Promoting Pepsi with the Peppiest: A Family Affair
by Sarah Hull

Getting in Deep with Britney Spears: An evening of informal Britney Analysis with the Girls who Saw it All...On Friday, Britney Spears played at the Gund Arena in Cleveland. A number of Oberlin students attended the show. The Review’s Sarah Hull, intensely curious about such a highbrow event, asked the students for an interview. They agreed. Their responses (which follow) may surprise you.

Sarah Hull: Um, when was the concert?

All: Friday (Nov. 9).
Here the interview gets interrupted by a discussion of cigarette confusion.

SH: What was Britney wearing?

Julia Mcbee: She changed outfits a lot.

Katie Dewitt: For the first half she changed about every song.

Juliana May: For the last song she stripped into like a…basically a bra and underwear.

JMc: For the finale…she was wearing like a bra and jeans…really low jeans.

JM: Really low jeans, I don’t know how we didn’t see her butt crack…

SH: Maybe it was like double-sided tape?
Laughs

Okay, so what was the scene like? What was the audience make-up?

JM: Ages five to 15, and their parents. And then, our age group, male.

KD: No, our age group, female! I feel like most of the men — there were a lot of guys but they were like, teenage guys.

JM: Or 23 year old packs of men together.

KD: They were teenage boys I thought.

JMc: I thought they were like 18, 19.

KD: But also definitely mostly female. And they wouldn’t agree with me but I was pretty sure it was a mostly blonde, female crowd.

JM: Really dyed, crimped.

JMc: Lots of families. Lots of girls.

KD: Lots of little, little girls…

JMc: I feel like I saw one woman with a baby and infant.

SH: Was she breastfeeding?
JMc: I…don’t know.
Laughs
KD: Can that exchange go in?

SH: Yeah, of course.
Laughs

JM: And there were definitely people there who were there to see her take it off. Like, we heard people scream “take it off.”

JMc: I saw like, an old man. I honestly did. He was definitely at the concert and it was definitely weird and a little creepy…

SH: So what was the general vibe, was it like “decoy overtly sexual” sexual but like it was family fun?

JMc: I feel it was both.

JM: She made a big disclaimer in the middle. She said “I get a lot of shit,” well she didn’t say “shit,” she’s like “I get a lot of flak for what I wear, what I don’t wear, what I say, what I don’t say, and to tell you the truth, I’m not a little girl anymore.”

JMc: And then she sang a song about how she’s not a little girl anymore. It was also very commercial. And they may have to do this I guess but like in the beginning the emcee came out…

KD: First of all there was an emcee.

JMc: He came out and promoted Pepsi, he made a little Pepsi commercial onstage. It was weird, you know, it was like “thanks to all the people at Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi.”

JM: And like he had us do a Pepsi commercial. [To the audience] he was like “okay, when I hold the Pepsi up you’re gonna go ‘oooh’ and when I drink it you’re gonna go ‘ahhh,’ and then when I hold it up you’re gonna scream and clap.”

SH: Weird. So did you feel like it was creepy?
JM: It was weird…

JMc: I was really surprised. Well maybe not really surprised. But kind of disturbed by the amount of family that was there. Because like, her show was really sexual. I mean she’s gyrating on stage the entire time…There were little, little kids there, and the scariest part was that there were a lot of little girls were dressed in like…not in Britney outfits but in sparkly pants, tube top. Here there occurred a digression concerning Dewitt’s knowledge of cheesy fashion.

SH: I feel like I look at Britney and I end up feeling bad for her. Did you feel like she was empowered or did you feel like she was a total T&A tool?

JM: I feel like she feels fine about what she’s doing. I felt bad for her just because it was like…

KD: It was like soulless.

JM: Well…no…for me at least it’s like what kind of a life she has. It’s like, she does these tours that are so scripted and so spectacle-like and circus-like. And I feel like she definitely doesn’t have much say.

KD: But I don’t feel bad for her the way I think you’re asking. I don’t feel bad for her like she’s shaking her ass up there and that’s all she’s worth.

JMc: Like, I think she’s happy and I think she’s into it.

KD: Also just because I feel — this is going to sound stupid — it’s not expressing herself that’s the point. Because it’s pop music. That’s not the way pop music works. But if it was like, Blink 182, we wouldn’t be sitting around worrying about it. It’s cuz it’s like, a manufactured, female pop star who wears skimpy outfits. And…obviously I’m not privy to Britney Spears’ personal life, but I do feel like she is up there living out something that she aspired to…And whether or not that’s true…I guess maybe I feel like empowering is not the right word, but it’s also not pitiful. It’s neither. It’s just someone being a singer and being a dancer and putting on a good show for people. And if you think that’s sort of sad then any kind of entertainer is sad.

JM: It’s kind of vaudeville-esque to me, in terms of the turnover. Just the amount of shows she does, the kind of audience she requires. It ends up being really quick and easy and a good time. Sort of like junk food, in some ways. You know, it’s just like not that great for you but immediately it is, and then it’s over and then you kind of don’t think about it that much besides having posters and T- shirts to sort of say that you were there. And it’s kind of, that’s the thing about the spectacle. The only way you sort of remember it is with the kind of accessories that go along with it.

SH: I don’t know. I just feel like my problem with Britney’s kind of overtly sexual image is that I feel it is a little bit dishonest. Cuz she sorta comes out and plays this good girl next door but at the same time she’s wearing no clothes.

KD: But that was all recently [that she started singing these very sexual songs].

JMc: And you know it’s true, like the whole song “Slave 4 U” or whatever, it’s different from her earlier stuff. And it’s more…

KD: Overtly sexual.

JMc: Yeah, exactly. But that’s what she wants to do and like, she’s not doing that little girl image anymore.

JM: I kind of was a little bit offended by the “Slave” song at the end, and the video. They’re pretty disgusting if you ask me. Not necessarily the dancing sections where they’re all in unison but the parts where there’s like a group around her and she’s in the middle and she looks like she’s being fucked. And she sort of introduced the song by taking off her clothes and saying “don’t you guys feel like there’s just something in you that you can’t control, and you’re a slave to it?” And I think that she was trying to say that, you know, “it’s a body thing, it’s a kinetic thing, it’s something that makes you want to move, you’re a slave to your movement.” And that would be one thing you know, if you were a slave to your body and you just were doing it. But the movement is so overtly sexual that it’s almost like “I’m a slave to this man.”

KD: That’s what I was going to say — more than the dancing, more than the video — I think that the thing that is offensive about it is that…the overt message of it is “there is a man, and I am his slave.” Because of my desire maybe…but still, I am in his control. And I’m not like a Britney lyric archive, but if I remember correctly it seems like a lot of her songs and — this is where the dishonesty comes in for me like what you were saying before— I feel like [these previous songs] have essentially really similar messages but what’s more subversive about them is that they’re not overt and that she’s saying “I’m just a little girl…I led you on by accident hee hee” but clearly that’s not the point of the song. The point of the song is that she’s playing with her own sexuality and using it as power, in like, a really objectified way. And I feel in the same thing like “Hit Me Baby, One More Time” can be read very easily as a highly sexual song. But those songs are kind of played and presented as more innocent and I think that’s almost to me much more offensive.
Although seriously I don’t find it offensive, I actually don’t think the sexual dancing in [the video] bothers me at all, I think it is kind of liberating and fun. Sexiness is great. I don’t really think that because someone is being publicly sexy that they’re being objectified. But what bothers me is more the words of that specific song, as opposed to the way it’s presented. Whereas with the other songs it’s the exact reverse — it’s the way that it’s presented in combination with the words…

JM: And the other thing I just wanted to say was, I don’t enjoy the music on the same level that I appreciate other music. And I feel like the reason why we all went was more like a curiosity, in the same way that you go to see the acrobats and the trapeze artists.

KD: And it’s also like a movie like You’ve Got Mail. You don’t go to see it thinking “this is going to be great” — you go to see it because you think “this is going to be fun.”

SH: We should probably wrap this up. But hey, was it worth 50 bucks?

All: Yeah, definitely.

JMc: I wish we had a better view, though.