Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Garrett, Daniel

Titel

Every Day is a New Day: Art, Biography, Criticism, and the Changing Fortunes of Diana Ross

Ist Teil von

• Offscreen, 2003-10, Vol.7 (10)

Ort / Verlag

Montreal: Donald Totaro

Erscheinungsjahr

2003

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• “In its effort to provide for all possible viewer positions—from the Silent Majority conservative of the early 1970s, to the African American proud of the real-life Holiday achievements, to the viewer primarily interested in Diana Ross’s career—Lady Sings the Blues negotiates racial, gender, generational, and political problems with complexity and subtlety. Because of the great disparity of viewer needs, the stresses placed on the narrative structure are enormous.” Tracy/Ross’s character’s older white woman boss rejects Tracy/Ross’s ambitions and ideas—her potential value—and we watch here two things, an African-American in an uninteresting subordinate role and how much she wants more (in life, most people would see the role, not the desire for more); Tracy/Ross observes black youth and that inspires a colorful design for a dress (this is how the mundane, some aspect of the community—through genuine appreciation—enters art, an inspiration known to the artist, but usually not known to the community or general public); the photographing of a fashion advertisement in a downtrodden ghetto area, the ghetto made fabulous, with contradictions of fact, taste, and utility; Brian/Williams’ character’s discomfort with the fashion world and the styles and freedoms it makes possible, discomfort with, for instance, Sean/Perkins’ character’s ambiguous gender/sexual identity; Tracy/Ross’s trying to ask questions of a black man on a street in Italy, but he either doesn’t speak English or feels no obligation to talk to her (“You ain’t a brother,” she mutters—recognition of difference within “blackness”); and slim Tracy’s being attractive to people despite not fitting a voluptuous mold. (Jane Gaines, “White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory,” Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism, edited by Diane Carson, Linda Dittmar, and Janice R. Welsch, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1994, p. 181) Diana Ross, photographed for the fashion bible Vogue more than once —and a style favorite of Vogue editor and Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute head Diana Vreeland, as fashion journalist Andre Leon Talley reminds readers in his memoir A.L.T.— did more than play a designer in Mahogany; she was the designer of the film’s wardrobe, from the slinky dresses she wore that brought to mind Bill Blass and Oleg Cassini, to the unusual Asian-inspired costumes that were reminiscent of the very popular early 1970s work of Kansai Yamamoto and Issey Miyake (Yamamota attracted thousands to his shows; and later Miyake would design an outfit for Ross’s 1983 Central Park concert). Some of Ross’s notable RCA 1980s work included the sultry “Sweet Surrender” and the comically sexy “Sweet Nothings” from Why Do Fools Fall In Love, and her channeling in “Muscles” of both Michael Jackson and the female lust that had been released by the new emphasis on the male torso in 1980s America, an emphasis that was not unlike the aesthetics of the ancient Greeks (who made an allowance for homosexuality analogous to the broadening liberalism of American society), and “Who,” and the irresistibly weepy “Love Lies,” and “Love Will Make It Right,” with its almost angular line readings (somewhat long, somewhat formal, with a kind of analytical attitude, over a jazzy rhythm), the insinuating and erotically grateful “You Do It,” the experimental (Felliniesque?) “Pieces of Ice,” and from Swept Away the superbly eloquent and impassioned tribute to Marvin Gaye, “Missing You,” “Nobody Makes Me Crazy Like You Do,” which Ross once called a “sleeper,” a song that slowly charms, and “Forever Young,” and then from Eaten Alive the Supremes-like “Chain Reaction,” and “Oh Teacher,” “Experience,” “Love on the Line,” and “Crime of Passion,” among the songs produced by the Brothers Gibb, and Mick Hucknall’s “Shine” and “There Goes My Baby” from Red Hot Rhythm and Blues.