Modern society is very judgmental, especially when it comes to people of popularity. However, the human race is not necessarily qualified to judge each other, such is one of the follies of humanity. Poet Tony Hoagland supports this idea in his poem, “Poor Britney Spears”. Hoagland poses the question, “Are we sure we know what the… we’re doing?”, after explaining the manner in which Americans judged and attempted to control pop singer Britney Spears. Hoagland is known for his satirical take on the contemporary life of modern Americans, and makes no exceptions for this in “Poor Britney Spears”. Hoagland provides an exemplary use of tone, metaphors, irony, and an analysis of the dichotomy of society to expose the exceedingly critical face of society…show more content… Hoagland continues to employ a sarcastic tone, specifically when he begins to remind the audience that it was completely by choice that Britney Spears “… wandered into the late-twentieth-century glitterati party of striptease American celebrity”. Progressing through the poem, Hoagland begins to take a more aggressive tone as he begins to criticize society, something that his diction reflects. Hoagland compares society to a mad scientist that has engineered Britney Spears as an amorphous thing to be shaped by others. This connection reflects the way that society dictates what exactly they want celebrities to be, and how it generally gets what it wants due to the celebrities’ fear of losing popularity. In lines 26-28, “Or is she nothing but a gladiatrix who strolls into the coliseum full of blinding lights and tigers”, Hoagland poses society and critics as sadistic fans and vicious tigers respectively, some of words with negative connotations to further convey the aggressive tone, such as: voodoo doll, drunk, fanged, and humiliation. This aggressive tone goes to reflect that Hoagland himself is not exempt from the overly-critical mind of
