A marriage joke?
It was either 1998 or 1999 when Mrs. Happy and I decided to get a new television, since we had been using a 13" TV that I received as a high school graduation gift in 1990. I felt flush with success from my recent acquisition of a job at Dell Computer Corp., and we were primed to make our first major purchase as a married couple. So we borrowed some relevant issues of Consumer Reports from The Happy Father-in-Law, gathered up Mrs. Happy's 14-year-old brother just for the heck of it, and headed off to Best Buy, a store that recent advertisements had led us to believe was holding a huge sale.
The advertisements grossly exaggerated the extent of the price cuts. We found sale stickers on two of the television display models broadcasting an array of insipid music videos that offended me both as a music lover and as a consumer. The lack of variety in the video images did nothing to sell me on the quality of the TV sets, and the horrid popular music of the time just made me want to leave the store.
Then a funny thing happened. A new video began running, and instead of cursing it and looking away, I watched. I had never seen the video, heard the song, or seen the young female performer, but I was mesmerized. The energy in her voice and the charisma in her dance kept me enthralled, stock still, with my mouth open until the picture faded to make way for a trite piece of video garbage. I don't remember if I said this out loud, but I know I thought it: "If there is any justice in this world, that girl will be the biggest star of her generation."
That girl did go on to become one of the biggest stars ever, and certainly the biggest star of her generation so far. Her popularity grew and her record sales skyrocketed (though, for the record, I have never purchased one of her CDs), but the general public's respect for her gradually waned until it seemed that few people cared about her except 14-year-old girls and dirty old men. Nevertheless, her most recent album debuted at No. 1 on the charts, and you would have to live in a cave (or possibly outside the United States) to go an entire week without hearing her name or seeing her picture.
Throughout the years, she has released some songs and pulled some stunts that I don't approve of. But remembering my initial reaction to her, before I heard the hype, before I heard the jokes, before her image overshadowed her artistry, I always try to cut her a significant amount of slack. I know she is an incredible talent underneath all the glitz her handlers have foisted upon her. I know that the pressures of fame make people, especially people as young as she is, go completely insane and do weird and stupid things, even above and beyond the weird and stupid things we all do. I can't say with any certainty that I would behave any differently in her shoes. I try to imagine myself standing backstage at a concert and someone approaching me and saying, "Okay, put on this humiliating outfit, hang this giant snake around your neck, go sing your song, then give Madonna a full-mouth kiss on national TV. Oh, and here's a check for two million dollars." I am ashamed to admit I would probably do everything they asked. Still, in interviews, she demonstrates true poise, intelligence, and respect, providing more articulate conversation than the majority of popular performers today.
Unfortunately, the media trumpets her every indiscretion that they can prove, all the while speculating and inferring and implying whatever they can't prove. But after all the times I have directed negative thoughts at the media due to their treatment of her, and after all the times I have excused her in my own mind for mistakes common to everyone's experience and blown out of proportion by infotainment television shows and supermarket tabloids, her latest controversial escapade left me shaking my head in disappointment.
News reports, which of course must be taken with several grains of salt, say that after a night of partying in Las Vegas, she married a childhood friend. Apparently neither she nor her friend were drunk. Both were in enough control of their faculties to obtain a marriage license, find a wedding chapel, walk down the aisle, and say "I do." But she filed for an annulment the next day, saying that the wedding was a "joke" that had gone too far.
I'm sure she didn't intend to demean or undermine the wedding ritual or the idea of marriage, but that's the effect her actions had. People are now laughing about it, pointing fingers at her, and making all sorts of jokes on late night talk shows and in stand-up comedy routines. All the laughter, though, betrays and reinforces society's attitude that a marriage that ends as soon as it begins is funny rather than tragic. And her actions, at least as far as I am able to determine them, at best display a lack of respect (and at worst a flagrant contempt) for an institution that I hold dear. So now I just shake my head and wonder, "Britney, what were you thinking?"
