I admit that I haven’t watched Framing Britney Spears. I love her so much and when I went to watch it, I stopped myself. Why? Because I had seen Britney’s post on her Instagram how she had said she, “didn’t like the way the documentaries bring up humiliating moments from the past.”
And I just felt like it was disrespectful to watch it. But I have always wondered where the title came from. Because it always felt like someone was trying to tell me she committed a crime. And I know that the crime, in my opinion, has always been committed against her.
The Director Samantha Stark, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and explained the confusing name.
“While we were making the film, we talked a lot about re-traumatizing Britney and her family by showing these moments. Part of the reason it’s called Framing Britney Spears is there are these still-photo frames that were humiliating to her. We thought it was really important to pull outside the frame because so many people had all these assumptions based on one frame, one still image that they saw,” she said.
Samantha continued, “In the end, we felt like we had to put some of them in because we wanted people to have more context. We always tried to have her talk back to [the paparazzi] if we could. She 100 percent deserves to be mad that we’re still looking at those photos, because it’s ridiculous that we’re still looking at them, and they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. As much as I want to explain myself to her, I totally understand where she’s coming from.”
I appreciate the documentary because it reignited the #FreeBritney movement, not that it ever died. But it expanded it to the point where the world was taking a second look.
And we need more people to be paying attention, because Britney deserves to be able to live her life and be free from the conservatorship.