Posted By BillHeise on September 16, 2010

I have written about Ms. Spears in conjunction with my post on the fabulous Miss Brooks. I thought I’d attempt it again because of my post earlier this week on Cramer v Stewart, for she gives us the same fundamental oppositional pair, which, in my previous post I said was the product of the problematical Enlightenment.

As you’ll recall, she went insane for a while and came in what I call her ‘post-hysteria comeback’ with the song ‘Circus,’ where she declares that

There’s only two types of people in the world
The ones that entertain and the ones that observe

This is in line with the Enlightenment principles of reason. Reason divides things up, and nothing is lost in the division. But her division puts me in something of a bind, because now I think I have to choose between two alternatives. Fortunately for me, Britney is thinking more about herself than me, so she chooses for herself.

Well baby, I’m a put-on-a-show kind of girl
Don’t like the backseat, gotta be first

I feel as though I am being judged myself when she gets around to talking about the ‘two types of guys out there / Ones that can hang with me and ones that are scared.’ Not wanting to be a scardy-pants,’ I feel I must chose to hang with the hangers-on crowd. She can drive me around anytime.

And where does she drive me? To insanity town that’s where. But at least she’s in charge on the insanity train. And that’s all that’s important, right?

Britney’s problems actually stem from her configuration of her place in the intellectual environment.

The Growth and Misguidance of Britney

I liked Britney when she first appeared on the scene with her video ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’:

She was a bit too young in my opinion to be so sexualized, but she was following the cultural drift which started in the 80s with Madonna and in the 70s with Serge Gainsbourg and Carolee Schneemann for the art lovers among us. And who am I to stand up against the forces of American culture. People can do what they want with themselves in this culture, even things that I think are bad for them. She made a lot of money playing the young virgin (until she got rich and tired of playing the young virgin). That’s okay with me, as well.

Britney’s Version of ‘My Prerogative’

But decisions people make are not without consequences, and Britney started paying for her mistakes in her libertarian construction of her universe as time went on. In what I call her ‘pre-hysteria phase,’ she recorded Bobby Brown’s hit single ‘My Prerogative’ (seen here in the ‘in bed’ version):

I love this song. I love her version of this song. I love watching her flop around on the bed for 3:30 during this song, while singing (bragging is more like it) about the fact that ‘people say I’m crazy.’

Britney (quoting Bobby) announces that

People can take everything away from you
But they can never take away your truth
But the question is..
Can you handle mine?

Okay, I would agree that people can take everything away from you. I learned this from my work on Boethius, who gets thrown in jail and has only useless Philosophy and his more useful faith in God to sustain him. And if she and Bobby are talking about faith, then I would agree with them. But it appears that they are talking about something else. They want to be able to do what they want to do.

Again, that’s okay with me. But you can’t expect me to believe that they are serious. And it turns out that I don’t believe the, Isn’t that the message of the song:

It’s my prerogative
Its the way that I wanna live
It’s my prerogative
You can’t tell me what to do

But they (Bobby and Britney) put their argument into a ‘real/unreal’ framework. Britney is real (she says so, and no one can or should or does doubt her):

Some ask me questions
Why am I so real?

Since she is real, (she says so) the threat to those who would interfere with her work, no matter how selfish and egomaniacal they may appear to us, is that they will be denying the God-given individuality of God-created individual Britney. We are not God; we are men; and so we submit. Britney, (following Bobby) has led us to an end in which there can be no argument without destroying the things that we believe and cherish in our heart of hearts.

It is a metaphysical position about the self itself. It is not a position that we can contest through science. We are all metaphysically real.

My question for Britney is whether she really believes that other people are ‘unreal.’ She well could if (for instance) we wanted to pose her Enlightenment position in ‘Circus’ with her Enlightenment position in ‘My Prerogative.’ Those who do not agree with her configuration of ideas are those who have a touch of unreality about them. This puts those who disagree with Britney (especially the conservative naysayers) in the position of not being real. And unreal people are people whose positions ‘real’ people don’t have to (and don’t) take seriously.

But there does indeed seem to be a problem with the life that Britney has chosen to lead. She’s nuts! (So, for that matter, is Bobby Brown). Should this matter to us? Perhaps not if we chose to believe that she has founded her argument on the rock unmovable.

Womanizer

But I don’t think that’s wise. We can get to the bottom of her problems by looking at another of her ‘post-hysteria phase’ videos, ‘Womanizer’:

‘Womanizer’ is another ‘I’m-in-control’ video, and it’s a great song. On the level of language and philosophical form, however, it leaves something to be desired.

The video opens on a naked Britney (the ur-Britney). Then the video travels through several (four to be exact) incarnations (with requisite costume changes) of Britney (each with a different hair color). This is supposed to tell us that she can change her look, but that underneath it all she is every woman (naked in a shower or sauna on an uncomfortable-looking ur-bench).

She sings of the difference between things fronted (surface things) and real deep things (she knows ‘just what you are’). This gives her power in her universe. She’s in control, not because she has real depth into her own individual character, but because she is able to (through costume and hair-color changes) change herself into ‘every woman’ who can see ‘just just what you are’ but whose attention to her own individuality may be skewed by a touch of insanity.

My Problem with Britney Mirrors My Problem with Joseph Campbell

That’s great if it’s true. Britney has driven argument back to the point where are no one can argue with her. She has won. She’s in control. Those who are interfering are bad unreal, bad people. QED.

Unfortunately, others in the past have also thought that they have had the ‘final solution’ to all problems that affected their culture. Hitler’s ‘final solution’ to the problems of Jews in Europe was to have them wiped out. Only with a fuller understanding were people able to get over the solid logic that led Hitler to his solid conclusions and men could see just how badly argument could be skewed away from the truth.

By singling out only Hitler’s ‘final solution,’ we are positioning ourselves in the metaphysical space of evil. It’s always (so the Bible tells me) wrong to kill, but questions of relative judgment have no absolutely final indicator by which we can take an adjective such as ‘longer’ and measure it against ‘shorter, in the way that we can describe and compare an imagined ‘triangle’ to an imagined ‘square.’ The two approaches are incompatible, because they approach two different things. One is metaphysical (absolute evil) and another is relative (length).

It is clear that Britney is taking herself seriously on a metaphysical level as an absolute person with absolute status to be allowed her prerogative. But when she does so, she must move out of her state as an individual (with one look and one hair color) to the state of every woman (with multi-colored hair). It is there (and I would ask where is there) that she gains the gifts for herself that she loses if she remains in her individual body.

This is that same position that Joseph Campbell takes in his Masks of God. The only way he can save the individual is to destroy the individual and his strong belief in God with a weak belief in many gods but no strong belief in any. The individual is saved, but at what cost?

Gaga’s Challenge

Maybe that’s okay. But then we get to 2010 and Lady Gaga’s meat dress.

One of my oldest friends was complaining on Facebook that Lady Gaga was just ‘shock for shock’s sake.’

Is it that I’m getting (or have gotten) old, or was that meat dress really, really disgusting? I’d like for my younger friends to comment on this e coli dress as I can’t really imagine anyone thinking this was anything but shock for the sake of shock.

I took a different view of the meat dress. Here’s what I said:

I don’t know what it says about me, but I like the dress (and Lady Gaga). Sure, she’s probably crazy and she’ll be a crack head in 5 years, but she’s not the first person to be crazy in the art world. People considered Zappa crazy. And Eric Clapton (and countless others) used heroin for his art. Both Bon Scott and Jimi Hendrix died in their own vomit. It’s what artists do! They explore the extremes! She is innovative in ways that NO ONE is innovative in a world where everyone is desperately trying to be innovative. Just my two cents.

At last, someone agreed with me (and thank you).

But then I started thinking about the meat dress in terms of my blog, and so I wrote this:

It’s a misuse of meat, and on that count I agree with you, but as art it’s amazing. She’s not, like Madonna was, purely looking to shock people with her boldness about allowing us to view more of her body. Lady Gaga is stretching our notions of what is and is not acceptable as fashion (what we use to COVER our bodies). She’s inverting a trope that goes back to Carolee Schneemann in the 70s: Is fashion ‘more than meat joy?’ Rather than pulling art from her naked body, as Carolee did, she uses fashion covering to ask the same question. It’s really quite clever.

I then posted another note referring people to my blog post on Carolee Schneemann. I know better, but I couldn’t help myself (and I’m sorry).

Now what strikes me about the meat dress is that it externalizes the interior that people like Britney want to take to insure themselves against outside influences. Britney can—following Madonna, Jane Birkin, and Carolee Schneemann—use their bodies to insure that their arguments will be the last arguments in history. They all think they have ascended to a plateau where argument is not necessary. Those who think so are merely those who have not ascended to the higher plane. They will wait for the masses to meet them on the higher ground, but they will not descend to their level. To do so would complicate their authority.

All of them have failed.

The meat dress places the same limits on thoughts that had once been thought to be beyond question. It places Britney’s argument within time and history, rather than outside of time and history as she herself thought when she copied it from Bobby (who also thought that).

Lady Gaga is not content to let Britney (or even Madonna) have their place without a challenge. She is undermining their (once-thought-firm) positions by inverting them. Inversion is her legacy from the Enlightenment, and so I suspect that it will also not be the last word on the body/meat cycle, but it is new, and being new will warrant consideration for a while, until, as always happens, someone invents a new and as yet unheard of body/meat/costume.

My question (as always) is how does Britney know that her argument about her prerogative (which she borrowed from Bobby Brown, who presumably borrowed them from the Declaration of Independence, who presumably borrowed them from…etc. etc.) What is the original ground of Britney’s borrowed thought?

I’m not sure I’m right, and I’m not sure it matters. But this is how I feel. And you are you (or anybody) to tell me different.

Categories: What I'm Listening to This Week
Tags: