Whitney, the new documentary on the belting supernova, ends with an epigraph explaining that Whitney Houston, whose life we just spent two hours parsing every sordid detail of, had the most consecutive No. 1 hits in the 1980s and that “I Will Always Love You” is the best-selling song by a female artist of all time.
In Kevin MacDonald’s shamelessly dirt-digging documentary, Houston’s career and success is literally reduced to a footnote.
Perhaps our exasperation and disgust isn’t entirely MacDonald’s fault. His film comes after an endless parade—funeral march, really—of projects spelunking for the deepest secrets and darkest demons in Houston’s life.
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Whitney is executive produced by Pat Houston, Houston’s sister-in-law, and it’s the first project to feature cooperation and interviews with the more press-shy members of the singer’s family, including her mother, Cissy Houston. Perhaps this is how MacDonald surfaces his big pay dirt and, after so many similar endeavors, the only true new revelation: Houston was allegedly molested as a little girl by her cousin, singer Dee Dee Warwick.
(Warwick is no longer alive to defend herself, and Houston never publicly alleged any sort of incident during her own life. The accusation comes from her half-brother, Gary Garland-Houston, who says Warwick also molested him, and Houston’s longtime assistant, Mary Jones, who says that her boss and friend once confided in her.)
Aside from that, Whitney is familiar territory for anyone who saw the tawdry, controversial 2017 documentary Whitney: ‘Can I Be Me,’ Lifetime’s alternately bland and trashy biopic, or any of the seemingly infinite newsmagazine specials trading Houston’s foibles for ratings: her early exposure to and lifetime of addiction to drugs; the rumor-mongering over her sexuality and relationship with Robyn Crawford; her tumultuous relationship to Bobby Brown; her fraught experience mothering daughter Bobbi Kristina; and the crass speculation over whether her death was preventable and, more, who is to blame.
The vultures everywhere—TMZ and tabloids, film and TV projects, the gale-force-spinning gossip windmills—have picked apart each and every detail of Houston’s life, scavenging for any morsel hinting at her inner darkness or traumatic past. It’s left the career of the greatest singer of all time a ravaged carcass, to be gawked at and pitied. And that is a shame.
It is obvious that there is interest, and even value, in redirecting the spotlight on the tragic elements of a celebrity’s life, particularly when their death is so untimely and occurs under such horrific circumstances. Beyond chasing clichés of a troubled life behind the glamour of fame and talent, a fully realized portrait of a person shouldn’t paint over their shadows.
But our posthumous examination of Houston’s life has, in a way, done the reverse. There’s been such interest in shining a spotlight on those shadowy areas, that the light—the voice, the unrivaled success, and what made a star burn that bright—has been ignored entirely.
Haven’t we had enough?
Whitney, as early reviews reflect, is a well-made documentary, no surprise given MacDonald’s Oscar- and BAFTA-winning pedigree. (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland, Marley, and documentary features.)
But it’s also one with an almost blatant agenda.
MacDonald opens the film with Houston’s voice, telling a story about how when she was young she had nightmares that a giant was chasing her which her mother, Cissy, would tell her was the devil trying to catch her. Houston says that she would be exhausted from running, but wasn’t ever going to let the devil catch up. The metaphor needs no further explaining.
Early in the documentary, MacDonald inserts his own voice, an unusual choice in a film like this. He is interviewing a close family friend who goes by the name “Aunt Bae,” and you hear him ask her if there was anything untoward or traumatic that happened during Houston’s childhood that could explain her destructive descent into drug use later in life.
Aunt Bae, who isn’t shy about revealing other shocking details, like the fact that Houston dropped an infant Bobbi Kristina on her doorstep and left her in her care for years, is indignant, flatly denying anything but an idyllic upbringing. It’s later in the film, of course, that the allegations of child sexual abuse are made.
This happens again when MacDonald interrogates Bobby Brown about Houston’s drug use, which Brown makes clear he has no interest in discussing, going so far as to call the topic irrelevant when considering his late ex-wife’s legacy. But we hear MacDonald challenging Brown on that, as the R&B singer gets increasingly agitated.
It would certainly seem that MacDonald is on a fishing expedition. Those closest to Houston who don’t seem to take the bait, including Brown, Aunt Bae, and Cissy Houston, cede screen time to the siblings and half-siblings, hairdressers, and family friends who have no qualms speaking freely about Houston’s rumored troubles.
When the film jumps from Houston’s upbringing in Newark to the effects her drug use had on her voice and her health, it fast-forwards through her rise as a pop and R&B superstar. Literally fast-forwards. We see footage of her very first television appearance, singing “Home” from The Wiz on a late-night show as a just-signed singer, and then plays her prodigious catalog of hits, awards, records, and cultural milestones as a light-speed montage.
Not only is this irritating because it is vaguely disrespectful—sorry, Whitney, no time for the hits when we gotta get to the turmoil and despair!—but because when the documentary does pause to examine her career, it is fascinating. Of course it is! Someone that talented, that successful, that once-in-a-lifetime: The stories behind the music are as captivating as the stories behind the musician. For some reason, with Whitney Houston, we tend to ignore that.
There are anecdotes about the ways in which Cissy and her husband John groomed Houston to be a singer as a teenager, biding their time until she was ready for the spotlight, going so far as to trick Houston into her first solo concert performance as a test to see how she’d handle presiding over the crowd.
There is a fleeting reference to the unlikely record label bidding war to sign her, so soon after A&R execs rebuffed the idea of a performer who could only sing, in an age that birthed the careers of Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul. (Someone should keep those poor women away from this documentary at all costs. The shade thrown their way…)
A brief story behind the nonchalant recording of Houston’s iconic national anthem is fascinating. Who wouldn’t want to hear more of that? More of what went into crafting her biggest hits. What goes into marketing a superstar. How Houston dealt with and transcended race—her getting booed at the Soul Train Awards is only briefly explored—and a deeper dive into what it meant for her to be a blockbuster romantic lead in The Bodyguard when no other black woman ever had.
Yes, it’s titillating to hear the background drama. But these are stories about history, and a person whose music and career shaped history. Aren’t those worth telling, too?
There’s an obvious caveat here. Ignore Houston’s demons and you’re left looking through rose-colored glasses, ignoring the full spectrum of her humanity, and doing a disservice to fans who want to know what it was really like to live life as a woman that talented and that famous. But the documentary’s lack of effort toward bridging the gap between those extremes is baffling, especially this long after her death and after so many other projects centered on her life.
Because of the pedigree of this documentary and the scale on which it is being released and receiving publicity, it’s been compared to Asif Kapadia’s documentary on Amy Winehouse that won the Oscar in 2015 and was celebrated for the frankness and dignity with which it explored how Winehouse’s vices shaped both her career and her downfall. But Whitney fails to be so elegant.
Amy and Kapadia purport to give Winehouse her own voice, framing the narrative diary-style, with home footage largely shot by the fated singer herself serving as the documentary’s structure. The only voice Houston gets in this, and really ever gets in these projects, is that infamous Diane Sawyer “crack is whack” interview, a ridiculed soundbite from a troubled person, in turn gossiped about in countless documentaries by those who surrounded her.
If the goal of a film treatment like this is to gather a sense of the full, real subject, warts and all, then we’ve failed Houston greatly. Her life has been reduced to dark clichés, damaged Hollywood tropes, and tired sound bites. This is a woman whose voice existed in a range of five octaves. Clearly, she lived her life just as vastly. Yet we’re still, sadly, only being shown its lowest register. And when it comes to Whitney Houston, you want those high notes, too.
