From the moment Britney Spears released her debut single, “…Baby One More Time” in 1998, the system was rigged against her. That much was obvious from watching the New York Times documentary, Framing Britney Spears, which premiered last week. For just over an hour, the film demonstrates how, throughout her 22-year career, Spears has consistently been subjected to the toxicities of modern culture, from sexism to capitalist greed.
The documentary also focusses on the legal complications that surround Spears, most notably the conservatorship that she has been living under since 2008. For the past 12 years, Spears’s life has been in the hands of her father, who legally controls everything from her business dealings and financial affairs, to her medical care and living arrangements.
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While always controversial among fans, in the past three years the validity of the conservatorship has been scrutinised and sparked the #FreeBritney movement, a fan-led initiative that advocates for Spears’s release from these legal constraints. As of 2019, Spears has been involved in a legal battle to extricate her father from the arrangement, refusing to work until he is removed as conservator.
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How could a 39-year-old mother of two, capable of world tours, album roll outs, TV appearances and a successful Las Vegas residency be incapable of managing her own life, as the conservatorship suggests? Why was the conservatorship, an arrangement meant to protect Spears’s wellbeing, dubbed a “hybrid business model” by former co-conservator, attorney Andrew Wallet? Who is really benefitting from the conservatorship of Britney Spears?
Due to the culture of secrecy that has surrounded Spears for over a decade, the answers to these questions are, at this time, unknowable. But they are also a distraction from the broader picture painted by Framing Britney Spears.
When Spears first stepped out in that school girl outfit in the “…Baby One More Time” music video, her career was a siren call for moral panic. Her burgeoning sexuality was weaponised by the conservative media. The documentary shows how, during an interview with the veteran broadcast journalist Dianne Sawyer, Spears is blamed for the baggage placed upon her, Sawyer seeming to agree with a comment made by Kendel Ehrlich, the wife of the then Governor of Maryland, in which she said she’d shoot Spears given the opportunity. “Because of the example for kids and how hard it is to be a parent,” Sawyer says emphatically.
Spears, visibly upset, replies: “That’s really sad that she said that. I’m not here to babysit her kids.”
We witness a teenage Spears subjected to inappropriate conversations about her virginity and comments by interviewers on her breasts. We see how her former boyfriend, fellow popstar Justin Timberlake, manipulated their break-up to paint Spears as a slut and a cheater, a narrative which was gobbled up by the tabloids and the misogynistic celebrity industrial complex.
The documentary demonstrates how the business of celebrity – the paparazzi, gossip blogs like Perez Hilton and TMZ, and the appetite of the public – demonised and hounded a young woman, how they questioned her capabilities as a mother, poked fun at her mental health, suffocated her during her most vulnerable moments and stood by as shady characters entered her life.
When that situation eventually exploded, Spears wasn’t given any space – paparazzi took pictures of her in an ambulance on the way to the hospital where she was admitted for 72 hours under a psychiatric hold – but was almost immediately placed under the control of her father and the conservatorship.
It’s rage-inducing to see it laid out in this way, to watch how, at every opportunity, she was tripped up and taken advantage of. What’s even more frustrating is that no lessons have been learned. The conspiracy theories and social media discourse that surround Spears’s Instagram account looks a lot like the swarms of paparazzi that used to chase her through gas stations in 2007.
Britney Spears is not a victim. “I don’t like that,” she said of the word in her 2008 documentary Britney: For the Record. “I’ve been placed in that category for some reason. And I hate that because I love to see people making the most of their situations and being positive.”
A glance at Spears’s Instagram, with its dancing videos, fashion shows and inspirational memes, seems to confirm this optimistic outlook. With so much ugliness around her and the legal issues ongoing, Spears seems to have found some semblance of contentment. And if, one day, she does decide to tell the real story, then we should listen and learn. We owe her that much at least.
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