The 10-episode documentary series “New York Times Presents” released its sixth standalone documentary episode entitled “Framing Britney Spears” on Feb. 5. This FX series, which is now streaming on Hulu, used this particular episode to document the rise and fall of Britney Spears and her conservatorship battle with her father, Jamie Spears. Spears’ father had acted as her conservator after she was deemed incapable of being responsible for herself after her public meltdowns in 2007. In this process, he was granted full responsibility for his daughter’s mental health and finances, a highly-controversial ruling that inspired The New York Times to create this documentary.
In this episode, director Samantha Stark focuses on the people important to Spears’ life from years ago — both in good terms and in bad terms. The crew also interviews the theorists who brought light to the #FreeBritney movement, and it’s really interesting to see how her fanbase has evolved. The fans that are interviewed in the documentary are working in the best interest of their idol, which is much different from how they were years ago.
The New York Times’ production team aimed to use “Framing Britney Spears” to examine the way the world was treating her in the mid-2000s and view it through a 2020 lens. As the current generation is discussing more about mental health and the #MeToo movement, Stark knew that people would see how mistaken they were about Spears for the past 20 years.
The FX documentary showed clips from the 2008 MTV documentary, “BRITNEY: For the Record,” that demonstrate the toxic relationship between the father and daughter. She only had one thing to say on the topic of the conservatorship.
“I’d feel so liberated [without the conservatorship] and feel like myself,” Spears said in the documentary. “When I tell them the way I feel, it’s like they hear me but they’re really not listening. They’re hearing what they wanna hear.”
Although the 2008 MTV show was made for her fans, it still didn’t get the message across that she was in a troubling situation. Luckily, “Framing Britney Spears” was able to raise public awareness.
The MTV documentary was just the beginning, as Spears’ team would continue to completely gloss over her real situation of the legal constriction regarding her freedom in exchange for their own financial benefit. Now that the audience knows more about her predicament years later, the segment of the star’s “comeback” in the FX episode is truly disturbing. From her appearance as a judge on “The X Factor” to the creation of roughly 30 perfume lines, all of the promotional stunts to boost the pop star’s career were done with a forced smile. As this documentary reveals, her fans only heard and saw what her management wanted them to hear.
The interview clips in the documentary play a pivotal role in allowing the viewer to truly see how ignorant and small-minded the media was to the young star. These people looking back on Spears’ struggling early adulthood heavily contrasts the image that was shown to the public, as the filmmakers showed these two completely separate ideas of her side by side. The production team behind this documentary did a great job in providing a powerful and impactful perspective of this contradiction in her life. As Spears was trying to grow into being a young woman, the public eye was constantly trying to shoot her back down.
“It’s so much fun [for the media] to take a celebrity who’s a young, beautiful, talented girl and rip her to shreds,” Kim Kaiman, who was the senior director of marketing with Jive Records from 1998 to 2004, said.
Kaiman was one of Spears’ first major influences at the beginning of her music career, which started when the singer signed with the record label at just 15 years old. The inclusion of a quote from this woman in the documentary furthers the idea that people sought out to manipulate the young star, giving The New York Times concrete evidence to support this claim.
Shortly after the night that she shaved her head in 2007, Spears was photographed attempting to see her estranged kids while they were under full custody of her ex-husband Kevin Federline. From the frustration of not being able to do so, she snapped at the cameramen who took advantage of this very raw and emotional state. This resulted in the infamous meltdown photos as she hit a paparazzo’s truck with an umbrella; in this documentary, that paparazzo, Daniel “Dano” Ramos, was interviewed.
“I’m concerned about you,” Ramos said that night as he blinded the singer with the flashing lights of his camera. In the documentary, Ramos recalls his own emotions as the popstar damaged his truck.
“It was not a good night for us — but it was a good night for us — cause it was a money shot,” Ramos said.
In his interview for “Framing Britney Spears,” Ramos boldly refutes the popular narrative. “I don’t really believe [that the paparazzi had an impact on her] because you know, working on her for so many years, she never gave a clue or information to us that ‘I don’t appreciate you guys. Leave me the eff alone,’” he said. The documentary does not hesitate in exposing his contradictions.
Ramos should have taken responsibility for being one of the many people responsible for the singer’s downfall when he had the opportunity to; yet, he didn’t. Instead, he simply said that Spears loved the paparazzi. One interviewer responded to Ramos’ innocent claims by asking about the numerous times in which Spears had flat out told the paparazzi to leave her alone.
“There were times where she’s like ‘Can you leave me alone for the day?’ But it wasn’t like ‘Leave me alone forever,” Ramos said in response to the interviewer’s question. Just minutes prior to this moment, the documentary showed a clear example of how Spears really wanted them to “leave [her] alone forever.”
“What do you think it’ll take the paparazzi to leave you alone?” former news anchor Matt Lauer asked in his 2006 televised Dateline interview with Spears. She said she didn’t know and then broke down crying. Lauer then asked, “Is that one of your biggest wishes?” to which she just nodded in agreement.
Photo courtesy of @freebritneymovement/Instagram.
The documentary shows tabloid cover after tabloid cover humiliating the singer, achieved at the hands of people like Ramos. Accusations began to rise from these magazines, as people were quick to judge based on just a photo. The compilations of bullying and harassment that the singer faced were an extremely effective technique in getting the filmmaker’s point across — the early 2000s media treated her like a headline and not an actual person.
One of the documentary’s most thorough deep-dives is exposing the life of Jamie Spears when he had a very estranged relationship with his daughter. From rehab to unemployment to filing for bankruptcy, this documentary highlighted that he was not taking responsibility for his own life. Did this seem like the kind of person who should have the complete responsibility of a grown woman? This documentary presents viewers with all of the information that was found and allows them to come to their own conclusions.
Another focal point of the episode was The New York Times’ analysis of her growth in Spears’ Instagram platform, a tool utilized by her conservator in order to control the way that the media saw her. However, the cryptic nature of her posts caught the attention of fans around 2019 when she posted, and continues to post now, videos with unclear messages and captions to them. The documentary interviews podcast hosts and activists in regards to her vague social media; to them, these posts don’t see it as vague at all, as they believe that Spears is purposely trying to send a message to her fans. Spears has not responded directly to this movement, but there are documented reports from her current lawyer Samuel Ingham that explain that she wants to continue fighting against her conservatorship and that she welcomes the support of her fans.
The New York Times documentary did an amazing job of exposing the disgusting treatment of Spears from years ago, highlighting just how much she deserves to gain back her independence after 12 long years. What this documentary strives to explain is that the media itself was the reason for Spears’ meltdowns back in the early 2000s. Now that we are living in a different decade, the world can finally accept the singer for who she is. It appears that for the first time, the media is on Spears’ side through the making of “Framing Britney Spears.”
This article was originally published on the New University website. To find the original post, click here: https://www.newuniversity.org/2021/02/08/framing-britney-spears-theres-no-escape-she-cant-wait/
Comments