Reading Response: EXILE part 2

The Exile of Britney Spears Ch 8-15
Christopher R. Smit

We have already established how we as a culture created and consumed Britney Spears. We consumed everything about her and exploited her as a person for our own entertainment and political (power) purposes. In this relationship between Britney and I, guess who holds the power? Me, the consumer. Our society has taught us to consume anything and everything as product; this does not exclude Britney Spears. This all sounds a little weird and uncomfortable, stating that we consumed Britney the way we consume cookies. Perhaps it is easier to say that we consumed Britney the way we consume, say, a Barbie doll. The fact that Britney was literally objectified and produced into the form of a miniature doll, says a lot about this relationship between us and Britney. We hold the power. Just as we can litterally buy a Britney doll and hold it our hands, play with it and manipulate it, we have also been manipulating Britney Spears the person. Using this idea of Britney as our manipulated product, explanation can be offered for the huge down fall we witnessed in her career. We let Britney make her own decisions and those decisions led her to become less "perfect." In her becoming pregnant, this young innocence which we had associated with her dissolved. Her body became physically less like a doll and more like a real women with the advantages of larger breasts, but a bigger, "used" body. We didn't like this and sent her into exile for it. We rejected her, but not completely - still using her as a point of ridicule and gossip, but not using her for her sex appeal any more.

But guess what, Britney's back! On our terms that is. Whether or not she fully understands the power we as a society and the media have over her, she will act in just the way we want her to. If she doesn't we know what happened last time. Just in case you are not on quite on the Britney's-back-band-wagon, lets just say that a few other people are... Who's top of the Google + charts?

In the process of trying to find out what other celebrities have been made into Barbies, I found myself on the Barbie website. I would encourage you to check it out, it is pretty fantastic... http://www.barbiemedia.com/?subcat=7

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you think our contemporary society turns people into commodities more or less than it used to?
2. Who do you see having the potential to be the next Britney? The next big cookie for us to spit out of our mouths?