Catie Willm

HONS 110

Dr. Peeples

October 6, 2021

The Rhetorical Situation of Britney Spear’s Conservatorship in Britney v Spears

It’s January 2008. You turn on the tv, and yet again, the American princess turned catastrophic train wreck is making headlines. This time, Britney Spears is being ushered to the hospital after locking herself in her bedroom with her two children to keep them from her ex-husband. The camera angle of the reporters comes from a helicopter circling Britney’s ambulance and there are hundreds of flashing lights from the paparazzi. You see some chase the ambulance down the high way until they’re finally blocked off from entering the hospital. If you kept up with celebrity gossip and news in the late 2000’s and 2010’s, then you’re all too familiar with Britney Spears in news headlines similar to this one. These incidents were upwards of 13-15 years ago, yet Britney is still suffering the consequences. Britney’s current and past relationships with the media, her family, and those hired to work for her family is dramatically depicted in Britney v Spears, a groundbreaking documentary highlighting the tyranny of her father’s conservatorship. The reformation of conservatorship legal policies across bureaucratic America has been largely publicized by the efforts of Britney Spears, her legal team, and her fans.

The documentary Britney v Spears can be referred to as a “rhetorical text” in reference to Britney’s conservatorship and legal battle as a “rhetorical situation.” Lloyd F. Bitzer defines rhetorical situation as a “complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence” (6).

Britney vs Spears was effective as a rhetorical text because it introduced new quantifiable data that showed evidence of Britney’s exploitation that hadn’t been previously shown to the general public. For example, Britney’s father Jamie Spears told the public in 2008 that Britney was happy under the conservatorship (Britney v Spears 1:00:41). This is disproven later in the documentary through a voice recording of Britney from 2011 saying she always wanted out and that wish was consistently ignored (Britney v Spears 1:09:01). Additionally, Britney v Spears was effective because they proved that Britney’s co-conservator’s, Jamie Spears and Andrew Wallace, as well as her manager Larry Randolph, made millions of dollars off of Britney’s Circus and Femme Fatale tours which took place under her conservatorship (Britney v Spears 1:03:23). This was a time which Britney was forced to work long hours on tour through her father’s exploitation and threats to take away her children. This evidence is corroborated by a BBC news article which suggests that Britney’s 2020 personal lawyer supported her case of financial conservatorship abuse, in which he took money from her while being in control of her finances (BBC 2021).

Bitzer goes on to define the main three elements for defining rhetorical situation: exigence, audience and constraints. An exigence is a modifiable, urgent and necessary thing that is waiting to be done (Bitzer 6). A rhetorical audience consists of “only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (Bitzer 6). Third, Bitzer describes the rhetorical constraints of situation, which is anything that has the power to impact or shift the results of the exigence.

Looking at Britney v Spears as rhetorical text of a rhetorical situation, we can define aspects of her life as shown in the documentary using exigence, audience, and constraints. First, the exigence of Britney v Spears is the fifteen-year long entrapment of Britney J. Spears as a result of the failures of the legal system to do their due diligence in processing Britney’s claims to freedom. As seen in the left

image, the #FreeBritneyCampaign was heavily publicized as many Britney fans protested her conservatorship. The 2019 #FreeBritney campaign arrived as a result of the rhetorical exigence as the publicity of the movement introduced Britney’s wish to be free from her conservatorship. The documentary follows not only Britney’s life, but the varying ways the media and her father were able to silence her. The audience of the documentary are Britney’s fans mostly, but more specifically, the documentary served as a call to action of Jamie Spears and Larry Randolph to free her from their oppression. The audience could also be viewed more broadly as the general public, as both the director, Erin Lee Carr, and the lead investigative journalist, Jenny Eliscu, attempted to shed light on the lies and cover-ups of Britney’s oppressors. They wanted to shift the narrative away from “crazy Britney” and show her as a loving mother with no reason for imprisonment, making the audience anyone who needed their mind changed on the situation.

There are many constraints to Britney’s rhetorical situation, namely the reformation of conservatorship laws in California, Britney’s inability to share her perspective due to her silence, and the lies told by the Spears family to the media.

While the Spears case is by far the most popular conservatorship case, elder abuse and celebrity abuse under conservatorships in California is currently underway of reform as legal scholars recognize the entrapment and exploitation allowed in conservatorships where family members have sole responsibility of the conservator’s person and estate. In “Beware of the Con in Conservatorships: A Perfect Storm for Financial Elder Abuse in California”, Kenneth Heisz discusses the lack of data regarding conservator’s use of the conservatee’s finances while in control of their estate, meaning there is virtually no evidence as to how exploitation is involved in conservatorship (8). The journal includes examples of celebrity exploitation from their children and spouses after experiencing an illness. Similarly, Britney’s personal and financial rights were taken from her after a mental crisis, and she was exploited due to the lack of awareness surrounding conservatorship. As stated multiple times in the documentary by Britney’s past friends, the fact that she has been stuck in her situation for so long with no change or reform is a failure of the US legal system (Britney v Spears). The legal system actively worked for her father for over a decade, allowing him to continually steal Britney’s rights away and legally “become her.” Despite Britney’s efforts, the court continually ignored her complains and claims, especially through revoking her right to attorney, which was another rhetorical constraint.

The Instagram post featured to the left illustrates Britney’s first acknowledgement and personal statement to her fans publicly regarding her conservatorship and took place immediately after gaining legal freedom in September 2021. This image illustrates a major rhetorical constraint from her conservatorship: her inability to share her own thoughts to not only her fans but the legal system regarding her feelings on her father and the situation he put her in. As Britney v Spears illustrates, Britney’s inability to share her personal feelings regarding the conservatorship is the main reason her father was able to speak on her behalf, even saying that she wanted to go on tour for Circus and Femme Fatale when she didn’t. It allowed Jamie Spears to say who could see her or who could not; controlling who she could date and who her friends were.

Another rhetorical constraint are the lies told by the Spears family and representatives to the public and the legal system. As illustrated by the Rolling Stones article “Drugs, Desperation, and Dementia: ‘Britney Vs Spears’ Reveals New Horrors in Conservatorship” Britney’s family hired a Dr. James Edward Spar, a retired geriatric doctor who specialized in dementia patients, in 2008 to diagnose Britney with severe premature dementia and deem her unworthy to handle her own financial affairs “without being subject to undue influence” (Zemler 2021). However, as the documentary discusses Britney was working full-time while she supposedly was suffering from her illness, as she was on tour and guest starring on How I Met Your Mother (Britney v Spears). Through this example, and other similar illustrations of Britney at work during times the court deemed her mentally unfit, the creators of Britney v Spears effectively challenged the constraints of the rhetorical text through attacking the narrative of Britney’s oppressors with factual evidence from the time. In 2013, Edward Spar was removed from the case and after being interviewed by the director of the documentary in 2021, he refused to admit that he’d ever met Britney. His diagnosis in 2008 was the main reason Britney was deemed unfit to be in control of her person and estate for the next 13 years, despite Dr. Spar’s refusal to acknowledge his involvement. His lie exemplifies a constraint of the rhetorical situation because it negatively affected Britney’s capacity to be freed from her conservatorship at an appropriate time, and it fed false information to the public and legal system.

Britney Spears’ rhetorical situation for the past 13 years has been one of toxicity, control and frustration. The image to the left illustrates the feeling of success for the Free Britney campaign after a judge ruled in her favor, forcing her father to step down as her conservator and start ending the conservatorship as whole (Dalton 2021).

Works Cited

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 25, Penn State University Press, 1992, pp. 1–14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40237697.

“Britney Spears: Singer’s Conservatorship Case Explained.” BBC News, BBC, 29 Sept. 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53494405.

Carr, Erin Lee, director. Britney v Spears. Netflix, 2021.

Dalton, Andrew. “Britney Spears Freed from Father’s ‘Toxic’ Conservatorship.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 30 Sept. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/britney-spears-entertainment-arts-and-entertainment-los-angeles-8ed8d18ff75eee08fb58c5ddd4625f4f.

Heisz, K. (2021). Beware of the Con in Conservatorships: A Perfect Storm for Financial Elder Abuse in California. NAELA J., 17, 33.

Zemler, Emily. “Drugs, Desperation, and Dementia: ‘Britney vs Spears’ Reveals New Horrors in Conservatorship.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 28 Sept. 2021, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/britney-vs-spears-things-we-learned-1232932/.