Oct

9

Britney Spears’ Princess Diana Shrine: Through a Looking Glass, Darkly

October 9, 2007 |

Apparently Britney Spears has become obsessed with Princess Diana. After building a shrine to the People’s Princess (whose death in a Paris tunnel ten years ago is now the cause of a solemn, strangely belated inquest), Britney Spears now thinks she shares Diana’s destiny.

The hysterical shrilling about a Britney Suicide Watch actually does seem warranted– she is manifestly unstable. But this story does not even ascend to the level of the sad, stupid, strange resonance between Marilyn Monroe and Anna Nicole Smith.  “The second time as farce” only applies when something happens the second time, and while Britney may achieve her own status as pop culture mythic icon, it won’t be as a new Princess Di.

britney_spears_giving_birth.jpg
Britney Spears, Giving Birth to Sean Preston
(Sculptor: Daniel Edwards)

MSNBC news-celeb Keith Olbermann (or his caption writers) cleverly dubbed Spears the “People’s Pop-Tart“. Personally, I’ll opt for “Diana’s Ditzy Doppelgænger.” Britney herself might have come up with it– if she could spell Doppelgænger. Or if she could spell “ditzy.”

To take this to a higher intellectual level: why are people so determined to work themselves into analogies with history? I suppose such narratives allow people to make sense of their lives, but you might as well accept George W. Bush’s belief that he is somehow the second coming of Winston Churchill, that World War IV, currently playing out in Iraq, is in fact World War II 2.0, and that today’s descendants of the Greatest Generation are in fact something more than the Fattest Generation.
Britney, like George W., looks forward to being gazed upon by the face of history, but is too dumb and deluded to realize that she’s just looking in a funhouse mirror.

One more thought: at least Britney was ultimately forced to leave her children behind– with their father, GED holder K-Fed (a.k.a. Kato Kaelin 2.0).


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