The wrong side of capitalism

Hyperreality TV

I was watching Miss Universe on TV the other day, which featured a minute’s silence for victims of the Tsunami in Asia. The network took this to be an opportunity for an ad break. Incredible.

Anyway, I hope a British TV channel picks up Britney and Kevin: Chaotic. It’s a great example of why I like Britney Spears, making it clearer than ever that she’s an entirely virtual entity. By adopting the tropes of the most invasive reality TV (rambling personal conversation complete with uncomfortable pauses, Big Brother style; point-of-view camera shots) and even going beyond that (green night-vision video, a la the Paris Hilton sex tapes), while at the same time being manifestly scripted and ruthlessly edited, the show is a precise articulation of the idea that the ‘reality’ disclosed is simply nothing; that before socialisation and articulation (ie, before ideology), _all there is_ is a void. The fact that, in this instance, its a lovely Britney-shaped void, of course, is no bad thing either.

5 comments

1. My volume was up max and following your link then was very nearly the death of me.

   Does Britney’s pregnancy affect the abstraction of her existence in any way? Can she be a pregnant-Britney-shaped-void?

   Comment by leila @ 6/1/2005 9:29 pm

2. I suppose I’m theoretically committed to the idea that being pregnant doesn’t make her any more real. Actually, something as inherently corporeal as pregnancy is a perfect cover for her actual virtuality.

   Comment by Tim @ 6/2/2005 10:48 pm

3. Hey T-Unit - did you manage to get it off of a bittorrent? What do you use for American shows? I’m buggered since btefnet.net went tits up.

   Comment by Marty @ 6/3/2005 12:09 am

4. No, I was in America last week. The first episode appears to be on Torrent Reactor, though.

   Also, serendipitously:

   Britney Spears passes among us, too, disguised as a mortal. She has allowed herself to be reborn as a young, pregnant woman. Will her rough husband mistreat her? Will he lead her to damage? Vishnu and the other gods once gathered to accuse Shiva of being unworldly. You are always meditating, they said., what do you know of life? Shiva opened his eyes and interrupted his meditations and caused himself straightaway to be born into the body of a householder who was then at the point of death. He rose, the Shiva-householder, lived a life and then died. All this happened, for the gods before him, in an instant. Shiva spoke of his death and his rebirth. He smiled. The gods went away and left him in peace. So too with Britney Spears. Do not fear for her, you think to yourself. A god inhabits her.

   Comment by Tim @ 6/3/2005 12:21 am

5. That’s excellent actually. There *is* a talismanic power to her pervasive iconographic constructedness.

   Comment by Leila @ 6/3/2005 10:34 am

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