by Ogelthorpe Q. Sighvatson

Created on: March 02, 2010   Last Updated: March 03, 2010

Britney Spears has thankfully gone as far as one can go on the conventional pop star circuit.  She has crashed, burned, made a lukewarm comeback, freaked out again, disappeared and is now thoroughly entrenched in the weird, ill-conceived random appearances phase of the cycle of celebrity.  It is time for her to break the chain and do something genuinely interesting for once in her life.

It is time for Spears to focus her strange energies into strange avenues; to not so much get "back on track" but rather to get on a new track.  It is time for her to become interesting and compelling in a way other than as a human trainwreck.

Phase 1: Enough of the pop stuff.  There's a new generation dominating the Top 40 and most of these people do it better than Britney did.  It's time to partner with sexully explicit techno pioneers Lords of Acid.  She has an interesting voice and an image that is ready to be subverted and manipulated in grand performance piece that could actually shake up the world's image of her. 

After all, Miss Spears is going to have to understand that a portion of her record sales from now until the Earth explodes in a firey ball of human hubris will be ironic in nature: irritating hipsters buying the CD for its future kitsch value, as if there were a futures market on camp chessiness.  She should come to the realization that a spectacularly bizarre attempt at re-invention will generate far more appeal across a much wider demographic than any milquetoast attempt at a "return to form".

Phase 2: Broadening Horizons.  Britney has done the music thing and she's done the mainstream 'tween demographic family friendly semi-autobiographical film route.  The time has come to take on a project more outside of her comfort zone.  I'm thinking a one-woman off-broadway show where in she plays Mother Jones rallying striking coal miners.  Charge 1000 dollars a seat for opening night, then (without advance warning) drop the ticket price to $5 a seat for the rest of what could be a record-breaking run.

If the stage is not of interest, than she needs to partner with a director capable of crafting a truly unique film for her.  I'm thinking that she could partner with Peter Greenaway and star in an unofficial sequel to The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover wherein Britney plays a waitress at the restaurant from the original who has her own strange adventures when a mysterious new dishwasher introduces her to an underground world of high-stakes flesh embroidery.

Only when she can step outside of the narrow conventions that have defined her irritating career to this point, can we truly say that Britney Spears has emerged from her season in the abyss.

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