Philadelphia Inquirer

Britney Descending

By Dan DeLuca
Friday, August 30, 2002

I'm starting to feel sorry for Britney Spears. American Idol notwithstanding, the moment of teen-pop super saturation is long gone. In fact, the Idol frenzy argues in its own way that the era of talent-free automatons has receded. Say what you will about the desperate-for-fame survivors of Fox's Darwinian smackdown, but sinister Simon Callow wouldn't have let the remaining contestants get this far if they couldn't at least, sing.

That's more than you can say for Britney, whose true vocal limitations weren't as fully exposed as her body until she made the error of opening her mouth on that dreadful HBO special last fall.

Since then, the road's been bumpy: At a mere 3.8 million, Britney moved fewer than half the copies its predecessors did. Justin Timberlake went off with the real Janet Jackson, rather than a pale imitation. The industry is moving on, intent on "Building the Post-Britney," as a recent New York Times Magazine profile of malleable Amanda Latona put it. And after tabloid yammering about a Mariah Carey-style crack-up, Spears' mother defensively told People her daughter had "never, ever been close to a breakdown."

Into this narrative steps Britney's Inferno, Headlong Dance Theater's conflation of Dante's Inferno and MTV culture, which will premiere Thursday as part of the Fringe Festival. It takes place, according to Headlong co-founder David Brick, "in a weird, hybrid world that's as if pop culture was an actual society." (You mean it isn't?)

For Headlong, Spears is a pure product too tempting not to use in a conceptual piece about celebrity, identity and manufactured consumer need. That may sound like a drag, albeit one of a different kind from Britney, Baby, One More Time!, the movie that showed at the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and claimed its subject as a heroine to transvestites everywhere.

But trust me, it's not. I don't know dookie about dance, but I do know that Brick is way too savvy to turn a subject as juicy as Spears into a boring high-art discourse on the vacuity of pop. "The goal is definitely not to say, 'Look how stupid pop culture is,'" he told me last week at a rehearsal of the troupe, which in the past has put clever spins on Star Wars and James Joyce's Ulysses.

Its connections to the Italian poet are mostly a good joke, but befitting the title, Inferno does have a hellish heart. The show is not about Spears per se, but features a "Britney" character that is anointed a media goddess. There's a Pepsi-slurping Svengali, and a hilarious bit where the icon-in-training is shown how to signify "business" and "pleasure" with body language.

"Britney" ascends the pop altar, but the false idol is betrayed by the same fans who worshiped her. "She needs a brain transplant!" they protest. When a ubiquitous space-taker like Spears stumbles, schadenfreude is in order. We've seen quite enough of her belly button, thank you. Though beware: The post-Britney era will produce a different breed of genetically engineered stars, only programmed to appear more real, like skater-girl Avril Lavigne.

But while we're waving good riddance - in a Garth Brooks-like move, Spears has announced a hiatus - let's not forget the pleasures of pop. Sure, Spears comes across as a vacuous Barbie doll, but she rose to the top not only because her boobs are bigger than Mandy Moore's. She was also packing with her share of Swedish-written ear-grabbing songs.

Inferno understands that. Indie-rock alchemist Rick Henderson did the music, and at the run-through, his remix of the Neptunes-produced "I'm a Slave 4 U" succeeded, no matter how sucky Spears' singing. And the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" sounded glorious deconstructed.

So, as Inferno closed with its protagonist's fall complete, I couldn't help but feel sympathy for the real Britney. It's sad, really. Pop stardom's Warholian clock is telling her that, at 20, it's time to remake herself, or step aside.