For years Britney Spears was considered on the one hand the pioneer of pop singers of the modern age, but on the other hand also a kind of tragic figure whose fame disrupted her life and spirit and brought her to personal and public extremes that were extensively covered by the media.
Few knew what the singer was really going through, a reality that only many years later was revealed as an ongoing nightmare and real abuse, all on the part of her father and his affiliates, the same elements who were supposed to protect her and were legally trusted to keep her mentally and financially guarded by the court.
After more than a decade of stifling legal guardianship that began with the well-publicized collapse of Spears (39) in 2008, in late September, Court Judge Brenda Penny ruled that Spears' father, Jamie, be suspended from his job as guardian until a final decision is made on November 12.
The dramatic decision was the opening shot in rehabilitating Britney, who after many years of silence, revealed in June this year, in shocking testimony, the suffering that had been her lot for more than a decade under her almost complete rule and control of her father. The ban on getting pregnant again or remarrying her partner (who, as I recall, got engaged very recently after the dramatic development in her case).
The report of Britney Spears' release from her father's guardianship.
Courtesy here 11
But it was not just Spears' voice that was finally heard.
Many of those who for years were forced to remain silent put an end to this in a series of docu-films that accompanied the legal drama surrounding Spears, and came out with perfect timing and not random at all one after the other in the weeks in which the legal hearings took place.
"Release Brittany"
The first to stir up the storm was "Release Britney" from the New York Times, which aired in February and covered Spears' transformation into a star alongside her crash.
As in the most successful soap operas, after the sequel that dropped the bombshell came the sequel: "Control Britney Spears," also from the New York Times that aired in late September and focused on her father's complete, not to mention morbid, control over her life during her 13 years of guardianship.
Unsurprisingly and as with any rating bomb in recent years, here too there is an Israeli angle: a former Israeli-owned security company that has taken an active part in monitoring and taking complete control of the star's life.
Three key characters star in the film: a dresser who accompanied the singer on her tour, an employee of the Israeli-owned security company Black Box, and Spears' personal assistant.
In the film, viewers are first exposed explicitly and not just as rumors in tabloids about Spears' control techniques in her life that included incessant surveillance of every step she took, installing eavesdropping devices in her private room and her phone and total compartmentalization of anyone defined as a "bad influence" on her.
It was further revealed that at a time when the "Liberate Britney" movement was at its peak and waged a stubborn struggle to uncover the truth behind Britney's life, her father and collaborators took care to send impostor investigators to the movement's demonstrations to gather information about their activities and intentions.
Britney's third time
The third in a series of films that took part in the media circus around Spears was "Britney vs. Spears" from Netflix by journalist Jenny Alisco and director Erin Lee Carr, which covered Spears' struggle for freedom by presenting confidential evidence and exclusive interviews and also aired in September.
CNN also joined the media celebration in early October with "Toxic: Britney Spears' Struggle for Freedom."
Unsurprisingly, this docu also paints a grim picture of Spears' father's power of control over her life, bringing testimonies from friends and ex-employees about the pop star's miserable life routine, which included almost obsessive monitoring of all her media, interfering with her life routine including supervising The doctors she met, permission to read religious books only and more.
Britney herself responded in a long Instagram post to the docu and claimed that significant parts of it are sinning against the truth.
After a while, she reworded the post and qualified her remarks.
There is no doubt that now, with the dramatic ruling and change in her life, Spears will star in the headlines voluntarily and not voluntarily quite a bit and we can only continue to follow and hope that she finally gets to run her life as she sees fit with as little drama as possible.