“Britney without filter”, on Arte.TV: anatomy of a fall

ARTE.TV – ON DEMAND – MINISERIES

On the radio, on TV, in bookstores – where his autobiography, The Woman in me (JC Lattès, 2023), alongside Pour Britney (POL, 2024), the essay that the author Louise Chennevière has just dedicated to her -, Britney Spears is playing in a loop. This shows the fascination that continues to arouse the career of the pop icon, adored for his sexy and badass before being thrown out to the celebrity press and social networks.

This is because the director of Britney without filter grew up listening to Baby One More Time (1998) and aping the suggestive choreographies of the little pop princess. Twenty-seven years after the release of the first hit, Jeanne Burel offers a dissection of the singer’s career in five chapters, each of which borrows its title from the American’s discography.

Born in 1981, in a modest environment, white trashsome will say, Britney Spears is trained in the American school of multiple talents – singing, dancing, musical comedy… A word comes up in the description that the journalists and academics interviewed in the documentary give her, « wholesome » (“healthy”, “pure”).

Unbearable violence

However, the archive images of Britney Spears as a child send shivers down your spine as you have the impression of watching a little learned monkey perform. A member of the Mickey Mouse Club troupe (alongside Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, etc.), she entertained the gallery until she was 18, then recorded a first album, half demure, half sexy, with colossal success. The backlash will be scathing.

The documentary recalls how the young woman was treated in the media after her second album, more daring than the first, offended conservative circles: “Are you a virgin?” » ; “Are your breasts done?” » ; “Are you single?” »

The popularity of Britney Spears coincides with the rise of trash television, and these videos, which we had forgotten or simply never seen, are unbearably violent. The rest is known: losing his temper, shaving his head under the eye of the paparazzi.

However, everyone lets it happen, because, as one speaker points out, “she’s much more entertaining that way.” Who didn’t laugh at the video that went viral of this fan asking, with snot in her nose, that we “leave Britney alone” ? And who remembers her being placed under paternal guardianship in 2008, when she was 26 years old and had two children?

We had to wait until 2021 and the Free Britney movement, emanating from her immense community of fans, for the guardianship to be lifted. In the last part of the series, we hear a fragment of her court hearing, in which she denounces, in an unrecognizable voice, working conditions comparable to sex trafficking.

It is in its final minutes that the documentary gets closest to its subject, and it is paradoxically there that it reaches its limits. In wanting to cast a wide net in such a restricted format, the series probably does not take enough time to develop its most interesting conclusion. If the star’s journey tells us about fame, puritanism, America and our relationship with idols, it especially says a lot about how society treats women. The 42 million followers of the star’s Instagram account are well placed to know that, while things have changed, some women have never recovered.