Britney and Kevin - Chaotic

this is an example of someone in the age of reality TV stardom trying to take creative control. im not sure if i even understand the implications of this. Yeah, the show is awful, but its a new, possibly even important kind of awful.

well, if they are controlling the image, does that still make it reality television?

I was thinking you meant you drank polish, like floor polish! hehe.

jean baudrillard sez: "i like it!"

AND THAT'S THE FAIRY BELOW HER TRYING TO PROTECT HER AND I'M SUCH A DORK OMG WTF?!?!?!?!"

I ... I don't think that I'd like to ever watch that show again.

The part I watched was Brit filming her knees and saying "don't these look like boobs?" and then asking all of her peons what they thought about relationships. Now I love me some Britney and making fun of Britney, but it was really too banal to want to watch for very long.

Britney's Home Video: Plumbing The Depths

By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 18, 2005; Page C01

One sure thing about Britney Spears's new reality TV show: There's no danger of anyone ever dumbing it down. A dumber downer would potentially be lethal. It would have to be buried in lead for 10,000 years, like nuclear waste.

"Britney & Kevin: Chaotic," which premiered on the dispensable UPN network at 9 last night, was not made available in advance for critical review. After seeing the show on Channel 20, this critic can say that what seemed like a snub now appears to have been an act of charity. UPN was trying to spare us poor scribes a bad case of mal de mer.

Incredibly, Spears and hubby Kevin Federline took "credit" for the cinematography on the show, which was done by them on a standard-issue home video camera with more out-of-focus scenes, blurry wild pans and unintelligible visual gibberish than something shot by a 2-year-old child or a 100-year-old granny. Actually, there is no need to insult children and grandmothers here; the program was an execrable mess by absolutely any standard, though of course these days the idea of standards is just all too uncool.

Following in the tipsy footsteps of too many other rock and pop stars, Spears and her entourage decided they could turn the everyday blither and blather of their lives into a reality television show, with Spears asking "Can you handle my truth?" (the show's original title) once or twice during the hour. Her truth consisted mostly of footage of herself, close-ups so close that viewers could count pores -- except that almost no shots were held on-screen for more than a few seconds.

Then onto something else, like a view of two mounds accompanied by Spears's narration: "They look like boobs but they're not. They're my knees." Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh yes, there was lots of laughter, gales of it by Spears and her collection of assistants, hangers-on and suck-ups. In one of those categories we can put Federline, who Spears thinks is a "cute guy" (high praise) and "cool" and whom she dragged along on a London concert tour. Viewers were allowed only fleeting peeks of that.

The least that the smutty-mouthed, pudgy-faced brat could have done was to give her fans a musical number or two, but no. Entertainment was banned on the show, unless you count Spears gigglingly interrogating those around her with questions about "marriage and commitment and relationships . . . and stuff."

Federline, who has bad posture, no personality and wears diamond studs in his ear, didn't really figure in the proceedings (other than teaser sense at the outset) until 12 minutes into the show, when he was glimpsed on the phone in the back seat of a limo. Later, at their hotel, he was asked by Spears to philosophize: "I feel that love is love," he declared. "Love is a commitment." And, a moment later: "Love, it is what it is. It's everything. Everything."

"Magic happened," Federline said of the Monday he met Spears and briefly danced with her at an L.A. bar. Presumably this was stronger magic than that which inspired Spears's weekend marriage in Las Vegas last year (or was it last month?), a quickly annulled embarrassment to which she briefly and chirpily made reference.

Spears wasted much of the show terrorizing her staff. She also repeatedly asked her pals to describe their favorite sexual position, a needlessly tasteless touch for a star whose fans include little girls of 10 and younger.

It's scary to see those tots copying Spears's hyper-pelvic dance routines as they sing along with her records. Everyone laughs and says "how cute," but it can really creep you out.

Like the WB, UPN is a small network that keeps searching for a winning formula and ways of wasting time. "Britney & Kevin" plumbed new depths of shallowness. It was TV's non-event of the week. It was America's crummiest home video.

But, anyway, tell me more! Have they talked about the pregnancy yet?

reality tv in its truest sense would never be legal/aired.

reality tv in its truest sense would never be legal/aired.

OK, all reality TV is controlled. im aware of this. but, what makes this so different from other shows, is that the camera is physically controlled [albeit horribly] by the subject itself.

HAHAHAHAHHAHA, i cant stop laughing.

as for what i said above, about this show being some new important kind of awful, i still stand by it. i believe the show has only one more week to go, and anyone ive tried to watch this around reacts violently. and its not the sort of violence that usually accompanies people slagging off normal reality television. people are angry with britney, who appears to have completely lost touch with reality, and the only thing they truly enjoy is seeing this smug prick federline weasel his way into her million dollar panties. im really struck by how much the camera "work" reminds me of the blair witch project, except in this horror story, you get to see the villan. (fuck you kevin)

the reason she is the executive producer is the same reason one of her songs was titled "Not a girl (not yet a woman)": she cannot bear the thought of anyone thinking of her as anything other than what she thinks of herself. Its a sort of Facist Solipsism over the airwaves, and i feel bad for her. At first she wanted us to think she wasnt that innocent, and now she is trying to meld this sleazy federline into Nick Lachey while she tries to fit into Jessica Simpson's southern girl stupidity, all to make up for the fact that most of us realize shes fairly drugged up.

its all sad, but hey, i love watching car crashes as much as no one.

sure, there is no disaster to be seen on the show, but the show is pathetic. i keep thinking about pinnochio as i watch it. "i just want to be a real girl"...

The pre-teen thing isn't an argument for Britney fandom; it's just that those are the only people I can imagine whose experience is small enough to potentially find this stuff interesting, which they don't anyway. Anyone who's ever dated someone will find this unconscionably dull, I assume; the only possibility for interest would be if you truly had no concept of what it was like to sit in a hotel room with someone you're dating and be bored shitless and play around with a camera. WHICH IN REAL LIFE AT LEAST LEADS TO NUDITY.

hahaha

i mean, i have to completely agree with you. there is no interesting aspect of this show. a clever group of high schoolers could make a better show. but i am still interested in the slow crack-up of britney spears. christina aguleria isnt like this. jessica simpson isn't like this. why her? what in her mind could possibly justify a show like this. i mean, all around its a BAD IDEA. didnt she fire her manager a while ago? this is what i mean about creative control coming from someone who isnt really creative. Most starlets seem to be either happy with being told what to do, why not britney?

i do think some of this comes from a sort of generational obsession i have with her. i mean, if you were in high school when she first came out, she was THE girl, wasnt she?

Also, JD: I actually don't think it's entirely insane of her to think people might want to watch this. I mean, really, if photographers followed you around and tabloids made a big stink about your going into a bathroom without shoes on and people on the internet had whole discussions about how you bought a cheaped-out Radiohead CD, it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable -- within that little bubble -- to come to the conclusion that people were super-interested in everything you did. What she probably hasn't realized -- and this is maybe good news for her, mental-health-wise -- is that we're only interested in seeing her do stupid stuff we can tear her down for.

B: Omigod, are you filming this?
K: Yeah. I like your hat.
B: Remember, I bought it when we were in Spain?
K: It's cute. Show the camera that hat.
B: Like this?
K: Awesome.
B: We have so much fun together.
K: I can feel you opening your emotions up to me.

i have this fantasy of going back in time to high school, when she was, as you say, the SHIT, (even if arty indie kids like me pretended to roll our eyes at her), and i want to tell everybody this insane story about What Happens To Britney, culminating in her, drunk, barefoot at a gas station, married, twice, and pregnant half a minute later.

amazing how the world can change before your eyes.