TV Review: "Framing Britney Spears"

The new documentary is a scathing indictment of the pathologies of celebrity culture

Every so often, a documentary comes along that is such a brilliant illumination of its subject and on their milieu, that is so scathingly critical of our culture, that is so haunting, that you have to take a while to really process what you’ve seen. Such is the case with the recent documentary Framing Britney Spears, which examines, among other things, the controversy surrounding the conservatorship set up by her father, the way in which her image was controlled and consumed in the hostile mediascape of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, and her gradual breakdown in the mid-2000s. 

Framing Britney Spears is not, to be sure, an objective documentary, and it makes no claims to be so. What it is, however, is an indictment of the way in which both Britney the person and Britney the pop culture icon have been manipulated and consumed by both the general public and by the media. It is thus a scathing indictment of celebrity culture and the tremendous toll that it takes on the lives and psyches of its subjects. 

There are, I think, two villains in this drama. The first is, obviously, Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, who has been in control of the conservatorship for over a decade. Though he didn’t agree to be interviewed for the documentary, there’s enough evidence to suggest that he wasn’t a substantial part of his daughter’s life until it became clear that she would be his meal ticket. When it became clear that she was having significant trouble in the mid-to-late-2000s, he stepped in and has, since then, controlled almost all aspects of her life. Framing Britney Spears goes out of its way to include interviews with friends and experts that show how strange, if not downright sinister, it is for someone to impose a conservatorship on someone as young as Spears. 

The other, in some ways more insidious, villain is the culture that both fetishized and demonized Spears in equal measure, taking a girl from Louisiana and turning her into one of the most celebrated and reviled women of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Again and again, we see the ways in which every aspect of her life, from her relationship with Justin Timberlake to her efforts to raise her children, was relentlessly scrutinized and hostilely analyzed. Take, for example, the truly horrifying interview with Diane Sawyer, in which the host not only framed the breakup with Justin Timberlake as somehow Spears’ fault but also, notoriously, told Britney that the wife of Maryland’s governor wanted to shoot her, a stance that Sawyer seemed to defend (presumably because Britney was so hypersexual that she couldn’t help but infect the nation’s girls with her overcharged libido). 

Indeed, we see again and again and again how a media that is intrinsically misogynist remained pruriently interested in her sex life, and it’s deeply uncomfortable to watch her have to navigate this world—including the repeated queries about whether she’s a virgin—with a smile on her face. Nor did all of this only come about once she was famous, and there’s a moment early in the film where none other than Ed McMahon asks Britney whether she has a boyfriend. When she responds that she doesn’t because boys are mean, the geriatric McMahon says, “I’m not mean. How about me?” It’s meant to be played for laughs, of course, but it’s also quite horrifying to watch.

Diane Sawyer and Ed McMahon, however, are just the tip of the iceberg, and we witness many moments in which Spears is chased (literally) by paparazzi desperate to get a photo of her. In a particularly galling moment, one paparazzo is asked whether he feels any remorse or guilt for participating in this pathological behavior. His defense, that Spears never seemed to genuinely want to be left alone—except for particular days, he claims—shows just how morally bankrupt so many members of the paparazzi were and are. 

However, what’s particularly striking about Framing Britney Spears is the way that it subtly turns its hostile lens back on us, the viewers and consumers of media culture. After all, the various outlets—People, Us Weekly, the various tabloids—would have had no reason to offer millions of dollars for candid photos of Britney if there hadn’t been an audience ravenously hungry for them. Indeed, some of the film’s most visually striking moments are those in which we witness the hyper-mediated atmosphere of celebrity culture: we watch as the paparazzi throng around Spears, catching her in their cameras, even as they are captured in yet another camera, which is shown to us via…yet another camera. It’s an unsettling reminder that we are also complicit in what transpired, as well as warning us against continuing to sponsor such toxic behavior. 

Nor does the documentary shy away from a subtle critique of those who are part of what they call the “Free Britney Movement.” After all, isn’t there something a little ridiculous about calling these people activists (as happens several times?) For that matter, isn’t there something more than a little unsettling about the Britney’s Gram podcast, which examines the pop star’s Instagram posts, attempting to interpret them, looking for clues about her true feelings. Though they seem to view themselves as figures of moral righteousness, it’s quite creepy about the depth of their obsession, which extends to their noticing that Britney is fond of using emojis rather than emoticons (no, I’m not kidding). Their obsession is matched by yet another young woman who, when speaking about her beliefs about the conservatorship, articulates them in a way that sounds very much like adherents of QAnon and other conspiracy theories. Just because they seem to have the moral high ground doesn’t mean that their adulation is any less toxic than the criticism offered by the mainstream media.

Framing Britney Spears is a scathing indictment of our celebrity-obsessed culture. While it can’t quite get to the real human behind the facade—the perennial struggle of any documentary that takes a particular star as its subject—it does nevertheless show us the cost of stardom. As such, it reminds us of our own complicity in this toxic phenomenon.