on. In the enterprise known to detractors as “Britney Inc.” she wasn’t the President. She wasn’t even Management. She was product.
There was nothing she could do about those claims but sit tight, keep smiling, be alternately goofy and charming, rely on the loyalty of her fans and let her brilliant recordings and larger-than-life stage performances do most of the talking. For many stars, that would have been enough. The media would have tagged her: pretty, dumb, sells shedloads of CDs, vacuous, uninteresting. Next, please!!
However, there has always been something about Britney Spears that made them uneasy. They were convinced that nobody could be that perfect and there had to be a dark side. And so the chip, chip, chipping away at her began almost from Day One. By 2002-3, the onslaught had gathered further momentum, and in addition to all the earlier criticisms there were daily stories of her her drunken binges, party-girl lifestyle, sexual associations with unsuitable men, diva-like behaviour, feuds with other stars like Xtina and Pink and arrogance towards her fans.
Meanwhile, Britney’s fans were living in their own bubble. Some time around 2001, a journalist asked some young girls why they were Britney fans. The consenus answer was "Because she's always happy and everybody likes her". But the Golden Princess of Pop would fall off the wall like Humpty Dumpty and the pieces would prove impossible to reassemble. Open season was about to open and dumping on Britney Spears would be the new black.
The end of the innocence came swiftly, unexpectedly, and over quite a short period of time. There was the break-up with Justin. An abandoned show in Mexico. A rude gesture to the paparazzi. Pictures of her smoking. And then the true disaster of the UK Crossroads premiere. Earlier that day, Britney was everywhere in the media, charming the socks off her public, and all seemed well with the world. But she was late for the premiere, and had no time to stop and talk to the fans, sign autographs – or pose for photographs. Some photographers began to boo, some angry mothers followed them, and mass hysteria among a handful of children was duly reported in the morning tabloids.
The magic spell was broken, Britney was damaged goods and suddenly there were new critics everywhere. Right from the start of her career, a reserve of hatred against her was building up on all sides, to be kept in store for use when the time was right. To music journos, she was a fame-academy-bred purveyor of manufactured music who deserved to be a one-hit-wonder but wouldn't go away. To the worlds of rock and of earnest singer-songwriting, engaged as ever on their campaigns for real music, she was that little goody-goody bitch who flooded the world with teenage pop and destroyed everything.
And gradually, other things began to change. The little boys who loved her at the start grew into little headbangers. Little girls became little fashion fascists. Starstruck mid-teens became late-teen moralists and cynics. Young and hedonistic media commentators grew into young parents. Liberals became increasingly illiberal. And soon the drizzle of abuse which began on Day One of Britney Spears’ career was raining down upon her head in endless cascades.
And, with a horrifying synchronicity, at this very same time that the world was losing its enchantment with the fairytale life of Britney Spears, Britney was losing her enchantment with herself. Tabloid coverage depicted a girl whose life had gone completely off the rails and was now on a relentless downward spiral.
First-hand observers of her decline and fall were everywhere. One pal told Star magazine, "Since the split, Britney's been seeing the world through the bottom of a glass more and more. Britney is on a slippery slope. Everything in her personal life is centered around boozing and partying. But if she doesn't take control of her drinking now, she could end up like so many stars who make it big when they're too young. She is so talented and has so much live for that it would be a terrible shame if she should descend into the nightmare world of booze and end up in rehab."
Another source recalls meeting her in October 2002 at a nightclub in New York. Britney was disheveled, wearing a T-shirt with no bra, her jeans falling off and her thong visible. Her eyes were wide, and she seemed to have been crying. She was slurring her words. “What’s up?” she said, staggering as she leaned for support against a wall. “What’s up with you?” asked the startled friend. “I’m just out here trying to forget my troubles”, Britney said. “I’m sorry I ever got famous. I’m sorry I ever fell in love. I hate my life. I hate it, hate it, hate it! Screw it all!”
By early 2004, she had lost most of her own self-respect. She could try to ignore the constant press bad-mouthing, but nobody could remain oblivious - or impervious - to that level of criticism and abuse. And, following her notorious Vegas wedding, a grim process of self-examination began. With the help of her family, Britney began to realise that, in real life, she was turning into the crazy, irresponsible wild child portrayed in the media, and much of her time since then has been spent trying to pry the threads of her life and personality apart and keep them separate.
Unfortunately, this return to basic values and real life has been played out in extremely adverse conditions. A sinister shift in the development of popular culture was under way – and Britney did not at first take sufficient account of it. In the wake of a successful anti-intrusion case against the press, taken in the European Court by a member of a European royal family, most of Britain's most pernicious, rapacious, unscrupulous and persistent paparazzi moved to the USA, where no anti-intrusion laws exist, and began at once to target the celebrities of music and the movies with a ferocity and viciousness never previously witnessed.
The photo agencies soon began to realise that they were operating in a completely uncontrolled environment, where they could do and say pretty much whatever they liked with virtually no risk of legal comeback. As they flexed their muscles with growing abandon they discovered that it was within their power to make and break celebrities purely through the manipulation of their images.
Simultaneously, and not by coincidence, came the rise and rise of the trash celebrity magazines. In the UK we have Heat, Star, Sneak, New, Closer, Now and Reveal. Each one depends on the efforts of the paparazzi - but pictures of beautiful people looking beautiful are regarded as boring and of little value. But pictures of beautiful people looking ugly, spotty, disheveled, fat (or thin!), poorly dressed, and captured in embarrassing poses? That’s another matter.
Those are now the most sought-after images, and the photo agencies keep special files of them. The uglier and more shocking the picture, the more money it earns. The ugliest pictures show up again and again. Little wonder that careful celebrities like Xtina and Mariah never venture outside without some careful refurbishment from their make-up artists and stylists.
Britney seems never to have understood how much of an artist’s capital is invested in the integrity her visual image. Could she ever have grasped that the photo of her walking into a public toilet barefoot would assure her reputation in her home country as a “dirrtier” girl than Xtina could ever be – and not in a good way? Yet in the eyes of many showbiz columnists that’s the picture that defines her now.
The image of Trashy Britney, the Trailer Park Queen, with her scruffy blonde hair tied carelessly up, mirror shades, cigarette and acne has been so powerful that it led to her complete absence in 2005 from FHM America’s list of 100 sexiest women – a list she topped in 2004. Maxim Magazine’s “Britney Spears Road Map” consisted of a photograph showing her face covered in spots which viewers were invited to join up with a pen. She has hardly any spots now, but not a single celebrity magazine has bothered to point that out.
To the girl herself, Trashy Britney seems symbolic of her determination to draw a very firm line between her life and her career. About this, she feels, there must be no ambiguity. She says she doesn’t mind looking unglamorous when she goes out to buy a milkshake. It’s supposed to telegraph very clearly to the paparazzi that she's off duty. But, perhaps because these days they are starved of official photo-opportunities, and of the chance to picture her at work, the paps have ignored the message and their interest in her off-duty life has become increasingly intrusive.
The elements of the complex whole that is Britney Spears may be clear to Britney herself by now, but the process has been something of a PR disaster. Far from producing a greater respect for her as she struggles to make the transition to a real, mature young woman, married, starting a family, and willing and able to take charge of her life and career, the media have played merry Hell with the endless stream of candid images which in truth show nothing more than what Britney has said all along - when she takes off her make-up and dresses down, she’s just “a regular girl”.
We may well wonder why this should be such a stunning revelation that it requires endless, tedious, mindless repetition. Britney buys a magazine. Britney calls in at her Dad’s fast-food joint. Britney goes shopping with her Mom. Britney takes lunch with a girlfriend. So what? Well, the point is that the photo agencies sell all these photosets with a ready-made bad-news storyline attached. “Britney Spears looks tired and spotty as she drinks a bottle of whisky in the street”; “An overweight Britney Spears is thrown out of a restaurant with her trashy husband Kevin” “Expectant mother Britney Spears looks depressed after visiting the doctor”. Often the storyline doesn’t even match the pictures, or is proven within days to be false, but who - apparently - cares?
What’s common to most of these stories is the “fall from grace” angle, and the moralising sting in the tail. Each one is put forward as if it were on the same level as seeing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth come out of a gay club clutching a lesbian video. The tabloids and weekly celeb magazines have column inches to fill and they buy them in like so many cans of beans. Chip, chip, chip. Day after day. Chip, chip, chip. Week after week. In the past, a pic of Britney looking ridiculously dressed one day would be countered by one of her looking unfeasibly gorgeous the next.
But since she began her break in mid-2004, that hasn’t happened. The once glossy image of a carefully manufactured, pristine pop product has not after all been replaced by the image of an increasingly mature, beautiful, talented, powerful, independent young woman as Britney - judging by her letters to her fans - clearly hoped, but by that of a dirty, slutty, lazy sex addict who plans to live in a midden of tasteless, expensive squalor surrounded by babies and dogs, no longer has any career plans, and doesn’t care about anything anymore. Even though she has sold over 6 million albums in the last year alone, the media are wondering if her career can ever be revived.
Even the most loyal of fans have gone into a kind of pursed-lip mode. “Well, I suppose, if she’s happy…” Yes, they still love her, but they no longer expect anything from her. A year ago, tabloid claims that she was pregnant were met with pure horror. Similar claims in the early weeks of 2005 were met with a sigh of resignation and a general consensus feeling that she should just get on and do it and stop f~cking about. Fans were in a limbo of uncertainty for so long that her eventual confirmation that she was indeed expecting was met with a sigh of relief and a round of hearty congratulations.
My own feeling as a fan is that Britney’s search for her own reality has been too radical and has gone on too long. Yes, she should be entitled to have a life offstage without getting abuse for not always looking like she’s onstage. But that’s not how it works. She should counterbalance the ugly photostories with photo opportunities showing just how stunningly beautiful she can be when she makes even the slightest effort. She should counter the bad news about her image with good news about her career plans. Her life, viewed from her end of the telescope, may be full of fun, pleasure and personal satisfaction, but what does it look like from the other end?
Her profile does not need to be low. It’s a complete fallacy that she needs to get out of the spotlight for a period of years because everyone’s sick of her. Apart from anything else, she’s always in the spotlight anyway - but for entirely the wrong reasons. She needs to take control of the situation and ensure that what’s in the media is what’s in her best interest. And it doesn’t matter a damn what the 90% of the population who don’t like Britney may think. What matters is what her enormous fanbase thinks. And they need Britney like they need food. They need her ALWAYS to be there. The present hiatus is causing a loss of faith.
It can’t be good that people begin to forget why Britney became famous in the first place. Making the inevitable comparison with Ms Aguilera once again, we would have to admit that, no matter how raunchy an image Christina displays, and no matter what publicity-grabbing antics she indulges in, her dominant image is always that of a singer. Britney’s musical accomplishments, on the other hand, are always forgotten by the popular media – even though she is, by some distance, the biggest-selling female artist in the world in the current century – and her dominant image is that of a wayward celebrity.
But all is not yet lost. In sticking with pop music, Britney has at least ensured that her music isn’t stamped with its own expiry date. Other trends in music come and go, and for long periods of time pop music is like a river that has dried up. But all the time it’s still there, the pure stream of innocence, happiness, melody and freshness flowing like an undercurrent through all good music. We will listen to earnest or angry music for a while, but long-term we get tired of other people's issues.
Surprisingly too, many of the music journalists who once dismissed Britney as a joke have gradually come round to the realization that her music may be pop, but it’s pop of the highest quality. By the time “Greatest Hits: My Prerogative” came out, she was getting reviews she could barely have dreamt of at the launch of “In The Zone”. The Dotmusic site savaged ITZ in an orgy of smart-ass word-wank, but see what they said about GH:MP: “A more discerning ten-track Best Of would, like the voice of the divinity in "Dogma", probably have sent the listener deaf with its pop perfection. Like an Amish blanket "Greatest Hits…" contains deliberate faults because only God is perfect, but even so it comes tantalisingly close.”
Furthermore, whether consciously or unconsciously, Britney appears to be positioning herself for the father and mother of all comebacks. If you want to do it in style, after all, you have to come back FROM something. The deeper the depths, the more spectacular the rise. To be reborn you have to be dead. Bad news, constant trashy drama, career self-destruction.....then BANG!! A beautiful young mother with a new album coming out rises like a phoenix from the ashes and everyone's amazed and dumbfounded.
Her video diary "Britney and Kevin: Chaotic" is a fascinating postscript to the Spears story so far. Britney once expressed puzzlement at the media obsession with her. "I don't get it. I love what I do," she said. "I enjoy singing and dancing, but I'm pretty retarded. Just a big dork. Very silly." B&K: Chaotic appears to be a belated attempt to prove that what she said was true - and possibly to demystify herself once and for all. I have a feeling that it is all of that, and something more - a spoiler, designed to destroy all the previous images so carefully fabricated by the press. "The vacuous lives of the idle rich" is a kind of metaphorical blank canvas, upon which Britney and the press will soon be painting many new pictures.
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