celeb
feb 13
2008

Britney

It may seem like a suspicious suggestion, but I recommend Rolling Stones' Britney Spears cover story (only a fragment of which is online). The juicy dish on Brit-Bot is in there, but it's really the not-so-disguised analysis of celebrity culture that hits you: the industry that Britney has created, the disease that fame has become, and the hunger of a public that is insatiable. I realize that we tend to hyperbolize the contemporary moment, but I can't help feeling like the equation famous = fucked up has ever been more true. (Also: Grigoriadis is the real deal.)

5 comments

I really felt sorry for her after reading this Blender article last month. I haven't seen the RS piece, but I imagine it's equally pity-inducing.

posted by alexis at 5:39 PM on February 13, 2008

i might actually buy this issue. which will be the first i've bought since my subscription ran out in like, 1997. (i paid for one year, it lasted for 3!)

US weekly has a staff of 10 in los angeles covering her. then you go watch the wire, and realize how messed up that is.

posted by kitty holmes at 6:03 PM on February 13, 2008

Speaking of hyperbole... I think Britney will become one of those crystallising narratives that focus a wild mess of strands - social capital, public obsession, fame as lubricant for the celebrity industry, etc etc - in a useful, if sad way.

But that first bit from RS is unsettling. It's like we all knew she was way more savvy and cunning than the image she tried to project yet had nowhere near the savvy or cunning to deal with the reality of her fame.

I'm sure this has been said before, but the thing that fascinates me is how Brit became a blank text for anyone and everyone: she was the wholesome pin-up girl for thirteen year-old boys, then the fetishised, trampy crush of fifty year-old men; third-wave feminists thought her provocativeness was great, second-wave ones saw it as everything they fought for, lost; she lived the "American dream" and then basically ripped up and threw-up on the ideals of fame, wealth and success... she basically became both the light and dark of contemporary notions of cultural capital, laying bare the seedy unconscious of modern social/economic/cultural systems to the public as if to say "these are the consequences you never see".

Huh - I was wondering how I could write so much on Britney Spears and escape self-loathing... but, there it is. I gotta' find a way to quit Fimoculous.

posted by Nav at 11:14 PM on February 13, 2008

The RS story is SO much better than the Blender story, mainly due to Grigoriadis' ingratiation with the sleazeballs who "protect" Britney.

posted by Karina at 9:34 AM on February 14, 2008

Just read the print story - highly recommended even for those not entranced by the TMZ/Perez/OK circus.

What I think is interesting (and perhaps to be explored at a later date) are the class differences between Britney & Paris - and how those differences have steered them through surprisingly similar stories.

posted by Gavin at 1:29 AM on February 15, 2008




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