While one might merely chalk it up to coincidence that the full-length trailer for Pablo Larraín’s Spencer should be released right around the same day as a follow-up to Framing Britney Spears called Controlling Britney Spears, it feels extremely pointed. After all, these are both women in history and pop culture who have been positioned as the lambs to a slaughter called Fame. And everyone from the paparazzi to the fans to those closest to the celebrity in question has been equipped with a knife for the plunging.
The difference, thus far, is that Spears has continued to live to tell the tale (though, often, it seems like just barely). Or hopefully, she’ll be able to—if and when the conservatorship ever truly comes to an end. And, with the tailored timing of both Controlling Britney Spears and Britney vs. Spears right before her next September 29th court date, the pressure on the Superior Court of California to “do the right thing” is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. Granted, it would be interesting to see Jamie Spears and the “business management” team at Tri Star attempt to maneuver their way out of this one—though they’ve been extremely wily in the past. Or maybe it wasn’t their “wiles” that sustained them, so much as commencing the conservatorship during a time when the public wasn’t as inquisitive. Here, too, one has to wonder how Diana’s fate might have fared were she given the quasi-luxury of existing in a different period, specifically now, when, although the public is still willing to swallow a lot of shit, they don’t take everything the media says at face value. Thanks, in large part, to the “direct access” to celebrities and their side of the story that comes with the territory of Instagram.
Plus, as it has been said, the hoi polloi has now frequently taken it upon themselves—in part thanks to the “free time” the lockdowns of the pandemic “allowed”—to act as the investigators responsible for figuring out the truth (which is precisely why a show like Only Murders in the Building is so timely) when no one else in a position of “authority” can. The #FreeBritney movement was no exception, including Barbara Gray and Tess Barker’s podcast, Britney’s Gram, intensifying over the years since it was started in 2017. Although it was inaugurated as “a lark” to humorously dissect the often-cryptic captions and photos of Spears’ Instagram, things started to get pretty real in 2019 when an anonymous voicemail was left for them by a paralegal formerly working on the conservatorship. Per the voicemail, it was confirmed that Britney was being held in a mental health facility (just after the announcement of her Domination residency being cancelled) against her wishes.
It’s the sort of anonymous “tip” one could imagine someone close to the inner-workings of the Royal Family’s treatment of Diana leaving on a machine. Except that such reports could not be leaked to a public that might have cared back then. Instead, it seemed, leaks were only given to the press to do with what they would. What’s more, Diana’s own phones were notoriously bugged (even though the illustrious Squidgygate incident was a result of plebeian eavesdroppers’ recordings after picking up the same radio frequency the call was on). Enough to make her practically as paranoid as Jean Seberg about the whole constant invasion of privacy phenomenon. In Controlling Britney Spears, the violation of Spears’ privacy is specifically addressed through the spotlight on the “security” team hired by the various managers of the conservatorship, namely Robin Greenhill and Lou Taylor. “Security,” of course, being a euphemism for “spies.” And what better company to employ for that purpose than Black Box?
One of the primary interview subjects for this documentary, Alex Vlasov, executive assistant to Black Box’s president, Edan Yemini, is someone who clearly wasn’t paid enough for his silence. Which is why he proceeds to let it rip throughout the exposé about just how much Spears’ right to privacy was breached. This includes having her iPhone monitored and mirrored by another iPad viewable by the likes of Jamie and Robin. Of especial importance to Jamie—making for a good Electra complex story—were the men Britney tried dating. All of them had to be vetted and background-checked in order to make the cut in “Brit’s world” (kind of leading one to believe Sam Asghari could still be a conservatorship “plant”), which, obviously, wasn’t her world at all. Just as it wasn’t Diana’s.
In some senses, Jamie doesn’t only embody the entire Royal Family in his oppression of Spears, but specifically Charles’ (which, yes, adds to the whole Electra complex vibe) form of subjugation. As Diana remarked on the aforementioned Squidgygate recording, “I was very bad at lunch, and I nearly started blubbing. I just felt so sad and empty and thought, ‘Bloody hell, after all I’ve done for this fucking family…’ It’s just so desperate. Always being innuendo, the fact that I’m going to do something dramatic because I can’t stand the confines of this marriage… He makes my life real torture, I’ve decided.” Swap out the word “marriage” for “conservatorship” and it could just as easily be Spears speaking these words.
So, too, could, “Will they kill me, do you think?” This is the phrase uttered by Kristen Stewart as Diana in the freshly-released trailer, detailing a plot that reimagines Christmas ’92 at Sandringham. A very peak of tension within the Charles-Diana union, yet nothing the Royal Family saw as worth getting a divorce over. Same as how no one controlling Britney Spears seems to see a reason to do away with the conservatorship…other than the fact that there’s too much scrutiny on it now.
Another part of the Spencer trailer finds Charles telling Diana, “There has to be two of you. There’s the real one and the one they take pictures of.” Again, this is the exact kind of rhetoric Britney has been fed for years as a means to keep her complacent within the conservatorship and the fame machine attached to it. Not to mention the constantly looming threat of her losing access to her children. Diana, too, faced such threats with William and Harry (and yes, it also feels eerie that both women should have two boys so close in age). That this is the worst form of torture for a woman whose primary aim in life was to have been a mother—a nurturer—is not lost on the oppressors seeking to use the most effective tool for control: withholding. In other words: take access, gain control.
Larraín, who seems to want to re-create the attention he received with a certain biopic about another tortured soul, Jackie, is no stranger to the “fragile woman” narrative. Nor is the movie’s screenwriter, Steven Knight, who wrote 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things. Of the film’s plot, Larraín commented, “We decided to get into a story about identity, and around how a woman decides somehow, not to be the queen.” Imagine this being subbed out for, “…not to be the princess of pop.” Larraín continues, as though also talking about Spears, “She’s a woman who, in the journey… decides and realizes that she wants to be the woman she was before she met Charles [substitute “Charles” with “fame” here to accommodate Britney’s scenario].”
“The key is how she discovers… that what she really needs to do is be who she wants to be,” Larraín further noted. “And by that, it doesn’t mean she needs to be next to anyone, to be part of anything, but herself and her own children.” The same goes for Spears, pending whatever the judge rules on September 29th to free her from the shackles of the conservatorship in a way Diana never fully was from the Royal Family’s (or the world’s) watchful gaze. Though, of course, not watchful enough to prevent her from death.
