Historiographers distinguish between annals, chronicles, and histories. Annals simply list events according to date and chronicles situate them sequentially in prose, whereas a history arranges events around a perspective upon a meaningful beginning, middle, and end — in other words, a history organizes events into a story.
Respect could be accurately subtitled “a chronicle of the life of Aretha Franklin.” It gives us lots of events from the singer’s life, but does not, in my view, amount to much of a story.
Part of the reason, I suspect, is it never becomes entirely clear what Ms. Franklin’s life is supposed to be about. She wants to sing, she wants love, she wants some independence, she wants to make some impact in the civil rights movement — we watch her enact all of these intentions, however none of these amount to a kind of defining desire she manages to get or fail to get, for better or for worse.
The closest we come to learning what motivates the protagonist in this feature is her repeated express interest “to make hits.” Her most noble ambition, that is, is to make a bunch of money and/or become famous — totally an option when it comes to attempting to organize a life and, by implication, a compelling story.
From a Christian perspective, the best tragic version of this story would have the pop singer realize her goal, only to find it did not truly satisfy. A tragicomic version might add an extra act where she finds happiness some other way.
Respect, though, does not follow either course. Rather, after some ups and downs, it cuts away to real world footage of its heroine performing in front of the Obamas, and seems to suggest that the still performing septuagenarian has accomplished thereby the height of human happiness.
It’s as if the film says, look, despite all her childhood drama and adulthood drama, Aretha Franklin still managed to get this famous … isn’t that just great?
Well, isn’t it?
Walking away from the film, it is this followup question that lingers most prominently in my mind. Honestly, if this is truly the best life on this earth can amount to, golly that’s sad.
Some viewers might judge this an uncharitable interpretation of the film. After all, they might point out, is it not a story of redemption that begins with the child Aretha singing in her Baptist preacher father’s church and then coming back around to these roots at the end with the production of her best selling gospel album?
My main objection to this line of reasoning would be the use of the word story. A better description, I think, would be that the movie chronicles these events — it shows us things that happened, but does not invite us into an appreciation of what it all means.
I might summarize my dissatisfaction with Respect like this — and I assume I will step on a few toes with this one — but what do you think? Does it still sound like the national anthem to you when a singer seizes it and embellishes it almost beyond recognition as an opportunity to showcase his talent?
Or more to the purpose, does it still sound like praise when an artist does the same with “Amazing Grace”? My inclination is to say that it isn’t — or rather, it is, only the focus of praise has shifted from God to some extraordinarily talented woman or man.
(I trip up in the same way, incidentally, over many Christmas carols sung by the likes of the Backstreet Boys.)
This is not the space to open up an exhaustive analysis of the relationship between sincere piety and edifying Christian art, and I will admit that the film does take pains to emphasize some sort of reversion on the part of Ms. Franklin to the Christian practices of her youth.
At the same time, for me at least, it all rings a little like Blue Oyster Cult playing cowbell over “Silent Night.”