Mystery Behind Britney Spears Madness Discovered
Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly contemplative, I wonder why celebrities can be such raging a-holes. To be more specific, why Britney Spears is so outlandishly beyond hope at the tender age of 25. I would like think that if I had access to all of the resources she does (did) that I would be able to ride that gravy train until I was well into my 30’s and possibly even my early 40’s. Let’s face it, Britney Spears fame and wealth were a product of very calculated efforts on the part of savvy marketers, industry professional and media experts. When you take away the thin veneer that disguised her lack of intelligence, charm, wit and talent, what you have left is a pair of sweaty daisy dukes, a couple of stained wifebeaters and some tacky Wet n’ Wild cosmetics.
The transformation which took place within Ms. Spears after she spurned those willing to shield her from the harshest of realities is nothing short of tragic. This is an object lesson for us mere mortals. What we see being spoon-fed to us by men in suits is the greatest kind of illusion. Britney without professional handlers, producers, music writers, backup dancers, stylists and most clearly her family, is a Britney not worth paying attention to.
That’s not to say that as an individual human being Britney is worth nothing, I genuinely don’t feel that way. She’s a mom, a daughter, a sister and probably even a friend to some, surely there are people who should and do care about her. But her magic as a celebrity is now gone and to see the awaiting paps in the above video falling all over themselves in feint concern, while cajoling this disaster of a human as she mindlessly hits another car, caused a papable sensation that can only be identified as nausea.
And that’s when it dawned on me. The sense of self-entitlement, the constant barrage of false praise and unearned accolades, always being told what you want to hear — it must truly warp a person’s sense of who they really are. Britney’s first concern was for her own car. Nevermind the innocent person’s vehicle she just struck. Not to mention that photogs persistent refrain of “Are you ok? Are you hurt Britney?”
Jeebus, she tapped a car going approximately 1 mph. Is she so fragile that this would cause her physical harm? Or maybe it was her emotional well-being they were worried about? Or MAYBE, even the camera wielding nitwits were so awestruck by her talent and charisma that they simply couldn’t help ingratiating themselves to
Britney is on the verge of extinction. Either by her own hand, or the very fickle and gullible audience that once propelled her to fame. Without any discernible talent, even the public’s fascination with a trainwreck like Britney will eventually wane. Sadly, Britney is far too stupid to parse out the difference between those who follow her out of sheer curiosity as she implodes and actual fan worship.
Britney is barking mad.
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This is the most insightful acticle about Britney Spears that I have ever read. I know that ‘insightful’ and ‘Britney Spears’ should never go in the same sentence, but I think this writer has described perfectly what has happened to Britney.
Comment by adam — August 8, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
Thanks Adam. That means a lot!
Comment by dmdo1016 — August 8, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
Your article was interesting. One thing that most people fail to take note of however is “our” (as the viewing public) responsibility for the train wreck kids that are steaming out of Hollywood at an alarming rate. It’s all well and good to blame the paparazzi - Britney and her “trailer park” selfishness…..but honestly her sad situation would not exist if it it was not for the sick voyeuristic tendencies that have overtaken our culture.
Britney Spears continues down this path because we encourage her to do so by purchasing the mags and downloading the downright depressing images - we devour her sadness - the photogs get paid mucho money for particularly compromising shots - and they do their best to deliver.
This girl obviously has some mental issues. No one knows what her life was/is like - what happened to her along the line that could have driven her to this point.
To chalk her near 20 year career up to a shallow veneer that hid her “lack of intelligence, charm, wit and talent…” is ridiculous. This is a girl that has worked longer than most 40 year olds. She is obviously having some sort of breakdown. Take a look at her star search tapes, dancing and showmanship. She was and is not untalented. Just lost.
Maybe we should stop judging her and take a good long look at our own motives. Why do we care so much? Do her mistakes make us feel superior - and if so why? Judge not lest ye be judged.
Comment by rak — August 8, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
In regards to Britney having talent, just because she could carry a tune as a child doesn’t mean her vocal capability evolved into something noteworthy as an adult. She still sounds the same as she did when she was a kid. She’s a product of the entertainment business. It doesn’t matter if , early on, she was pursuaded into taking on a sexual personna in her act, she could have and should have said ‘no more’ once she became an adult. She seems hell-bent on doing things her way now so let her suffer the consequences. She knows the cameras are on her and still she continues to fuel her own self-destructive fire. If she wants to bill herself as a singer, then she should stop lip-snycing. Let the music listeners determine what venue to which she should be associated. She’s a mother now and she should be giving her attention to her children. Instead, it seems she’s choosing to give it to the media.
Comment by SGH — August 9, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
As far as talent is concerned there is not doubt that Britney was (is?)talented. Carrying a tune is something many children do - she was able to belt it out - and there is no denying that she could (can?) sing. As a singer myself I know that there are various things you can do to destroy you instrument. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t there to begin with. Your statement that “It doesn’t matter if , early on, she was persuaded into taking on a sexual personna in her act, she could have and should have said ‘no more’ once she became an adult.” is amazingly callous. The things that happen to us in our formative years - uhhhh formative being the operative word - seriously contribute or devalue what we become as adults. When your parents delegate their responsibilities to nannies and other care givers and reap the financial benefits of your compromised position it’s really tough to find it in yourself to be a great role model. It takes a tough and seriously strong person to transcend that. No one knows what came her way. I think that she has serious issues - and that we, as the viewing public should examine why we are so cruel to someone who obviously needs help.
Comment by rak — August 9, 2007 @ 8:18 pm
I AGREE WITH NUMBER 2. INSIGHTFUL IS CORRECT. I WAS A BIG FAN MYSELF AND I DONT BELIEVE THAT HOPE IS EVER LOST SO MAYBE IF SHE CAN TURN IT AROUND AND FOCUS ON HER KIDS IN THE VERY LEAST, I MAY BECOME A FAN AGAIN. ALL IN ALL I THINK WE AT LEAST MUST ADMIT THAT IT IS A SAD SITUATION, EVEN IF HER IMAGE WAS CONSTRUCTED BY OTHERS, GIRL COULD DANCE AND NO ONE DID THAT FOR HER BUT HERSELF.SHE HAD SOME ICONIC PERFORMANCES BUT THAT SEEMS LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM WHERE SHE IS AT TODAY.
Comment by E — August 10, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Now this is INSIGHTFUL:
Tragic Britney, brought down just like Lolita
By Jenny McCartney, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 12/08/2007
One of the saddest little public dramas of our times, captured daily by gleeful paparazzi, is the ongoing nervous breakdown of the pop star Britney Spears. Last week it emerged that Spears’s ex-husband, Kevin Federline, a dancer and aspiring rapper known as K-Fed, is seeking primary physical custody of their two young boys, on the grounds that she is not in a fit state to bring them up happily and safely.
That grim news comes against the lurid backdrop of a string of other recent Spears stories: that a plump, post-partum Britney - dressed for a pole-dancing video shoot in a minuscule leather bustier - abandoned the project, sobbing, later to canoodle topless with a grinning stranger in a hot tub; that she spectacularly wrecked an OK! magazine photo-shoot by letting her Yorkshire terrier defecate on one dress, wiping greasy hands on another, and wandering off with a substantial haul of the designer sample goods.
The impression of a woman in mental freefall is accentuated by Spears’s ever-changing wigs: earlier this year, she suddenly shaved all her hair off with a pair of clippers. It is dubious how much those in her immediate circle are doing to help.
advertisementSpears’s breakdown reminds me of a tragedy contained within a novel, and the novel in question is Nabokov’s Lolita, the story of how Humbert Humbert, a fastidious European aesthete and paedophile, seduced and destroyed a 12-year-old American girl. Lolita, despite the furore caused by its subject matter, has always seemed to me an intensely sad and moral novel: it exposes not only Humbert’s chillingly selfish fascination with exploiting the precocious sexuality of “Lola, the bobby-soxer”, but also his towering indifference to the fact that he has ruined her character and future prospects. Her school observes that she has become “antagonistic, dissatisfied, cagey”, and when she leaves Humbert, it is for the arms of another predator, until she finally winds up pregnant, penniless and married to a much older man.
Remember the then 16-year-old Britney Spears in 1998, bright-eyed, confident and lithe, gyrating sensationally in her school uniform while singing the ambiguous lyrics: “Hit me baby one more time”. The phenomenon that was Spears allowed middle-aged men who would otherwise have felt embarrassed about ogling schoolgirls to be roguishly open about fancying Britney: Alastair Campbell, as I recall, was a particularly avid fan.
The talented, God-fearing Spears, of course, was 16 and not 12: but wasn’t it, in retrospect, all more than a little creepy, including the very public obsession with Spears’s virginity and when she was going to lose it? Now, aged 26 and the mother of two children born in quick succession, Spears herself doesn’t seem to know how to age: she is dead-eyed and disorientated, pushing herself into ever shorter and tighter clothing, confusedly court-ing attention while seeming sickened by it.
She appears to want to remain in a hyper-sexual girlhood, even as time and circumstances require her to act like a grown-up. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the world’s lascivious attention acted like that of a collective Humbert Humbert upon the teenage Britney: its price has been her psychological ruination, from which she will need considerable help to recover.
Yet, once, millions of little girls wanted to be Spears, a just slightly older girl drooled over by millions of adult men. Now that she is in trouble, her role will be usurped by younger stars, such as soap celebrities and girl band members. Little girls are suckers for glamour in its most lurid form, from Barbie to the big-breasted, long-tressed Katie Price, also known as the topless model Jordan. At no time in history has the message been pumped out so forcefully to pre-pubescent girls that the primary import of any woman’s life is to be sexually desirable to men. What follows from that message in less stellar lives, one suspects, is a brief flurry of coquettish triumphs followed by decades of eating disorders, plastic surgery, and quiet self-loathing.
A Government-commissioned report concluded last week that black boys were being similarly let down by their role models, suggesting that instead of focusing almost exclusively on black rappers and footballers, it might be time for the media also to remind schoolchildren of black men and women who have risen in the law, medicine, finance or the police. At present, the most ubiquitous image of an adult black man, offered up for apparent admiration in music videos and films, is of a muscular gangster who profits from crime, drives a souped-up car and is surrounded by subservient female eye-candy.
It is, perhaps, heavily ironic that the two great social movements of the late 20th century were the rise of feminism and of black civil rights. Their leaders, who preached an aspirational, political message of access to the echelons of genuine power, would weep to see the stereotypical role models that the consumer industry routinely dangles today before young girls and black boys. It is hard for the teenage coquette to age happily, and the violent drug-dealer to stay out of jail. These days, children have got to be careful what they wish to be when they grow up. The terrifying thing is, it just might happen.
Comment by rak — August 12, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
Yeah, that was dripping with insight. I feel more intelligent for having read it. Thanks so much for sharing.
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt rak. Seriously, making excuses for celebrities who refuse to take responsibility for their lives and use their misbegotten gains to better themselves or their children in ways that are useful, is really a waste of time.
Britney neither wants or needs my insight, your protection or the above writer’s handwringing over-analizing. What Britney needs is for reality to slap her in the face and possibly some parental guidance.
Quite honestly, Britney’s been acting like an a-hole for far too long.
Comment by dmdo1016 — August 14, 2007 @ 5:53 am
and I guess your article was dipping in insight?Parental responsibility might have kept her from acting like such an A-hole. The lack of responsibility for actions stems from absentee parenting. Until people are willing to change their values (and that includes us as viewers and reporters) our society will continue to go down the Shi&&er. This is a girl that was exploited. It’s just a fact. A 9 year old is not capable of making rational and logical choices re: his/her future…and 16 year olds don’t belong naked on the cover of rolling stone….it was all about the $. And lots of people made lots of it. I am not a celebrity apologist or even a Britney fan just someone who is disturbed by the colossal lack of judgment we show in documenting and taking pleasure in her demise. there are planty of people that need reality to slap them in the face….why are we so thrilled to watch it knock this particular gilr on her ass?
Comment by rak — August 14, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
Re #2, I agree with you Adam; this piece was one of the most well written I’ve read. Less IS more. Style aside, the content was thought-full, mature, and blinders-off true. How do I find more of what you have written, dmdo1016?
Comment by jan — August 16, 2007 @ 12:17 am
All my articles can be found here on this site, or over at Blogcritics.org Jan, and thank you. I appreciate your taking the time to comment.
Comment by dmdo1016 — August 16, 2007 @ 2:40 pm