“Whitney Houston died of a broken heart.” So goes the introduction to the documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me?, the one that viewers ought to watch before comparing and contrasting details to the forthcoming and possibly more controversial Whitney (screened at Cannes and for some reason directed by Scotsman Kevin Macdonald–was it because Whitney’s best bodyguard was Scottish?). In the latter, the trailers and spoilers have already revealed Houston’s feelings about Paula Abdul’s singing, as well as the revelation of her being sexually abused by a family member as a child, but what it doesn’t seem to show is the same direction in narrative as Whitney: Can I Be Me?, which focuses more ostensibly on the same approach that another documentary about a fallen star, Amy, took. That is to say, Can I Be Me? accuses every single person in Whitney’s life of being responsible for her inevitable demise–whether it was those who worked on her tours and wanted to keep seeing a paycheck coming in, her own family members–most of whom were on her payroll–or her most fatal drug of all, Bobby Brown himself.
With the documentary named as such because Whitney used to ask this question constantly, perhaps the first time she truly realized she was not necessarily “allowed” to be herself was at the 1989 Soul Train Awards, when she was booed by the audience upon the announcement of her name as part of the nominees. Believed to be too white-sounding to the black community, as was the by-design making of Clive Davis, who had always wanted to mold a black woman into his ideal pop star, Whitney was seen as a product of a literally whitewashed version of black music. He could never manage to do this with Aretha Franklin or Dionne Warwick (always touted as Whitney’s cousin at the outset of her career) as they weren’t as “moldable” as Whitney, just nineteen when she made her first TV appearance in 1983, allowing Davis to achieve his musical dreams with her. So, too, did her mother, Cissy Houston, the gospel singer that wanted to live vicariously through her daughter’s more mainstream and successful career.
That she was a girl from the New Jersey hood was not exactly a fact about Whitney that Davis wanted to be noticed or remarked upon, another reason many of her potential black fans found her to be a sellout, most especially after her second album, Whitney, featuring the pop-centric (read: too white) single “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).” The person that would turn out to be was, unfortunately, New Edition’s Brown, who she met the very night she was booed at Soul Train.
It was no coincidence, in fact, that Whitney’s music started getting much more R&B-influenced after spending enough time with Brown, who was suddenly vying for Whitney’s affection with her longtime best friend, Robyn Crawford, a sort of Ingrid Casares to Whitney’s Madonna that had everyone speculating as to the true nature of their relationship, with it at one point stated that Whitney probably had the predilection to be bisexual because of her ability to fall for a person’s mind rather than just their body.
The fights that would escalate between Robyn and Bobby as the years went on grew to a breaking point on her last international tour in 1999, as detailed by Whitney’s bodyguard, David Roberts (the aforementioned Scotsman), who warned severely in a now infamous letter of Whitney’s dangerous addiction and behavior not just on tour but in general. Even with her only child, Bobbi Kristina, around to serve as potential motivation for staying sober, Whitney and Bobby fed off one of another in their addictions, he originally just with alcohol and she with drugs. When their respective “passions” combined, the result was calamitous. Save for Bobby, who will apparently continue to remain unscathed by the death of both his wife and daughter, insisting that Houston did not die of an overdose and hypocritically promoting a haven for abused women in honor of his daughter called Serenity House.
Directed by Nick Broomfield, known for his documentaries about famous and complicated subjects (including Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, Kurt & Courtney and Biggie & Tupac), the brutality of watching Whitney’s success and the gift she always insisted she received from God deteriorate is compounded by seeing how much those closest to her treated her as someone to commodify and nitpick at rather than simply to love–again harkening back to the honest question: can I be me? The widely known photo of Whitney’s bathroom–drenched in beer cans and crack paraphernalia–now causing controversy for being purchased as an album cover for Pusha T by Kanye West is also featured in the movie as an indication of just how dire the situation that was Whitney’s life had become. Yet still, even when she was clearly emaciated and singing poorly in the 00s, everyone looked the other way, instead complimenting her body and choosing to gloss over any missed notes caused by drug-decimated vocal chords riddled with nodules. No one wanted to see her as she was, least of all at her lowest moments, broadcast for all the world to see in interviews with Diane Sawyer (the much parodied “Crack is whack” line being the takeaway) and her reality show stint on Being Bobby Brown. And, finally, even singing was not enough of a source of escape or a means of coping through the pain anymore. To boot, there was her own father’s lawsuit against her over, of all things, hundreds of millions of dollars he claimed he was owed for working for her. Just another person–even her own flesh and blood–that cared not about her as a human being (who had lost all sense of self), but as an industry to be profited from. That she had to let go of the love of her life–shithead though he was–in 2007 (when they finally divorced) only added to Houston’s broken heart. Ultimately, Brown’s ability to move onto a new woman and have another family was likely what helped to spur the return to drug use, her old friend cocaine found in her system when she was discovered face down in a bathtub on February 11, 2012.
Asked at the end of the film by an interviewer how she wants to be remembered, she laughs at first, saying that people will write or say whatever they want about her anyway, but then finally settles on the following simple request: “I want people to remember me as just being a real nice person.” That’s, hopefully, who she can be at present. Who everyone in her life can at last “let” her be now that she’s gone.
