Constructive criticism of Ms. B. Spears
Sarah Wood in the Sunday Herald (Scotland)
and Colin Paterson with a less constructive, actually ungallant and mean, critique, in the same paper
-
It's true that celebrities are more artifact than person, and it's true that as a celebrity Spears has benefitted materially from her position as icon and role model for a generation of young women and girls; but she is one of those girls, and she's one of those young women as well. She's inhabiting, and exhibiting, the female soul of the world.
The problems aren't originating in her. And attacking those problems with scorn levelled at someone in her position is weak and ultimately misguided, if the goal is to make a better world from this one, or even just better art.
Trivial noise and images, but I'll bet there's a lot of worried moms out there still, whose daughters couldn't get enough of their idol and her image and noise.
Does she have a responsibility equal to the power of her celebrity?
I think so, but I don't think it's a responsibility to move to the commands of the politically correct and their own dim-witted ideas of what art should be and do.
What she is, like any true avatar, is what we are.
And her responsibility is to that.