By Catherine Sodano
Fervently snapping gum and anxiously biting her nails, Britney Spears aired her 60-day documentary in which an MTV camera crew follows her around in her everyday life. The disclaimer at the very beginning of the show was ‘no question goes unanswered.’ In a seemingly progressive environment, Britney’s dad, Jamie, spun off the show by cooking her cheese grits for the morning of the VMA’s. Manager and long-time friend, Larry Rudolph, and her dad, also her conservator, discuss in her house how no one will be allowed to speak to/access Britney at the VMA’s without directly speaking to one of them first.
In a rather exposing interview, Spears really opens up about her life under a microscope. She holds nothing back and for the most part still seems to be disenchanted with life in general. Her spirits are not really high and she more or less just goes through the motions.
She speaks about how her break up with Justin Timberlake was devastating, “With Justin, he was a part of the magnitude of what I had become. So when he was gone I was like, what am I supposed to do with myself? I was devastated [by the breakup], but I handled it a lot better than the [split] with Kevin…. He started to do an album for himself and he started to do things for himself, and I just never saw him anymore…. When it ended I felt so alone. I didn’t really wanna think about the reality of it. I never faced it…. I just ran.”
As the camera crews followed her around, it was no secret that there was a very apparent onslaught of media attention following her every step. At one point in the documentary, there were 50 cars, not including bikers, following the car she was in just to snap a quick picture. In an attempt to get out of the car, the circus of media attention got dangerous and she was unable to walk into a building and had to revert back into the car.
Britney explains how she misses spontaneity in her life, and how there is no excitement because everything in her life is too “in control.” It’s hard not to feel bad for the princess of pop. But it has also been shown that she isn’t little anymore and she wanted to rebel to show the world she was not young anymore and break her image. She says she yearns to do the most simple of things like walk down the street and breathe the crisp air. She expresses her curiosity and befuddlement as to why celebs such as Jessica Alba and her sister, Jaimie-Lynn Spears, are able to go shopping at a supermarket with their babies with no security, but she can’t.
In the documentary, MTV camera crews follow her around, watching Britney’s dance rehearsals, recording new tracks for her upcoming album “Circus,” following her to a Broadway play, and even capturing Halloween with her two sons. Her children were not in the documentary at all except for the Halloween scene, which was very brief.
She said that without her two “jewels” (sons) and dancing, she would be dead. Spears said that when people go through bad times in life a lot of people insist that they need therapy, but for her, therapy is dance. Spears said, “dancing is a spiritual experience” for me. It seems to be that her life is very in control right now, and there is not much margin left for error. She has the right people watching her at all times, and even if she is unhappy with the present situation, in the long run she will be happy and satisfied with the person she has become.
Spears also expressed her thoughts on how she feels about her life. “I’m kind of stuck in this place and I’m like, how do you deal? I just cope with it every day…. It’s better not to feel anything at all and have hope than to feel the other way…. It’s bad. I’m sad.” Seconds after, she breaks down into tears, gazing out the window of the hotel room seeming to really reflect on her life and situation, sobbing.
She claims she doesn’t feel that she is a “cool chick” anymore; she claims that her trust has been taken away from everyone and that she let “bad people” into her life because she was lonely. This all is a sad truth and Spears wanted her fans and the public to truly see on a very real level what she has to go through every day. It did show throughout the documentary that she is a work-aholic.
Almost every scene consisted of her dancing, shooting the video for “Womanizer,” discussing ideas for videos, doing interviews, picking out scents for her new perfume, getting ready for her cameo in Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet” concert, etc.
With rave reviews for the new, upcoming album, appropriately titled “Circus,” the expectations are soaring and reviews say this is her best album yet. It’s showed that she has put her all into this album making it the most personal and heartfelt album she has put out, yet still including tracks like “My Baby” for her two sons, and ultra-fun and pop-savvy tracks like “If You Seek Amy,” and “Leather and Lace.”
With Britney Spears’ album recently released, the Britney Spears phenomenon is about to get everyone’s attention, and Rudolph says this is the most ready Spears has ever been, and explicates how she needs this. Spears refuses to call it a comeback because, she says, she never left.
She ends the documentary answering the question of what she wanted everyone to know and view her as, and she aptly and matter-of-factly says that she loves, and wakes up every morning for her children, that she loves her two boys more than anything and that she is a really hard worker.
With anticipation sky-high for Britney Spears, the world has seen a softer, more intimate and personal side of her, many want to see her grace the top of the charts at No. 1 with her new upcoming album. After all, she has come an extremely long way in the past two years: two divorces, two children, custody battles, mental breakdown and her sister’s pregnancy. Britney had a lot of demons to overcome in her struggle to grasp reality once again, and she has, and she will. Britney Spears is stronger than ever before (no pun intended) and the world is ready for her once again.