FX documentary Britney Spears explores the #FreeBritney movement

For 13 years, almost every aspect of Britney Spears’ life – including major financial, professional and medical decisions – has been controlled by her father, Jamie Spears, through court-approved tutelage.

Established after Spears’ public collapse in 2007-2008, the legal arrangement is now older than Spears was when it debuted at “The Mickey Mouse Club”. It lasted even as Spears seemed to stabilize and mount an impressive comeback, releasing several albums, traveling the world and performing 248 shows during a highly profitable four-year residency in Las Vegas.

Since Spears abruptly canceled a second planned residence in early 2019, the legal arrangement – shrouded in mystery and a tangle of nondisclosure agreements – has raised more and more questions. Why, many wonder, is someone so capable and productive not allowed to make their own decisions? Journalists produced articles of reflection and in-depth investigations into guardianship, and their most dedicated fans mobilized on social media for #FreeBritney in what they believe to be exploratory circumstances held against their wishes.

It is now the subject of a feature film documentary by a team of journalists from the New York Times, premiering Friday at FX and FX on Hulu. Directed and produced by Samantha Stark, “Framing Britney Spears” shows Spears’ rise from valiant competitor to “Star Search” the queen bee to “TRL”, as well as the high-profile revelation that turned his personal problems into a national joke and culminated in controversial tutelage.

Applying the rigor of an episode of “Frontline” to a narrative that was shaped by low-source gossip and anonymous rumors, “Framing Britney Spears” is also a work of cultural criticism that can make some viewers feel guilty for gaping with photos. of Spears at Perez Hilton around 2007.

In retelling his story from the point of view of 2021 – in what we hope will be a time of greater sensitivity to mental health issues and a post- # MeToo understanding of the misogyny that permeates much of celebrity culture – the documentary encourages viewers to reconsider his ideas about Spears, his chaotic tabloid character and his fervently dedicated fans.

New York Times senior editor Liz Day, who works on the FX documentary series for The Weekly, says she was attracted to making a film about Spears because, she wondered, “How could the same person be able to acting at a high level in Las Vegas as a sold-out superstar, earning millions of dollars, but at the same time are we being told that she is so vulnerable and at risk that she needs this very intense layer of protection? ”

What makes Spears’ guardianship unusual – in addition to his extraordinary fame – is that these legal arrangements are typically designed for older people, often with dementia, who are unable to make informed decisions or physically take care of themselves. There is a Catch-22 for people trying to end guardianship, Day explains. “If you are not necessarily in complete control of your daily life or your finances, how can you prove that you can be in control of your finances and your daily life?”

Day, who helped report segments about Alex Jones and Ivanka Trump as a senior news producer on “Last week tonight with John Oliver,” says Spears’ tutelage is the most difficult story she has had to cover, thanks to the complicated dynamics family, sensitive legal and medical issues, and the additional layers of secrecy that come with Spears’s fame and wealth.

Then there is the unreliable nature of celebrity journalism and the standards that can vary enormously from one medium to another. “You hear a lot of speculation out there that is repeated and repeated as a fact: ‘Britney has X’ or ‘she doesn’t have permission for Y.’ And when you really dig in, ‘How do you know what’s on tap?’ there’s a lot of smoke, ”says Day.

Framing Britney Spears producers caught up with the pop star, his family, his lawyers and other members of his inner circle, but were rejected (or received silence) on almost every occasion. “It was a real ethical dilemma to try to figure out how to do this and not participate in what everyone has done in the past, which is to make all these assumptions about [Spears], ”Says Stark.

A breakthrough came when Felicia Culotta, who played an unusual hybrid role as the singer’s friend, assistant and traveling companion in the pre-conservative era, agreed to talk about Spears on the record for the first time in many years, providing an emotional outlook.

“The only reason I did the interview was to remind people why they fell in love with her in the first place,” says Culotta in the documentary.

Another key interview came from Adam Streisand, the lawyer Spears tried to hire her to represent her in the initial guardianship process in 2008. Streisand says that Spears specifically did not want his father to be in charge of his guardianship. (Jamie Spears had not been a consistent presence in his daughter’s life until that time, according to the documentary. A record executive remembers him saying, “My daughter is going to be so rich she is going to buy me a boat.”)

Streisand also said the judge in the case denied him the opportunity to represent Spears, citing a medical report that allegedly indicated that she was unable to hire a lawyer on her own.

“I still don’t know what’s in that report,” says Streisand.

“Framing Britney Spears” is the latest project to reconsider women once ridiculed and abused because of their role in obscene scandals, such as Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt and Paris Hilton. He asks us to reflect on our collective complicity in the mockery and sexist criticism to which Spears was subjected.

There are clips from a cruel segment of “Family Feud” (“say something Britney Spears missed last year”) and an ABC interview in which Diane Sawyer interrogates Spears about the end of her relationship with Justin Timberlake: “You caused him so much pain, so much suffering. What did you do?The split marked a turning point in media coverage of Spears and the start of an unpleasant reaction that continued during his ill-fated marriage to Kevin Federline.

Spears had the misfortune to fall apart when the tabloid vulture culture of the mid-1830s reached its peak when a lucky paparazzo could win hundreds of thousands of dollars with the photo of a single celebrity.

“There was just that invisible line that seemed to exist at the time that nobody knew how to deal with,” says former Spears stylist Hayley Hill in the documentary. “And nobody knew how to tell her how to cope.”

Stark’s preconceived notions about Spears were challenged.

“I had made an assumption as a young girl that she was not in control of her image – that she was a puppet who let other people sexualize her and she didn’t know what was going on,” says Stark. “But, according to all the reports from people we talked to, she knew what she was doing. She was discovering her [sexuality] and let’s see that. And that vulnerability led to all this ridicule and shame. And it wasn’t one of her millions of fans, who are usually her age. It was adults. “

The filmmakers sought to treat Spears fans with the same respect. Once the butt of jokes – remember the jabs directed at Chris Crocker, the teenager whose tearful plea to “leave Britney alone” in 2007 became one of YouTube’s first viral videos? – Spears’ most passionate followers have come together in a surprisingly potent move.

“When I started making this documentary, I said, ‘It’s about Britney Spears’ and I got that kind of smile from people,” says Stark. She notes that the majority of #FreeBritney supporters are in their 30s now and would be Spears’ teenage target audience when she came on the scene – young people who saw Spears as a friend and model. “There is an attitude of contempt for anything related to teenage girls. So, I really wanted to hear [the fans]. They are very sensitive to being dismissed as, like, QAnon people. ”(Jamie Spears sued at least one #FreeBritney supporter for defamation and characterized the movement as a” joke “run by” conspiracy theorists “.)

“Framing Britney Spears” features several prominent supporters of #FreeBritney, including LA comedians Tess Barker and Barbara Gray. Their podcast, “Britney’s Gram”, previously dedicated to funfully dissecting the singer’s Instagram account, helped the #FreeBritney movement gain momentum. In April 2019, podcasters shared a voice message they received from an anonymous informant claiming to be a paralegal involved in Spears’ guardianship and expressing serious concerns about the singer’s well-being.

Since then, supporters have been regularly picketing court cases and continue to analyze Spears’ often inscrutable Instagram posts, looking for messages encoded with the intensity of intelligence analysts.

The #FreeBritney movement became a more central part of the documentary when Spears’ legal battle began last year. In a series of lawsuits, Spears began to actively fight his father’s role as his conservative for the first time since 2008. When his lawyer wrote that Spears “welcomes and thanks the informed support of his many fans”, #FreeBritney believers celebrated.

“It was very important for them,” says Stark, “because they felt all this validation, like, ‘YYou should have heard us.‘”

In November, Spears won a small legal victory by having an outside company, the Bessemer Trust, added as a co-conservator of his property. But his father maintains partial control of his daily existence and Spears remains responsible for paying his lawyers, his conservative and his conservative’s lawyers – distributing more than $ 1 million in attorney fees last year.

“As long as it continues, all these people will be making money,” says Stark. “Do they always have her best interest in mind? It is hard to say.”