Perhaps the most grim of realities are best expressed by puppets (via stop-motion animation, in this case). Filmmaker Nicole Brending likely knew that harsh truths aren’t absorbed too well by the American public, so fond of their froth, as well as turning the lynch mob mentality into a sport. Which is why animation was the best route for her opus, Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity From Popular Culture. Plus, there’s the beneficial symbolism of female pop stars being the puppets of everyone–their fans, their managers, and, often, their stage mothers before that. As we’ve seen the after effects of the manner in which Britney Spears was plopped onto a pedestal to be slowly “de-virginized” for all the world to see–as though slowly yet voraciously unwrapping her like candy–the treatment of women in pop culture is never really “about” them. Even though it’s their lives being casually decimated. They’re but a byproduct of the misogynistic (including women, gay men and trans people bearing said misogyny) machine that is every facet of media consumed. And no one was a better example of being served to the pyre than Britney in the 00s.
This is the primary pop culture icon Junie Spoons (voiced by Brending herself) is meant to embody, though there are allusions to a number of other “trainwreck” personalities, including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Murphy and even Tonya Harding–all contained within this character. She is the “everywoman” of having no voice of her own. Of being a product wielded for the profit and consumption of the many, while she herself is left questioning reality by the end of her peak (which tends to happen when she can no longer be sold as jailbait).
Told in the talking heads fashion of an E! True Hollywood Story, various people from Junie’s life (whether hangers-on or people who knew her slightly better) retell the story of her rise and fall. While Junie’s life trajectory finds her becoming a pop star much sooner–at the age of fourteen (à la Billie Eilish)–than Britney (who was seventeen when her debut album came out) both were pushed into music and dancing lessons at an early age, and Britney was already being pimped out on The Mickey Mouse Club by age eleven. This, too, is referenced in Dollhouse, in which Junie meets her version of Justin Timberlake–named Zachary Wilderness–on a similar show. Zachary, however, is much older than Junie, thus, later when it behooves her puppeteers to have the two date, they change his birth certificate so that he only seems slightly older.
The stage mother dynamic also echoes tones of the rapport Brittany Murphy shared with her own matriarch that would eventually go quite sour. As one observer puts it, when other girls were having a normal life, “Junie was rehearsing fifteen hours a day and simulating sex for strangers.” Junie’s manager is also interviewed, echoing the vibe of Lou Perlman and Larry Rudolph, Spears’ former managers as he matter-of-factly discusses the “whore-ification,” if you will, of Junie, starting with subtle measures like putting her in a schoolgirl uniform or adding foam in music videos that represents cum.
A seamless transition from virgin to whore (the only things a girl can be) indeed. There are also plenty of parallels between Britney’s Diane Sawyer interview from 2003 and the one Junie endures in which Sawyer picks apart her latest lyrics for her hit single, “Dollhouse,” including such gems as “You wanna play with me?” and “I’ll let you lick my lil’ lolli/But you’ll have to go real slowly/‘Cause no dolly likes it fast/And my cherry’s got to last.” In Britney’s case, Sawyer pointed out, “One of us wasn’t born yesterday, do you really think that’s all [the song] is talking about?” after Britney assures, “It says, ‘Breathe on Me’–that’s it!” Like Britney, Junie was coached to invoke the good Christian girl shtick whenever such questions arose–a facade completely dismantled in Vanessa Grigoriadis’ scathing 2008 article for Rolling Stone called “The Tragedy of Britney Spears,” written in the aftermath of her public breakdown. Grigoriadis’ depictions are in keeping with the misogyny women themselves have been conditioned to conjure in order to function within the patriarchy as she describes how Britney “doesn’t want anything to do with the person the world thought she was. She is not a good girl. She is not America’s sweetheart. She is an inbred swamp thing who chain-smokes, doesn’t do her nails, tells reporters to ‘eat it, snort it, lick it, fuck it’ and screams at people who want pictures for their little sisters.”
Junie goes the same route–for who wouldn’t be prone to a little breakdown after so much scrutiny and misinterpretation? Especially in terms of the rampant double standards women must face for engaging in the same–or even less egregious–behavior as men. As is the case when Zachary Wilderness appears on the cover of Bro Magazine in May 2008 after leaking their sex tape, in a move popularized by Rick Saloman with Paris Hilton. Junie, in contrast, appears looking less glossy on the cover of Btw Weekly with a still from the tape and the headline: “Junie Spoons: Damaged Goods.” Sounds about right, as far as double standard-parading goes. And women are also happy to lap up the gossip and the teardown. As Sawyer narrated of Spears, “She’s like a laboratory experiment in the insulating power of fame.”
By 2010, our Britney figure has gone full Lindsay Lohan as the media has a frenzy with her dating a woman named Amanda (Lohan famously dated Samantha Ronson circa 2009). It’s here that we get the shaved head and an attempt at a new sound (something Britney was trying to do on her own around the year In the Zone came out with Original Doll–fittingly reminiscent of the film’s title, Dollhouse). Samantha comments on their breakup in the wake of the failure of Junie’s new single, “Animated,” “I don’t know, I guess I liked her better when she was less dykey.” Again, the machine of the patriarchy has fucked with every woman’s head so much, that all we know how to do is condemn other women when they don’t fit into the “pretty” and “pubescent” mold.
Realizing her foray into lesbianism through the lens of third wave feminism isn’t selling records, Junie decides to pose for the December issue of Playtoy, by now still only fifteen. And, as one commentator with a vested interest in her body notes, it’s only the millionth time they’ve seen her naked. This speaks to the notion that a woman loses all sense of being seen as a “real” person by the public the more she shows herself. She is something to be analyzed, a separate entity from anything resembling a “pure” human as, again, the Diane Sawyer interview with Britney elucidated. Case in point, Sawyer holding up pictures of Britney to her in various states of undress to herself to ask her if she’s ashamed. The entire scene is positively grotesque as we watch one of the most respected journalists in history undercuttingly degrade a pop star because she chose to pose as countless women before her have.
Sawyer also pulls out the ultimate shame card with, “Does your dad have a lot of opinions about what you do?” This seems to eerily presage the conservatorship that Britney continues to be imprisoned by as she repeats, “Oh yes.” But it’s also indicative of the fact that the male gaze and opinion is something we learn early on as women from our fathers, only to apply that knowledge to the subsequent men we end up boning. “Look at me, notice me, think that I’m special”–all of those sentiments directed at the father become channeled sexually toward men we’re actually allowed to fuck.
Naturally, mothers play their role in the undoing of a girl as well. Equal parts I, Tonya and Brittany Murphy: An ID Mystery in terms of the unhealthy mother-daughter relationship, Junie and her mother, Patricia, are the archetypal horror story about a child star being pushed into fame whether she thinks she really wants it or not. It doesn’t take long for Junie to act out, seizing a chance to emancipate herself from her mother and cut her off from being her manager. This is when “professional gambling addict” Joey Gold (the obvious Kevin Federline figure) enters the picture, and the two get married in Vegas (as Britney did to Jason Alexander).
Even Chris Crocker gets repurposed as “Some Guy Named Larry” begging the public to “Leave Junie alone.” Except Brending takes it one step further into the macabre territory as Larry ends up literally becoming Junie, or rather “Trans Junie,” in a genius effort to prove that women have so little say in their lives that the public would rather listen to a man posing as Junie than the real Junie herself. Incidentally, Crocker stated in 2014, “I know I would be one hundred percent happy living as a girl. But it’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of therapy you have to go through. And I’m willing to put in that work.” Mercifully, he never put in enough to “become” Britney, though he was clearly trying to emulate her look in the 2007 video that made him viral as he puts on the performance of saying, “All you people care about is readers and making money off of her!” Funny how Crocker ended up doing the exact same thing.
As Brending steers the latter half of the narrative to darker and darker depths (that are but a mere reflection of society to itself), in 2012, things take a Patty Hearst turn when Junie is abducted by “Siamese Liberation Militia.” Forced to record a video and state to the public, “I represent the worst parts of America. I represent sexism, racism, greed, capitalism, opportunism, classism, narcissism, nepotism…” Junie is the true puppet on a string for all walks of life. After being rescued, one newscaster reports, “She couldn’t distinguish between her real life and her life while in captivity.” It’s a chilling statement, for that is exactly how one can picture Spears thinking as she went off the rails in 2007 and, even now, living in her Instagram bubble.
Another haunting moment occurs when a member of the public playing a Britney Spears-inspired video game explains, “If you live long enough, eventually you get a show in Vegas.” The girlfriend asks, “Can I play?” “Yeah. I don’t wanna play anymore. It’s not that fun,” he replies. And it’s not. It’s more like a waking nightmare.
The eradication of female subjectivity in all industries of pop culture is also explored by Brending when Junie makes an art house movie–a nod to Blue is the Warmest Color as Junie is advised to act in a quote unquote lesbian sex film called Pink and Blue. Blue is the Warmest Color would become synonymous in the press with being a hostile working environment for lead actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, who were relentlessly abused by their director, Abdellatif Kechiche. Seydoux and Exarchopoulos would publicly decry his “methods,” but soon after, Seydoux would then shrug it off with, “The way he treats us? So what!” Just another side effect of patriarchal brainwashing.
As the madness escalates to heights the viewer can’t possibly anticipate, in the inevitable final scene, we’re given the “expert” in all things Junie, Dan Snotgrass, to show us just how much people’s obsessions with a female pop star turn into something serial killer-esque. Almost as though the masses are rendered carbon copies of Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, just wanting to inhabit her skin–never the least bit concerned with what she might be thinking or feeling as they would prefer to project their own sentiments onto her. And the puppeteers of the industry are all too happy to oblige with a brand new product for the public to eviscerate every five years or so.
While the pop stars of the current pantheon “appear” to have more control (e.g. Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish) in the present, it doesn’t exempt them from the skewering that comes with being a female open to public dissection. Or perhaps vivisection is the more fitting word.
