Okay, For Real, It's Time to Free Britney
A #FreeBritney documentary makes waves, the Golden Globes remain a joke, Rita Ora copies Rina Sawayama's homework, the SuperSpreader Bowl, and more rated Top Shelf to Low Brow
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Hello and welcome to another Monday edition of Top Shelf, Low Brow where we look at some pop culture occurrences from the last week and rate them on that very scale: Top Shelf to Low Brow (and maybe something in between every now and again).
I’m high as balls after ripping two fat cups of coffee with Chobani oat milk—which, if you’re wondering, is maybe the second-best of all the oat milk brands I’ve tried, and I’ve tried almost all of ‘em—so I apologize if I get a bit silly in this newsletter.
Last week I was, once again, very busy looking for stable work, so I almost feel like I was accidentally a little tuned out of the goings-on, my finger just left of the pulse. But there is one very important thing that happened last week: my Chromatica Oreos arrived!
A little banged up from their 90-mile journey from Pennsylvania, but whatever. Unfortunately, I can’t open them yet because I have to do a photoshoot with the package. Being gay is a disease 🤒 and I’m patient zero, baby 😈!
Top Shelf, Low Brow: February 1 — February 7
We Are Absolutely Freeing Britney This Year
A new episode of the FX standalone docuseries The New York Times Presents entitled “Framing Britney Spears,” released last week (and currently available in its entirety on YouTube as I publish this), delves into the career, media depiction, and horrific post-2008 legal woes of The Princess of Pop. The documentary—which, at 64 minutes, is hardly feature-length despite The NYT claiming it as such—attempts to show the social-media born #FreeBritney movement in a more professional, serious light, giving credence to the campaign advocating for the release of Spears from the conservatorship that has been controlling her life, career, and finances for over a decade.
It’s well-made and reasonably revealing, especially for casual fans and peripheral listeners who may not be entirely familiar with Spears’ situation. However, the episode can’t quite find a stable middle ground when it comes to shuffling between discussions of Britney Spears the pop icon and Britney Spears the conservatee, to the point where I found that it glossed over a few crucial points and started to veer on slightly exploitative itself at certain moments. I don’t know that it’s particularly good to give any credibility to TikTok conspiracy theories that Spears’ Instagram posts contain coded-messages. But, as one interviewee says, everything people theorize about Britney’s Instagram is something that they themselves are bringing to the post, she herself is really unknowable. The doc is, no doubt, well-intentioned, but it’s impossible to paint a truly compelling portrait of this life in just over an hour. However, the massive stir it has caused on social media is already leading to an even bigger push to reexamine the need for Spears to be in a conservatorship at all. In the documentary, it’s revealed that court documents labeled the conservatorship as a “hybrid-business model” because of how stable Spears’ ability to work has been since 2008. It poses the necessary question that courts should’ve been wrestling with for years: if a conservatorship is set up to protect the assets of a person who may not be able to make sound decisions, but the conservatee has now proven their capability to function so highly that family and lawyers can all be making a salary from it, why is the conservatorship still active?
The best moments from the documentary are the bits of interviews with Felicia Culotta, Spears’ longtime friend and assistant turned “VIP Coordinator” for her Piece of Me residency. Culotta talks about her time alongside Spears with such warmth and pride, it’s clear to see the difference between those who have a true affection for Spears as a person and those who see her as a blank check waiting to be cashed. The doc is worth watching for her scenes and insight alone.
As I said back in December, I’m tired of the people controlling Britney’s estate thinking that we don’t notice when they try to squeeze out a few extra pennies from her career, as they did with the random rerelease of Glory. As long as Spears refuses to work while under her conservatorship, every “new” song or remix is just an attempt to cash in on work she did long ago. It’s mind-boggling that courts haven’t seen enough evidence to reexamine the conservatorship, or at least seriously consider her requests to remove her father from control. In 2021, it is absolutely time to Free Britney. SJP said so! Let’s go!
(Rating: Top Shelf for the important insight that it’s giving to people who haven’t been totally informed of the current state of Britney’s life, middling for the quality of the doc.)
We’re Done With The Golden Globes……Officially!!!!!!
The last time the Hollywood Foreign Press Association got anything right was when they gave Lady Gaga a Golden Globe in 2016 for her role in American Horror Story: Hotel. She was great in the show, but even I know it was an award mostly given for the headlines it would drum up the next day. The Golden Globes, after all, are the awards season equivalent of shoddy clickbait.
So color me shocked when the nominees for the 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards were announced Wednesday and included a slew of weirdo noms and total snubs, as per usual! I know it shouldn’t aggravate me anymore after all these years, but each year the HFPA manages to get under my skin somehow. This year, it’s for awarding multiple nominations to Hamilton, The Prom, Music, and Emily in Paris. Like, sorry, but what the fuck? James Corden nominated for flouncing around The Prom for two hours putting on his best gayface and limp wrist? Sia’s poorly-researched and potentially dangerous depiction of autism in Music? The trendy, saccharine, blink-and-it’s-over nothingness of Emily in Paris, the television equivalent of the cronut? And don’t even get me started on Lin-Manuel Miranda clicking his heels on stage in his little high school theater production, the completely comical, everything-bad-about-musicals Hamilton that has been following me at every turn like a dark cloud of noxious gas for what feels like six decades.
I know this was a weird year for both television and film, but come on. There’s so, so much missing here, so much greatness to be found if the members of the HFPA only looked a little deeper and cared about the art of what they’re awarding other than the headlines they’ll make with what they snub. In 2021, the Golden Globes have solidified their place as the most jokey “major” awards show of the bunch, even below the Grammys and just above the People’s Choice Awards.
If you require any further convincing, look no further than the snub of Michaela Coel and her brilliant I May Destroy You, possibly the most lauded new show and raved-about performance of 2020. What Coel did with I May Destroy You was, in no small terms, completely game-changing. Michaela Coel recontextualized the ways that screenwriters can depict survivors of sexual violence, with such grace and marvelous nuance that the show’s finale seemed to herald a new age of television entirely. To completely shut out the show—especially in favor of something like Ratched, the bloated Ryan Murphy stinker in which Sarah Paulson says with 100% seriousness, “bo-lo-nuh is my favorite food”—is not just egregious, but continues to speak to the systemic problems in the industry and the fear that Hollywood has when it comes to rewarding unapologetically Black, women-centered programming. They prefer whatever is just-beyond-milquetoast enough to seem “provocative” and “new” or anything that will generate headlines, like the flash in the pan Emily in Paris, which squeezed all the juice out of its meme potential by the end of October.
If even the writers of Emily in Paris know that it’s nothing more than bingeable, instantly-melting cotton candy programming that can’t possibly hold a card to something like I May Destroy You, something is definitely wrong on a larger scale.
Hollywood Foreign Press Association, you’re a joke.
(Rating: Low Brow)
The Weeknd Performs at The Super (Spread) Bowl
I think the Super Bowl is nothing more than a bloated, overrated symbol of American pageantry and late-Capitalism and I hate it even more when it still takes place, with an audience(?!), during a pandemic. That being said, I’m only human and of course, I’m going to watch the halftime show, at least as long as it’s not like…Bon Jovi or something. I watched the Coldplay show live as it aired in 2016 and I’m pretty sure my brain went into a vegetable state every time Beyoncé wasn’t on camera.
But if you’re going to put a man on stage, The Weeknd is a great choice, and certainly an interesting one, given that so much of his music is about getting fucked up and fucking. It’s funny and kind of badass to me to perform a song about being coked out on the largest stage in America! Which is not to promote coke usage, something I’m personally against both because I have an addictive personality and I saw how it ruined Lindsay Lohan’s career. But I digress! I also like The Weeknd’s flair for the theatrical, so I figured that the show would be worth checking out, at least the day after it aired.
It was fun! I love a choir moment and I love horror movies, especially when they come together, so descending into the arena to “Call Out My Name” being performed by a choir of red-eyed robotic cult members was very chilling to me in the best way. “The Hills” remains an absolute banger worthy of screaming along to. “Starboy” and “I Feel It Coming” are great reminders of both the brilliance of Daft Punk and their perennial absence from the industry, we as a society need another Daft Punk album right this second (and we need it to be better than Random Access Memories). The show was a fun, neon-lit spectacle with a great setlist and a lot of eye candy, including Mr. Weeknd himself, who I still say is very hot. But to pack the stands with people during a goddamn pandemic? I can’t get over it. Why, why can’t we just make exceptions one fucking time and not do things as we’ve always done them? I’m so tired!
Also, next year we need a Halftime Show from Selena Gomez, with Bella Hadid walking around and modeling on stage the entire time. It’s only right to reward The Weeknd’s exes with some screentime, too. Actually, we just need to throw a runway up on stage, cast Bella and a bunch of other models, and have Selena Gomez perform a medley to them walking in couture that ends with “Me & My Girls.” I am available for consultation, NFL. My fee is $5,000, a $100 Starbucks gift card, and a yearlong subscription to Discovery+ so I can watch every episode of Barefoot Contessa.
(Rating: Top Shelf – yes the show shouldn’t have been packed full and it didn’t even really need to go on but at least the performance gave me 14 minutes of a little normalcy, which was nice, but again, unnecessary!)
Normani Said Gillian Anderson Looks Like a Zebra
She must really be offline working hard on that album which still doesn’t have a release date, because last week Normani revealed that she didn’t recognize a joking internet meme, resulting in her calling Gillian Anderson a zebra. What does that mean, you might ask? Well, here’s the original meme:
And here’s what a Normani stan with a Gillian Anderson Twitter avi said about a couple of pictures she posted with her dog, Sir Prince Dior (real name):
And here’s her response:
I have no other commentary on this other than that I felt it had to be included because of how hard it made me laugh. Normani said no I do not watch The X-Files or The Crown, leave me alone!
(Rating: Top Shelf)
Speaking of Normani, Dua Lipa Continues Her String of Questionable Decisions
Perhaps all the jetlag from her many pandemic vacations has been affecting Dua Lipa’s decision making because last week she announced Future Nostalgia: The Moonlight Edition, a classic 2009/2010 Teenage Dream-esque repackage that tacks on a few extra tracks and collaborations that don’t even fit with the rest of the album. And if you’re not familiar, a version of “If It Ain’t Me” that originally featured Normani leaked back in January 2020. Yes, I was sent the song and yes, I listened a year ago. And it was fantastic, Normani was a wonderful, welcome addition to the song. The original version of Future Nostalgia doesn’t include any featured artists, and an expanded edition with Normani could really elevate the project to something that deserves the repackaged treatment. The reasons for releasing a Normani-free version are unknown, but it certainly deserves to be there, especially if “Prisoner,” which isn’t even technically Lipa’s song, made the cut. Also, where is the original mix of “Love is Religion”? I actually have a lot of questions about this rerelease! And yet, I’ll be listening, because I just can’t seem to free myself from Ms. Lipa’s grasp.
(Rating: Low Brow for the decision to leave Normani off, Top Shelf for giving me a few more songs to listen to [even if most of them can already be found with a very quick Google search])
Harry “Wigalicious” Styles
New photos of Harry Styles on the set of Don’t Worry Darling have arrived. In some, he looks hot in a tank top:
But in others, they’ve plopped a truly tragic toupee onto his hot Harry hair. They fucked him up with this, I’m so mad…
(Rating: Low Brow, can we get hair and makeup on this stat!!!)
Rita Ora becomes RINA Ora
My favorite British semi-flop-yet-still-always-in-the-public-eye artist Rita Ora has surfaced once more, with a new project and a new look, both of which look suspiciously like another British pop star who managed to capture great success last year with the release of her long-awaited debut album: Rina Sawayama. Now, Rina Sawayama didn’t invent orange hair and vertical text in twisty, custom fonts, but for Rita Ora to pull this so close to Rina Sawayama’s releases is kind of beyond on the nose. Like, come on:
The fact that their first names align so closely, off by just one letter, just makes the situation laughable. It doesn’t seem like Ms. Ora is trying to hide it at all. And to be fair, I don’t think Rina Sawayama, who had one of the best albums of 2020, should be at all threatened by Rita Ora, who is most famous for having a lipsync flub at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. As Rihanna once said:
(Rating: Low Brow)
That’s all for this week! I’ll see you on Friday for whatever the hell comes out that day because I currently don’t have anything planned! Have a good week, I love you, wear a mask, and we’ll meet back here in a few days.