Framing Britney Spears

For awhile now I've heard about this "Free Britney" movement making the rounds online. Although I like some of Britney Spears work, I don't follow her closely so I had no idea what the movement was all about. A few months back I do recall hearing about some of her more...special fans believing her social media posts were sending them coded messages about the current state of her life. I assumed that was what #FreeBritney meant; a bunch of bored wackos reading too much into a pop star's words. While I still believe those bored wackos are, well, bored wackos, I now know the main reason behind the movement is about the conservatorship Britney has been under for an unusually long time. After viewing the documentary, "Framing Britney Spears," I can see why these calls to release her from the conservatorship have become so loud. Some thoughts...

~ Why is Britney's father her conservator in the first place? According to the doc, he was in and out of her life growing up because he was an alcoholic who couldn't keep a job. A former rep from her label talks about how the only time she met him, he made a comment about how his daughter was gonna make a ton of money and buy him a boat. By a few accounts, her mother was concerned with making Britney's pop star dreams come true, while her father was concerned with the money she would make. For him to all of a sudden come into the scene and demand to be her conservator seems...odd. One could explain it away as no one else in her orbit daring to propose such a thing and him taking the reins. But even if you go by that logic, any decent father would want to see their child heal and be able to be independent, not continue to force a conservatorship down her throat. There's is something untrustworthy about that man.

~ Britney really did not win the lottery when it came to the men in her life. And that also dates back to her father. We learn all the important relationship stuff from our parents and if your father is in and out. and not particularly engaged when he's in, then you're very likely to internalize that and carry it into your own relationships. Those cycles are difficult to break and Britney seems to have had trouble doing so. We all knew her teen pop boyfriend was (and continues to be) trash. He cheated, then accused her of cheating and built his career off of trashing her and spilling her secrets in every interview he did. Her name was on his lips for years after that split because it got him attention. As someone in the doc said, he took control of the narrative and that led to her getting all the blame and him getting all the sympathy (he employed this same tactic after the Super Bowl incident). The fallout from that launched her into her mini-marriage and then right into the arms of the scammer that she ended up marrying and having two sons with. She now essentially supports those kids and the ex and his old and new families. I'm sure being under the thumb of her conservator has not helped her make good choices when it comes to men.

~ How is someone unfit to run their own life or control their own money able to perform so often? Britney has done several albums, tours, promotional work, guest appearances and even a Vegas residency in her time under the conservatorship. I can't wrap my head around being incapable of A, but fully capable of B. I have no doubt she loves/loved being a pop star, but I can't help but wonder if all that work was an effort by her father to make money and/or keep her pacified and controllable. Depending on how she was living pre-conservatorship, not working the last 13 years probably would've reduced the size of her nest egg considerably. Lawyers and child support are expensive, after all. Putting her out there to do something she loves, yet has no control of the financials of, sounds much more beneficial to the conservatorship than to her. Presumably if she's so unwell that she needs to be overlooked by a third party, you would want her to get well before she put herself back into the toxic environment of fame. Presumably. Adding fuel to this fire is one of her original conservatorship lawyers petitioning the court for a raise, saying Britney was making considerably more money at that point, and calling the situation a, "hybrid business model". What? This person is supposedly so sick that they need constant supervision of their actions, but you're saying it's a business model? How did that not attract the attention of someone to see if this ish was on the up and up?

~ When Britney had her meltdown and was 5150'ed, she saw the writing on the wall about the conservatorship and accepted that it was coming. She met with a lawyer, who had his own questions about whether she was of sound mind to hire him, giving what he'd heard in the media. He says she was perfectly coherent and very direct when telling him she knew she could not fight the conservatorship, but she did not want her father in control of her affairs. This lawyer went to court on her behalf and told the judge what she'd said, believing they could work out a deal where a impartial and experienced third party would be appointed the conservator. Instead, the judge told the lawyer he had a document that clearly showed Britney was not of sound mind to hire her own attorney and so not only would he not be granting the request, he would be booting the lawyer from the proceedings. He literally was not allowed to be her lawyer. The judge refused to show what document he was allegedly in possession of. This was the last best chance Britney had of making this conservatorship work in her favor.

~ The lawyer who was removed from the case spoke of someone with knowledge of the conservatorship telling him Britney was the "highest functioning conservatee" he had ever seen. Does that mean she's...normal? Conservatorships are typically used for older people and tend to last the rest of the lives of those people. It makes perfect sense why they would be used in that capacity, it's highly unlikely someone in that situation and at that age would regain the ability to control their own affairs. But Britney is in her thirties with, hopefully, a long way to go ahead of her. Is the aim to keep her under conservatorship for all those years ahead? Even though she's "high functioning" and seemingly able to express coherent wants and non-wants to the courts? How has no court probed into this shady ass arrangement yet? How has no one wanted to speak to her at length and hear her side and figure out whether whatever ailment that was grounds to put her under the conservatorship is not under control now? I assume it was some sort of mental illness that started the whole thing and many of those can be controlled with medication and/or therapy. Even if it is a bigger, less controllable issue (ie. dementia has been one rumored issue), I would think that would be in writing somewhere and would make it more difficult for her to file court papers at all regarding the conservatorship.

~ Obviously, none of us are privy to the financial and in and out details of the conservatorship. But it should not be lost on anyone that Britney is paying the bills for this whole thing. The lawyers, the lawyers' lawyers, her father and his lawyers, her ex and, possibly, his lawyers. That's a lot of money. That's also a lot of motivation to keep the conservatorship in place. Her father has to account to the court what he spends, but that's still very little oversight. Britney likely doesn't know where all the money is going because she's being shielded from all of that by her father, who the court says doesn't even have to let her in on all of it. Where there's money, there's corruption.

~ The last thought I had watching this documentary was how unfair the media was to Britney, both before and after her meltdown. I don't think it's in dispute that, in the beginning, she invited the paparazzi and enjoyed the attention they brought her. But as that industry exploded, she was unable to control it and they became more aggressive in pursuing her. The doc actually had a pap who was asked if she ever told them to leave her alone (and we saw several pieces of video where she says just that) and he claimed she would say, "Can you leave me alone today, guys?", which he took to mean she just wanted to be left alone that day, not forever. Really, dude? She's pushing through the crowd, she's crying and she's begging you to leave on the regular. These photographers played a part in her downfall. And so did the mainstream media. There were so many awful pieces of video showing well known interviewers asking her cringeworthy questions. Diane Sawyer asks her how people should reconcile her girl next door image with her "slut" image, and later asks her what she did to Timberfuck to make him so hurt and upset with her. And she got so many questions about the supposed "slut" thing, when all she was doing was growing into her sexuality and wearing revealing outfits. Some random politician's wife called into a show to say how she wanted to, "shoot her in the head" for...I guess her image? Other interviewers inquired about her virginity and whether she'd had a boob job, right to her face. As if that wasn't enough, post meltdown, she became fodder for comedy shows and bits, even though she was clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness. The conversation of mental illness now is miles away from what it was then, but that's not an excuse. Clearly, she was not well and the media should've just shut up, rather than continuing to land body blows while she was down. 

I'm not sure what impact this documentary will have overall, it likely won't change anything when it comes to her court battle. But if you can watch this and not think something is amiss with her conservatorship, you need to watch it again and pay close attention.

Hitman Havoc

When I was in my 20's, one of my good friends at the time said she would never date a man who played any kind of video games because it was a sign of immaturity. She was in her 30's at the time and having trouble finding a man who did not, except for older men she had no interest in. She went on to marry a man who did play video games and they later divorced, and now she's married to an older man who does not play. The moral of the story? People are complex and think carefully about what your actual deal breakers are, kids. One of the memories I have of my childhood was mom saving up to buy a Nintendo for us kids, and then promptly getting hooked on it herself. My mother is in her 60's and still plays video and now occasionally tablet games. Some 84 years after getting my first Nintendo, I still like to game. But there's a secondary purpose to it now. Video games have been found to help patients with brain injuries recover, as well as help with anxiety. I literally have a doctor's note to play games. Yay for brain damage! That said, I'm not a super hardcore multiplayer gamer with some expensive ass setup. I tend to stick to single player games to unwind and help me focus.

In May of last year my nephew suggested I download a free preview of a game called, "Hitman 2" and it was love at first play. H2 is the sequel to 2016's "Hitman" and follows the story of a born and bred assassin called Agent 47 who works for an agency that caters to the wealthy. Agent 47's handler, Diana, feeds him information and he does the dirty work actually taking out the people who have contracts on them. The games are incredibly immersive and have a ton of replay value. It's actually encouraged that you go back through each contract multiple times to get all the achievements and discover new areas, and it's been great escapism for these Covid times, (ironically, there's a side campaign for H2 that involves a deadly virus getting out at a medical facility and infecting people quite easily). Having played through both of the games, I was excited for the release of the final installment this month, and The Greek pre-ordered the fanciest version of the game for me for Christmas. When I bought the first two games, it was years after their initial release and so I had no experience with what release days were like from this company. Boy, did I find out last week.

The "Hitman" games all operate within one place, meaning that you can open H2 and have access to both that game and H1 without having to load each game independently. In theory, the final release, H3, should allow you to access all three games and any side missions from just launching H3. Since each game is tacked onto the last, one would think you could just install H3 and fire it up and be good to go. But no. A week before the game was released, the company that makes it, IOI, posted a very long-winded rundown of what players needed to know before playing. First, there would be a website you'd need to visit and register for an account there in order to link H2 to H3 and carryover your progress. At the time, it said that website would be up "soon" and that it was highly encouraged you link the two games before playing the new one. If you waited to link them until after you played H3, your progress in that game would be wiped. Also, PC players who used one particular store to play games would have to re-purchase H2 on a different store if they wanted to play at all, thereby wiping out any of their H2 progress and ponying up an extra $20 for a game they already owned. Even more ridiculous, all players had to download various free "access pass" add-ons for H3 that would allow access to H1 and H2. Confused? Yeah, so was everyone who intended to play the game. The PC re-buy thing did not go over well at all and apparently the backlash was so severe that IOI backpedaled a day or so later and promised no one would have to buy content they already owned.

The night prior to the game's release, the website to transfer your progress was still not live and I just knew there were gonna be problems. Since release day was also Inauguration Day (praise the Gods), I wasn't in a huge hurry to do the progress transfer. Good thing too, because that website went live at the very time the game released worldwide and almost immediately crashed. Since the transfer was basically required before playing H3, a lot of people were just stuck not playing at all until the website came back up. I managed to do the transfer late afternoon and then fired up the game that night to find some progress did not transfer at all, and I wasn't the only one with the issue. Even then, a lot of people complained they still could not even get to the website. The following night I played the game with few issues, but still saw people who were unable to. On top of that, complaints began to flow in about how nobody had been able to access the extra content promised in the deluxe edition of the game. That night, IOI released a new FAQ saying they were aware of the issues and that they would make the content available to PC players and then, at some point, all other console players. They also slipped in a new fact about how that progress that did not transfer was never meant to, something not in their original guide about the carryover. I logged on Friday night to play and could not connect to the game's servers. "Hitman" requires that you be online to play, a move supposedly made to combat piracy but that has never actually worked to do so. Upon checking the Reddit board for the game, I saw that a lot of people either had never been able to connect (either to the website or the game itself), and more had played fine for awhile but now could not get on. Still, some people apparently were able to play without issue. The lack of connectivity persisted throughout the weekend and only seemed to be getting worse, with more people reporting they could not play the game. IOI further compounded everyone's frustration by stroking their own member on Twitter, posting something about how the game was their highest rated ever and, in a second tweet, asking how everyone was enjoying it. They tacked on to the end of both those posts some one liner about how they were aware people had issues logging in. Some players were able to deduce that the problems had to do with those who did the carryover, since it appeared those who did not do it could play. Finally, on Monday morning, IOI posted that they were taking the servers down for a few hours to fix the problem and, as of this writing, it seems like they may have. But...wow.

The thing that struck me over the weekend is how this company has zero self-awareness and some massive cojones. First, you tell people they have to hand over even more money than they already have, and you do this five days prior to the game's release. Then, you make it a requirement to go through this ridiculous process just to carryover game data for a game that shouldn't need to be so complicated. You wait to put up a website you know will be overwhelmed, then don't seem to comprehend that everybody who was on that website will then go to the game, completely overwhelming your servers. And when the servers go to hell, only then do you decide to toot your own horn and ask how awesome the game you made is. It's almost a week later and I'm just now able to (knock on wood it works) take a deep dive into the game. I still don't have the extras that I paid for and was promised. To top it all off, game data that I assumed was going to be carried over, that I spent countless hours completing (and some of it sucked so hard to do) was never meant to be imported into H3 and they knew and didn't say anything until after people found out. I didn't have much experience with this company prior to last week, both the previous games fired up and needed to extra attention since they were so old. But now they come off shady as hell and very unprofessional. I understand it's a smaller company than when they started out, but come on. This is just a choice to not be as transparent as you should have been. When you wait to get all the pre-orders and then spring new, costly information on people, of course they're gonna be pissed. You didn't anticipate that? You didn't anticipate that a game that's been pretty well advertised (at least on Xbox) to attract a wide audience that would want to play on day one? Nobody calculated that waiting to put up the carryover website until literally the 11th hour wouldn't have a negative outcome? It's just all so amateur. And it makes me very happy this is the last game in the series and I have no interest in their next project, some James Bond thing.

As for my first impressions of H3, having only one play though under my belt, meh. They took out a lot of things that gave the first two games such tremendous replay value. The last installment of the game is shorter than the first two and the vibe of it is very different. Time will tell how much of that is my dislike of change and how much of it is just the newness of the levels themselves. The end of the story was very anti-climactic and the lack of interaction between Agent 47 and Diana is a definite downside. Going back to redo some of the stuff that reset is both intriguing and upsetting, especially considering IOI also removed some items that I used to complete those challenges. I will never understand why they continue to require a single player game to always be played online, especially when you consider someone had already cracked the game and put it out to the masses hours after its release. Seems like that requirement is doing more harm than good. Hopefully having actual access to the game without issue will be worth all the BS from the last week.