Cry her a river. No, really — we owe Britney Spears an apology
Cry her a river.
Honestly, no snark or snicker here. No sarcasm.
The poor little pop superstar in a court-mandated gilded cage.
Well, not so poor. Britney Spears’ worth has been estimated at $60 million. And long removed from days of girlhood — she recently turned 39.
Far distant too from her celebrity train wreck chapter: Booze and drugs and meltdowns and spinning out of sanity, derided as bumpkin trash, shamed as an unfit mother and denied visitation with her kids, shaving her head in full view of the hounding paparazzi, flabby and stumbling through the dance steps during a live performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, in distress — but photographed — lashed onto a gurney when paramedics bundled her into an ambulance at her Los Angeles home, pix that made the tabloid round for months. That was her second psychiatric hospital lockdown in one month.
It was so easy to mock Spears and the whole world did. Punching up to bring down a young woman clearly reeling from mental torment, punchline for late night talk show jokes, subsumed by the flames of her own fame.
Hit me baby one more time. She reminded me, somewhat, of another tousled blond, Frances Farmer, who was repeatedly arrested for public intoxication and drunken driving — “You bore me” Frances once told a highway cop — too edgy and free-spirited for Hollywood, institutionalized by her stern mother in a snake pit facility where she was subjected to every experimental drug of the ’40s and tortured with electric shock therapy, though not lobotomized as has often been stated. So that she would fly straight, dammit.
For the last 13 years Spears has been under the conservatorship thumb of her father, James Spears, a man who was in and out of her life during childhood and adolescence. He has full control of his daughter’s finances, her estate, her career, even her personal life. Whether and how she can work, what medical treatment she receives, whether she can travel or get married, who may visit, who may phone her.
Court-ordained patriarchy in a culture that simultaneously extols and punishes female legends.
It was supposed to be temporary, the guardianship. It has become perpetual.
Such arrangements are usually reserved for the elderly, those who aren’t fit to care for themselves or their money, or vulnerable to outside manipulation.
Spears is a grown woman, mother of two boys — noncustodial access rights restored — a money-maker for hundreds of professional parasites, mega luminary of a Las Vegas spectacle, Domination, the Planet Hollywood residency that won best show awards in 2015 and 2017. In 2019, Spears abruptly announced she was taking an “indefinite work hiatus,” citing health issues her father was experiencing. But she’s also since vowed never to perform again unless released from her father’s suzerainty, a hostage-taking that has spurred a public outcry and #FreeBritney movement on social media, with fans attempting to decode the “signals” Spears-as-captive surreptitiously delivers, they insist, in her scattershot Instagram postings.
In court documents, Spear’s lawyer — the most recent version, not the aptly named Andrew Wallet, a lawyer formerly appointed to co-manage the singer’s estate with her father, since paid off and departed — has asserted that Spears is afraid of her father and desperately wants to be unshackled from him.
At a hearing in November, Britney Spears won a legal skirmish by securing the right to have a new co-conservator appointed, the Bessemer Trust. On Thursday, Britney Spear’s court-appointed lawyer scored a further, if minor, legal victory when California Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny overruled objections from Jamie Spears’ attorney who argued that he should not yield previously granted rights and powers while working with the trust.
Britney Spears’ lawyer filed last August to have Jamie Spears removed entirely as conservator. But once conservatorship is granted, it’s mighty difficult to get it reversed. Spears pater continues to buck for prevailing authority, claiming he’s only looking out for his daughter’s best interests.
Britney Spears, otherwise drama-free of late, has been in a stable romantic relationship for several years with boyfriend Sam Asghari, her most serious relationship since her marriage to backup dancer Kevin Federline, which followed on the heels of a shotgun marriage to a childhood friend that was annulled after 55 hours.
Asghari recently ripped Jamie Spears on his Instagram Stories account: “I have zero respect for someone trying to control our relationship and constantly throwing obstacles our way. In my opinion, Jamie is a total d---.”
All of this has unfolded against the backdrop of a New York Times documentary, “Framing Britney,” now streaming. Not available in Canada, unfortunately.
It’s a sad, often poignant look inside Britney’s world, and a tale that was always right in front of us, though few bothered to look at a life careering off the rails from her perspective.
This was the precociously talented youngster who grew up before our eyes, from the little Louisiana girl singing in shopping malls to the Star Search to Mickey Mouse Club to overtly sexualized teen phenomenon, grilled on television interviews — mostly by leering middle-aged men — about her breasts, her boyfriends, her virginity. When “Baby One More Time” rocketed to top of the charts and video iconography — Britney famously dancing in the halls of a high school in a sexualized parody of a Catholic school uniform — she was all of 16.
It was a new era of the celebrity-industrial complex, presocial media, and nothing was off-limits in the probing and dissecting of Spears. For the longest time, she willingly played the game, cheerfully answering all questions, willing object of mass voyeurism. Until adulthood began to wear at her patience and self-esteem and increasingly erratic behaviour became the zeitgeist motif, go-to fodder for gossipmongers and glossy magazine chronicling: Bonfire of Britney’s vanities.
Relentlessly pursued — a good photo could fetch up to a million dollars, reportedly — she was propelled towards crack-up, at one point attacking a paparazzi’s car with her umbrella. Turning to alcohol and drugs, in and out of rehab, gleefully deconstructed by purveyors of celebrity.
In recent days, her one-time and long-time boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, has come in for a heap of belated criticism. He’s not quite the villain as portrayed, but the blowback from a megawatt relationship that blew up in public never landed on him either. This was the guy who declared in an interview that he’d taken Spears’ virginity, then controlled the narrative of their breakup amidst speculation that she’d cheated on him. Timberlake redirected his bruised heart — ego — into a spectacularly successful music video: “Cry Me a River,” with a Britney doppelganger playing the role of a deceitful femme fatale.
While Timberlake’s star ascended, Spears’ went into decline.
“Framing Britney” reframes all that history through the Spears lens, even without her direct participation. And she’s evidently been cheered by the result, sharing her thoughts in a Tuesday tweet: “Each person has their story and their take on other people’s stories !!!! We all have so many different bright beautiful lives.
“Remember, no matter what we think we know about a person’s life it is nothing compared to the actual person living behind the lens.”
We all owe Britney a big fat sorry.