It seems almost too perfectly timed that a Black Widow script about male manipulation and mind control over women should come out the same year Britney Spears, too, seeks her freedom after years of having no real say in any of her choices. And, in this regard, there is a moment when Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) tells her sister—or rather, sister figure—Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), that the item of clothing she’s wearing (a vest plagued with pockets that Natasha jokes looks like it came from the army surplus store) is the first she’s chosen for herself since she can remember. And that she really likes it.
It’s these small choices many take for granted that make Yelena grateful to be free from the unwitting spell that bound her (on an even more literal level than the spell that has bound Spears). One she accidentally breaks after a vial of red powder explodes onto her face while on a mission in Morocco. It then becomes immediately clear to her that Natasha did not kill a certain villain like everyone thought she did. For there can be no other person responsible for this kind of diabolical technology.
The harrowing details of how the nefarious Russian (because, according to American film, is there any other kind of Russian?) in question, Dreykov (Ray Winstone), controls an army of women—usually castoffs with “genetic potential”—begins in 1995 (around the time The Mickey Mouse Club ended). Establishing the family dynamic between Natasha, Yelena and their parents, Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz), at the outset is the key to building toward the major eventual arc of the story. After a snapshot of the quartet’s picturesque suburban family life, Alexei comes home to tell Melina they don’t have more than an hour to escape from their faux middle-class existence in Ohio. Cut to twenty-one years later in 2016 (because no one wants to think about all the things that happened after that election year or how this was the last time Spears released an album) and Natasha is on the run from her “responsibilities” as an Avenger after violating the Sokovia Accords.
Like Britney, she seems to just want to retire and be done with this life of ceaseless work while also getting nothing but ceaseless shit in return. So she does, by hiding out in Norway thanks to an assist from her friend, Rick Mason (O-T Fagbenle)—though she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of being called anything more than an employee, of sorts. Equipped with the new identities he’s given her (including Fanny Longbottom) and a trailer in the middle of nowhere, Natasha thinks, okay, I can hide. Unfortunately, Dreykov and his evil robot creation, Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), have other plans when the latter is sent to seek and destroy in order to procure the case filled with the spell-breaking (so to speak) vials that Natasha didn’t know she had. For when Rick cleaned out her storage in Budapest, the box she said he should have thrown away turned out to contain a little gift from Yelena: the antidotes. Which Taskmaster is now in relentless pursuit of. Getting wise to this fact, Natasha squirrels them away and jumps into the sea.
In a scene that follows, one imagines it to be the kind of reunion that would transpire between Britney and Jamie Lynn as Natasha walks into a Budapest apartment armed, declaring, “I don’t know if I can trust you.” The fight that ensues is also the likely event that would take place if Britney ever got her hands on Jamie Lynn again. But in the case of these two sisters, things don’t go fully the Blanche and Jane Hudson route as they call a truce and agree tacitly to trust each other. It’s then that they’re attacked by another Black Widow after Yelena has finished explaining that not only is Dreykov not dead, he’s controlling a legion of Black Widows. A legion of women who should be powerful and able to use their free will for good, but are instead forced by the manipulation of Dreykov to do whatever he wants—even kill themselves on command.
During a scenario wherein Natasha is forced to realize that she, too, is under some of his mind control thanks to a “pheromone block” he has in place that keeps any of the widows from killing him, he diabolically explains that his network of subjugated women is a product of him taking advantage of “the world’s only abundant natural resource: girls.” It’s a disgusting sentiment made all the more so because this is how the majority of men (especially in dictatorship regime countries) do feel about women. That they’re disposable, throwaway (just look at the factory of teen pop stars—other than Spears—churned and spit out by record labels for “Western world” evidence as well). And not just because there’s “a surfeit” of them, but because they’re deemed naturally inferior, unable to make decisions for themselves without the “guidance” of a man—in the case of Britney and the Black Widows (a good band name, by the way), a patriarchal one.
As a Putin-like patriarch, Dreykov is sure to inform Natasha that ruling from the shadows is where true power lies (and yes, after the 2016 election, Putin would agree). And he proves it to her by showing her the database of women he has all over the world willing to do whatever he needs them to at the drop of a hat in order to assert dominance over the globe’s various (mostly male) leaders.
Dreykov—to really drive home the Jamie Spears parallel—controls his very own daughter as well. Worse still, he’s implanted a chip into the back of her head and has turned her into, for all intents and purposes, his robotic puppet. As much as there is a tinge of Red Sparrow in terms of the Russian training program of women into cold-blooded assassins, there is also a tinge of watching a dance rehearsal of Britney’s during which her father, ultimately, has the final say in whether or not she can say no to a dance move. Hence, when she did say no, being hopped up on lithium in retaliation for her “daring” to express anything like free will.
“You took away my childhood!” Natasha screams at Dreykov during their standoff. Here, too, we can envision Spears saying the same to Jamie—which she sort of has by declaring, “I want my life back.” She likely didn’t know she wanted it back yet when her parents thought to pimp her talents out when she was still just a child so as to get some kind of financial security. A return on the investment of having a child in the first place. To heighten the parallel to Dreykov’s mind control and essentially “being” these women by making their decisions for them, there is the recent Ronan Farrow/Jia Tolentino article that unveiled Jamie’s predilection for screaming “I am Britney Spears!” whenever someone questioned a decision that was made. As in, yes, for all intents and purposes, he was more Britney than Britney thanks to the legal agency bequeathed to him by the conservatorship.
But if oppressive men should have learned anything by now, it’s that you can’t keep a strong woman (or even a “weak” one) bound forever. Just as the Black Widows are destined to reclaim their freedom, so, too, is Britney.
