Published by December 8th, 2006 in , , , , , . I didn t expect to be writing about again so soon after my earlier post, despite the fact that I went out and got the of the soundtrack. And while the soundtrack is quite good (this isn t a review, but I may write one later) it brought to mind something I surprised I didn t think of when I posted earlier.
Again, clearly the producers of this movie know they have at least one audience they can count onto see it even if no one else does: Gays. After all, it s got Broadway cred, fabulous costumes, a flotilla of divas, a basis in the life story of a , and a show-stopping anthem that has kept drag queens in business for a quarter century. I mean, the deluxe soundtrack includes a dance mix of Jennifer Hudson s And I Am Telling You I m Not Going.
Okay? But as Keith points out, Dreamgirls isn t only the biggest gay film event since Evita. It s also an important black film event, perhaps the most important since The Color Purple.
(When was the last time you saw so many black actors in a movie this big? And a dramatic film?) And listening to the soundtrack (as I have, at least half a dozen times since yesterday), particularly to Hudson s and Knowles gospel-influenced vocals as well as the employed in so many of the other songs, as it was in the Motown music on which the show and movie are based, makes it tricky to promote a movie like Dreamgirls.
Not just because it has two different, though overlapping audiences, but because there s some members of one audience are likely to bear some antipathy towards members of the other audience. And in the course of promoting the movie to those audiences, some young singer/actresses who honed their vocal chops in black churches will find themselves walking a fine line and sometimes stumbling over it. Case in point, two different interviews given by two of the principal actresses in the film; Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce Knowles.
Let s start with Knowles, who in a move predicted to shock her more conservative fans gave an interview to the gay magazine Instinct, in which she talked about . In the article, she reveals a gay uncle made her turn her back on stereotypes and embrace homosexuals.
Knowles also makes it clear that her strict religious upbringing never made her turn against gay men and women, despite the church s opinion that homosexuals are abhorrent to God.
She explains: I was raised by my uncle who passed away with Aids a couple of years ago. He was my mother s best friend.
He brought me to school every day.
He helped me buy my prom dress. He made my clothes with my mother. He was like my nanny.
He was my favourite person in the whole world.
I never mixed Christianity with how I felt (about him). I am about faith and spirituality more so than religion, doing right by others and not judging.
The singer insists she d have no problems if a son of hers was to come to her with a gay confession: (I d say) I love him for the person he is with no expectations back. Then there s Jennifer Hudson, newer to the business and not quite as experienced with interviews, who had this to say to the .
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