Society’s Celebrity Bloodlust Complex and Britney Spears: Part 2

In Part 1 I compared society’s fascination with Britney Spears to the new movie Untraceable where people visit a website to accelerate the murder of a prone victim. Now that she’s out of the psych ward, there seems to be a new level of intimacy between Britney and the “journalists” out to get the best shots of her. It’s almost as if whatever pretense there had recently been about not literally swarming and stalking her has evaporated.

These two stills from CNN video are courtesy of a media helicopter that followed her car away from the hospital. It was stopped at least twice on the road for the swarmings.

It’s hard to imagine how much of this a person can take. If she “snaps” we would get to say, “yeah, that figures” but how much of a chance does this woman have to be able to regain mental health.

It reminds me of a tunnel in Paris in the late 1990s, except this time it’s not taking place in one evening of speeding drivers, but stretched out slow motion over weeks and months, almost as if someone is storyboarding it for maximum extraction of images during her whole descent into madness.

On one level she has merely drifted from one entertainment sector to another: pop music to tabloid spectacle. Once a Disney prop, she’s now a media character. I wonder if she’s ever had much time to be a self-contained individual.

Society’s Celebrity Bloodlust Complex and Britney Spears

Last Saturday, I sadly missed a special presentation of something called “The Fall of Britney Spears” or something like that on E! Channel, a sad commentary on our society that used to be Vancouver Island’s TV station.

I don’t like Britney Spears’ music or PR thing very much at all, but we are both parents of two children so suddenly I have a good degree of empathy for her. I’ve also always been rather concerned about celebrity microscope effect, long before the death of Princess Diana.

But this show on E! Channel was about reviewing recent events detailing Britney’s “fall.”

Though I missed the show, I thought about it every time I saw the trailer for the film Untraceable. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it seems that one of the plot elements of the movie is that some killer fellow has set up some sort of murder machine that will kill someone at some point, a point which accelerates closer when a greater number of people visit some website. So people’s participation in the spectacle makes them complicit in a murder.

You can even try out http://www.killwithme.com and take part in the movie/murder/complicity spectacle on your own in an ironic, self-reflexive nod to the plot device.

It seems to me that everyone who watched that Britney Spears show on E! Channel last week [and every other act of celebrity obsession] is complicit in the struggles she is now enduring. And while we can callously wipe it all away by saying she voluntarily chose to become a celebrity, that is insufficient to excuse what truly appears to be a celebrity bloodlust complex. We like to build up people to be larger than life, but at the same time we are always looking for excuses to bring them back down to earth to make sure they aren’t better than us.

I expect sociologists have much more to say on this, and those who have seen Untraceable will be able to confirm how much this observer complicity is significant in the movie, but in the end, the movie may be a strong metaphor for our role in Britney Spears’ tribulations.

Why Celebrities Should Be Political Reporters

Today I read an interesting commentary on the negative reaction people have against Oprah Winfrey endorsing Barack Obama. People seem to think she shouldn’t be all that partisan. I think that’s an interesting–and ignorant–point of view that undermines democracy.

These days in Alberta, teachers are not allowed to run for school board, even in districts where they don’t teach. Absurdly, the Supreme Court of Canada supports that decision because a democracy should ensure participation for all, but not necessarily all kinds of participation [like running for public office] for all. In Alberta, then, there are two classes of citizens.

Oprah Winfrey, despite her fame, should not be equally disenfranchised. We all know…actually we don’t really have a clue of the extent…that rich and often famous conservatives [unlike Oprah] support right wing politicians. We don’t express shock at that. No double standards should be allowed.

Then today, as I was preparing my other piece on Vancouver’s private thug corps, the Downtown Ambassadors, I found this poll on the 24 Hours website.

Luckily I was the first to answer the poll. Maybe I’ll set the sane trend. But, who do we think we are that we think it’s fine to stop celebrities from addressing political causes? Should they not be political reporters? Based on the often atrocious reporting in not just the free “newspapers” in town, many celebrities could do no worse than what the “professionals” are pumping out.

And the logical extension of this is that celebrities shouldn’t make political movies. George Clooney will be stuck in Oceans 14+ forever and Leonardo DiCaprio cannot discuss environmental policy ever again.

In the end, when schlock media like 24 Hours even entertains the notion that celebrities are not legitimate political reporters, their goal is to devalue whatever they may be able to contribute. Naomi Campbell may be awful at political reporting, as may other celebrities. But to negate their contribute based on their celebrity status is just foolish. It also serves the purpose of devaluing their critique if they happen to hit a nerve that the corporate media is not interested in being hit.

And when you take a google at what she’s up to, you can see why they’re after her, that Bush hating supermodel: “Campbell meets Chavez” in the Guardian. And now she’s off to meet Castro, which I suppose is what all the buzz is about.

In the end, when we pre-emptively limit people’s participation in political affairs of any sort, we do a disservice to the notion of democracy. Let her try. If she can make a difference, great. If she fails, she will still have succeeded at trying to participate in a democracy. And if she fails, she’ll do no worse than many who are already “professional” political reporters.

Sassy Indian Squaw: Imagine, Create, Transform?

“This sexy indian costume comes with suede corsetted dress with leather fringe and matching anklet.”

It’s the “Sassy Indian Squaw” Halloween costume and shock of shocks, it is going around the internet as a symbol of offense to all sorts of people. A few ironies lurk in the background, particularly in BC.

1. Halloween Mart’s website boasts Imagine, Create and Transform as their motto. It’s hard to see how this costume accomplishes any of that.

2. For the second time this year, a local First Nation has voted to ratify a treaty with the Crown. Regardless of where you stand on the content/process of these treaties this year, the Maa-Nulth have voted to imagine, create and transform.

At least some are able to move past the past. Too bad we all can’t.

You can contact Halloween Mart here to let them know what you think of their sexy Indian squaw and her matching anklet.

Gay pride versus the mayor of Truro…by Daniel Peters

As a change of pace from the usual west coast madness on this blog, I present a bit of madness from the east coast.

This weekend’s Gay Pride parades and other activities in Nova Scotia’s Pictou County have been in the news for the last week. It seems that the city council of Truro decided not to fly the Pride flag.

That decision, in and of itself, would not have drawn a comment from me. I don’t know what the precedents are. I don’t know what it means for a city hall to fly, or not to fly, a flag. Must they fly a flag for every little event that happens in their city? Nah, not worth commenting on.

Except for one thing: the way the mayor explained the decision.

It boils down to this. Truro mayor Bob Mills is a conservative, traditional Christian. According to him, it’s simply not OK to be gay, and that’s that. He won’t pick on gays in any illegal way, but neither will he do anything that expresses approval of their lifestyle.

Predictably, there has been a lot of noise (on both sides) in our local (Halifax) paper. Here’s my contribution (just now emailed):

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To the editor:

How curious that Truro mayor Bob Mills has raised the spectre of a slippery slope from the acceptance of homosexuality to the acceptance of pedophilia. I wonder on what basis he worries about such a thing as pedophilia, since the Bible has nothing to say about it. For that matter, the Bible never condemns rape, or even recognizes a distinction between rape and seduction. The fact that we are all horrified by pedophilia (and by rape) is a legacy of the very same modern, secular, humanist moral trend that has brought about our society’s greater acceptance of homosexuality. It is modern humanist morality, not Biblical morality, that emphasizes the importance of consent, and of the power balance that makes consent meaningful. The more secular and less Biblical our public morality becomes, the safer my children will be.

Daniel Peters