I've sat up and taken notice of a couple of events spinning from the music world. One is the televised train wreck of Ms. Spears and the other is the phoenix-like ascent from Hell of Nikki Sixx. One coming, one going. Same place.
Now granted, Britney has brought a lot of grief upon herself. No one put a gun to her head and forced her to aspire to stardom. Publicity is the price you pay for wanting umm, publicity. The same can be said for anyone who is lured by fame and fortune and then cries foul when they're the centre of attention. However, the girl is obviously not playing with a full deck. Something upstairs has snapped, the plane has crashed, and yet like we sit and stare at the TV screen like a bunch of rubber-necking drivers past a car accident.
The media certainly hasn't been any help. Misery sells, especially the misery of the rich and famous. Britney's faux pas will get milked to death, until there's simply nothing left of her to bash. Women in particular seem to be delighted in this latest turn of events. There is damn little compassion for one of their own, just the descent of female wolves on the weakest pup in the pack. Why? Because that's what women do. Their latent jealousies and insecurities spur them to find even the tiniest flaw of their competition and expose it, pick at it until it becomes a festering, gaping wound. The judgemental comments that are so freely spewed are often nothing more than verbal affirmations of our own fears and hang ups. "Oh my gawd, can you believe what she's wearing? She must be at least 5 lbs overweight!" Of course, if she didn't have any padding, she'd be anorexic. There is no winning on this. Anyone in the public eye is expected to be something the rest of us aren't: perfect. However, the definition of that perfection is as loose as the tongues that wag about it. Is it any wonder that eventually these celebs come unglued?
Britney's only hope for mercy at the moment is that the entertainment industry is fluid. By next week or next month, the sharks will have found new prey and media attention will sway in that direction, leaving Britney to pick up the pieces, alone, and make some sense of the chaos...if that's even possible. She'd be doing herself a huge favour by stepping away from the spotlight for a few years and allowing some healing to take place. I doubt her management would ever encourage or allow it though. She's their paycheque.
Another casuality of infamy has come back with a vengence, doing a complete 360 and paving the way for the Britneys, Lindsays and Nicoles to get their shit together and become something much more than press fodder. The well-documented fall from grace of Nikki Sixx, bassist of Motley Crue, has now been published in The Heroin Diaries. When a 'US only' pre-release of the soundtrack to the book was announced back in May, I was one of the few Canadians smart enough to realize that computerized shopping carts don't recognize borders and ordered a copy anyway.
Technically flawless, the CD is as addicting as the drug that produced the material. It holds a universal understanding for anyone who has leaned on a synthetic crutch and been beaten by it. You can feel the insanity, the self-loathing, and the frailty of a lost child inside an adult's body. The project also comes with hope though, proof for those who fall into the same black abyss that there is a ladder out.
Like Britney, marketing and sales detered anyone from preventing the derailment of Nikki, an oversight that temporarily cost him his life, both literally and figuratively. No matter how many people could see that the Emperor had no clothes and was deathly ill, there was money to be made and no one wanted to be the one to put the cash cow back in the barn.
Yes, everyone makes choices in life, and some are poor, even lethal. But the media circus that surrounds potential tragedies like these is our fault. We support it with the money that we shell out to the tabloids, we encourage it by tuning in to gossipy TV programs or clicking 'informative' hyperlinks. We create the feeding frenzy and then blame the people we expect new material from. We're drawn to lurid tales of demise and debauchery like flies on shit. We live vicariously through the outrageous antics of icons, only to discredit the players when we're done with them.
Sadly, I don't think it will ever change.
© Arlie MacGregor, 2007
http://arliemacgregor.com
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1 comment:
Wow, what a great article! I have to agree with you on many items here. I am one of the few woman who are not attacking Britney Spears. I see her as a sad, lost person who is trying to find some kind of happiness in all her misery, and I agree that she should just walk from it for a few years to sort herself out. I hate our celebrity obsessed society or that part of it anyway.
Thx for the article - awesome!
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