Don’t get one wrong, there’s no denying that Britney Spears’ conservatorship (and the abusive nature of it) has been caused by her leeching family—namely, one Jamie Spears. Not to mention further propelled in the mid-00s by a leeching media seeking to portray Spears in the worst light possible for the sake of $100,000 payouts for a tabloid photo. But what causes one to leech, to debase themselves as a human to the most inhumane of acts? That’s right, money. A synonym for: our capitalist system.
The very thing that drove Britney, from a family of humble means in Kentwood, Louisiana, to achieve the so-called American dream. Held up continuously as a supposed reason for why the U.S. is so “great,” this “dream” posits that no matter who you are or where you come from, you can be anyone you want to. Which is to say, in plain speak, you can become rich. For Britney, it was initially more about a passion for dancing and singing before her parents imbued her with the pressure of needing to commodify her talents so that the Spears family could be provided for (in other words, Britney was a victim of parentification). Thus, after investing in their child like a product with some “big city training,” they shipped her off to Mickey Mouse Club auditions where she met fuckboy and future boyfriend, Justin Timberlake.
Unfortunately for the Spears family, when the show ended in the mid-90s, it left Spears out of a job. Though the small reprieve wouldn’t last long, and this might have been the only period in Spears’ life when she ever had a real break. In some ways, she always seemed doomed to come under the thumb of a money-grubbing capitalist, starting with Lou Pearlman, the Faustian ringleader of the Orlando-based circus called “Let’s Churn Out Teen Pop” and arguably parodied in the recent Peacock show, Girls5eva. While Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC might not have managed to escape the maleficent manager, Britney did. Yet she wasn’t spared. And maybe even choosing to go with Pearlman early on might have at least allowed her to sue him later and win like most everyone else. Instead, she fell deeper down the rabbit hole of becoming prey for her own family, thanks, in part, to Larry Rudolph. Alas, not everyone can have “kind” Kris Jenner as their “momager.”
“I like money,” Spears told Matt Lauer in a 2006 interview, another one lost to the dark side of the brainwashing in this country that constantly chants, “Money is power.” And yet, has Spears yet to come to terms with the notion that a love of money is at the very root of not only all the world’s issues, but her own as well? The tool that was supposed to empower her has instead been weaponized by the very people who are meant to have her best interests at heart. As a teen girl, arguably the only human being with as much power as God when it comes to pop culture influence, the plastering of Spears’ face on everything from cellphone cases (then still in chunky Nokia format) to bean bag chairs to notebooks was a sign of just how big an industry this “little girl” from Louisiana really was. And that those on her “team” waiting in the wings to cash in would never be sated. The juggernaut needed to keep amassing, accumulating. Because when it comes to capitalism, we need only look to Jeff Bezos to know that it will never be “enough” money.
Once the beast is fed at this level, its hunger becomes utterly insatiable—to the point where one is all too happy to do whatever it takes to subjugate anyone else who stands in the way of “more money.” Even the very person responsible for making that money—in this case, Britney. When the conservatorship first arose, it was all precisely because Spears’ father maintained she didn’t have the sound judgment to know when she was being taken advantage of (very ironic indeed). For Spears had been all but placed under the drug-addled spell of her then “manager,” Sam Lufti, who also got involved with manipulating Amanda Bynes just before she fell under the clutches of a conservatorship. One that Bynes, too, has complained of in terms of her mother’s control over her life–though no one seems all that concerned about an as of yet to be created #FreeAmanda movement.
In any case, it’s no secret that money, de facto capitalism, attracts leeches. Particularly too much money. But the capitalist mindset dictates that we can never have enough of it if we are truly going to be “a success” in this world. Though at what higher personal and emotional cost does that so-called success come at? It would seem that Britney’s downfall via a torturous conservatorship is a fair response to the question. For everything about this story involves capitalistic motivations at their most Boschian.
