Framing Britney Spears felt like essential viewing upon its release in February. The documentary, produced by the New York Times, sparked a long overdue reassessment of the toxic celebrity culture of the Noughties, when baiting female stars became a blood sport and talk show hosts would grill girls in their late teens about their sex lives on primetime television.
It prompted the singer’s ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake to issue a public apology (delivered through the medium of Notes App, naturally) to Spears, acknowledging that his actions – which included casting a Britney lookalike in the video for his first solo single Cry Me A River, playing up to speculation that she’d been unfaithful – “contributed to the problem.” And it raised major questions about the star’s court-approved conservatorship, which was imposed after her high profile 2007 breakdown, and placed her multi-million dollar trust under the control of her father Jamie.
Since then, a flurry of Britney-related projects have been green-lit, including a Netflix documentary. The singer, who did not appear in or provide comment for the NYT’s movie, has admitted in an Instagram post that she was “embarrassed by the light [the film] put me in,” adding: “I cried for two weeks and I still cry sometimes.” The speed with which the industry has jumped on the Britney bandwagon after the first film’s success raises some uncomfortable questions: is this new obsession with the singer’s legal struggle over her conservatorship just another form of exploitation, dressed up as empowerment?
First in this secondary wave of Britney docs is the BBC’s offering. The Battle for Britney: Fans, Cash and a Conservatorship is presented by journalist Mobeen Azhar and, in fairness, was in the works before Framing Britney Spears proved so successful. Azhar, who describes the conservatorship row as “the biggest scandal in showbusiness,” travelled to Los Angeles last December after securing access to a court hearing discussing the case.
His initial investigations bring him face to face (or, in some cases, Zoom to Zoom) with some of Spears’ biggest fans, driving forces in the #FreeBritney movement that has made her conservatorship a trending topic. Their emotional investment in the case is huge. “She can’t even make a phone call,” speculates super-fan Hayley, who later suggests that even if the campaign proves futile, her “kids’ kids will free Britney if they have to.” Some fans claim to see cryptic cries for help in Spears’ Instagram posts: social media has certainly helped draw attention to the singer’s case, but there’s a darker side, too. When Spears’ former business manager Lou Taylor’s legal team reply to a request for comment from Azhar, they attach screenshots of death threats she has received from a minority of fans.
Azhar later heads to Spears’ hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, to learn more about the star’s early years, before talking to Catherine Falk, whose actor father Peter (best known as TV’s Columbo) was placed under a contentious conservatorship in 2009; he also speaks to Perez Hilton, who frequently targeted Spears on his blog at the peak of her mental health issues, and has since suggested that her conservatorship has actually protected her, as well as unrepentant paparazzo Rick Mendoza, who worked for TMZ around the same time. He’s an engaging presenter, with a scrupulously balanced approach, and his subjects quickly open up to him.
His short interview with Hilton is fascinating. It’d be a stretch to claim that the gossip blogger – who added vitriolic captions like “I need drugs” and “Unfit mother” onto photos of Spears published on his site around the time of her breakdown – emerges as a sympathetic figure, but his assessment of the role he might have played in pushing the singer to breaking point are stark and self-aware. “It was awful, I regret that deeply,” he says, before claiming: “If I were to die tomorrow, the majority of the world would celebrate. And it’s OK, because I am reaping the consequences of my actions.”
As Azhar learns more about conservatorships, what quickly emerges is a snapshot of a deeply rotten system that is “rife with exploitation,” as he puts it. Falk describes it as “one of the most lucrative money-making machines in the United States,” ominously suggesting “you will never get out of a guardianship” when others have a financial stake in your powerlessness.
What his film lacks, though, is insider insight. While the NYT’s film was bolstered by the involvement of the singer’s former assistant and confidante Felicia Culotta, the closest Azhar gets to Spears is a chat with her former choreographer Brian Friedman. Much of the footage – a 10-year-old Britney singing on TV, paparazzi swarming her car, the clip from her 2008 MTV series which marked the first and only time she spoke publicly about her conservatorship – will also feel familiar from Framing Britney Spears.
The December hearing comes as an anti-climax – ending the conservatorship isn’t even referenced – and Azhar suggests that the case will continue to go round in circles, like some kind of celebrity Jarndyce vs Jarndyce. His only conclusion is that it’s impossible to come to a conclusion – especially while Spears herself remains silent.
“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,” the star wrote in an Instagram post shortly after the NYT documentary aired. She is set to address her conservatorship in court on June 23. Perhaps that’s when we’ll finally get some answers – until then, documentaries like this one can only really speculate.