The Resurrection of B. Spears

The following essay is not meant to be blasphemous or scholarly. It’s simply an analysis of two historical figures which will seek to draw conclusions about how society deals and dealt with people in the public eye. Jesus Christ was born somewhere between the years 2 and 7 BC/BCE. Britney Spears was born on December 2, 1981. Jesus was the son of a carpenter, Spears the child of a former elementary school teacher and a building contractor. Nothing of their very early life would foretell of what was to come for these two people. However each would, in their own way, eventually become an icon for the culture in which they lived. Both would rise to a status which thrust them into the public eye. Both would reach a level of fame and notoriety few had accomplished before and both would eventually fall before their judges and meet their demise, be it literal or figurative. The following essay will draw logical connections between the lives of these two enigmatic and controversial characters, hopefully to discern the role the public played in their rise, fall and eventual resurrection.
The stories of both Britney and Jesus begin well before their respective baptism, but for our purposes we’ll begin there. Jesus was baptized in the desert by his distant cousin, John. It’s a source of controversy in the Catholic Church that Christ was baptized by John. The Gospel of Matthew recounts that John was hesitant to perform the baptism, and insisted that Jesus perform the rite. But Jesus persuaded John, and the ceremony marked the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Many member of the Catholic Church find it somewhat embarrassing that the future figurehead of the Christian church was baptized in the desert by a relative unknown.
Britney’s figurative baptism could be marked by her debut single, Baby One More Time. She was just 17 years old when it was released. As a teen in the music world, she sparked controversy with the video to that song and her naughty school girl costume. This song, and the album which would go platinum 14 times over, would mark her debut onto the international music scene. Britney began her career singing in the Baptist church of the town she grew up in. The song which marked her debut into the world of popular music caused quite a stir among the Church and other religious and conservative groups.
It’s the classic and cautionary tale of fame which tells of the temptation one encounters along the way. After Jesus was baptized he was lead out into the desert by God to fast for 40 days and 40 nights. During that time he was visited and tempted 3 times by the Devil. Each time he denied the temptation citing scripture of the Old Testament.
Britney was a virtual child in the entertainment industry. A sheep among wolves, if you will. Before she could really adjust to the fame she was caught up in the star-making machine. After her first album, she quickly followed up with another. She churned out hit after hit and was raking in money and fame hand over juvenile fist. It was inevitable that she would encounter temptation along the way. In 1999 she posed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in a photo shoot by David LaChapelle. ‘The American Family Association charged that the pictures, which showed Spears in push-up bras and a minuscule pair of shorts with "Baby" in rhinestones on the bottom, presented a "disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality" and asked that all "God-loving Americans" boycott stores carrying her albums’ (Wikipedia) At this point she also began dating Justin Timberlake, and despite her claims that she would remain a virgin until she was married she was reported to have had a sexual relationship with him.
This is where one distinct divergence between these two narratives arises: Denial v. acquiescence. Jesus was tempted by the Devil over and over during his time in the desert but he continually denied the temptation. Spears on the other hand seemed to barrel headlong into the temptations offered up by Hollywood and the music industry and wholeheartedly accept all which they had to offer.
Another key difference between Jesus and Britney could potentially help to explain the aforementioned point of denial v. acquiescence. Jesus had a very close inner circle of supporters. Firstly and most important Jesus always had God in his corner. At myriad points in the narrative of Jesus God comes to Jesus to offer support and encouragement. God is a tangible character in Jesus’ life and when Jesus is tested he has that presence to remind of the right path. Jesus also had a close-knight group of followers, the Apostles. Britney Spears was raised as a Southern Baptist. Some might say that she also had God in her corner, or so her preacher and church community might tell her, however that all gets pretty diluted when you’re uprooted from your family and moved thousands of miles away from that community. Britney had been a show-business kid well before she was actually in show business and that hectic lifestyle didn’t allow for much time for childhood friends, or close ones at the very least. Her family was probably her biggest supporters, but when fame and fortune comes knocking it’s anybody’s guess who will stick by you.
At the height of Jesus’ ministry he was preaching to audiences numbering in the thousands. For an itinerant priest, preaching to people hiding from persecution, that’s a pretty good crowd. Before Britney Spears she turned 20 in 2001, Spears had sold more than 37 million albums worldwide. Even at the height of their notoriety both Christ and Spears seemed drawn to a "questionable" element. Jesus often met with society's outcasts, such as the emperor's moneylenders. The Pharisees protested, saying that Jesus should spend his time preaching to the righteous. This was one of the very early cracks that began to form between the early followers of Jesus and mainstream Judaism.
In 2006 Britney Spears guest-starred on Will and Grace as a closeted lesbian. This role drew criticism from conservative Christian groups who were most likely already disillusioned by Miss Spears due to her sexually loaded stage performances and song lyrics. In 2004 Spears married her one-time backup dance, Kevin Federline who had recently been linked to actress Shar Jackson who was 8 months pregnant with their child.
These events and many more like them were fodder which would begin to fan the flame of disapproval that licked at the careers and lives of both Jesus and Spears. Both would be called upon to defend their actions to the world at large and both their lives would become public spectacle over which neither of them had very much control.
In the account given by the synoptic gospels, Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem during the Passover festival and created a disturbance at Herod’s temple by overturning the moneylender’s tables claiming that Herod had turned the temple into a “den of robbers” (Wikipedia and The Bible) He was later arrested by the temple guards and put to trial. He and his apostles were praying and in the garden of Gesthemane at the time of his arrest. The temple guards knew to arrest Jesus because one of his Apostles, Judas, had accepted payment to point him out. He signaled Jesus’ identity by kissing him on the cheek in sight of the guards. Jesus was put to trail, but Pilate, the governor found him guilty of no crime. He could not let him go free lest a riot ensue so he put the choice to the mob: they could vote to release one prisoner, the convicted murder Barabbas or Jesus. The crowd chose to release Barabbas. Jesus was to be executed.
On November of 2006 Britney Spears filed for divorce from Kevin Federline. From February of 2007 through September of 2007 Spears was in and out of various drug and alcohol treatment programs. As the legal battle over the custody of their children continued, many members of her entourage have been summoned to testify about her parenting skills. (Wikipedia) One such testimony came from one of Spears’ bodyguards “Fat” Tony Barretto which made allegations about her dangerous lifestyle and lackluster parenting abilities. Spears lost custody of her children to Federline on October 1, 2007.
Jesus was crucified by his peers on the Hill of Golgotha, and by all accounts died in the late afternoon. The details of Christs’ last day are gory and horrific to say the least. He suffered more physical, mental and spiritual torment than anyone should ever have to see in 1,000 lifetimes. After he finally died his body was moved to a tomb which was to be his final resting place.
Britney Spears suffered her own version of crucifixion. It may seem outrageous to draw a similarity between what Christ suffered and what Spears suffered, but to place the suffering of one human on a higher plane than the suffering of another human is a tricky thing. To make a judgment on the suffering of human beings necessarily says that one human life is more important than another. The vast majority of the human populace would say that Jesus Christ was more important than Britney Spears. At one time the vast majority of the human populace thought white people were more important than black people. The human populace is a strange entity.
At one point in her life Britney Spears was one of the most beloved and sought after performers in the history of music and stage. She was idolized by millions of teenagers and lusted after by probably billions of the denizens of the internet. After that she had two sons. She was wealthy and beautiful and she had at least two people in her life that for the time being would love her unconditionally. She had “it all”. But for whatever reason she felt the need to single-handedly destroy it. She lost her music career, she lost many of her fans and she lost her sons. Each day she would look in the mirror and see everything that she was and had and all that she had lost. And then she would turn on the TV and the radio and go on the internet and read a magazine and the newspaper and she would see it more. She was most likely and alcoholic and a drug addict. She may have suffered from mental illness. But it can be argued that at least the substance abuse was brought on by the pressure to stay at the dizzying levels that she had achieved and the mental illness could have been caused be falling from that height. I personally cannot imagine the suffering that this woman must have gone through. And the worst part, to my mind, was that it was her and her alone that got her to the top, and it was also her actions and hers alone that brought her down so low. On January 31st a judge placed Spears under co-conservatorship of her father James Spears and Attorney Andrew Wallette, giving them complete control of her assets. (Wikipedia)
During Jesus’ trail he was asked if he was the King of the Jews. His reply is ambiguous, and some gospels translate it as “It is as you say.” That was enough of an admission of guilt for the accusing priests and the public at large to warrant his crucifixion. Before he was crucified he was imprisoned and the Roman soldiers tortured him. As a joke on of the soldiers created a crown of thorns for him and placed it upon his head. The crown worn by the King of the Jews was created by someone else. The title King of the Jews was put in his mouth and his admission to hold that title was coerced and his words twisted.
Britney Spears was crowned the Princess of Pop by the media and the entertainment industry. With her impressive record sales, and Grammy award numbers it was a well deserved title. However, when her life started to go awry the same people that put the crown on her head were only too happy to throw it in her face later on. Just as Jesus’ title brought nothing but a painful crown and his ultimate death, Britney’s title, in the end came back to bring her nothing but the memory or what she was and the realization of what she had lost. It brought her to the moment of her ultimate spiritual and emotional crucifixion.
Needless to say, it’s a cognitive leap to assume the similarities between Jesus Christ and Britney Spears. But how much of the vast difference that we perceive between them is actual fact? How much of that was part of their actual life and how much of it was created by external factors? It’s possible to assume that the role that each of them plays in the world and history at large is nothing more than iconography created by society. Jesus became the icon of the Christians and Britney Spears became the icon of the evils of excess getting too much too fast. Vanessa Grigoriadis reported in "The Tragedy of Britney Spears" (2008), her cover story for Rolling Stone, that "more than any other star today, Britney epitomizes the crucible of fame for the famous: loving it, hating it and never quite being able to stop it from destroying you." Did either of them ever ask for these labels or roles? Jesus at no point ever actually called himself the King of the Jews, and Britney Spears, although she worked hard a tried to achieve fame and success at no point asked to become the epitome of the crucible of fame and success.

After Jesus was crucified and laid to rest in his stone tomb, a number of his apostles were headed to the town of Emmaus to eat dinner. Jesus appeared to them, but at first they could not properly see that it was him. Later while having supper at Emmaus "their eyes were opened" and they recognized him.

Recently pictures of Britney Spears began to surface in which she looked really good, more like her old self. The Britney Spears of In the Zone. Said the writer of The Superficial “Britney Spears hit up Vegas over the holiday weekend and, Jesus, she looks surprisingly awesome. I guess being deemed mentally unstable really does shed the pounds. Who knew? Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to explain to my confused penis it's not 2001 again. At ease, soldier!” She has regained visitation rights to her 2 sons, and she’s successfully completed her treatment program. Spears was asked to appear at the VMAs, but a backup act was arranged in case Britney reverted to her old tricks. Britney appeared, looking beautiful and won 3 awards including Video of the Years.

“But, in all seriousness, I hope Britney Spears appreciates my enthusiasm. There's no greater compliment you can give a woman than "Hey, nice rack." Chivalry: it's what's for dinner.” – The Superficial

Later while having supper at Emmaus "their eyes were opened" and they recognized her.