The Exile of Britney Spears: A Tale of 21st-Century Consumption

As sustainability and eco-responsibility become a part of our everyday cultural conversation, we’re finally being forced to acknowledge that what we consume matters. What we fail to realize is that we unconsciously, continually, and at times violently consume much more than just food—including celebrities. The Exile of Britney Spears takes the ubiquitous pop star of its title as its primary example, explaining that we have consumed, digested, and eliminated Britney Spears in a process uniquely characteristic of American popular culture. In Christopher Smit’s provocative account of the sociological, aesthetic, and political outcomes of this new mediated cannibalism, he offers the idea of exile as a new metaphor for the outcome of popular consumption. By investigating the psychological, personal, and social matrix of Britney’s rise and fall, he outlines the process of her inevitable exile from global taste and favor.