Why I care about Britney and KFed

(published in the VC Reporter on December 29, 2005.)

The year in worthless pop culture
Or “Why I care about Britney and KFed”

~ By MOLLY FREEDENBERG ~

I love pop culture.

I love Britney and KFed and their ridiculously greasy, white trash life. I love Brad and Jen. I love Angelina and her lips. I love hearing about whether Jessica Simpson is wearing her ring, and whether Nick Lachey really made out with that girl in Vegas. I love trashy gossip, silly speculation and bogus reports about things that don’t matter.

I am one of the cogs that keep the celebrity machine running.

I know I should be embarrassed about this, but I’m not. I’m too busy being fascinated by the phenomenon. After all, I’m a lifelong feminist and ideological hippie who once shunned all mainstream magazines and television shows for my own mental health. I partly blame western culture for much of the misery of 12-year-old girls everywhere. I’m still angry at Seventeen magazine for the back-to-school issue I read before seventh grade, which convinced me that if I didn’t have straight blond hair, stretchy black leggings and tortoise shell barettes, I’d never be popular (I didn’t, and I wasn’t).

And I still can’t read Cosmopolitan, Glamour or Self for more than five minutes. Either the glorification of celebrity and superficial beauty annoys me too much, or it starts getting its insidious grip on me until I wonder if I should weight 90 pounds and spend most mornings worrying about my crow’s feet (instead of, oh, I don’t know, making breakfast, painting, reading, having sex, cleaning the house, cleaning out my hotmail inbox or just about anything else).

So you’d think I’d hate Us Weekly, People and most certainly Web sites like www.thesuperficial.com even more. You’d think I’d be ashamed to admit I even know who Shar Jackson is, much less that I know exactly how she feels about Britney stealing her babbydaddy away.

But celebrity culture has caught my attention in a different way than other mainstream media has — and, lately, almost better than other media has. It used to be that I looked to movies and music to act out my fantasies for me, to voice emotions I couldn’t express on my own, to give me insights into my own life that were just out of reach. Cameron Crowe’s film Say Anything taught me what kind of boyfriend I wanted, for example, and “Something I Can Never Have” by Nine Inch Nails spoke the pain of teen angst better than I could myself.

Lately, though, it seems the great movies and powerful songs are getting fewer and farther between. For every Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there are five Cheaper by the Dozens. For every Nemo there are a million rip-offs. There aren’t even as many good mediocre movies as there used to be. And at the same time, either the lives of celebrities have gotten a lot more interesting than they used to be, or technology has given us more ways to hear about them. Suddenly, the lives of celebrities are more interesting, and more powerful, than the products they’re creating — for me, at least.

Rather than playing archetypes which help me understand myself and my community better, celebrities are those archetypes. And with all the crossover between genres (e.g. reading about Britney’s life is like a reality show about a pop star; but Britney also has a reality show about a pop star), the lines between what’s private and what’s performance has become more blurred anyway.

So in that vein, I announce to the world that, yes, I have spent 2005 paying attention to what’s happening in the homes and hotels of rich, famous and beautiful people I’ve never met and probably wouldn’t want to. And these people have some of the best stories I’ve heard all year. Here are some of the year’s best stories and most grotesque trainwrecks — and my guess about why they’re so compelling.

Move over Paris: The sidekick gets the spotlight

Like just about everyone else on the planet, I’m fascinated by Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton. Hilton is like this strange alien I can’t understand, and therefore can’t help but study. But Nicole Richie is the reason I still even care about this duo. Somehow, Richie has managed to wrestle enough spotlight away from her blond bimbo friend to make herself a media darling in her own right. The magazines covered her dramatic weight loss (“Is she anorexic?” they asked, but kept giving her attention for it) and style change (new stylist, they say), her engagement to the incredibly shrinking boy DJ AM and then subsequent break up, and the confusing deal she got to write a book and make a movie based on her charmed life. But it’s nothing she’s done, or even anything she is, that makes me like her. It’s purely the story of her ascent. As the weird, chubby, short friend of that annoying hot blond chick on The Simple Life, Richie entered the public sphere as the classic sidekick — except this sidekick has finally turned around and asked, “Why are you the superhero anyway? What makes you so special?” It’s Robin’s rebellion against Batman. It’s Stimpy stepping on Ren. It’s No.2 making Dr. Evil cry this time. And we love it. Because really, how many of us identify with the superhero? Aren’t a lot more of us the awkward, gawky understudy? The one who’s friend is the hot one, the smart one or the big success? And who doesn’t have a fantasy about showing up the person in whose shadow you’ve been forced to live? So I say, “Go Nicole.” At least until you’re truly a Queen Bee and I dismiss you as easily as I dismissed Paris.

Sex, lies and orphans

There are few things better than a good love story, and apple-pie Jennifer Aniston’s marriage to perfect-abs Brad Pitt was one of the best (and certainly better than any of the romantic comedies either has starred in). Both uncommonly gorgeous, both uncommonly rich, and both in the stride of their respective careers, Brad and Jen also seemed somehow down-to-earth, sincere and truly in love. Though I was never a particularly big fan of either actor separately, their union has symbolized the kind of pure, true, honest love I’ve always wanted — the kind I dreamed of as a kid. But their break up, including the addition of America’s sexpot, Angelina Jolie, is an even better story. The gorgeous homewrecker vixen. The heartbroken, but strong and graceful, jilted lover. The straying man you can’t help but not hate. There couldn’t be three more perfect players in this tragic triangle, as they come with built-in audience ambivalence. I can’t help but hate Angelina, the vixen with loose morals who seduced her married co-star. But I can’t help but admire her either, for her refusal to get serious until Brad’s marriage was over, her UN ambassadorship, and her heartwarming adoption of two AIDS orphans. Jen, meanwhile, is just so lovable and vulnerable. When I look at her, I instantly feel pangs of empathy, and instantly hate Brad and Angelina for her. But there’s also something annoying about her “I’m-the-victim” stance. And Brad. Oh, Brad. Is he really the poor neglected husband whose wife wouldn’t give him the family he deserves? Or was it, um, something else he was hoping Jolie would give to him? This trio are like a fantastic serial dramedy with cliffhangers after every episode — the kind of show that makes you wait all summer for the season premiere. I just hope it follows the arc I want it to take, with Brad and Jen reuniting happily at the end.

When Bubblegum goes bad: Teen queens get trashy

There’s something magnetic about a teen starlet: the youthful glow, the sense of endless potential, the shorthand symbol of “what kids are into these days.” I couldn’t take my eyes off Britney Spears every time she was on the screen. And a few years ago, you couldn’t help but think freckly red head Lindsay Lohan was cute and wholesome. But I didn’t really start paying attention to these bubblegum pop tarts until they started getting a little rougher around the edges. Britney started a few years ago, with admitting she’s less than virginal and her kiss with Madonna and the skimpy outfits on awards shows. But this year she took the cake: the tacky T-shirts, the loser boyfriend-turned-deadbeat dad, the greasy hair and fast food, the insta-pregnancy after the shotgun wedding and the obnoxious reality show that revealed Britney and Kevin as both stupid and boring. And Lohan must have learned her lesson from Britney, not waiting through a couple records to go from sweetheart to sleeze. This year has been all about her break up with Wilmer Valderrama, her crazy partying with Paris Hilton, the weight loss attributed either to anorexia or to cocaine addiction (with neither being particularly teen sweetheart-like), and the two car accidents she’s blamed on paparazzi. These girls are the embodiment of our own ambivalence about youth, beauty and success: we love and hate them because they’re perfect, and then we love and hate them when they fall from grace.

There were so many other fantastic celebrity stories this year: Tom Cruise and his brainwashed wife-to-be, Katie Holmes (otherwise known as the end of Holmes’ career as we know it); the split between Jessica “I’m either brilliant for playing stupid … or I’m really just dumb as nails” Simpson and Nick “Please, God, let me make money on something other than this stupid reality show” Lachey; the strange rise of ugly duckling sister Ashlee Simpson and her very public fall on Saturday Night Live; and the trainwreck that is scruffy Ben Affleck, charmless Jennifer Garner, downward-spiraling Jennifer Lopez and just-plain-creepy Marc Anthony.

And though none of them truly matters in any important way, though none is taking me to a higher plane for knowing about them, all have helped get me through 2005. They’ve distracted me from the tsunamis that tore apart Southeast Asia and the mudslides that took people I loved in La Conchita. They’ve taken my mind off a war I feel powerless to stop and a government I feel embarrassed to live under. I haven’t ignored Hurricane Katrina, the nomination of Samuel Alito for Supreme Court, or the scandals surrounding Tom DeLay, but I’ve been grateful for my mindless escape from those topics.

I never thought I’d say it, but I’m grateful for gossip-mag trash. And if things in the world remain this dismal, and the mainstream media doesn’t start filling the void soon, then I hope it keeps coming.

Read what my friend Ivor Davis has to say about all this.

Comments

[Steve]

This made me think of a quote from Mike Davis in the March '06 issue of Esquire:

"The ultimate trajectory of fandom is to kill and devour the celebrity deity."