Blank Slate

"Lucky" is a departure for Britney Spears. She's not in love, she doesn't dance, and her clothing choices are relatively subdued. In fact, this is the first video in which Spears wears faux-fur-lined robes and Veronica-Lake-style hair. It's all in the service of "Lucky," one of the two characters she plays in the video: "Lucky" is a "Hollywood girl," a film star, while "Britney" looks on and signs about Lucky's innate sadness. Apparently, despite Lucky's success, she's often overcome with misery.

We never learn exactly what makes Lucky so melancholy. Lucky herself doesn't know. "If there's nothing missing in my life," she muses, "then why do these tears come at night?" Meanwhile, "Britney" hovers around Lucky's classic Hollywood era mansion and studio, a Greek chorus in a red tulle top. Because Lucky never actually sees Britney, the latter becomes a proxy for the viewers, who are similarly allowed to look at Spears all they want, without hope of her looking back. (Spears reinforces the viewer-identification at her concerts: performing "Lucky," she idles on a bed, surrounded by magazines, as if she were one of her own fans.)

The idea of the movie star whose fame leads to despair is not new, and Spears acknowledges the debt to Sunset Boulevard and the like by dressing Lucky up and putting her before outdated bright lights. We know only two things about Lucky: she's unhappy, and she's famous. Lacking any other evidence, the viewer is forced to conclude Lucky is unhappy because she is famous. Which is a fairly strange conclusion for someone as famous as Spears to present. But she presents it at a remove — Lucky, circa (a very glam) 1940, is unhappy; Britney, circa 2000, is just offering commentary. So is Spears "Lucky" or isn't she?

In her countless interviews, Spears portrays herself as happy with her fame. She has also stated (and her mother has concurred) that fame has been her goal since she was old enough to remember. She might actually be truly unhappy — but she comes across as too disciplined a performer to self-destruct in more traditional ways, such as drugs or booze; recording "Lucky," then, could be her way of protesting while still advancing her career. Problem is, while Spears did write several songs on Oops!.. I Did It Again, "Lucky" isn't one of them. Since the song is apparently not personal, the question becomes: why did Spears (and her management) decide to create Lucky?

Spears happens to be famous at a time when fame is more accessible, and fans are more ambivalent about the famous, than ever before. With the studio system that apparently employs Lucky a distant memory, anyone can become famous, so there's no incentive for the fans to treat the stars with respect. Moreover, there is more information available about the famous. A fan can feel very "familiar" with Spears after visiting her Web site, reading her book, reading her mother's book, and seeing her interviews countless times — and familiarity breeds contempt: for every Spears fan site now up on the Web, you could probably find two anti-Spears sites. By setting up the Britney/Lucky dualism, Spears challenges that false familiarity, plays with the illusion that the viewer "knows" her.