For the high-brow crowd, all the chatter of Britney Spears' life appears to be another instance of devolution of the nation's attention onto the superficial, inane, and downright vulgar. But her story, evolving even as this blog is posted, may offer valuable insights into the intersection of larger social challenges, personal health (psychiatric in particular), the sacrificial mechanisms embedded into our collective an individual psychologies, the ethical obligations of media agents to all citizens, and the moral discipline of the public.
If the speculation about Britney's possible bipolar disorder ultimately bears true, then she potentially could be the most famous sufferer from this terrible firestorm of a disease. The manic and hypo-manic phases of this illness may play a larger part than we are currently aware in fueling our economy, propelling our arts and entertainment industries, infusing our politics, and infiltrating countless dimensions of our life. It's a disease with decidedly genetic underpinnings and post-traumatic triggers. And so if Britney is indeed suffering from this difficult-to-treat disorder, a noble hope is that not only she attains sufficient insight into the workings of bipolar disorder on her mind but also that the rest of the country learns more about the illness, how pervasive it is, and what can be done to manage it.
When I first experienced the online and televised chatter of her story, I felt that I was above the fray from it all, an intellectual snob worried about the decline and fall our our Republic. But when I caught sight of that utterly bewildered face that burst into mindless laughter, of that leg in a soft restraint stretched over the gurney, I felt I was no longer peering into a celebrity's drama-queen life but a human being in pain, in torment, in a wild curse of a roller-coaster ride, a mother dissolving into a washing machine whirling her in the ups of manic confusion and the downs of depressive, perhaps suicidal, gloom and terror. "This girl might be dead in a few months," I thought. "Those kids will be tormented all their lives," I worried. So we have one of the strangest paradoxes of twenty-first century dirty laundry: a tabloid story that engenders our stupefying fascination could actually become so intense that the human being at the center of the drama bursts right through the camera lens and finds a place in our hearts, calling us to pause the nonsense and ponder about the path of salvation for a mother lost. All mothers are our mothers.
Britney Spears has an advantage that few who struggle unknowingly with bipolar disorder possess: reams of money to fuel her mania, to follow every fading comet of manic ambitions. But how many young women suffer in our country who don't' have her wealth but have the other problems she faces? What will their children grow into? A nation that doesn't care for all mothers is a nation asking for permanent childhood. And when children bring up children, children become abused and the whole world aches with self-torture. If it's true that the goddesses of ancient mythologies were actually once girls and women sacrificed to false gods and whose true voices were muted, then we aught to hope that we may have with Britney Spears more than an another sacrificial tabloid myth: a truth that escapes the lies of mythology to convey a message about who we are and what we can do about it.
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