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FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2008
The Sad Decline of Britney Spears and Our Voyeuristic Complicity
A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation among women about someone
whose skirt was so short that when she sat down her quot;Britneyquot; was showing.
Variations on this joke have appeared since paparazzi shot photos of Britney
Spears quot;going commando,quot; a popular term for appearing in public without the
benefit of undergarments.
It is not uncommon in the history of language for RELATED
new words to be created, or old ones changed, Annals of Tabloid
based on a person's name. The word quot;derrick,quot; a Journalism: Britney Edition,
By Andrew Cohen
machine for hoisting heavy objects, is thought to
derive from quot;Derik,quot; the name of a 16th-century
English hangman. The word quot;bowdlerize,quot; meaning to censor, comes from
Thomas Bowdler, who removed the naughty passages from Shakespeare in an
1818 edition. And the word quot;lynchquot; comes from a Captain William Lynch, who in
1780 helped create a grotesque form of vigilante justice.
So to use a proper name to signify an object or action is a normal expression of
linguistic creativity and change. But how have we reached the point in American
culture when we can laugh collectively -- and without guilt -- at a troubled
young woman suffering some form of addiction and mental illness, a callousness
that allows us to associate her very name with sexual exhibitionism and
depravity?
I am only now beginning to avert my eyes from the video images of Spears
partying with her girlfriends, attacking or cavorting with paparazzi, driving
recklessly with her children, shaving her head, performing in a stupor at an
awards show and, most recently, being carted into custody after some kind of
emotional collapse. The latest news includes a report that none other than Dr.
Phil showed up to offer help. Perfect.
Hollywood scandals are as old as -- well, Hollywood. And I am old enough to
remember the death of Marilyn Monroe, a sordid story that turned Monroe into
an eternal icon, even though it contained elements of drugs, suicide,
depression, sex, celebrity, the mob and a cameo appearance by the president of
the United States. But Monroe was a full-grown woman in her mid-30s when she
died, and her life and death have a kind of tragic dignity connected to them,
especially in comparison to the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the tribulations
of Spears.
One of the terrible side effects of America's celebrity and media culture is a
pervasive cynicism about addiction and mental illness. The paparazzi, a name
created by Federico Fellini for a character in the film quot;La Dolce Vita,quot; are the
bloodthirsty mosquitoes on the front lines of our gossip wars. But someone
publishes the images they capture. The resulting buzz attracts not just the
tabloids and cable news shows, but the gossipy sections that turn the
mainstream into the meanstream media. As purveyors or consumers of such
news, we are all complicit.
And here, for journalists, is the crux of the problem: While we linger beyond
imagination on the dissolution of one young celebrity, mental illness is an almost
invisible story in the American news media. I came to this conclusion after
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2. reading the book, quot;Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health
Madness,quot; a Pulitzer finalist. In it, Pete Earley, an experienced journalist,
reveals the terrible truths that should be on the pages of America's newspapers
every day: that we have not progressed as far as we think from Shakespeare's
day when the mentally ill prisoners of Bedlam Hospital were put on display as
public entertainment.
Through the story of his own son, Earley reveals how the de-institutionalization
of the mentally ill has led us to a place where jails have become the American
Bedlam. quot;Jails and prisons,quot; writes Earley, quot;are simply not safe or humane places
for the mentally ill.quot; Any reporter can go out on the street and come back with
that story -- today.
Some will argue that troubled celebrities like Spears and Michael quot;Wacko Jackoquot;
Jackson are victims of their own excesses and bad choices. In other words, they
somehow deserve what they are getting, that we who have lifted them up have
a right to tear them down.
But how does a person like Spears get to that terrible place where she now
suffers? I am displaying in my office this week a framed image of Spears from
when she was about 16 years old. It once hung on a wall over my daughter's bed.
She is curled up on a love seat, staring at the camera, wild curly hair, pouty but
sexy. She wears a white tank top, black leather shorts and high leather boots.
Think of Lolita grown up to be a soft-core porn star. Now think of how many
little girls dreamed of being her, and how many boys dreamed of being with her.
The distance between the Mickey Mouse Club and parties without panties turns
out to be not so great after all.
Here's how it seems to work: A talented kid is recruited into show business. At
first she is just adorable, funny, perky. Think Hannah Montana. But behind the
glitz, she has already been torn from her childhood and thrust prematurely into
the world of adults. Before you know it, she's reached puberty, and to build her
career she is encouraged to shed some of her innocence. The songs, dances,
videos, images, become more suggestive. By 16, she has become completely
sexualized by the culture. Every move, every gesture, every mistake in
judgment comes under the most intense scrutiny. And we wonder, even as we
let the spectacle wash over us, what went wrong.
In my day, another Mouseketeer was an object of desire. Her name was Annette
Funicello, and we used to joke about how well she filled out her
Mouseke-T-shirt. Then we saw more of her in those zany beach-blanket-bingo
movies of the 1960s. Yet there were social forces in place that surrounded her --
and all of us -- with a safety net that saved us from the worst forms of
exploitation.
Is there a way to cover the Britney Spears story responsibly? I'm no Puritan when
it comes to gossip, and I've grown up reading the tabloids, but there is clearly a
danger zone, when life and health are at stake, when the best thing the press
can do is back off. That time for Spears is probably now. Avoiding the daily soap
opera does not require journalists to abstain from critical and analytical pieces
on celebrity, addiction, gender and mental illness. And perhaps the troubles of a
particular celebrity might be an occasion to turn the camera away to the less
intriguing but more important cases of mental illness in our own communities.
As for me, I'm keeping that image of Britney in my office for a while. I hope it
will serve me as a symbol of regret, regret that a real person, a human being, is
falling apart before our eyes; regret that I'm part of a culture that watches such
destruction with prurient curiosity and the most mean-spirited schadenfreude;
regret that, as I'm distracted by Spears, the mentally ill who walk by me every
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3. day on the streets of this city might as well be invisible.
Are you as outraged as Roy over the way the Britney story has played out?
Posted at 5:56:42 PM
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