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FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS: If you seek Britney. As moving as this is, feels less successful as activism, as it still has a whiff of something rotten, like the prestige version of the same tabloid speculation that it attempts to indict/shaped Spears’ life in the first place. B-
While its drawing of connective tissue btwn misogynist celebrity culture & misogynist law is compelling, the reframing of many pieces of archival clips, especially from big media outlets, as gross feels a bit like an attempt to let an audience compartmentalize their complicity.
But the doc functions as an interesting problem text: if you report on and document tabloid history/celebrity culture, to what degree will you recapitulate the nasty politics and cruel spectatorship practices you’re trying to examine/critique?
surprising they did not talk about parasocial relationships during the whole “dissecting Britney’s Instagram” section… maybe would have been interesting framing/context... esp how the internet/social media radically changed our relationships to celebrities
i know, i know the whole lack of involvement from Spears herself shapes the body of this doc quite a bit, but it's also v weird watching something about a woman's agency/lack thereof, how she's assessed/punished for that, and is itself litigating/analyzing without her, uh, agency
