Poor Justin Bieber and his anger issues. He has become the King Joffrey of pop
Remember the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Remember how desperately sad it was to see Jack Nicholson’s lobotomised face, devoid of all the fizz and joy that had previously made him such an endearingly unpredictable presence? Of course you do. It was one of the most harrowing moments in all of cinema. Well, now – in a bleak reminder that history is doomed to repeat itself over and over again until all is nothing but ashes and smoke – this scene looks set to play itself out once more, this time across the face of Justin Bieber.
Obviously not literally – because God knows society couldn’t cope with the horrors of what a lobotomy scar would do to Justin Bieber’s lovely haircut – but figuratively. For Bieber’s spark, his verve, his very raison d’être could soon be extinguished for good. That’s right; as reluctant as you understandably are to hear this, Bieber is going on an anger management course.
Now, there will be those among you who will applaud this. You will have followed Bieber’s downward trajectory over recent years – the accusations of spitting and kicking, the investigation into claims he caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage by egging a neighbour’s house, the video of him yelling “Fuck Bill Clinton!” as he urinated into a mop bucket – and you will have reached the conclusion that these are the acts of an uncontrollable young man driven berserk by fame. You will have also reached the conclusion that he needs to be put in his place. But this conclusion is wrong.
Because douchiness runs through Bieber like oil through a Russian pipeline. It suits him.
It’s a perfect fit. Can you remember what Bieber was like before he was primarily known for being a jumped-up little wazzock with impossible entitlement issues? He was awful. He was a 15-year-old boy in his dad’s baseball cap, singing songs about wanting to hold hands with girls. He was all teeth and conditioner. He was a helium-fuelled Manga cartoon. He was the kid from AI. Worse, he was the kid from AI, but without the cool bit where his face melted whenever he ate anything. But now? Now Bieber has become King Joffrey, and it’s glorious.
The anger management course comes as part of a plea deal reached after Bieber was arrested for careless driving and charged with resisting arrest earlier in the year at something the Miami police determined to bean illegal street race. Blood tests found marijuana and Xanax in his system, but the deal means he won’t go to prison so long as he makes a $50,000 donation to charity and promises to attend a 12-hour anger management course. Which is obviously a dreadful shame.
Because what if it straightens him out? What if the lessons he learns in this anger management course are so profound that Bieber becomes a flattened-out shadow of his former self? What if it turns him into the sort of person who actually gives straight and thoughtful answers in deposition videos, rather than using them as an opportunity to scowl and sneer and essentially perform a high-wire impression of a gone-to-seed Zack Morris from Saved by the Bell, as he did earlier this year?
Without a droopy-eyed Bieber mooching around in the misguided belief that the world owes him as much as he can possibly want whenever he wants it, we’ll have nothing to focus our collective rage on. Without him, we would start taking our fleeting aggression out on each other or, worse, we would start getting angry about real things that actually matter. Without Bieber to distract us, we would all become social activists. Imagine how dull that would make Twitter.
However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. In reality, it’s hard to learn anything in 12 hours, especially when that thing involves permanently expunging the wild streak of brattishness that has become an indelible part of your DNA. Besides, celebrities as a whole seem relatively immune to anger management in all its forms. Mel Gibson underwent a course after his drink-driving arrest in 2006, and yet still went on to leave those terrifying full-volume racist voicemails to his girlfriend four years later. Naomi Campbell took an anger management course after her myriad violent exploits, and she still doesn’t seem like someone who you would want to barge in front of in a toilet queue. The Situation, an American reality TV star who somehow managed to get on Celebrity Big Brother two years ago, has been on anger management courses this year, and he’s still brimming with enough torrential self-loathing to keep referring to himself as a name as unforgivably knuckleheaded as “The Situation”.
And, besides, this is Justin Bieber we’re talking about. In the nicest possible way, he does seem to be the sort of person who would need at least 48 hours’ worth of lessons to even begin to grasp the difference between up and down, which does suggest that this is all going to be an completely pointless endeavour.
And that’s fortunate because, right now, Bieber stands alone as a shining example of the corrosive nature of fame. The more Bieber acts out – the more he does everything in his power to repel people in the most obnoxious way possible – the more youngsters will be put off from following in his footsteps. If just one peppy tween realises that recording a jaunty pop song will ultimately result in them yelling inexplicable insults at former presidents while someone films them peeing into a bucket, and instead decides to do something sensible with their life, then Justin Bieber will have done his job. We need him.
Posted on: The Guardian
