The latest Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, is the fifth to have been released in the ten years since her passing. Usually, adaptations of her life show an artist out of her depth, a wife overwhelmed by her tumultuous marriage, and a devoted – but struggling – mother.
These depictions fail to portray Whitney in her entirety. By focusing so heavily on her struggles and perceived shortcomings, they overlook her success, iron-clad work ethic, and, yes, her sexuality.
Naturally, my initial reaction to yet another Whitney Houston was one of disappointment; how much posthumous humiliation must she endure before we can all move on? However, the second I heard the film’s opening lines, “I’m gonna do a medley for y’all. It’s about love, the things we do to get it and the things we do to keep it,” my preconceptions melted away. Those words were spoken by Whitney on stage at the 1994 American Music Awards, about to embark on her most ambitious performance ever.
The film then cuts to a younger iteration of Whitney singing gospel at her church’s pulpit; the contrast between these two scenes perfectly sets the tone for what’s to come, an earnestly-told story about a complex, compassionate, God-fearing woman with many competing identities.
The film, released in UK cinemas on Boxing Day, has received much praise. And much of it for the brilliant casting. Naomi Ackie captures Whitney’s essence perfectly; the smile that takes up half her face, at once coy and deadly sincere, is uncanny, as is the imitation of Whitney’s tone, rising and falling in a flawless instant.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody is the first time I've watched Whitney’s life through a lens of triumph rather than tragedy as well as the first time I've seen equal weighting given to all the loves of her life – even the one she went to great lengths to hide.
Whitney Houston met Robyn Crawford in her late teens outside a community centre near her hometown of Newark, New Jersey. In her tell-all memoir, A Song For You, Crawford says the two shared “an instant connection.” They eventually became secret lovers, then flatmates, then (as Whitney’s star was rising) business partners but first and foremost, throughout the two decades before their estrangement, they remained best friends always.
It was hard to watch Whitney be sexualised before she’d even come to terms with her own sexuality. Still, it was a necessity to include it in the film since it rings true for most black women living in Western worlds, where our bodies are commodified and fetishised sometimes as early as infancy.
We see Whitney’s parents, especially her father, begin to take particular interest in her appearance after she signs her first record deal, urging her to wear her hair longer, and choose dresses over jeans, all the while insisting that she’s his princess. This pet name seems to make Whitney uncomfortable. Even more disappointing is her parents’ open disapproval of Robyn, who waits patiently in the wings, supporting Whitney all throughout her come up. At a pivotal point in the film, Whitney invites Robyn on tour with her as her creative assistant, and Robyn says hesitantly, “Your mom won’t be happy; she hates me.”
Instead, they seek permission from Whitney’s father, who isn’t best pleased about it either. After picking Robyn apart, showing his open disdain for her tomboy dress sense and asking, “Do you always wear your hair that short?” He tells them both that it can only work if they go out and find boyfriends.
“You need to be seen with your men,” he says, much to Robyn’s disgust. Ever the daddy’s girl, Whitney obliges and starts sleeping with Jermaine Jackson shortly after. It’s then that her bisexuality becomes clear. She’s still very much in love with Robyn, yet she isn’t faking her attraction to Jermaine either. When Robyn confronts her, wounded by the apparent betrayal, Whitney begins to quote the bible, showing how staunch religious upbringings often lead to traumatic internalised homophobia, especially in racialized people.
Having been raised in a dual-faith household, I know this dichotomy all too well – from the perspectives of both Islam and Christianity. I’m yet to ‘come out’ to my parents, partly because I think it’s an unnecessary obligation and partly because I fear their reaction and potential rejection of who I am.
Seeing Whitney’s struggle made me feel grateful to have grown up in an age that afforded me the resources and community to reconcile the parallel realities of my faith and sexuality. Whitney had to keep up a facade not just with her parents but with the whole world. She launched her career pining after fictional men in her music and movies like The Bodyguard, all while trying desperately to conceal that she was in love with a woman, having to deny her affection for Robyn every time there was speculation in the tabloids.
Though we don’t see her death in the film (thankfully!), I think that inauthenticity and insecurity slowly chipped away at her spirit. It drove her into the chaotic arms of Bobby Brown and a drug-fuelled lifestyle she couldn’t sustain. I wonder if we’d still have one of the greatest musical icons to have ever lived if she’d just been allowed to embrace all of who she was. I wonder how many more women like Whitney are out there, dying through denying their truths.
