A STAR IS TORN (FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS)

 

Anyone with an ounce of sense should have had serious misgivings about the way Britney Spears was marketed from the moment she became a pop star.

The video for her debut single 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' played on the seedy, age old male fantasy of the 'Lolita' style schoolgirl.

Aged 18 and a former graduate of Disney's 'The Mickey Mouse Club,' the song and its sexually provocative video catapulted Spears from Bible Belt child star to teen pop sensation.

However it came at a huge price, whipping the tabloids, celebrity gossip magazines and mainstream TV shows up into a frenzy over every image that could be captured of her on and offstage.

With the video still remaining controversial to this day, Samantha Stark's New York Times, FX and Hulu film 'Framing Britney Spears' has also become one of the most talked about documentaries of 2021 with its focus on the cost her phenomenal fame exacted on her.

Social and mainstream media have in recent weeks been awash with commentary about the documentary's depiction of the fame factory that exploited Spears to the point of combustion.

Aged 39, she is still one of the world's most successful recording artists, with an estimated net worth of $59 million.

However for 13 years, she has had no control over her financial affairs and has effectively been under the legal guardianship of her father after a very public meltdown under the harsh gaze of the paparazzi.

With Jamie Spears exercising a very tight control over his daughter's affairs through a conservatorship awarded by a Californian judge in 2008, she has now become a figure of grim fascination.

Conservatorships are more commonly used to exercise control over the financial affairs of someone with dementia and it is highly unusual to have it awarded in the case of someone so young.

Concerned about the impact of the conservatorship on her mental health and the potential for her to be further exploited, the #FreeBritney campaign has been organised by fans to persuade the authorities to give her back the right to take control of her life.

The American Civil Liberties Union and celebrities like Cher, Miley Cyrus and Paris Hilton have athrown their weight behind the campaign.

Stark's film charts the rise of Britney Spears from a child star raised in Mississippi to the world's hottest pop sensation.

Through its clever selection of archive footage of her being hounded by the paparazzi and TV interviews, it also captures her descent as she became the butt of late night talk show hosts' jokes as one of the entertainment industry's most troubled celebrities.

'Framing Britney Spears' views her rise and fall through a #MeToo lens, interviewing her former assistant and family friend Felicia Culotta, marketing executive Kim Kaiman,  paparazzo Daniel Ramos among others about the ruthless way she was exploited.

Many villains emerge over the course of the documentary.

Justin Timberlake, Spears' fellow Disney Club graduate and former boyfriend, is accused of ruthlessly manipulating the media to blame her for their break-up and advancing his career at her expense - even having a lookalike appear in the video of his hit 'Cry Me A River'.

The pre-social media paparazzi also revel in her misery with very little remorse, knowing photos of her can fetch up to $1 million.

Diane Sawyer emerges badly with footage of an aggressive 2003 interview in which she runs with the Timberlake narrative and unsympathetically asks Spears about their break-up: "What did you do?"

Disgraced broadcaster Matt Lauer, who was fired by NBC during the #MeToo scandal, is seen in a 2006 'Dateline' interview callously propagating the narrative that Spears is an unfit mother because of paparazzi shots of her sitting behind the wheel of her car with her four month old son on her lap.

Spears' former Sam Lufti is also portrayed as someone who attaches himself to celebrities when they are at their most vulnerable.

But the main villain of the piece is Jamie Spears who is depicted by Jive Records' Kim Kaiman as being disconnected from his daughter's life, yet boasting from the off how one day she'll be so rich, she will buy him a boat.

It is implied he treats his daughter like a cash cow, even under the terms of the conservatorship.

But while there is a long list of villains in Stark's film, it also directs some uncomfortable questions at its audience about the kind of society we have helped fashion.

It was the public who colluded with the exploitation of Spears as a sexualised pop star right to the portrayal of her as a hot mess disintegrating before our eyes.

The public condoned the misogyny of the tabloid feeding frenzy over every setback on her personal life and tacitly encouraged the insensitive questions thrown at her in TV interviews.

We allowed Spears' public persona to be inflated and then cruelly punctured several times.

Spears, of course, wasn't the only victim of relentless, callous, sexist tabloid bullying..

Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus, Charlotte Church, Amy Winehouse and Caroline Flack were all subjected to it and not all of them survived.

Like Asif Kapadia's 'Amy,' 'Framing Britney Spears'is a cautionary tale about how.a celebrity dream can easily become a nightmare.

And while the viewer hopes Spears can one day recover something resembling a normal life, we also need to ask ourselves two questions.

When will we draw the line in the appalling treatment of some people, particularly women, in the public eye?

Do we even have the appetite to stop it or are we simply content to revel in their very public shaming? 

If the answers to those question are no and yes, then how appalling is that?

('Framing Britney Spears' was broadcast on Sky Documentaries and made available on NowTV in the UK and Ireland on February 16, 2021)

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