A Feminist South Park: Spears and Subjection

One could not help but be struck by the fashion in which Trey Park and Matt Stone gave Britney Spears the '"South Park" treatment' in the series's March 19 episode, 'Britney's New Look.' Beyond the episode's allusive sophistication - the episode aped The Lottery's structure and dashed in pop-horror motifs ('Children of the Corn,' for instance) - the writers' take on Spears turned out to be profoundly, even earnestly, feminist. The episode was the most affecting take on young women and pop culture that I have seen.

The writers knowingly and indignantly lay out the tropes that have structured Spears's treatment: the public's Colosseum-style (blood)lust for the young woman's failure; Spears's obvious inability, from the outset, to define her interests, career, or identity; and, of course, the cruel obsession with her weight and appearance. When Stan screams, 'But she has no head,' one of the producers in the recording studio (to where Spears was rushed after her suicide attempt) responds: 'I know. She really chubbed up.'

Some further observations:

(1) When Spears blows off the top two-thirds of her head with a 12-gauge shotgun, she loses the top of her mouth and hence the ability to enunciate. She thus speaks in glottal starts and stops. It is unclear if those around her can understand what she 'says.' The idea is that it never mattered anyway. There is more significance here if we consider Derrida's general understanding of the voice as that which presences the subject (or, perhaps, if we want to speak of origins, the antesubject) to itself (for Lacan, meanwhile, the voice constituted objet a). It would seem that the narrative's end was to cripple - though not fully deprive - Spears of the primary means for becoming present to herself and to use this as a metaphor for her status as a placeholder of sorts.

(2) This 'placeholder' is thus, for the narrative, a receptacle for social neuroses: Hence, at the end of the episode - when it is revealed that Spears's ritual killing is just that and will be repeated on a replacement or successor (Hannah Montana, as it happens) - the holder of the place is structurally irrelevant and will inevitably be succeeded. Spears is irrelevant and the original desire is insatiable.

(3) Butler's excellent discussion of 'passionate attachment' and subjection in general in The Psychic Life of Power - where, she suggests, 'the subject is formed by a will that turns back upon itself, assuming a reflexive form' - seems relevant: If subjection is enacted when a desire or will is met with language and is instantiated by this meeting, becoming attached and committed to its recognition (the combination of the will to suppress this attachment and, later, other linguistic effects, forming the unconscious), can we speak of subjective attachment in degrees? While subjection is surely a universal movement, are some more subjected than others? Or is the attachment more 'passionate' in some than others?

Certainly, part of the now-proverbial Spears 'tragedy' - a trope unto itself at this point - is Spears's attachment to the paparazzi. 'South Park' largely ignored this, forcing us to accept the conceit that Spears genuinely tries to escape their gaze. The actual narrative is more complex: Spears's obvious desperation for their attention suggests an attachment far more passionate than 'South Park' would admit or than people seem comfortable contemplating: That level of passion, for which no one can coherently 'blame' the young woman, saturates - and largely constitutes - the 'tragedy.'