Borkowski Weekly Media Trends 25-06-21
#FreeBritney, Music Stunts, Wholesome Football Twitter, and One Giant Leap for Accessibility
Britney breaks 13-year silence
This week saw the Britney Spears confession fans have been waiting years for. Britney has spent the past 13 years in a conservatorship, in which her father has had legal control over her finances, healthcare and her ability to marry, travel and have children. This is ostensibly because of Britney’s mental health problems. But since 2019, when Britney started to use Instagram more frequently, concern about her situation has exploded.
The theory goes: Britney Spears is being held captive against her will, and given medication that is compromising her mental state, allowing her family to hold onto control of her wealth. A truckload of almost-evidence, thousands of die-hard fans, and millions more concerned Instagram followers lead to a full blown #FreeBritney movement, which culminated in a viral documentary on the topic in 2020.
Only the documentary didn’t include any comment from Britney or her people. The situation stood as it had for 13 years: the conservatorship had never been disputed in its annual courtroom reviews, by Britney or anyone else. All the #FreeBritney movement had, really, was some cryptic Instagram posts and the knowledge that Britney’s social media activity was heavily supervised.
Until this week, when, in court in LA, Britney called a judge to end her conservatorship, saying: “I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I’m happy … I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized, you know, fake it till you make it. But now I’m telling you the truth.” A following Instagram post saw her apologize for “pretending like I’ve been ok the past two years”.
This should be great news and, if Britney were able to be safely ‘freed’, it would be. But fans will surely be left reeling at the unanswered questions. How was Britney able to post such a message? Why did she not say something sooner? The hope is that she felt galvanised by the countless fans and public figures supporting her online. But, nevertheless, the situation feels uneasy. It speaks to the world we find ourselves in, where fake news is increasingly indistinguishable from the truth. A sceptic might wonder if the #FreeBritney story is all smoke and mirrors, or worse, that Britney has been manipulated into ‘confessing’ by those supposedly controlling her – the past two years, after all, have seen Britney go from forgotten star to reinstated global treasure, her brand skyrocketing with her.
We may never know what goes on behind closed doors, what celebrities’ real lives are really like. But what seems certain is that the myths that become popular are those the public want to believe. The tale of free Britney might be too good to not be true.
Buried album unearths grand tradition of music stunts
Every publicity stunt walks a tightrope between artistry and gimmickry; if it’s too arty then its author runs the risk of appearing inaccessible or worse, pretentious; too gimmicky and it comes across as insincere or cynical.
Of course, these boundaries are entirely objective and shift according to the sector and target audience of the stunt.
Orcadian musician Erland Cooper this week offered a masterclass in walking the art-gimmick tightrope when he announced to the world that he was burying the only copy of his latest album deep in the Orkney soil to be exhumed in 2024.
The ‘only album’ gimmick is approaching the status of grand musical tradition, having been made notable by WuTang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, whose sole copy sold at auction for $2M and is still the most expensive piece of music ever sold (until some BTS NFT trumps it in 6 months’ time probably). Similarly, the ‘lost’ music stunt is another classic, with notable examples including the Voyager Golden Record that was shot into deep space in 1977.
The artistry, especially for fans of Cooper, is also compelling; this is a guy whose music reflects the landscape of his homeland and has been praised by critics for its ruminations on the peace and beauty of nature, and its healing impact on the stress and mania of urban life. Cooper wants to know what the album will sound like after it has spent three years immersed in this landscape. For non-fans of alt-folk music, it’s probably on the pretentious side – it’s unlikely Harry Styles will be following suit any time soon. But for legions of music snobs – including at major media outlets like The Times and BBC Radio 6 Music - it’s a fascinating social and sonic experiment, and music publicity done right.
The brighter side of football’s relationship with social media
For most footballers’ social media is a breeding ground for hate and discrimination. There are trolls and racists operating at every level, including Alvaro Morata receiving death threats to family and Marvin Bartley a 34-year-old midfielder who captains Livingston in the Scottish Premiership who’s recently spoken out about his experiences with online abuse. You may have seen BT’s Hope United – a campaign to tackle online hate during the Euros that features an unsettling horror-themed ad that leaves a strong impression.
However, there is a lighter side to social media on rare occasions. The Blizzard unearthed an extraordinary tale that started with a researcher at the popular video game Football Manager who stumbled on a documentary series about Blackburn Rovers discovering a player called Ben Brereton had an obscure link to Chile making him eligible for the Chilean national team. After a Football Manager streamer discovered this on the game, he created the #BreretonALaRoja hashtag which picked up enough traction to propel the young British striker to the Chilean big leagues. He competed for Chile in this year’s Copa America scoring the winning goal against Bolivia.
Viral, organic hashtags can inact genuine change, and it’s pleasant to hear a wholesome story in a sport marred by nasty online abuse. We’ve seen brands try and jump on these trends before like Burger King sponsorship of Stevenage claiming to be masterminds of the club’s popularity on FIFA, the video game. It’s incredibly difficult to manufacture something like this but it is possible!
One giant leap for accessibility
The ESA has announced that 20,000 Europeans have applied to be in the next class of astronauts going to space, including 200 people with disabilities who have applied for a new position that has been dubbed ‘parastronaut’. The parastronaut position is open to candidates with disabilities pertaining to their legs, who would not fit the typical rigorous physical requirements to be astronauts.
For the space agency, this is seen as a way of staying relevant in a world where, as the ESA announcement says, society’s expectations toward diversity and inclusion have changed rapidly. It is also a significant statement considering that astronaut programs tend to be famous for their rigorous standards of physical and mental acumen—similarly to the Paralympics, the ESA’s outreach to would-be astronauts with disabilities sends a clear signal that physical handicap need not prevent someone from performing at the top of their field. After all, what better place is there for a person to work who can’t walk than space, where zero gravity means no legs are required.
From a comms perspective, the announcement lands very well—it is not a guarantee to send a disabled person to space, but instead promises a ‘serious, dedicated and honest attempt to clear a path to space for a professional astronaut with a physical disability.’ Whereas these kinds of gestures can often smack of tokenism, we find the ESA—which, after all, is funded by taxes from disabled and non-disabled alike—to be on the right side of this fine line. On the flip side, this same week it has been announced that Love Island will have its first contestant with a disability—announcing the addition of Hugo Hammond, who was born with clubfoot and plays disability cricket for England.
Why, we might ask, does one smack of progress and the other inauthenticity? Perhaps because Love Island has long been criticized for its lack of diversity and promotion of ‘unrealistic’ body standards, this latest gesture towards inclusion feels like merely that—a gesture. It is also worth noting that this is a very low-commitment gesture for Love Island, who, due to Hammond’s total mobility, have not committed to making the Villa wheelchair-accessible.