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The first thirteen months of yielded two radical and diametrically opposed interpretations of "The Star-Spangled Banner". The first came on July 25, 1990, when Roseanne Barr sang (to use a generous verb) the anthem before a San Diego Padres match. In a white and sharp shirt, Barr was happily offside, squealing notes that she could not touch, which were most of them, while spitting and grabbing her crotch. The crowd booed him. President George HW Bush, a week after the start of the Gulf War, took the time on Air Force One to call the interpretation of Barr "shameful". She apologized, but later recalled that she was inundated with death threats. -Semitic, and suggested that the incident hastened the cancellation of his Saturday morning cartoon, "Little Rosey."
Then, on January 27, 1991, at the Super Bowl XXV in Tampa, Whitney Houston did the opposite: she sang the national anthem perhaps better than it had ever been sung. The Desert Storm operation was taking place now, creating a patriotic mood. Houston, in a white headband and tracksuit, opened his mouth wide, and out of the speakers came fire fire sound. (Houston was synchronous on a pre-recorded track, which became a hit and was reissued after Sept. 11.) Television cameras greeted black-and-white soldiers, wide-eyed spectators, and waved flags. As explained by Rickey Minor, Houston's longtime arranger and conductor, Houston was inspired by the interpretation of Marvin Gaye's 1983 song to NB. All-Star game. For the Houston version, Minor changed the signature from 3/4 to 4/4, to give him more time to linger over the notes.
Playwright Tony Kushner was, at the time, working on "Angels in America," which would include this line for the gay black Belize character: "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing He put the word "free" to a note so high that no one can reach it. "Barr had screamed the note as if a pig was being slaughtered; flat like the world's clearest bell, then added some notes that were even higher, for good measure.As Cinque Henderson wrote in his deconstruction of the Houston version, "the machinery of violence The state has too often been used against blacks for a song about bombs and rockets to attract a lot of people, but Houston has ushered in a change. "She had redone the hymn to her image, full of the brilliance of the gospel with which she had grown up. (Her mother was the gospel singer Cissy Houston, and Dionne Warwick was a cousin.) The embellishment of "free" -take that, white cracker! -resonated with Black America, but, as with all things Whitney, his "Star-Spangled" Banner "has been a crossover success, designed to please everyone.From the distance of a quarter of century, what the two anthems represent – the black excellence, the white vulgarity – have an unfortunate resonance, not only because of the last two Presidents but because of the confusing ways of Barr and Houston – and the 39; national anthem itself … After all, a black singer could never get away with Barr's irreverence, any more than black athletes can take the knee without triggering hysteria
The Houston Super Bowl arrives half way to Kevin Macdonald's captivating documentary, Whitney, at the end of the week, after the release of his first three albums for Arista Records, under the auspices of Clive Davis. was in the middle of Houston's career a year before his conquering cover from the world of "I'll always love" Dolly Parton's "The Bodyguard"; and before the long, scary, drug-fueled run that ended with his death, in 2012, in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton. The film, which debuted at Cannes, is inevitably shaped like Everest, with an epic rise followed by an equally epic descent. This is not the first posthumous documentary about Houston, but it is surprisingly profound, both in the damage that it undergoes and in the context that it gives to Houston's successes
. Houston had a picture of a good girl, princess who made her infinitely acceptable to conventional pop but obscured, or perhaps exacerbated, her demons. The songs that made her famous – "The greatest love of all", "I want to dance with someone (who loves me)", "A moment in time" – are danceable humble and often saccharine; they tell you almost nothing about Houston, which, as the documentary catalogs sharply, had more than its share of secrets. His relationship with Robyn Crawford, his best friend and assistant, appears to have been not only sexual but central, making Houston the focus of a territorial war between Crawford and Bobby Brown, Houston's husband for fifteen years . Through informed interviews, Macdonald (the director of "Marley" and "The Last King of Scotland") evokes salacious but persuasive assertions about Houston's alleged aggression while a child was reportedly molested when he was a child. And then, of course, there was addiction, which brought Houston tabloid infamy and much worse. As told a confidante, Houston said she was taking drugs because she loved them, but Macdonald explains how addiction may have stemmed from even deeper problems, that 's not a problem. it is sexual repression, trauma, cost of celebrity or loneliness.
Houston was not one of his contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Madonna, or like his heiress Beyoncé – to bring his pain into his music or to push the boundaries. His contradictions remained on stage, until they could not be contained there. What she had was a one-in-a-billion voice, with not only superhuman bearing but a shimmering tone. She just had the best silk in the bazaar, and she knew how to use it. Macdonald gives us generous portions of her first television appearance, singing "Home" (from the musical "The Wiz") on "The Merv Griffin Show" in 1983, when she was nineteen. His musicality is unassailable, which makes things even more sad and infuriating when all that falls in the water. Macdonald's film made comparisons with "Amy," Oscar-nominated Asif Kapadia's column for the rise and fall of Amy Winehouse. But, while Kapadia avoids talking heads, Macdonald fills the screen with emotional and emotional faces: brothers and sisters, friends, passing acquaintances, Bobby Brown. They come in turn to look like a Greek choir, facilitators and passers-by on a crime scene. Unlike another recent documentary, "Whitney: Can I Be Me," the Macdonald movie was made with the participation of the Houston family, but it does not follow a party line; it seeks enough to release conflictual perspectives and buried truths.
Macdonald also cleverly uses subversive cuts to highlight the contradictions in Houston's career. The national anthem sequence slips between Houston's dazzling performance and images of civil unrest and police brutality. (This was, after all, less than two months before the Rodney King beat.) In a previous segment, Houston's pastoral video for "I Want to Dance with Someone" is interchanged with clips. Ronald Reagan, Coca ads and other sunny 80s totem totems in America – until images veered to the riots of the 1967 Newark race that obscured Houston's childhood . The subtext is that Houston's Prom Queen's cross-picture was a cover for more than his personal demons – it was a fantasy of post-racial reliability. Sometimes she failed: at the 1989 Soul Train, her name was booed, and her mother heard spectators chanting "White-y!" Arsenio Hall, questioning her about her game, said, "You can" Roseanne Barr replied, "I mean that, and other things, but …" It's tempting and tragic to think to everybody. things that Houston meant, during his revolutionary career, and did not. We will have to settle for the track of clues that she left us, on stage and off.
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