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Overdose, heart attack and rape: Demi Lovato's new series is part of the problem, not its solution - Walla! culture

2021-03-30T12:22:37.108Z


Pop star Demi Lovato reveals her addiction to the series "Dancing with the Devil" and raises troubling questions about image and success


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Overdose, heart attack and rape: Demi Lovato's new series is part of the problem, not its solution

Pop star Demi Lovato rummages through wounds in the new series "Dancing with the Devil."

She exposes her addiction and raises troubling questions about image and success, but dealing with these important issues is tainted by her manager’s cynical and opportunistic fingerprints

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  • Demi Lovato

  • scooter Brown

  • TV review

  • Disney

  • YouTube

Ben Byron Braude

Tuesday, 30 March 2021, 09:40 Updated: 10:00

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Business for all intents and purposes.

Demi Lovato, "Dancing with the Devil" (Photo: screenshot, YouTube)

In the summer of 2015, Demi Lovato released "Cool For The Summer" - a pop / rock song with semi-provocative lyrics produced by the Swedish hit machine Max Martin that became (rightly) a huge hit and turned her from another children's star from the Disney Channel into a real pop singer, just like Miley Cyrus , Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and others.

Who would have believed that six years later, in the summer of 2021, Lovato would begin promoting "Dancing with the Devil" - a four-part documentary series documenting her rehabilitation journey, from the moment she almost died from a heroin overdose to a comeback Exciting to the pop world.

Needless to say, "Dancing with the Devil," produced by YouTube Originals and its episode available for free every Tuesday at 10 p.m., comes to the world along with Lovato's new album of the same name which comes out four years after her previous album.

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If the name Demi Lovato doesn't mean too much to you, you're probably past the age of thirty or contemporary American pop doesn't exactly star in your Spotify.

Demi (born Dmitry Devon Lovato) has never become a huge star like Britney Spears, but you could say she was on her way to being the next Christina Aguilera.

Like Aguilera, Lovato also came from a Spanish-speaking house (her father is of Mexican descent) and her strong voice allowed her to sing powerful ballads alongside light-hearted pop hits, the two even recorded a joint duet shortly before Lovato's overdose.

Like Aguilera, Lovato also had an image of a slightly less sterile pop star, she talked about being bisexual, about suffering from bulimia and having an open conversation with her young fans about anxiety, depression and body image.

Despite her relative openness, her hard drug addiction Lovato managed to keep secret, in July 2018 when her personal assistant found her unconscious after an overdose of heroin and other drugs, she was rushed to hospital in a critical condition and the pop world was struck by astonishment.



This is also more or less the point where "Dancing with the Devil" begins (the series directed by Michael D. Ratner was screened at the last SXSW festival), Lovato is known to have survived her overdose, and now she and all the people closest to her are talking candidly about what happened.

The fact that Lovato takes an active part in the series, staring at the camera and recounting all the events in her voice, is unusual, especially for a young girl (only 28 years old) who is still striving for an active career in the pop world.

Just imagine the late Amy Winehouse sitting in front of the camera and talking about her conversations with her dealer or the first time she tried heroin and 'Molly' and you begin to understand the direction the series is going. Yes, Lovato has experience with drugs that would have caused even Pablo Escobar Blush with embarrassment, and now that she's (kind of) clean she is willing to talk about years of addiction that have almost cost her her life.

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Left with partial blindness.

Demi Lovato, "Dancing with the Devil" (Photo: screenshot, YouTube)

Along with interviews with Lovato, her mother, her sisters, her best friend, her personal assistant and more, "Dancing with the Devil" is accompanied by behind-the-scenes footage of the last big tour that Lovato went on, the one immediately followed by the fall.

The scenes from it were to be used for another documentary about her, and serve here as real-time warning signs of an impending disaster.

These moments are reminiscent of the excellent film "Whitney Houston: To Be Who I Am" ("Can I Be Me") which brought the tragic life story of the pop diva through materials from her recent world tour.

It turns out that the huge tour appearances, the sign of success that every singer strives to reach, often become the most dangerous moments in their lives, the distance from home reveals the deepest personal problems that arise on the surface, and can no longer be dimmed by any Instagram filter.

There is no comparison between Lovato and Houston’s vocal abilities or accomplishments, but both have struggled with similar demons: hard drug addiction, eating disorders and deep depression.



It could be said that talking about heroin addiction is what is supposed to attract us viewers to see "Dancing with the Devil," but the rest of the topics Lovato talks about in the series are just as important.

Aside from the cerebral events and heart attack she experienced following the overdose (leaving her with partial blindness) it turns out that Lovato was sexually assaulted that night, apparently by the same person who provided her with the drugs.

Like too many young women.

This was not her first sexual assault, and she also describes a rape on a date with one of the young actors who starred with her in one of the Disney movies she starred in, when she was 15. Without revealing the identity of that rapist, it can be understood that he went on with his life and Lovato dragged the injury Broadcast business as usual.

Beyond the image change Lovato goes through in the series, it's a not-so-simple indictment of the Disney Channel money machine, which turns out to be a place where the young men and women who leave it may have a successful career, but also mental scars that no visit to Disneyland can cure.

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Part of the promotion.

Demi Lovato, "Dancing with the Devil" (Photo: screenshot, YouTube)

While watching the series we are exposed to the amount of people who work for a medium-sized star like Lovato, there is a personal assistant, dietitian, spiritual guide / rehab, coaches, styling consultants and more.

So it is not surprising that she is required (even if not explicitly) to try to broadcast business as normally as possible, this is a young woman who is a business for all intents and purposes.

But what do you do when the image of a Disney star is too far from reality?

In Lovato’s case, from the moment she started talking about her coping with addictions and depression (even before the overdose), her managers tried to make her the poster girl of the phenomenon, because in Hollywood as in Hollywood everything can be leveraged.



In one of the most powerful scenes in the series, filmed towards the end of that tour, rapper and producer DJ Khaled takes the stage with Demi and congratulates her on the number of weeks she is alcohol-free, then invites her to perform a song in front of tens of thousands of people.

We viewers, who today understand the situation where Demi, a few weeks before her overdose, is asked to celebrate her detox in front of a huge fan base, can already see the crash route that will not be long in coming.

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Addictive substances, eating disorders and sexual assault are not all that Lovato shares with us.

Her biological father suffered from schizophrenia and addictions and died destitute without being in contact with him, and she carries a biological burden of mental coping.

Raising awareness of what used to be called "mental illness" is as important to me as the discourse on drugs.

This is one of the most common phenomena in the Western world, one that is often treated with shame or dismissed as a slight depression, but in practice costs millions of lives, and not just in "boring" countries like Denmark.

The golden cage in which Lovato is surrounded, similar to the one depicted in the film "Save Brittany", is an ideal incubator for growing mental problems, which only intensify when their sufferers are constantly preoccupied with their image - whether it is the image of the "Christian virgin" or the "complicated girl".



And the truth is that "dancing with the devil" is not only the solution to the problem but part of it.

The public outing to the media with the addiction story comes relatively early in Lovato’s recovery and as mentioned as part of a PR campaign for an album coming out this coming weekend.

Her personal manager, Scooter Brown who also manages Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Jay Balvin and more (and is in a long and dirty conflict with Taylor Swift), is one of the series' producers and for quite a few moments you can see the finger claims of the shrewd and cynical businessman .

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The masks are removed - but in a calculated and artificial way.

Scooter Brown and Demi Lovato at Launch with "Dancing with the Devil" (Photo: GettyImages, Rich Fury / Getty Images for OBB Media)

There is a deep sense of artificiality throughout the "dance with the devil".

It comes from the very beginning, when excessive emphasis is placed on the photographs under the conditions of the corona, and in a sequence of engineered moments we see all the interviewees remove the mask just as they begin to speak.

It is also expressed in a ton of quotes designed to intensify the drama, like the one said by Demi herself: "Okay, I'll just say everything I have and at most we'll leave it out."

In a series that contains almost the entire Lovato medical file, other than perhaps the results of blood and urine tests, it’s hard to imagine that there is anything that really remains on the floor of the editing room.



The devil whose name appears in the series' name is supposed to represent Lovato's drug or tendency to become addicted, but if you give it some extra thought you will find that the answer is more complex.

Lovato's greatest enemy is her media image, a superpower whose control is limited and sometimes even seems to control her.

Her vicious and drug cycle began following an injury she experienced as a child on the Disney Channel, when she was asked to smile the whitest smile in the world even when her heart was broken and her mind was torn, leading to her escape to drugs and alcohol.

But today when she holds the title of "pop star who almost died of an overdose" she has a new image to maintain, one that is not at all clear she wants.

It is doubtful whether we will hear about it in detail in the upcoming album.

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Source: walla

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