Before Queen Bey, there was Queen A, who was the hostess opening the door for countless famous and reputed black artists in popular music today. February 11th 2022 marked a whole decade without Whitney Houston. She was also known by her nicknames, the Voice and Prom Queen of the Soul and went by Nippy to her close friends. She was the owner of more consecutive number ones in the United States charts than the Beatles and the singer of the best-selling single ever released by a female artist with sales of over 200 million worldwide.
Whitney Houston inherited talent from her blood relations and strengthened them during the church choir and high school. Her cousins were Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, and she was the daughter of the gospel singer Cissy Houston, who worked with icons such as Elvis Presley, Roy Hamilton, and Aretha Franklin, and was part of The Sweet Inspirations and the Drinkard Singers. Whitney was born in the early years of the tumultuous and revolutionary 1960s in the north-eastern state of New Jersey. Her birth came only four years before the 1967 Newark riots, which started when a black cab driver was beaten by two white police officers for a minor traffic offence. Five days of rioting and looting followed, resulting in 26 deaths, 700 injuries and more than 1,400 arrests. This chaos made the Houston family move to East Orange however, young Nippy never forgot where she came from.
On top of this already turbulent decade, Houston had a difficult childhood, which might reflect some events later in her life. She was bullied as a child for being light-skinned, she was sexually molested by her older cousin (Dee Dee Warwick), she experienced a difficult relationship with her mother and witnessed her parent’s divorce, as well as being introduced to illicit drugs at a young age. This combination resulted in an adult with issues with self-confidence, drug abuse, fame and sexuality.
In addition, Whitney was another female singer with issues in relationships involving her nuclear family, who were also her co-workers, even her ex-husband and daughter. Later, at the apex of her career, she sued her father. Before marriage, her love life was a recurring theme in interviews and headlines, with many rumours about her sexuality, due to her close friendship with Robyn Crawford, who was labelled in the papers as a lesbian because of the way she dressed. The union of these factors made her the star of the American tabloids, and her drug addiction was depicted in television parodies with a humorous tone.
Once Whitney Houston became famous, she was once again subject to bullying and racism despite the 1960s Civil Rights acts and black power movements. In the record label where she started her career, producers thought they were polishing a popstar which needed to be accepted by the masses, in this context, meaning white Americans, and therefore anything that sounded ‘too black’ was rejected. The Soul Train Awards honours the best African American culture and entertainment. In 1998, she was booed by the audience, as they believed her musical talents and successful images were “too white and pop”, therefore not aligned with the category of “black” music. These critiques tormented her soul throughout her career, haters were always complaining “Boycott Whitney Whitey Houston.”
On the other hand, Whitney left sparkles wherever she walked by. She was the first black woman on the cover of the teen magazine Seventeen. During the 1991 Super Bowl, she gave a performance that was important to the United States, as she gave a sense of pride to the country in the moment of the short but tragic Gulf War. Besides that, Whitney’s career expanded to the Hollywood cinematic industry. Her notable role was as Rachel Marron in The Bodyguard (Mick Jackson, 1992), which boosted her career worldwide. This pseudo biographical romance starring Houston and Kevin Costner was important when representing a biracial couple’s kiss. Moreover, this particular scene was applauded in South Africa after the decades of terrible apartheid. Two years after its release, Whitney became the first major artist to play in post-apartheid South Africa. What’s more, The Bodyguard became the best-selling soundtrack album of all time in the United States and crossed the borders when Saddam Hussein used an Arabic version of “I Will Always Love You” for his final election campaign.
Posthumously she is still a shining star, influencing a lot of reputed names in the music industry, such as Mariah Carey, Beyoncé and Jennifer Hudson. Her songs are frequently remixed by countless other artists and still are in a successful position worldwide, such as her cover of 1986 Steven Winwood’s “Higher Love” which was recently remixed by the DJ Kygo as well as the iconic Clean Bandit medley of her jam “How Will I Know.” Moreover, she is the protagonist of recent documentaries such as Whitney (Kevin MacDonald, 2018) and Whitney: Can I Be Me (Nick Broomfield & Ruth Dolezal, 2017). Each of them focuses on a different aspect of her life, the first works more as a compilation of intimate memories and homemade footage from her close ones, while the second one is more behind the scenes with archived footage, focusing on her career and struggles with addiction.
However, it is important to be aware of the manipulation when watching any documentary. The audience can easily fall into the trap of photographic ‘literalism’ and daily technological advancement allows hyperreality to occur. It is fundamental to highlight that the truth and reality are uncapturable, especially when the documentary’s central character is dead. Documentaries can be manipulated by their filmmakers by creating a convincing narrative when they unify reports from interviewees and meticulously choose certain footage which suits their desired narrative. It is also noteworthy that part of the editing process is to use particular techniques to cause certain effects on the audience, to make them feel a certain way. Furthermore, it can be tricky to confirm a documentary’s accuracy, especially if it involves other people relying on memory to recount historic anecdotes.
Late 2022, specifically on December 21, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody was released and is now available on Prime Video in the United Kingdom. The trailer suggests another biopic about a famous artist who deals with relevant issues to the modern audience and were a part of her life. Such as her bisexuality, poor mental health, drug addiction, and racism. It is important to highlight that the film was written by Anthony McCarten, the same writer from Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer, 2018) and The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014), which were heavily criticised for the lack of accuracy of the events portrayed and the exaggerated and vague representations of the famous names involved.
Where to watch these mentioned documentaries:
Whitney (Kevin MacDonald, 2018) on All 4
Whitney: Can I Be Me (Nick Broomfield & Ruth Dolezal, 2017) on BBC iPlayer
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