existential celebrity

Ann Powers looks at Justin and Britney and asks: "Why has one teen phenomenon made such a spectacular transition to adulthood, while the other languishes in the muck of her own misdeeds?"

Though he dates A-list actresses, Timberlake has since worked to maintain emotional distance from celebrity culture, making clear that becoming a better musician is his primary interest. When he released "Cry Me A River," a song allegedly about his breakup with Spears, the real news was its striking production and nuanced vocals. Timberlake had arrived as an artist and in doing so made his private life not a nonissue but not the main issue.

The sad thing is, Spears could have taken this route. Her 2001 "Dream Within a Dream" tour spun an elaborate fantasy about girl culture and the role of the princess that suggested Spears might actually be really thinking about the image she was trying to maintain. By 2004, when she covered fellow celebrity disaster Bobby Brown's biggest hit, "My Prerogative," she was publicly struggling with her bad reputation but doing so through music, not by stumbling through the tabloids.

But Spears lost the thread by choosing -- or being forced by the very media-driven culture now busy chastising her -- to make her private life the main focus of her fame. Yes, she had children young, and yes, she's proven herself an exhibitionist unable to handle the excesses she can afford. But the absence of Britney the Artist (and yes, she deserves to be called an artist) is what made space for Britney the Wreck to take over.

Like many creative women, she took time off to start a family and lost career momentum, reduced by many to the role of "bad mom." Like her tragic spiritual sister, Anna Nicole Smith, she soon found that fame for its own sake is a toxic pursuit.