By Polar Levine for http://www.polarity1.com
September 12, 2007
Yeah, I saw The Comeback. It was like watching somebody commit hara-
kiri with a butterknife. And we all wet our panties laughing at this
lost person. The summer-long hysterical nastiness of the Britney Watch
served as the perfect trailer for her anticipated career demolition at
the MTV Video Awards show. I'll confess to a certain seratonin rush
watching the poster girl for America's corporate-driven music and
celebrity culture flop around the multi-tiered stage like a mechanical
sausage. I also felt a certain ugly satisfaction sensing that I was
also witnessing the perfect symbol of the flame-out of the American
Empire which, like Britney, has lost its power to ba-da-boom the rest
of the world into submission. I'm not proud of the latter source of
pleasure since people with more guts than I have are out there getting
their legs and faces blown off for the Empire's sake. But I couldn't
summon up enough pleasure to laugh out loud because in my guts and
bones I loathe the way we entertain ourselves by trashing people in a
global media arena when they're at the lowest point in their lives.
This same feeling of empathy even goes out to low-lifes like Larry
Craig -- and Craig, unlike the Britney types, actually causes harm in
the course of a day's work to people other than himself.
It's true that Britney Spears gratefully took the gasoline shampoo and
then flicked the Bic with whatever hand wasn't holding her brew of
choice. Every living organism on the planet got to see a mother of two
kids in a space bikini boozily clomping around on heels a half-foot
high. She's been unfairly described as "overweight" (as though that
were a felony). In fact she was probably trimmer than 95% of the 25
year olds watching from the safety of their earned anonymity --
sitting there with their own collections of embarrassing defects which
have -- so far -- escaped online posting. Spears' real problem was
that she was out of shape and out of mind -- a condition that rendered
her unqualified for the task she was hired to execute. Not to mention
under-rehearsed and unable to remember the few lines of retarded
lyrics she was paid to lip-synch -- but was not even required to sing.
She couldn't even navigate the risers without assistance. Her only
crime was being unprofessional in a venue that places no value in
professionalism, craft or vision. Without the Britney trailer there
would have been no Britney Event to laugh about. No one would have
noticed.
Here was a pimped-up ride of a person who no longer likes to work,
preferring to drink and party and breed. And -- as long as somebody
not brain-dead is minding the kids -- that's perfectly ok with me. She
worked hard for the money and deserves her down time. She even
deserves to f&@k whomever she pleases or leave her underwear at home
without a jury of info-idiots passing judgment on every tv and web
browser in the world. But our sad girl transgressed if she assumed
that high-budget fakery would shock & awe the world into buying
product. The real joke of the performance was the expectation that the
citizens of Earth were going to be scandalized over the sight of a
young female in her underwear pantomiming a sequence of off-the-rack
sexual signifiers. Oy! On TV yet!
- - - We'll be right back after this message. I'll just insert here
that my thoughts on this issue are colored by something very personal.
Besides my primary occupation and pre-occupation with all things
musical, visual and media rendered, much of my gray matter is wrapped
around stuff like my country's investment in domestic and global
mayhem. In four years my kid will be draft age. [pause to reflect]
So my patience is lite with a society that has less curiosity about
American foreign and energy policy than about whether or not Britney's
twat is feeling a breeze when she steps out of her limo. And now back
to our commentary. - - -
Britney was just the opening act of a hokey Fifties era TV "Variety"
extravaganza. MTV is now as fresh and revolutionary as rap -- both of
which were news 25 to 30 years ago and back when saying dirty words on
a record was interesting. MTV and mainstream American rap now kick it
to you with that bubble gum flava. Like the leaders we elect, these
cultural dinosaurs can't think and chew at the same time. We barely
need to mention the biggest dinosaur in the house -- rock -- which, in
its current geriatric stage is as counter-culture as Fonzi. The awards
show presented its predictable cast of icons that blandly signifiy
"danger" in a format that resembled the same TV s@*t I used to laugh
at as a kid while my parents and grandparents swooned. The kitchy
dance routines, lip-synching, teleprompted "ad-libs" and every worn
out gesture of cheesy show-biz gas. Even the live performers got the
Liza Minelli treatment with a few Twenty-first Century touches that
said "edge" with pizazz.
What's most pathetic and enraging about the public flaying of Spears
-- for the crime of being normal -- is an over-stuffed populace
addicted to comfort, hubris and the woozy narcotics of fat-free
theology and patriotism laughing at a real live person's self-
destruction. She's a person who, regardless of the value of her work,
did at one time work hard and she achieved what her jury could only
dream about. But now she's like us, getting her cuteness banged up by
living day-to-day in the REAL reality show -- kid-raising, failed
relationships, being over 20 and staying there, career worries and
trying to take some of the edge off with a drug of choice
(pharmaceutical or theological). We laugh at Britney because we're too
f#$*ing terrorized and terrified to laugh at ourselves.
A society that can't laugh at itself is one that is not equipped to
recognize what's broken or to summon the wit, creativity and effort to
fix the damned thing. It's a society that thinks it can orchestrate
how the world behaves by making stuff explode. Like a film industry
that thinks it can keep surprising us with the same old explosions at
the same plot points year after year. Like a post-adolescent,
addicted, spoiled single mom who thinks that by squeezing her baby-
stretched body into nymphet-wear and drooling her way through a few
pole dance moves she'll convince us that she has talent, starpower and
the primary currency that defines our value in this society -- sex
appeal.
The domestication of America's culture for the sake of stockholders
has made non-conformity, sexuality, creativity, personal tragedy,
incompetance, sociopathic greed and catastrophic ignorance as
denatured and consumable as American cheese. As I flip over to the
celebrity media event on CSPAN -- the Petraeus Show -- I'm no longer
laughing.
http://www.polarity1.com
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