Young girl with problems writes song about said problems; song becomes major international hit, thus putting girl in situations that feed those same problems; girl hits rock bottom one month before major awards show and a big, public deal is made of getting her help for the problems she said she didn’t need help with in the song; shy and contrite but somehow still aggressive, girl performs the now-mythic song on said awards show; almost immediately thereafter, she is told via television monitor that she’s won a major award for the same song; over the course of a few seconds on live television, she falls apart, asks for help and then miraculously and brilliantly regains her composure––thus essentially reenacting the above cycle in a compressed space; girl is welcomed, problems or not, back into the embrace of semi-polite mainstream culture.

I’ve expressed my doubts about the media event that is Amy Winehouse before. I don’t deny that the girl has been photographed in some bad situations, but the whole crack video to rehab to Grammy triumph trajectory just seems a little contrived, a little too perfect a story of celebrity redemption. But whether her much-documented problems have been exaggerated, or even underplayed, there’s no denying the power of the clip above as an exclamation point on the end of this narrative. Just those few moments where she appears to be taking in the news of her Record of the Year win via the satellite monitor, and her face cracks and her hands grip for something that isn’t there––this is Judy Garland stuff. You can’t make that shit up.

Media triumphs like this pay dividends over both the short and long term. How long is it going to be until Amy heads into some kind of Courtney Love circa 1995 phase––maybe not the full-on Versace makeover, but somebody’s going to try to put her in a film, right? Back in May, there was a very unsubstantiated rumor floating around that Winehouse had been asked to be a Bond girl. I imagine it’s too late for that, although if this story is legit, if Amy stays out of trouble until April, she apparently has the Bond theme all sewn up. Meanwhile, I just watched that clip for the twelfth time, and the twelfth tear came to my eye. This is the oldest narrative in the book––the broken girl forgiven for her problems and anointed a star––and I don’t want to buy into it, but damn it, it’s totally working.