‘pocket-money’ and ‘allowed’ a credit card of her own. Dad Jamie was even permitted to comb her mobile telephone bills, checking who she’s called or texted. He still does.
In any other life, these would be the traits of a possessive controller. But under a court-appointed conservatorship, this is the permitted interventionist control exercised to ensure the life of an iconic figure remains on track. Its juxtaposition is hard to fathom alongside the pop superstar who has sold 84 million records worldwide, and has been crying ‘freedom’ since 2004.
In early 2009, the terms of her conservatorship were made indefinite, as her dad was made permanent guardian. Britney has struggled with this set-up as it further reinforces her belief that fame has become her prison. We are told conservatorship is a price she must pay for her own welfare and to redeem a career that was spectacularly imploding throughout 2007-8. Hers was an infamous ‘meltdown’, played out in agonising slow motion on the public stage before being dissected, shaken and tipped upside down by the world’s media. Britney Spears seems to perform, live and self-destruct within a commercial snow globe for the entertainment, prurience and profit of others. But what cost to her soul? What about the human being inside?
The man I’m speaking with at the Mondrian leans forward, seeking to educate me.
‘People get it so wrong. Look, she has a huge heart and is so sweet. But there’s also a dark side, and it’s not of her making. The girl’s got shit going on and everyone’s dealing with it the best they can. Tough love harms no one when all they can do is harm themselves. So you want to find the real Britney? Good luck, bro’! Even the woman herself ain’t found that one out yet.’
To be fair, he didn’t say much more, but his impassioned testimony was typical of the consensus encountered over the past eight months traversing the show-business landscape of Hollywood, the southern terrains of Louisiana, then Florida, and the roads of a chaotic childhood.
People were keen to assist with the depiction of a ‘true soul’.
‘No one’s troubles should reflect on who they really are,’ said one backstage ally from the MTV Video Music Awards, ‘but the problem with Brit is that her troubles went public, and that projected an image that was a travesty to the essence of who she is.’
Wherever I go, she is talked about as someone who is immensely likeable and great fun. It seems the harsher judgements passed down on Britney were, in the main, generated by media commentators and faceless bloggers. Such is the consequence of the human spirit when constructed into a brand that people view as faulty product. But the one thing I’ve learned is that no one is tougher on Britney than Britney herself. Within the privacy of her own counsel, she sits with self-berating judgement, keen to learn lessons and remind herself to ‘keep thinking positive’. Positive thinking is her shield from the dark moods that can consume her.
There is also an emotional depth to Britney that few appreciate. She might not be someone who can easily articulate herself, and she may just be a simple girl from a small town, but in her own mind she finds a simple connection with words, lyrics and poetry, which she expresses on paper. It is her way of making sense of the madness. In moments of quiet, she’ll analyse everything, then toy with words, which she scribbles in her journals in looping handwriting, attempting to reflect her mood of the moment. She is passionate about maintaining a journal—it’s her one true confidante.
Britney is today a young woman and mother-of-two searching for an identity away from her music and fame. And yet she’s searching for her own sense of self, while simultaneously fighting back to redeem the brand.
Hollywood celebrates ‘comeback kids’ who once stared into the abyss, like actors Robert Downey Jr. and Mickey Rourke but few redemptive stories are as compelling as the rise, fall and fight back of Britney Spears. Her life has commanded a level of curiosity that refuses to loosen its grip or avert its gaze. In 2008, Yahoo announced she was the most popular name entered into its search engine—in a year that saw the momentous election of Barack Obama. It is evidence, if such were needed, of a fascination of Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe proportions.
‘She is by far the most powerful celebrity on this planet,’ was how she was once described by ABC’s chat show host and American Music Awards compere Jimmy Kimmel.
Anyone with an ounce of compassion cannot help but wish Britney all the best in her current resurrection. She has clawed her way back from the edge, pulled by the rope of people’s good wishes. No doubt such public empathy is drawn because an entire generation has grown up alongside her music from 1999 onwards. In America, the pre-teen set of the nineties shared its pubescent years with her as she broadcast daily into their front rooms via The All New Mickey Mouse Club.
Most likely, her ardent following is because Britney embodies the dreams within every girl who has ever posed with a hairbrush for a microphone in front of the mirror that becomes a TV camera. She represents a billion dreams with which those dreamers identify. And then, of course, there are the boys who became men, entranced by the girl in school uniform whose provocative image enticed their equal adulation.
Within the enduring brand that is Britney Spears, the canny marketing that mixes innocence with seduction has ensured that here is an artiste who has been shaped, sold and viewed as all things to all people. She has seemingly transported everyone on a journey into a collective fantasy about her dance with the devil called fame.
But it’s also the tale of that old adage, ‘Be Careful What You Wish For…’ because no one, let alone a teenage girl, is sufficiently wired to cope with such impossible expectations, not to mention the rabid attention of the paparazzi. Few families would be strong enough to sustain without injury the ‘tornado’ that leaves ‘debris scattered all over’ as mum Lynne Spears described it in her memoir, Through The Storm.
As Vanessa Gregoriadis wrote in the February 2008 edition of Rolling Stone magazine: ‘More than any other star today, Britney epitomizes the crucible of fame for the famous: loving it, hating it and never quite being able to stop it from destroying you.’ Such nightmares seemed impossible at the start of a story where the précis is simple enough: an angelic teenager from Kentwood, Louisiana, bursts onto the pop scene with ‘…Baby, One More Time’ in 1998. A fledgling career goes meteoric and she is crowned the world’s princess of pop. Fame and fortune take their toll and the wheels fall off a once unstoppable juggernaut after Britney marries and soon divorces an ex-dancer called Kevin Federline, mothering two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James.
Devastated, Britney numbs the pain by keeping occupied, transforming herself into a party girl. She starts to court the paparazzi and rebels against her family, which leads to an infamous head-shaving incident, a mean-looking umbrella attack on photographers and a custody battle with her ex-husband. She then loses her custodial rights until the rock bottom moment plays out on our television screens: Britney being strapped to a gurney and loaded into the back of an ambulance, looking lost and bewildered as TV-news helicopters beamed spotlights from above and paparazzi trailed in pursuit. Cornered by her own demons, she had nowhere to turn but the psychiatric ward of an American hospital. It was a physical and mental breakdown not afforded the usual rights of dignity like a bad episode of the Jerry Springer Show.
But it is the underlying causes, the elements not readily visible, which drive this story and provide an insight, which in turn helps us understand much of what has been played out. It is these hidden factors which this book attempts to explore within the unravelling story: where Britney came from, what drives her, what makes her tick, what has rendered her so fragile and what circumstances ultimately conspired to de-rail her. It is a raw story so no one should expect the saccharine taste of brand-driven publications. There are no villains in this story—and there are no heroes either. But I sincerely believe there’s a huge amount of people wishing for a happy outcome to this endless saga and it is within this collective hope that the redemption of Britney Spears is rooted—and this book was born.
LOCATION: KENTWOOD, LOUISIANA
The hit song is in full-stride: ‘I’m runnin’ this like-like-like a circus…’