SELLING YOUR SOUL AT THE CROSSROADS
Or a response to Dave’s piece below on Beyonce’s stabs at diversifying via the movie business. For some strange reason Hollywood is showing little of its usual caution in these matters what with the loosely themed Eminem biopic and Britney’s starring vehicle hitting our screens this year. Post Glitter they must all be worrying a touch. There we had a loosely themed biopic of Mariah Carey, missing out the key point that she married the bloke in charge of the largest record company in the US, and adding that she had a hand in pretty much every piece of dance music that came out of the States in the 1980’s. At least Mariah has been around the block a bit (to much?). A loosely themed biopic of Britney before she was famous should surely only fit a short film.
Calling it Crossroads has already killed any credibility the movie could have in the UK. The studio is thinking “coming of age drama, Britney reaches the Crossroads between girl and woman“, we are thinking “grotty motel based soap opera set outside Birmingham“. It is when you delve further into the project the height of Hollywood’s misunderstanding of Britney’s popularity really shows. Pop allows us the extravagance of our own pop filled fantasy. The tunes (Baby One More Time, Lucky and particularly Oops) allow the teenage girl a degree of identification with Britney whilst then leading us on to aspiration of being Britney. By showing Britney as an ordinary teen girl the first half of that equation is solved at the expense of the second half. A plot like Glitter (girl next door becomes superstar) also fails because the transition lacks verisimilitude. The casting couch is removed, the artist is shown as having complete control over their career – and we know this is not the case with Britney or Mariah.
Pop allows us to have the contradictory beliefs about the star, to entertain seperate fantasies because it has no consistent narrative. The linear effect of a movie leaves us with just one image – at least until Britney makes another film. And it is not that clear that the audience want to see a comic/serious road/coming of age movie staring their glamourous idol being them, when they would much rather be her. Hollywood beware.
Not to mention suggesting the fact that Britney is spawned from the loins of Dan Ackroyd should in any sane world be enough to end her popularity straight away.