Look, I’m not some big Justin Bieber fan; I don’t love Justin Bieber—correction, I didn’t think I loved Justin Bieber. But now I’m not so sure. Before I explain my partial conversion to Belieberism, I think it’s important that I disclose my prior encounters with the phenomenon. When I finished graduate school, my first job was to teach twelve-year-old Beliebers in Canada how to measure the hypotenuse of a triangle (I was an SSAT tutor). I took to incorporating Bieber into my math word problems. It worked. If Justin Bieber’s stage is a triangle-shape with one side 3 feet long, a second side four feet long, and the front of the stage is its hypotenuse, how many Beliebers can safely stand in front of the stage if each person needs one foot of space? (This is a word problem that could only exist before COVID-19, and yes, many twelve-year-old Beliebers informed me that no Justin Bieber stage would ever be that small). I know (and still only know) maybe one song of his, and I can’t even think of the name of the song as I write this essay. Incidentally the song brings up memories of driving to Rockaway Beach to surf the waves in the winter when I lived in New York City. My van didn’t have a CD player or Bluetooth, so I’d listen to the radio—and at that time, Justin Bieber was pretty much the only thing on the radio. All I could think about was how cold the ocean was going to be when I jumped in and how sad I felt for Selena Gomez, and how mean Bieber was for writing a song like that about her, even though the song wasn’t really about her, because no song or poem or piece of artwork is really about anyone. I digress. When I think of Justin Bieber, mostly I think about Selena Gomez—or at least, when I thought about Bieber, I mostly would think about Gomez. But this has changed. Now I think about Billie Eilish. And that’s strange to me. One of the most fascinating and beautiful, and dare I say, moving moments in R.J. Cutler’s brilliant documentary, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is when Eilish meets Justin Bieber for the first time.
First of all, let’s just take a moment to let this one sink in. Billie Eilish is a Justin Bieber fan. Her mom explains in the documentary that Eilish was so obsessed with Bieber that “as a little kid I considered taking her to therapy.”
Enter Bieber, after the intermission. (This, in itself, is worth noting. When was the last time a movie had an intermission? The intermission divides the moment in the film when Eilish goes from a largely underground singer to a household name.)
The scene opens with another crowd of adoring fans, screaming at Eilish, a scene we’ve grown accustomed to since the movie began, a scene that becomes increasingly more and more extreme as Eilish’s fame grows and the film progresses. This gives the viewer a strange kind of vertigo. On the one hand, isn’t this something we’ve all imagined, to be surrounded by so many adoring fans? But R.J. Cutler manages to film this adoration from Eilish’s perspective, offering viewers a real sense of the claustrophobia such crowds engender. The guard rails keeping fans out also become a kind of cage in which the celebrity exists. The film puts the viewer in this position; we’re going along with Eilish for the ride. And because Eilish is so young, I can’t help but feel fairly protective of her. I feel like she could be my little cousin and I don’t want her to get hurt by a tossed iphone or mean comment. Her mother later tells the camera that she doesn’t understand how any young artist goes through this kind of “trajectory” without a parent. And indeed, I think the role that Eilish’s parental support plays in her success is largely underplayed in the film and worth further study.
But back to Bieber. When Eilish sees Bieber for the first time, she and Bieber are in their celebrity cages, surrounded by hundreds of screaming fans filming them on their iPhones; when she sees him, the camera focuses in on her, first recoiling, but then staring at Bierber. Her face is filled with such pure love. It’s overwhelming to watch.
It is overwhelming to watch because we so rarely see expressions of pure love anymore. By this I mean, when was the last time you saw someone openly adoring another human being, without cynicism, without irony, without an agenda? I can’t remember.
And here’s the thing that makes me love Justin Bieber a little more. When we do see such vulnerability, such openness in a stranger, our first instinct might be to turn away, to move back a little, to self-protect. But Bieber doesn’t turn away, or move back, or turn his head. He watches her. He sees her. And his face is free of cynicism and irony and all the terrible things we have yoked to love, and fandom, and popular culture.
When was the last time you looked into a stranger’s eyes and understood exactly what they were going through, without the need for words to qualify anything? When was the last time you observed two human beings in a moment of perfect understanding? When Billie Eilish looks into Bieber’s eyes, and when Bieber looks into Eilish’s eyes, we observe two human beings, living an experience foreign to most human beings on this planet (they are surrounded by hundreds of fans with iPhones, filming them, after all). They understand what it means to be adored by so many, and yet, here they stand adoring each other. And, if that isn’t the stuff of opera, I don’t know what is.
R.J. Cutler has provided us something truly precious: a moment of recognition. Maria Abramovic tried to artificially create something like this in The Artist is Present at the MoMA. I went to the exhibition when it was showing in New York and sat for a couple of hours watching Abramovic watch strangers, and while I have seen moments from the performance that are rather moving, my experience sitting beside Abramovic at The Artist is Present was mostly underwhelming. At the very least, I felt nothing close to what R.J. Cutler has achieved in this meeting between Eilish and Bieber. I imagine this feeling was what Abramovic was reaching toward (and occasionally achieved).
There’s something incredibly humane in watching Bieber see Eilish, even as she enters a world of fame that paradoxically leaves her adored by everyone but truly known by so few.
Eilish is an original, a true poet and artist. I never got the same feeling about Bieber. And yet, there’s something quite remarkable and moving and true about watching Eilish sing along to Justin Bieber in the car, or watching her get a call from Bieber after she sweeps the Grammy’s.
Eilish’s mom says that now is a scary time to be a teenager. Indeed. We live in a planet that may be unlivable by the time Eilish can receive Medicare. Our political leaders lack real courage to make changes. And to top it off, teens are living through a pandemic that further isolates them while living in a society that was lonely and isolated to begin with. Now indeed is a scary time to be a teenager. Scarier because it isn’t clear when we’ll all be able to sit together again listening to music we love, sung by someone we adore, who can bring the room to tears.
About the Writer
Janice Greenwood is a writer, surfer, and poet. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and creative writing from Columbia University.