Elvis.
I've always hated Elvis. I could never really explain why. He was dead almost four months before I was dropped into this world, so you'd think there would be no need for me to have any grudge. But, I do.
For a while I thought it was because my Aunt loved him. Apparently, immediately after my birth and for years after, she said I was the second coming of Elvis. I didn't remember this until my mom reminded me, but apparently I was a bit of a smartass when I was a kid and when my Aunt (for what turned out to be the last time) reiterated her theory about the second coming, I mused (as much as a 7 year old can muse I suppose), "I'm not the second coming of him, I'm the first coming of me." (This story is probably a little apocryphal as my Mom has a tendency to remember me a little more clever than I probably was.) So, I started off on the wrong foot with him.
I remember hearing his music on the oldies station my parents used to like to listen to and just wondering what the fuss was about. And that hip-shaking, gyrating, or whatever that was supposed to be so controversial, (which by today's standards is really quaint) never really struck me as interesting. And his movies. Oh, jesus.
But I didn't come here to throw some shit on a long-dead icon. (He was the first and credit should be given for that.) I came here because I have a some thoughts about Elvis and how I see him fitting into today's celebrity obsessed culture. And it all starts with Britney.
Is Britney Spears not the second-coming I could never be? A southerner from a small town makes good suddenly, shocks a lot of squares with a sexually provocative image, gets wooed by hollywood a little, develops a fanatical following, gets surrounded by the wrong people and the wrong substances, has ups, has downs, but comes back before it all goes down hill? I know people love the Marlyn Monroe angle more here (especially after the now almost-prophetic Lucky video), but to me she plays more as female Elvis. For one, I don't think Monroe ever fell out of the favor of the American people the way Britney has. For another, Monroe wasn't the cross-over star going from music to movies. And both Elvis and Monroe suffered from the insecurities that people seem to associate mainly with Monroe.
Either way, Elvis and Monroe both have their similarities (namely innocence corrupted, as Elton John tells us) and maybe Brit's a bit of both. I don't know. But stay with me. If she is Elvis (and I realize he also went into the service, made many more movies than Britney and probably didn't fall as far as she did until he had that poop to end all poops) then she's gone through his life cycle of 42 years in 26 years. Except she didn't die. And I think a lot of people hate her for that.
I've read (mostly in Chuck Klosterman's books) about the "accelerated culture" we live in. But in addition to the acceleration, what strikes me is how predictable we want our stories to be. Sure, you can see it all the time in movie theaters close to you. But it's also true of celebrities and how we view them. And how they're made out in the gossip magazines. It's not just that Britney's the next Marilyn or Elvis because the comparisons are there, but also she's there because that's how she's covered. As soon as she came out, she made a big enough splash and the gossip magazines were looking for her to follow the Marilyn pattern. They started covering who she was dating, where she went, and what she did with such scrutiny. They started looking for the cracks. They didn't do it thoughtfully or maliciously. They're just not very creative people or they're attention seeking self-aggrandizers who roll in the dirt of other people's lives so we will think they're interesting. (I know they'll tell you they're just reporting this shit, but half the time they make shit up and a lot of the rest of the time, they're pushing people so hard and scrutinizing them so much and so loudly, they're asking, nay, begging for something "newsworthy" to happen.) And that's a real difference from the Elvis and Monroe eras to the "reporting" of today. We don't want to just see the car wreck, we want to see the look on everyone's face as the car goes careening off the road and into the pole. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, I guess. And it's not like she's helped herself out either. It does take two to play this game. Well and us all eating that shit up.
Anyway. I know now they're hatching this comeback story with her father running her estate and teaching children to dance. And maybe becoming a good mother. Yeah. They just rebooted and went with a bigger comeback story on her. Which is good, definitely better than having her die and then making memorial plates and shit. But, for a while there, you just knew they were begging her to die so someone could have the exclusive photos and the big interview with whatever anonymous source about how it was or wasn't suicide.
We sort of got a taste of how the magazines react with Heath Ledger. But the problem (from their point of view) with that was that he was more or less private. The magazines didn't get a chance to build him up one way or the other. And all the attempts to tell the "backstory" now just seems insensitive to people who admired him. (And it is.) If Britney had died, though, it would've been a scene. I'll bet some of the magazines had first drafts of the stories ready to go. But that fucking Britney didn't die.
I know people have said somewhere that had Elvis lived, he wouldn't have lasted and become the icon he is today. They've said the same thing about Kurt Cobain. I think Britney might be the test case for that argument. I don't know that she'll ever become more than the circus she has been turned into (with our help). But if she lives until Elvis' 42 and beyond there's no way we can forget about this the way we ignore the fat-Elvis days.
It'll be interesting, I guess.
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