It's Britney, Bitch
American society made a pop princess into a monster.
If you missed the screening and Q&A of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950) at the Philosophical Research Society, you are in luck! It has been rescheduled to Sunday, April 6th, and tickets are available now. Just click the link here, and I hope to see you there!
On May 23, 2024, Twitter user @Wangleberry sent out a request asking people to share what they called their “load-bearing posts” – the perhaps less viral, but more personally significant social media posts that have “lived rent free” in the individual mind. I’ve recently been unable to stop thinking about mine, which user @wtflanksteak posted on May 3, 2024. Listen, I’ve been liking these new pop girls and their disco-lite music but we were in the car and “Drive Me Crazy” by Britney Spears came on the radio and that song is fucking rocket powered. They simply do not make them like that anymore. What happened to production????
Perhaps the reason as to why I couldn’t – and cannot – stop thinking about her point is because she’s absolutely correct. They simply do not make them like Britney Spears anymore. I’m not sure that they did before, either.
In the year (!) since I’ve launched this platform, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a Sacred Monster almost as much as I’ve been explaining it – via my writing here, my lectures and speaking engagements, and in casual debates with friends.
A Sacred Monster – a term originated by Jean Cocteau, to describe Sarah Bernhardt – is this: a celebrity whose bad behaviors and eccentricities are overlooked or forgiven by their admirers. I find that each half of the term means that in 2025, Sacred Monsters have become few and far between; there are few public figures who are truly sacred as well as monstrous. I find myself often saying, “their contributions to the culture need to be so undeniable that it doesn’t matter what they’ve done.” As such, previous Sacred Monsters I’ve written about are Kanye West – once sacred, now just a monster – and John Galliano – whose efforts to right his wrongs have perhaps just put him back into purely sacred territory.
What about another Sacred Monster: the one we’ve outright created? The one that America’s celebrity culture and sexual politics pushed into a madness so tragic, it not only ruined her life, but it also changed the way we perceive women in the public eye decades later, and ultimately created what may have been the Ur-pop star?
Of course, I am referencing the one and only Princess of Pop: Britney Spears.
Your opinion of Britney Spears more than likely has everything to do with your opinion of pop music.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to SACRED MONSTER to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.