Pieces of Britney

Britney has been a topic of conversation lately. The "Britney’s Tragedy" issue of Rolling Stone has been floating around the house… Look if you’re on the internet I don’t need to tell you how "everywhere" she is right now. Britney’s an interesting topic. She herself isn’t that interesting. If you’ve seen her on television in conversation with talking heads you can almost physically feel the vacuum created by such empty patter. But for anyone interested in socialization (I present myself as an edublogger but one day will present the argument that education (as we understand it) doesn’t exist) Britney’s case might someday rival the notoriety of "Little Hans.’"

Britney just doesn’t fit in. That is, in her own society. It’s important to keep in mind that there are many societies, and the difference only really causes a problem, when it’s not acknowledged. Are you slotting what you see into what you already know or are you open to the possibility of difference. The slightest difference, the slightest unacknowledged difference can lead to misunderstanding. Britney comes from a different place, but I see in her, or I’m making an analogy between her situation and the homeless in Western Capitalist societies.

The first similarity, at least in my mind, is their place in the spectacle. And I mean spectacle as in the image of reality given through mediation. The image of reality, and reality are two different objects of consciousness that can be differentiated through testing. My six year old son has a lightsaber, and playing with it one morning he reached out his hand to the lightsabre on the floor about six feet away. He stood there with his hand out and open like Luke Skywalker. After a few moments, and I remember doing the same thing as a child and still occasionally I test the strength of the force within me, say when the remote control is a little too far out of reach. Reality sucks, a child knows the difference between the spectacle and reality, and reality sucks. We don’t get fairy godmothers to grant wishes or broomsticks to fly and every child knows that. I may be, ok I am, reducing the concept of the spectacle. The idea also includes us as spectators and this is how Britney and the homeless are alike. Here in Vancouver, Canada where Canada’s homeless come to enjoy the weather or more likely not freeze to death in the winter, the reality of the homeless becomes a spectacle. It amazes me that there are 2000 or so people sleeping outside in Vancouver every night and there’s not outrage about it. (2019 Canada’s General Strike!!) This should not be a problem, but there it is, and we’re (I am definitely part of this we. Noticing the spectacle, is not the same as engaging in the reality) looking at it and not doing anything. In the Case of Britney, there were unlimited funds to buy her mental health, and still cameras flicker as she falls apart. We see the spectacle, like watching a movie, but Britney is not a fictional character. How is it possible that Britney, with all that money, knows so little of the world?

Compare her to Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Leonardo. These are people of Britney’s society. A society of spectacle, a modern day Olympus, but these four, and many others thrive by banding together and finding the earth. They are friends who give. There’s something to get at here.