12/1/2023 0 Comments Most famous paparazzi photosFemale celebrities were expected to constantly look perfect, even on their way to the grocery store, and when they happened to be captured in an unflattering photo by the hordes of men harassing them, it was somehow their fault. It’s all thoroughly depressing, and a harrowing reminder of a culture of harassment that was entirely acceptable not too long ago. “But it wasn’t like, ‘Leave me alone forever.’ You know what I mean?” “There were times when she like, ‘Can you leave me alone for the day?,” he claimed. “What about when she said, ‘Leave me alone?,’” an off-camera interviewer responded. He insisted in the film that she never gave any indication she wanted to be left alone. It was a great kind of a relationship.”Įven with all that, Ramos still has deluded himself into thinking that Spears was somehow asking for this, that it didn’t bother her, or worse, exacerbate her mental health issues. It was like she needed us and we needed her. She was very friendly, a sweetheart of a girl. “In the beginning when paparazzis were following Britney, you could tell she enjoyed it,” Ramos said in the film. The slimy, voyeuristic behavior of many paparazzi was seen simply as the price of fame, and Framing Britney Spears brings on Daniel Ramos (the paparazzo who famously provoked Spears - then in the midst of a mental health crisis - into attacking his SUV with an umbrella) on to illustrate the mental gymnastics these creeps did to feel okay about the exploitative nature of their gig. But as Stone points out, it was big business back then. These days, with most print media struggling to stay afloat, it’s unfathomable that a publication would have millions of dollars to spend solely on images of famous people walking to and from their cars. “Extrapolate that over the year, you know, $7 to $8 million, but spending millions of dollars a year on pictures that just quintupled the amount of money that was out there, which meant there were a lot more photographers coming in and doing it.” “When I had a really healthy budget, it’d be about $140,000 a week on imagery,” Stone says in the film. To get a sense of just how massive the market for tabloid shots of young, vulnerable celebrities was back then, Framing Britney Spears brings on Brittain Stone, the photo director of Us Weekly from 2001 to 2011, to reveal just how much money he was able to devote to paparazzi photos. There are plenty of cringe-worthy moments that highlight this throughout the film, including clips of reporters asking Spears (who, it’s worth noting, was an underage teen girl during the early part of her career) about her breasts or whether she’s still a virgin, and magazine covers patting Justin Timberlake on the back for “getting into pants.” But perhaps most striking is the way the doc reminds us how pervasive and accepted it was for paparazzi to harass famous people like Spears. This week, the New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears premiered on Hulu and sparked new conversations about the harassment that female celebrities in the late ’90s and early aughts suffered at the hands of the media - and society in general, really.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |