An American Tragedy

The Britney Spears affair is the ultimate death of Rock And Roll. A teenager who was just having fun and enjoying life, making money with her hard work. I already mentioned, and confirmed with proof, that she's the artist of the decade and her everyday struggle to just stay alive and sane demonstrates she's already inside the history books of popular art. We buy her records, we read about her in magazines and papers we buy as well. She became a piece of entertainment with her own drama. I can compare her with Marilyn Monroe, Maria Callas and even Kurt Cobain and the difference wouldn't be big. The late artists found dead too soon and it seems Little Miss Brit is on her way. Britney helps the economy of the U.S. by making photographers sell their pictures to European publications, keeping the dollar afloat. Britney is as important as a Wall Street Broker.

I think Andy Warhol would have loved her, if he had lived to see her meteoric rise, her domination of the media, and fall. Warhol would have photographed her face and painted it in red, then pink, then black. a Britney becoming a woman, using her body to seduce men, marry one and bear his children like a woman is supposed to do, and then breakdown in an ocean of alcohol and mountains of pills and coke. Andy Warhol wouldn't ask her why because he would know the answer. He would ask her about her kids... What made her lose control? What about her own well being? Is this suffering necessary to make a point?

If we are obsessed with her, in good or bad ways, it's because we see ourselves in her behavior. In less than a decade she's become America's sex symbol and also the sign of its decadence. Again, Britney represents the fall of the Rock And Roll artist: The worst shit she could ever have said, worse than "fuck you, Kevin," was "I support president Bush in his war against terror [by invading Iraq]." A young artist that doesn't question establishment and has thousands, millions of followers, is a dead one already. I can forgive Britney for not wearing underwear and hanging around with Paris Hilton (another beautiful, famous girl, but way different... maybe I'll talk about her later), but I can't stand a musician who betrays the true spirit of rock and roll, or pop if you want to name it, and tells me war, a fictitious one, is OK just because we're paranoid.

See what I mean? Again, this is the my decade, the YouTube generation, the Ipod Era. And Britney Spears, dead or alive, hot or not, is the quintessential artist of these personalized and isolated times.