At 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, I’m sitting in Moulton, discussing Britney Spears and Jesus. More specifically their collective comeback. I asked my dinner companion: What does Britney represent in 2013? What does the album title Britney Jean really mean? Is it an oblique reference to that time she and Justin Timberlake wore matching jean suits? Or is it because her middle name is Jean? Is it socially acceptable to purchase Britney’s 13th fragrance? Was it acceptable to purchase her 12th and 11th?
Then we started talking about Jesus. There’s a new musical out titled “SPEARS: The Gospel According to Britney.” Patrick Blute, the creator, claimed in a Fox News article that this will be “the greatest story ever told to the greatest music ever written.” Blute—a Columbia grad—is careful to say that the show is not meant to be rude. He assures us that the musical, “tells an essential story using fragments of pop culture in a non-offensive way.” Blute says the piece is meant to reconcile “the anxiety 20-somethings feel about living in a society that has thousands of statements and not much substance.”
The musical played to this key audience when it opened at Columbia before moving into New York City.
We went on to wonder how one can tell Jesus’s story inoffensively. We decide we will assign our own choice Britney songs to Jesus’s story: “Hit Me Baby One More Time” for the flogging, “Toxic” for when Jesus meets Mary Magdalene, “Work, Bitch” for the carpentry backstory, and so on. I asked my friend if this material is too religiously insensitive for an Orient column, and she said it would be better suited for a drinking game. I thought wow—for Snark Week or Saturday night, that’s the question.
This conversation stayed with me. I spend the remainder of the evening knitting and listening to the music of the ’90s (side note: who knew that Enrique Iglesias was a thing in 1999? A true millennial). I realize that Britney has not only made waves in the drinking game, fragrance producing, child rearing, and theater making worlds—she has also significantly improved the security of our sailors abroad.
Merchant Navy Officer Rachel Owens was recently quoted in an NBC article that sailors have been using Britney Spears songs to ward off Somali pirates. I am pleased by this; particularly, the mental image of sailors on tankers blasting “Toxic.”
According to Owens, “[Britney’s] songs were chosen by the security team because they thought the pirates would hate them most…it’s so effective, the ship’s security rarely needs to resort to firing guns.”
Perhaps, if Tom Hanks’s character in the recently-released blockbuster “Captain Phillips” had employed this strategy, the pirates would never have taken over his ship. Metro News reported that in 2011 alone there were 176 pirate attack on boats off the Cape of Africa. Britney is helping stop this. She is is saving lives. Britney: pirate deterrent; Britney: shepherd to the flock.
As I sat in Moulton contemplating Britney and Jesus, something clicked into place. Britney is here. She helps travelers cross pirate-infested waters. She helps confused 20-somethings understand the story of Jesus. Britney is protective; she has a mother’s touch. Britney—like Jesus—is here to make religion, travel, and art more palatable. It was then I realized that that Britney Jean is nothing less than a hagiography; she is a saint. We are experiencing a second coming—a second coming of Britney Spears. It’s Britney, bitch.