Britney Spears is back on trend

The legal deal banning Britney Spears from managing her own life and finances is already more years old than the pop star’s when she appeared as an energetic 12-year-old girl on Disney Channel, and controversy on whom the government boils again.

Spears, 39, has lived under this strict agreement since its infamous collapse, which in 2008 led a California court to place her under sole legal guardianship handled since then mostly by her father. , Jamie.

The guardianship, the reasons and precise terms listed in confidential court documents, have been the subject of further scrutiny in recent years, especially after Spears canceled his second Las Vegas residency in 2019 and went into hiatus. indefinite professional.

Now, an FX documentary produced in association with The New York Times is immersed in the popular legend about Spears, who rose to world fame as a teenager by chaining hits, including “Baby One More Time”, before a dramatic stumble broke out. the cannibalistic appetite of the paparazzi.

The film emphasizes the role of the heart press and celebrities of the early 2000s in the sinking of Spears, showing how it was a media goal pursued without pause.

The #FreeBritney (Liberate Britney) movement, in which hundreds of thousands of ardent fans who believe she is a hostage, are gaining momentum last year when the singer pressured the court to remove her father from the role of tutor.

Its proponents, whom many – including Jamie Spears – consider simply conspiratorial, say the star is asking for help with encrypted messages, emoticons and even the color of his clothes on his eccentric Instagram account.

They claim Spears has given enough signals to regain his own custody, sobe all after his court-appointed lawyer told a judge, “My client has informed me that she is afraid of her father.”

The judge chose not to immediately remove Spears’ father as head of his estate, but appointed the financial company Bessemer Trust as co-sponsor.

Jamie Spears took a step back in 2019 in his custody of Britney, a role that gave him power even over his medical and mental health decisions, after suffering a colon rupture.

The pop icon for now does not seek to eliminate guardianship, a legal figure usually intended for the elderly or sick, but to grant it to professionals.

She aspires for the tutor who now has temporary custody over her to remain so, and would like a bank to manage her finances.

The next court hearing is scheduled for Feb. 11.

The documentary “Framing Britney Spears” suggests that the former pop star superstar was manipulated and brought to emotional ruin by an insatiable media environment, in which her images sold for more than a million of dollars.

From her days as a brave preteen in “Star Search” in 1992 until she appeared with her head shaved in 2007, the documentary draws a magnetic superstar, the image became that of all but her own.

The documentary shows how prominent news presenter Diane Sawyer pressures her to explain why she “did something” to cause “so much pain” to her partner, the no less famous Justin Timberlake, in her breakup, a situation that leaving Spears, as one interviewee said, as “the fucking class.”

And Matt Lauer, the now-disgraced morning television ex-figure, makes her cry in a 2006 interview in which she charges against her physical condition while pregnant with her second child.

During her prolonged mental breakdown that followed her 2006 divorce and the battle for custody of her children, Spears was photographed at service stations barefoot or driving with a child on her lap.

In another scene, he takes an umbrella and starts hitting a paparazzi vehicle, an image that became iconic.

Moya Luckett, a media historian at New York University whose research includes celebrity culture, says the “cruelty” Spears experienced today is blurred in a social media landscape where stars can select their own images.

“You become your own producer,” Luckett said, pointing to stars like Taylor Swift or Beyonce who have taken over the conversation on Instagram or participated in their own documentaries.

As his legal battle escalates, his fascination with Spears is likely to persist, especially because fans, many of them in their 30s and 40s, who adored him in his youth, take for granted the difficult situation of the singer.

“Everything she goes through resonates with the kind of frustrations many of us have, in a neoliberal world where we’re told we can do everything if we want to,” Luckett argued.

“And then we found out we really can’t.”