A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation among women about someone whose skirt was so short that when she sat down her "Britney" was showing. Variations on this joke have appeared since paparazzi shot photos of Britney Spears "going commando," a popular term for appearing in public without the benefit of undergarments.
It is not uncommon in the history of language for new words to be created, or old ones changed, based on a person's name. The word "derrick," a machine for hoisting heavy objects, is thought to derive from "Derik," the name of a 16th-century English hangman. The word "bowdlerize," meaning to censor, comes from Thomas Bowdler, who removed the naughty passages from Shakespeare in an 1818 edition. And the word "lynch" comes from a Captain William Lynch, who in 1780 helped create a grotesque form of vigilante justice.
So to use a proper name to signify an object or action is a normal expression of linguistic creativity and change. But how have we reached the point in American culture when we can laugh collectively -- and without guilt -- at a troubled young woman suffering some form of addiction and mental illness, a callousness that allows us to associate her very name with sexual exhibitionism and depravity?
I am only now beginning to avert my eyes from the video images of Spears partying with her girlfriends, attacking or cavorting with paparazzi, driving recklessly with her children, shaving her head, performing in a stupor at an awards show and, most recently, being carted into custody after some kind of emotional collapse. The latest news includes a report that none other than Dr. Phil showed up to offer help. Perfect.
Hollywood scandals are as old as -- well, Hollywood. And I am old enough to remember the death of Marilyn Monroe, a sordid story that turned Monroe into an eternal icon, even though it contained elements of drugs, suicide, depression, sex, celebrity, the mob and a cameo appearance by the president of the United States. But Monroe was a full-grown woman in her mid-30s when she died, and her life and death have a kind of tragic dignity connected to them, especially in comparison to the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the tribulations of Spears.
One of the terrible side effects of America's celebrity and media culture is a pervasive cynicism about addiction and mental illness. The paparazzi, a name created by Federico Fellini for a character in the film "La Dolce Vita," are the bloodthirsty mosquitoes on the front lines of our gossip wars. But someone publishes the images they capture. The resulting buzz attracts not just the tabloids and cable news shows, but the gossipy sections that turn the mainstream into the meanstream media. As purveyors or consumers of such news, we are all complicit.
And here, for journalists, is the crux of the problem: While we linger beyond imagination on the dissolution of one young celebrity, mental illness is an almost invisible story in the American news media. I came to this conclusion after reading the book, "Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness," a Pulitzer finalist. In it, Pete Earley, an experienced journalist, reveals the terrible truths that should be on the pages of America's newspapers every day: that we have not progressed as far as we think from Shakespeare's day when the mentally ill prisoners of Bedlam Hospital were put on display as public entertainment.
Through the story of his own son, Earley reveals how the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill has led us to a place where jails have become the American Bedlam. "Jails and prisons," writes Earley, "are simply not safe or humane places for the mentally ill." Any reporter can go out on the street and come back with that story -- today.
Some will argue that troubled celebrities like Spears and Michael "Wacko Jacko" Jackson are victims of their own excesses and bad choices. In other words, they somehow deserve what they are getting, that we who have lifted them up have a right to tear them down.
But how does a person like Spears get to that terrible place where she now suffers? I am displaying in my office this week a framed image of Spears from when she was about 16 years old. It once hung on a wall over my daughter's bed. She is curled up on a love seat, staring at the camera, wild curly hair, pouty but sexy. She wears a white tank top, black leather shorts and high leather boots. Think of Lolita grown up to be a soft-core porn star. Now think of how many little girls dreamed of being her, and how many boys dreamed of being with her. The distance between the Mickey Mouse Club and parties without panties turns out to be not so great after all.
Here's how it seems to work: A talented kid is recruited into show business. At first she is just adorable, funny, perky. Think Hannah Montana. But behind the glitz, she has already been torn from her childhood and thrust prematurely into the world of adults. Before you know it, she's reached puberty, and to build her career she is encouraged to shed some of her innocence. The songs, dances, videos, images, become more suggestive. By 16, she has become completely sexualized by the culture. Every move, every gesture, every mistake in judgment comes under the most intense scrutiny. And we wonder, even as we let the spectacle wash over us, what went wrong.
In my day, another Mouseketeer was an object of desire. Her name was Annette Funicello, and we used to joke about how well she filled out her Mouseke-T-shirt. Then we saw more of her in those zany beach-blanket-bingo movies of the 1960s. Yet there were social forces in place that surrounded her -- and all of us -- with a safety net that saved us from the worst forms of exploitation.
Is there a way to cover the Britney Spears story responsibly? I'm no Puritan when it comes to gossip, and I've grown up reading the tabloids, but there is clearly a danger zone, when life and health are at stake, when the best thing the press can do is back off. That time for Spears is probably now. Avoiding the daily soap opera does not require journalists to abstain from critical and analytical pieces on celebrity, addiction, gender and mental illness. And perhaps the troubles of a particular celebrity might be an occasion to turn the camera away to the less intriguing but more important cases of mental illness in our own communities.
As for me, I'm keeping that image of Britney in my office for a while. I hope it will serve me as a symbol of regret, regret that a real person, a human being, is falling apart before our eyes; regret that I'm part of a culture that watches such destruction with prurient curiosity and the most mean-spirited schadenfreude; regret that, as I'm distracted by Spears, the mentally ill who walk by me every day on the streets of this city might as well be invisible.
Are you as outraged as Roy over the way the Britney story has played out?
A response to posts that seem to suggest there's no...
