Hit Me Baby One More Time
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HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME Miriam Kongstad 1 Can you handle my truth? Britney Spears casually plays around with a new camera, occasionally focusing on others, but largely keeping the lens on herself. 2 An animal is born in the wild. Andrew Wallet are appointed conservators. The conservatorship extends Britney Spears is born in 1981 in McComb, Mississippi and raised in past managing Britney Spears’ estate to approving any minor purchase or 1 Kentwood, Louisiana, in a low-income household. driving a car. In 2020 the conservatorship is still in effect. The animal is studied by scientists. The animal lives under increased surveillance and complies with expectations to prevent conflict. From early childhood Britney Spears receives singing and dancing lessons with a professional career in sight. Britney Spears releases five further solo albums, including Black Out which is released shortly after her infamous shaving. On the cover she appears with long black hair. In 2013, Spears takes up a four year long residency in The animal is caught. Las Vegas and performs the show Britney: Piece of Me over 250 times. In 1993 at the age of 11, old Britney Spears becomes a member of The All- Despite the show's major commercial success, it is still described to be New Mickey Mouse Club, a children’s variety show which aired on the looking backwards rather than forwards.2 Disney Channel, with a cast of mostly teen performers. Activists protest against animal captivity. The animal is displayed in a zoo. The #freebritney movement is formed by journalist and comedian Tess Britney Spears is recognised as an auspicious pop star. Barker and Barbara Gray in 2017. In addition to running a weekly podcast series scrutinising Spears’ life and activities on social media, they organise a The animal becomes a main attraction and gets its own enclosure in the zoo. number of protests and demonstrations against Spear' conservatorship.3 Britney Spears declines to perform in the girl band Innosense and aspires to a solo career. In 1999 she releases her first solo album. The animal suffers from depression and extra precautions must be taken in order to make it perform again. The animal escapes. In 2019, Britney Spears is caught by paparazzis whilst driving a car After releasing four solo albums, giving birth to two children and filing for unlawfully. Shortly after she is coerced by her conservators to re-enter a divorce in 2007, Britney Spears shaves off her hair and attacks a paparazzi psychiatric ward. The same year Jamie Spears is accused of abusing and his car with an umbrella. The events become world news and Britney Spears’ children. A court case which concerns ending the speculations arise about Spears suffering from mental illness. conservatorship begins and remains in process in 2020. 4 The animal is caught and restored. In 2007 Britney Spears is also kept in a psychiatric ward, loses custody her children; is declared legally incompetent and is eventually placed under court approved conservatorship. Her father Jamie Spears and the lawyer 3 Scared to love you Britney Spears’ relationship to her career has progressed to the point where Spears reveals that she loves it. However, after criticism is provoked, Spears closes up somewhat about her feelings and returns to the cameras as comfort. 4 Let’s start by zooming into the mind and bedroom of a teenage dream because here is to be found a synthetic portrait illuminating a long-lived scheme one that leaves me with both fascination fears and tears it’s a form of erected desire - it’s the face of Britney Spears a component in the motor oil greasing the gears of a spectacular machine with a nauseating smell of honey seducing me to spend that pocket money listen! the pop song holds a tune that ties a grip a form of involuntary companionship which every day squirts out thousands of repeated messages defining all of those premises that we do not look young enough slim, white and willing enough messages that come to us carried by the boiling steam pumping out of the spectacular machine bearing no reprieve5 5 Sink your teeth deep into that blazed blondie’s face taste the flesh of a woman about to fall from grace and even if you might think to yourself that her image ain't gonna burn a heart out you’ll see that this bonfire is devout let’s imagine for a moment the machinery would pause from its grind and if so I would ask you to slip deep inside that very eye of your mind to see what you then find when you’re there do remember that the Young-Girl is not always young she just hacked the hourglass the day she embraced to get stung resenting ageing as a crime of disgrace6 she wears the mask of her face7 and through her enveloping whole she becomes a form of educational patrol when she giggles she’s working8 feeding not merely the paparazzi behind a tree lurking emblematic as a business not a soul felt by many yet often laborious to unroll but don’t look back in anger, don’t you look back in anger I heard you say9 with a whipping tone of positivity in the moment when I am brushed off as an angry woman yet again 6 The potency of the erupted icon is a form of autopilot dialysis fulfilling a predetermined role she seems to arrive packaged with reflexive extol and all of a sudden she wasn’t merely hanging on a wall as a poster but imperceptibly shaping the very eye of the mind from the get-go Britney compressed a narrative which is you can be like me and I guarantee it will make you happy and loved and attractive while roaring like a Pavlovian Dog10 turning the mechanic steam into fragranced smog her visual appeal to the sensation of desire is a trick worthwhile to admire as the memory of her body alone is able to generate a drooling sensation within a single tone If a nice dress is the promise of a beautiful body Britney is the promise of a beautiful life.11 7 I wish as a teenager I had thought lucky that my lips not only mumble lucky that my hips are spare and fumble lucky that my breasts are small and humble so you don’t confuse them with mountains12 ‘cuz I don’t wanna be that pretty faced girl on the poster squeezed in between flocks of men lying tightly under a boaster flesh without sensation like a cheaply sold roaster for Friday night’s family dinner but oh I did not I was blissfully unaware that the beautiful is always bizarre on un-reality TV if not I would have understood that just be natural and carefree didn’t really mean what it seemed to be in due time I could have reached for the command key and modified my recognition in this blond front figure leading a form of vanilla warfare backed up by fitness as today’s natural healthcare and scuffed at a smile is the best makeup any girl can wear13 when I was told to behave 8 I am the reason they exist15 but I know it might be born out of fear of ending on a blacklist the dread of being the one who ain’t ever getting kissed it is indeed a violent passage to grow through girlhood this has to be underlined I can’t afford to be misunderstood yet the hardest part is that those patterns are passed on through a stream of love transmitted through the breast milk like a protecting boxing glove I came to understand the celebrity as the consumer and the producer above all a major seducer mothers wishing daughters the best of life the consumer of producers which often boils down to becoming someone’s wife as well as the producer of consumers14 what needs to be reproved and reprogrammed so who is it then employing all of those rumours? is how the internal voice is damned which undoubtedly is the hardest job of all the answer is women voluntarily making your own bloody flesh crawl women are the ones who buy them but take those smokey Torches of Freedom and swallow them with your quinsy self-affirmation through somebody else’s mayhem throat16 to test if that sales strategy gratifies the gloom of your guts or if it might denote women are the ones these narratives are aimed at an effect which is merely skin-deep a way to clean feet on our own doormat 9 It’s full on, it’s right on it, it flashes like strobe lights, enough to make anyone get an Following the pale figure with rapid steps, trying to get close, trying to get up front. It’s epileptic attack. Pine trees lit by flashes. It’s pitch black otherwise, so the focus is a residential area, that’s clear now. A long, typical evergreen hedge. Cars honking clear and sharp when flashes are shut out in the dim night. A head with no face intensely, big dogs barking around. The handbag dog remains quiet. Is it trained so? emerges. It’s grim. A pale figure with no face in the darkness, approaching frontally. Is it even alive? The sound is deafening but local, like the inside of a beehive, There’s a white hat, a greyish sweater with a hood and some long black hair. The pale approximating like an ominous storm. From below the edge of the flashlight figure turns their head slightly.