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While I find Ms. Traister’s knowledge and insights around popular culture increasingly to the point, I’m not at all convinced that her impressions of what may be driving Ms. Spears’ behaviors are exhaustive, as they seem to suggest that Ms. Spears is essentially incapable of agency and anger, ie. of saying “fuck you” to an audience and public which has, in effect, been chronically abusive.
Is it possible that, quite apart from either “cheerfully submitting” as a “victim” or as “addled” (interpretations which continue to pathologize her), Ms. Spears was, in fact, so much in control that evening (“Subsequent reports seem to indicate that Spears insisted . . .”) that what we are actually reacting to is our own discomfort at not being delivered what we expected, as we have grown accustomed?
Is it possible Ms. Spears is not quite who we think and want her to be, and that the annoyance and anger she elicited in us was intended, and was expressed unreflectively but succinctly by the NY Post’s observer who wrote with barely contained injury, It was ridiculous . . . The production people at MTV were freaking out . . . Nobody can tell Britney what to do anymore. No one can control her. She is a mess. ?
