What We Learned From The Flurry Of New Britney Spears Documentaries

I wasnt good. I was great.

Its a line I keep thinking about from the more than 20 minutes Britney Spears spoke by phone during a court hearing on June 23 . The audio is one of the rare times she has talked publicly about the 13-year court-ordered conservatorship orchestrated by her father, Jamie.

As if we needed to be reminded of how great and influential of a performer Britney Spears was and is. But we did because of how long she hasnt been able to control her own narrative. In February, the documentary Framing Britney Spears , from The New York Times, FX and Hulu, brought more public attention to both the conservatorship and the years of sexist and exploitative media coverage that came to define her public image. It also started to illuminate the broader issue of conservatorships and the ways these arrangements can exploit the people they are aimed to protect.

In the months since, the legal developments in Spearss case have accelerated. For the first time, she got to choose her own lawyer , Mathew Rosengart. There will be another major turning point on Wednesday, when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny will take up two major questions : whether her father will be removed as head of the conservatorship and/or if the 13-year conservatorship will finally come to an end.

Ahead of Wednesdays court hearing, three new documentaries and specials are out, each showing how stringent the conservatorship has been and the extent to which Jamie Spears and his associates controlled all of Britneys communications and interactions. The documentaries can help catch people up before this potentially momentous news day. Yet the films are also limited in what they can achieve. The details of the conservatorship are difficult to depict visually, and nothing in the entire saga has been as powerful as hearing Britney Spearss own testimony.

Deciding whether to watch each documentary depends on how much you want to know or dont know already. Controlling Britney Spears, which premiered Friday on Hulu, has the most specific focus of the three as a follow-up to Framing Britney Spears. Its probably best for anyone who has been following the developments in Spearss conservatorship case with some level of specificity. The new installment peels back the curtain on the mechanics of the conservatorship. Among its most alarming revelations : Alex Vlasov, a former employee of the security firm hired by Jamie, discusses the extent to which the firm was tasked with surveilling Britneys phone (when she was allowed to have one, which wasnt always the case). And Vlasov says the security firm installed a recording device in her bedroom.

Elsewhere in the documentary, Spearss longtime assistant and confidant Felicia Culotta and head of wardrobe Tish Yates talk about how they and other people close to Spears were basically torn away from her. The conservatorship meant that every interaction Spears had with virtually anyone was strictly monitored, they said. Many people who interacted with Spears could sense something wrong was going on and how lonely she was without a support system and people whom she could trust, according to the documentary and other accounts of these events. But as Dan George, who managed Spearss Circus concert tour in 2008 and 2009, says in the documentary, The first rule of the conservatorship is that you dont talk about the conservatorship.

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