Poor Britney. But perhaps she should be grateful - when other stars have home videos emerge in netland, they're usually the kind of video that features very little dialogue, and even less clothing. Our slice of unadulterated Britney reverses the norm, and instead of heightening her to online teen fantasy goddess status, Britney is cracked open in the more psychological sense. Not that you're about to see a confronting soul-searching self-expose with an intellectual self-awareness; but perhaps this is what makes the video so compelling. Clearly intoxicated, we are witness to pure, unconscious projection of a caged pop starlet. She feels "ugly", "confused", and battling a sense of disconnection to the world around her. Except, of course, this is the Britney zone, and what does this disconnection result in her "missing"? Seeing Spawn, the movie. But in fairness to her, as a young Americana gal, this is an adequate parallel to draw between her life and what she conceptualises the "other" Britney would be doing, if not for the fame that eventually emprisoned her in a cocoon where hit movies come and go, oblivious to the Britney tour schedule and press circuit. Like all the other Americana gals, she'd be down at the mall, watching Spawn. Poor Britney.

 

Even better, Britney's longing to escape her self, leads her - perhaps quite logically - to romanticise time travel as a real possibility. That's the catch 22 of the pop icon, of course. You yearn to "become" the projected "celebrity" self, only to achieve actualising it at the expense of the "true" self. She is left an eroded young woman, drinking away the hours in her cave, thinking about the self that never was, or perhaps even the self who exists in another time, altogether. Beware, Australian Idols, this could be YOU.