Since she was a teenager, Britney Spears, 39, has been informed about how her sexuality should be and how it should be. She was vilified, questioned and embarrassed for hugging her, and someone in power once said that Spears’ sexuality was so threatening that she would be given an “opportunity to shoot” her.
There is a group of people who identify with this.
Standing in front of the Los Angeles Superior Court last year, Kevin Wu, an activist for the #FreeBritney movement, spoke to the crowd with a megaphone, saying of Spears: “She gave me permission to be myself growing up as a gay boy in suburban Virginia and Britney gave me the power to be who I am. “
The crowd – who have gathered to protest the tutelage Spears has been in since 2008 – clapped their hands and nodded in agreement, their signs saying things like “Justice for Britney”, “Britney Spears deserves her freedom” and “Free Britney, bitch! “
This scene was presented in the opening sequence of the recently released Hulu and FX documentary “Framing Britney Spears”, produced by The New York Times and directed by queer filmmaker Samantha Stark, 38. The film is her first feature film project.
“This is in the first three minutes, and it is on purpose, because many of the loudest voices in the #FreeBritney movement are strange voices,” Stark said of the scene, adding that she “absolutely” considers it strange when she thinks of Spears and the movement to challenge guardianship.
“She cannot choose where she lives. She cannot sign a check. She cannot sign a contract. She can’t choose what to do with her money, ”said Stark of Spears’ court-ordered deal, in which his father, James Spears, was put in charge of his business. Although he is now a co-conservative, his daughter has asked for his complete removal.
“I think that’s why people have such a deep connection with her,” Stark said. “She is still listening to who she can be and what she can do, at an exponential level.” This has some resonance for the LGBTQ community.
Spears has long championed the queer community and received the GLAAD Vanguard 2018 Award in recognition of his support. That support included his opposition to bills in Texas that would restrict transgender rights, his participation in a tribute to the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, and his support for legalizing marriage between people of the same gender. sex. She also spoke out against the bullying of LGBTQ youth.
Stark said the anti-bullying defense is one of the reasons queer fans feel so attached to Spears and are fierce advocates for his well-being. Many Spears fans grew up with her, coming to life while listening to her music, many enduring bullying while watching Spears be bullied – first by the media and the paparazzi, and now, they claim, by the powers behind her guardianship.
It is in contrast to Spears in the early years of his career. “I think Britney, for all I heard, was really involved in creating her image and was really trying very hard to be herself and was totally ridiculed and embarrassed about it,” said Stark.
Part of Stark’s film examines the period around the 1999 release of Spears’ debut album, “… Baby One More Time”, which catapulted her to stardom. In a very famous way – and, at the time, quite controversial – the title song was combined with a video clip featuring Spears in a high school uniform.
“She owns the corridors at this school,” said Wesley Morris, a critic for The New York Times, in the documentary. “If you are 12 or 13, you are going out with someone who remembers you. It’s not the part of sex that looks cool – it’s the control and command over herself and her space that looks cool. “
For LGBTQ children growing up at the time in places where school corridors were, at best, something they owned and, at worst, somewhere they feared, that was powerful. Spears’ control over herself, the way she took up space and her unapologetic embrace of her own sexuality created a connection with queer fans that was enduring and mutually felt by Spears, according to Stark.
“Most of the people I talked to who stand out in the #FreeBritney movement are almost 30, 30, so they were 11, 12, 13 when Britney was going out, so they saw this, and I think it’s this deep connection that it only goes one way, actually, ”Stark said, adding that a Spears confidant who appeared in the film said that Spears felt embraced by her fans and not judged. “So, if you were judged and criticized, it means that you related to her, and she related to you, in turn.”
The same things that fans loved about Spears were threatening to others, and the headlines in the early 2000s asked things like “Too sexy too soon?” and claimed that his sexuality “makes some mothers nervous”. That line of criticism was expanded in 2003 with Kendel Ehrlich, then Maryland’s first lady, who said – at a domestic anti-violence conference, ironically – “If I had the opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would” .
Britney’s answer at the time? “Ew” and “I’m not here to, you know, take care of her children”.
The media was relentless in its criticism of Spears, and the film shows the crushing bands of paparazzi falling on her everywhere she went, taking pictures that would be used to attack her in the press the next day.
“They would ridicule her no matter what she did,” said Stark, adding that the constant teasing and criticism was something that Spears’ LGBTQ fans could relate to. “I heard a lot of stories from people saying, ‘This is how I felt. I wanted to be the perfect brother and I wanted to be the perfect son, but I knew that no matter what I did, I would still be the bad boy because he was gay ‘”.
Stark’s film includes an examination of the period around 2007, when Spears shaved his head, an act that was seen as his great ruin, a physical manifestation of his collapse and proof of his “collapse”. However, when viewed through a strange lens, it may not be read in the same way. In fact, Stark revealed that he “dramatically” shaved his head at 21 “with scissors” because “he didn’t want to be female” (this reporter, also a homosexual woman, shaved her head around the same age).
“I think it resonated with many of us watching,” said Stark, who turned 16 on the same day “… Baby One More Time” was released. She said it was “infuriating” that someone could be “considered crazy or classic hysteric” for shaving their head.
Stark remembers seeing magazine covers about the incident at the time and being confused as to why Spears cutting all her hair meant she was “crazy”. Shortly after these magazines reached the stands, Spears’ mental health would be used by the media as a weapon against her and as a way to discredit her and declare her inadequate as a mother. A year after shaving her head, she was locked up in guardianship.
“We now know that Britney was not perfect,” Wu, the #FreeBritney activist, says in the film. “Britney had to sail to find out who she could be and what she could do. I think this story of control and identity really resonates. “
Spears did not participate in “Framing Britney Spears”, although Stark said that she tried to contact Spears by all available means. Stark called Spears ‘lack of opinion an “ethical conflict”, but said she never assumed what was on Spears’ mind. In fact, she added, she didn’t have to, since Spears had been saying what she thinks for a long time.
“Britney says, ‘I’m talking, but no one is listening to me,'” said Stark, paraphrasing a clip from a 2008 documentary with Spears, where she is tearfully talking about her guardianship. “It also seems that all the time, Britney’s songs literally say, ‘She’s so lucky, she’s a star, but she cries,’ give me more ‘, everyone wants a’ piece of me. ‘They’re very like,’ I’m saying this, why aren’t you listening to me? ‘ “
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