What the Film 'Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody' Reveals
(CNN) -- "My whole life: 'She ain't Black enough. She ain't White enough.' Well, how about she's not obedient enough? How 'bout she ain't fearful enough?"That's Whitney Houston, played by Naomi Ackie, in Kasi Lemmons' moving and elegant new biopic, "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody." She's responding to criticisms that she's out of touch with Black audiences -- that she's merely an ingénue whose image and sound have been carefully constructed by White music executives to do just one thing: people-please.The scene is one of many in the movie neatly capturing the pressures the real-life Houston navigated as she walked a professional tightrope, trying to maintain her identity and integrity while meeting the demands of the record moguls who wanted her to tamp down her Blackness, behave "respectably" and quash even suggestions of queerness.
