In the video to accompany a new single, Britney Spears has put herself in a confessional, looking sexually provocative and whispering sweetly to a Catholic priest. According to 'sources' who can barely contain their delight, in as-yet unreleased footage, she will sit on the poor man's lap. Sooner or later we can probably expect someone to condemn this on grounds of taste and religious sensitivity. There will be a small storm. Lots of people will watch the video, talk about Britney and, possibly, even buy the music it's supposed to be selling. Certainly, it's fairly tasteless. It's even deliberately provocative to practising Catholics, in a particularly laboured way. But basically, this is just a cheap publicity stunt and anyone who condemns the desperate singer for it, is going to be playing into her hands.
Some time ago, I wrote a story in the Observer's Pendennis column about criticism of Nicole Kidman for appearing in the film version of Philip Pullman's anti-Catholic book The Golden Compass. The point, in her case, was that she has repeatedly declared that she is a Catholic and that it's important to her - so the decision seemed odd. Recently, she has explained that it was not as hypocritical as it appeared to those early critics, since she agreed to take the job only on the understanding that the film would have some of Pullman's explicit anti-church content removed. Good for her - she's got principles.
But the power of the Catholic church as a publicity tool is something understood by the undisputed master of this sort of thing - Madonna. You may remember that she recently crucified herself on a recent tour. Surely enough, eventually someone complained. And - bingo! - news of the tour, pictures of the strip-lit cross, and of course Madonna herself were everywhere. There must be a thousand more examples of people deliberately courting religious controversy just to get themselves some coverage. Is it time we stopped playing along?
