Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Backup Dancers From Hell: Britney Spears - “Till The World Ends”


We start with words splashing across the screen that it’s “December 21st, 2012”, while ominous clouds of something fill the sky. Great. I guess Britney has spoken with her personal prophetess and we’re all going to kick the bucket in a few months, which sucks tremendously, because I’m fairly certain that I won’t have all my Facebook games to the top level by then, and all my work will have been pointless. But hey, maybe Brit’s got some special ideas on how to live our remaining time in a fun way. Let’s check it.

Okay, first we get a shot of Britney’s high-fashion legs walking in a tunnel, so apparently we should spend some time walking around in couture in closed-in spaces. She’s got some of her posse with her, and they meet up with some other folks in wherever this dank place is. Everyone seems to be on the sweaty side, not sure what’s up with that, but all the folks still look sexy because it’s a Britney Spears video and it’s a requirement that all participants be young and hot.

We eventually get a full shot of Britney, and she’s once again trussed up in something black with metal studs, her hair looking slightly naughty and dirty. She sings roughly 7 words and then the camera pans away from her, so I’m not sure that the cameraman really understands what his focus should be. Anyway, the camera goes above ground, where we see some guy diddling with a manhole cover, trying to get it open. Two wandering, leather-clad skanks see him doing this, and rush over to help out. Must be something special in that there manhole.

Back to Britney, as she warbles the song and wanders around this industrial complex, where we seem to have a tremendous amount of people wearing the least amount of clothing possible. (To make sure we understand the clothing minimalism, the camera is basically rammed up the behinds of several thin actresses.) Most of these people are not really doing anything, so Britney decides it’s time for a dance off.

Instantly, a clearing appears in the sea of sweating bodies, and Britney is joined by several lovely lasses who also enjoy wearing thongs. While they gyrate and thrust their arms in the air, we get jump shots of the probably-poisonous clouds still billowing outside, along with buildings possibly crumbling, just in case you forgot for a second that, you know, everybody’s going to die. We also get shots of other well-gelled people slipping into that manhole, so apparently Britney’s Boiler Room is the place to be.

Britney, always a professional, works the crowd by wandering around and letting people see her underwear. She’s briefly distracted by some dude looking really skinny and not right (think Christian Bale in that movie where he lost all the weight and went crazy, not a good look). Then Britney is magically back on the dance floor without her home girls, so I guess she fired them. We get side shots of lots of people feeling very amorous and rubbing themselves on one another. (Yet another requirement of a Britney Spears’ video. There’s a handbook, you know.)

Oh wait, now the home girls are back, and they are doing a dance with Brit that looks like they’ve all managed to sit on a cattle prod at the same time, jerking and shimmying. This somehow ramps up the audience and everybody gets even more naughty with as many neighbors as they can reach. Or maybe it’s the images of possible meteors or some such starting to slam into nearby buildings. Something’s got these people sexed up.

And there are more people on the dance floor, so I guess not everybody found a hookup or three in the audience. We also get some side shots where Britney appears to be dancing in front of a screen made out of all her gold records, then we head back to the main room where people are thisclose to having all-out sex to the beat of the music and the wailing on the track and the possible aphrodisiacal appeal of the planet being destroyed.

Now Britney is somewhere else in her underworld, leaning against a concrete pillar (is she tired?) while three male models gaze at her adoringly and sweat. She must really like this part of the set a lot, because she actually remains relatively still for at least two seconds. Then she’s back to gallivanting all over the place, with her posse now composed of males whose only goal in life is to touch Britney’s body and clothing, as if trying to figure out what she would look like if she ever wore a complete outfit.

Then we cut to… maybe a bomb shelter? Some cement room where lots of people have been crammed. While a production assistant screws with flipping a red light on and off, Britney and her cellar buddies do that synchronized thing where everybody hunches their shoulders to the beat. And still manage to have anonymous sex with strangers without losing that beat.

Okay, back to the main room for another line dance, this one with Britney and her stable of athletic, multi-racial studs. Not to be outdone, the girl posse and some of their friends undulate offstage with a tenacity that you usually only see in churches where people handle snakes and wear bad polyester clothing. We get to the point where you can’t tell who is doing what to whom, but they all seem to be having a swell time, so I guess it’s all good. Until somebody ends up pregnant. Then there will be a lot of finger-pointing and unanswered phone calls.

This raucous free-love choreography goes on for quite some time, with basically everybody getting a chance to ride all the rides in the amusement park. Yay.

Suddenly, just as Britney wails the line about “see the sunlight, we ain’t stoppin’”, we start seeing images of that sunlight breaking through the nasty clouds and such. (How cinematically convenient!) Now, I think these people are supposed to be pleased about the sunlight, but you really wouldn’t know it based on their reactions. Instead, most of them are reacting to the rays like it’s “True Blood” and Simple Sookie done screwed up and ripped some tinfoil off Bill’s parlor window.

Then I guess some assistant director stepped in and told the cast “look, dripping sex-bots, you are HAPPY that the sun is shining on you. This is NOT last-call at the after-hours bar and you have to go have sex somewhere else. The planet has been saved, and that’s a good thing.” With this bit of advice, we start to see most of the crowd untangle themselves from their random partners and look toward the sun with an attitude that might be feasibly approaching glee.

And the party gets started again, with everybody thrusting body parts about in rapture, especially when the sprinkler system kicks in and they all get drenched. (Don’t really get why the sprinklers didn’t work when the sun wasn’t shining, but hey, to each his own.) And that’s how we wind things down, with the boys and the girls and their minimal amounts of leather and morals all gyrating madly to the song, thrilled that the “everybody is going to die” business no longer applies due to the grace of Britney warbling a dance tune and doing pelvic thrusts.

Speaking of, Britney appears in the final scene, literally popping up by shoving her head out of that manhole and gazing about with wonder at the new world. Something tells me this might happen every day with her. Just guessing…



Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.

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