Pubdate: Thu, 22 Feb 2007
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2007 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383
Author: Kathleen Parker

DYING TO BE DIVAS

Between hourly updates on the decomposing body of Anna Nicole Smith 
and the balding of Britney Spears, we can confidently declare that 
the Jerry Springerization of America is complete.

The travails of these two tragic characters would be of little 
interest in a normal world, but "celebrity" is the new normal. Like 
it or not, we're all in this together.

Britney and Anna Nicole, after all, are our inventions. We made them 
celebrities, awarded them icon status, gave them life. Now, like Dr. 
Frankenstein upon realizing he's created a monster, we've become 
instruments of their undoing.

Anyone who has turned on a TV the past few days has been witness to 
the spectacle in Ft. Lauderdale, where hearings have been in progress 
to decide what to do with Anna Nicole's body.

In death as in life, it's all about the body. Who gets it?

I confess that it took a few minutes watching the probate proceedings 
to realize that it wasn't a spoof or a soap opera. The posturing and 
pontificating of Judge Larry Seidlin, clearly enjoying his 15 minutes 
of fame, makes Lance Ito, of O.J. Simpson trial fame, look like 
Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Also at issue is the paternity of Anna Nicole's 5-month-old baby 
girl, Dannielynn. The subtext to the entire mess is, of course, money 
- - the other defining concern of the former Playboy model's short unhappy life.

Advertisement Anna Nicole spent most of her public life trying to get 
millions from the estate of her deceased oil-tycoon husband, J. 
Howard Marshall, who died in 1995 at age 90. Now that same money is 
up for possible grabs among her survivors.

Wednesday, titillation merged with the macabre as mortals clamored 
over the bombshell's remains like the ravenous widows in "Zorba the 
Greek." The weird got weirder when the disembodied voice of the 
Broward County medical examiner was piped into the courtroom via 
speakerphone to issue a decomposition status report.

Better hurry up with that funeral, he said. Things are deteriorating 
fast around here. No kidding. And then everyone took a lunch break to 
visit Anna Nicole at the morgue.

While you're mulling that image, we switch channels to the other 
coast, where Britney has shaved her head and checked in and out of rehab.

Theories vary as to why Britney clipped her hair. The most recent is 
that she was reacting to estranged husband Kevin Federline's alleged 
threat to have her hair tested for drugs in a custody battle over 
their two children. If Federline indeed wants one of those strands, 
he'll have to take a number and bid on the sheared tresses, now for 
sale by the owner of the salon where the shearing took place.

At "Buy Britneys (sic) Hair Dot Com," bids start at $1 million.

"This is the Ultimate Britney Spears Experience!" boasts the site.

At the same time we might recoil from these prurient displays, we're 
also involuntarily mesmerized. The human wrecks of Britney and Anna 
Nicole transcend the usual roadkill metaphor, however, because we're 
participants - not just spectators, but also instigators.

We are the mirrors to their vanities.

For former child stars like Britney, who didn't get to develop a 
normal sense of self, identity comes from what is projected by the 
audience. What happens when the projection stops, or when it shifts 
from admiring to critical?

If you're Britney, apparently, you take out the shears and turn the 
rage on yourself.

Anna Nicole, who was without talent except the ability to attract our 
attention, existed only as an object. She posed; we ogled. But what 
happens when no one's looking? If you're Anna Nicole, apparently, you 
take more drugs and make a spectacle of yourself as a slurring, 
stumbling bimbo with her own reality TV show.

The parallel sagas of these two sad divas - one dead and one 
self-destructing - have the feel of reality TV that has spiraled out 
of control. Too much exposure. Too much celebrity. Too much attention 
- - if never enough.

The desperation that drove them both to extremes, and then to the 
brink, may have been born of the truth that reveals itself to all 
celebrities eventually: What the public giveth, the public also taketh away.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman