I like that she actually changed her voice & stopped the sarcasm for a second to say hi to her fans. She knew we were the only ones who gave a ****. <3
What a truly peculiar moment in time. There was this intense desire for connection to our favorite celebrities, but social media (which would completely revolutionize the way celebrities share content and engage with fans) hadn't quite become a thing, and as a result celebrity culture dominated traditional media in a way it no longer does. People still talked about things like "the blogosphere" and these blogs were totally reliant upon photo agencies like X17 to capture every up-to-the-minute happening in Hollywood. Britney, of course, had been a fairly newsworthy celebrity for a number of years, but her world imploding just happened to coincide with this weird moment between the Internet dark ages and the approaching social media renaissance, and as a result, she became our singular obsession.
X17 will never have another "Britney". With channels like Twitter and Instagram at their disposal, modern celebrities create and control the story they want to share. There isn't a need for a constant media presence, because the celebrities themselves are constantly creating the media we consume. The paparazzo's role has been greatly diminished.
Here we see Britney playing for the cameras and making deals with photogs. She, too, was attempting to control the story and share a specific message (though she was more than a little misguided in her judgment of the team around her that pushed her to check into rehab), but that message was out of her hands the second it was filmed and disseminated to various media outlets — free to be altered and construed in whatever fashion. Would her meltdown have played out any differently had it occurred just a few years later? Would it have captivated us in the same way?
Those guys must miss the fat paychecks they'd get for any grainy footage they could capture of Britney.
The entire narrative of the Britney breakdown is really intensely scary, dark and I honestly shiver to think about what was really happening. Even now, to think is she happy with what she's doing? Is she in control? I know all that illumaniti stuff is wacko - but you have to wonder if something along those lines has occurred.
