Spears of Destiny (44" x 60") by Paul Baines is the eighth limited edition print in the Indoor Street Art series available here. Britney Spears, temporarily insane pop idol to the masses has been a veritable money-making machine for the commercial music industry (almost) since her childhood. Driven to the edge by a combination of success and excess, Britney's PR people have attempted to erase her recent failings from the annals of pop history, treating her mental health as a mere chink in this particular celebrity's armour. However the public cannot easily forget either the manic depressive episodes that have charted this woman's career, nor the pressures the media have placed this woman under over the years. I am sure few but her most ardent fans have much pity for her, but it is worth considering this – which is the real Britney Spears?

A) The Bald Headed angry girl punching paparazzi photographers and hitting cars with an umbrella.

B) The highly manufactured princess of pop the public have been presented with before and since.

This is truly a biography of car crash television. Britney is an unwilling martyr to greed and corporate domination. Britney is a product unlike no other, her recent performances both on and off the stage show a human being in emotional turmoil, her inability to mime to her own tracks, her lack of co-ordination as a dancer, her glazed over appearances as interviewee on mainstream TV with her new Prozac stare, all lead to the question – which is the real Britney? Perhaps her temporary insanity was the nearest to the real Britney that the public will ever witness.

I have based this image upon the famous statue and shrine dedicated to Joan of Arc at The Reims Cathedral. Joan of Arc, (c. 1412[2] – 30 May 1431) also known as "The Maid of Orleans," a national heroine of France and a Catholic Saint. As a young girl she managed to convince the French Army during The 100 Years War that she could and indeed lead them through several victorious sieges. However her visions of God were later denounced as heresy and she was burned at the stake.

It would be almost 500 years before Joan of Arc would be beatified and later canonized. in the meantime she was burned at the stake The public have and always will be led by popular opinion, if enough people believe in the propaganda, be it positive or negative it will become the truth. The Media have merely accelerated the process and their subjects of interest do little to deserve the attention, life is exaggerated to the degree that "stars" must aspire to be super human, they cannot make mistakes, they cannot suffer from ill health, and they certainly can never let down their doting public. The stakes are purely monetary now, the achievements for the most part illusory but the power of perception remains as strong as it always has.

The veneration of the individual is in itself a form of cultural heresy, a false religion if you will. No human being is perfect, only the perfection of the image by a corporate controlled world wide media can be perfected and only on the surface. Beyond all reason in certain circumstances, until no individual human being can match the impossible standards set. Most people in most walks of life have suffered illness at sometime, some of them mental illness. Mental health is a precarious state to regulate, to a degree it is based upon public perception, for many in many cultures it is even a taboo subject. Lunatics cannot sell soft drinks, insanity, real-life insanity is cannot be pitched as "sexy", and as with many ghosts in the machine, the real Britney has been swept aside in a clamber for more money, more advertising deals, and of course more promotional videos and tours. She is not a heroine and fame is not a religion, and the Media has no true power over the people unless they accept its divine will. Which they do, always, and forever. Britney is damaged goods, her mind has been broken by the very same process that she has been forced through yet again, the Media will always salvage the wounded if the stakes are high enough, however false the iconography it can and will persist at all odds.

Spears of Destiny (44" x 60") by Paul Baines is now available as a limited edition print. To purchase this work please click the button below.

This post is tagged Britney Spears, Celebrity, fame, Hollywood, Joan of Arc, mental health, paparazzi, pariah, pop, Pop Art, PR