Author’s Note for “Slowest Hunter”

“Are you objecting that advertising and propaganda cannot be compared, because one serves commerce and the other ideology? You understand nothing.” —Milan Kundera, Immortality

I grew up during the boom of reality TV. I watched it all. Keeping Up with the Kardashians, America’s Next Top Model, Survivor, Fear Factor, Jersey Shore, My Super Sweet 16, and more. Alongside semi-scripted filmed TV came the rise of another type of reality entertainment: celebrity tabloids. The feverish headlines of the 2000s were a constant roulette of drama. Brangelina wedding! Bennifer divorce! Superbowl Nipplegate! Martha Stewart Prison Sentence! But there was one celebrity so popular that all other news seemed like background noise in comparison:

Britney Spears.

She was breathtaking and talented, and for years she graced the cover of every magazine. We loved watching her skyrocket to success, but eventually her fame outgrew her, and we became hungry for more. We told ourselves we loved her so much, but didn’t admit that we wanted ownership over her. That we didn’t mind annihilating her. We laughed when she shaved her head. We gasped when she attacked the paparazzi car with that black umbrella. We rolled our eyes when she gave that awful lip-synced 2007 MTV Music Award performance. Watching Britney’s mental degradation was a drug to us.

Fast forward to 2021: In re the Conservatorship of Britney Jean Spears.

We tweeted #FreeBritney, and cheered when she won her trial. We rushed out to buy her memoir. Britney’s point of view mattered to us all of a sudden. Our tune had changed dramatically. Perhaps it was the unsettling feeling of realizing that a beloved pop star, constantly under public surveillance, could be tortured right under our noses. When the conservatorship ended, we could sigh with relief. It seemed the denouement of the Britney Spears story would include a happy ending.

After the trial, Britney was active on social media again, but something was strange. She danced with swords in a yellow bikini, her eyes hollow and aimed at the camera. Around the same time, Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, came out. The memoir was a searing indictment of pretty much every adult in McCurdy’s life. Those who were responsible for her safety, who had instead heralded her exploitation. Readers were compelled by the endless cruelties narrated in the book, and it was an instant smash hit. It seemed the world was ready for a different type of celebrity memoir, one that explored the ethical limitations of celebrity itself.

“Slowest Hunter” is about two former child stars who are given the chance to opt out of their celebrity. The only catch is that once the journey begins, there is no going back. The story points a magnifying glass at the nightmarish land where someone becomes so famous that they transcend their own talent (which is fallible), their own beauty (which is mutable), and, eventually, their own humanity (which becomes estranged). I wanted to look at that gray area between intrepid idolization and bastardized admiration, where fandom grows teeth and we no longer see our celebrity women as human. A pop star’s celebrity is so valuable that their basic human feelings, exhaustion, and “off days” must be annihilated, because they are too threatening to those who profit off of them.

The story asks, where does this impetus to profit end? Far more than the celebrity herself, it’s their teams, their families, every fashion brand that copies the outfits they wear, fans making off-brand merch, the venues, the biopic movie deals, the tabloids, the news cycle, and the journalists covering them who profit. And in my story, the supposed utopia of the BorderHouse has a vested interest too. This is where humanity turns into imagology. In the imagologue’s world, appearances have a deeply ingrained purpose, and communication is tightly controlled. Free thinking is dangerous to the order of the world, so they distort truth, manufacture exhaustion, and heighten competition. Society functions at the whim of its unseen and unknown leader, whose appetite for profit is insatiable.

“Slowest Hunter” looks at celebrity as an industrial complex. It offers a picture of late-stage capitalism at its glossiest, held together by the covert claw of propaganda. By reading, I hope you see how deep the claws chain us.