00:02:23.540An Evening with Whitney, the Whitney Houston Hologram Tour, first debuted in Europe in 2020 and is currently doing a residency in Las Vegas, leading up to a possible United States tour next year.
00:02:35.140Whitney's family and estate are involved with the show's production.
00:02:38.980Pat Houston, Whitney's sister and the manager of her estate, raved about the hologram show, saying,
00:02:43.860We're excited to bring this cutting-edge musical experience to the fans who have supported the pop culture phenomenon that was Whitney Houston because they deserve nothing less.
00:02:52.260And while that may be true, the increasing use of holograms to recreate people who are no longer living
00:02:57.260is something that we should at least be asking questions about,
00:03:00.780rather than just accept as another new normal of our increasingly tech-enabled world.
00:03:06.040In a piece called The Zombification of Whitney Houston, spirituality writer Brooke Obie asks,
00:03:10.640what right do any of us have to demand that our deceased heroes, loved ones, or anyone else act as a zombie for our entertainment?
00:03:17.400at. I had heard about this hologram tour that Whitney Houston's estate were putting on in Europe
00:03:27.420and it was finally coming to the United States. I've been thinking about this for a really long
00:03:32.140time and really haunted by this for a really long time, but it was kind of out of sight,
00:03:36.200out of mind. But now it is happening. There's a residency for six months in Vegas of this
00:03:44.680Whitney Houston hologram. And it was so disturbing to me. And it was also happening at the same time
00:03:50.440as Halloween, like they released or they premiered this hologram residency in Las Vegas the week of
00:03:58.160Halloween. And I was like, wow, yep, that is perfect. You know, if you want to exhume some
00:04:04.280ghosts, if you want to zombify an icon, why not start the week of Halloween? So yeah, so that was
00:04:12.380really what triggered me finally sitting down and getting all of my thoughts out of my head and
00:04:17.040onto the page. Well, I mean, the Halloween date I think is so kind of perfect because it is a really
00:04:24.200spooky, haunting kind of thing, especially given that, you know, I feel like for so many of us
00:04:30.560Black women, we have this special connection to Whitney Houston. I know that she occupies a very
00:04:35.440special place in my heart. Do you feel the same way? Absolutely. I mean, she is everything. She's
00:04:40.700the voice, you know, and her life was so beautiful and so tragic and so unnecessarily ended. And so
00:04:50.460it was one of the most devastating celebrity losses that I've experienced in my life. And,
00:04:59.000you know, I was just so sad to see the people that were around her and the lack of care and
00:05:07.720the lack of regard for someone who needed help and assistance and wasn't able to get it and
00:05:13.880wasn't able to live authentically as herself either and still have the career that she wanted
00:05:20.400to have. And so to see what's happening now, this is basically the same thing that's happening in
00:05:26.460her life is now happening in her death. Her image is being constructed for her, you know,
00:05:32.960without her consent, and she's being put to work. Today, the term zombies conjures up brains0.98
00:05:38.700craving blood vests like Dawn of the Dead. But those pop culture interpretations obscure the
00:05:44.120actual grim origins of zombies and their connection to slavery. I read this really
00:05:49.840amazing in-depth article in The Atlantic by Mike Birani, and it was about the tragic forgotten
00:05:58.220history of zombies. And so it's talking about the ways that Haitian enslaved people, their deepest
00:06:06.140fear was that, you know, if they died by suicide because the plantations were so brutal, the French
00:06:14.080were so brutal in their slavery of Haitians, that they would be trapped in their bodies and that
00:06:20.680they would be trapped on these plantations forever. And then once Haitian voodoo evolved, that0.90
00:06:26.620zombie mythology evolved as well. And basically, there was a sorcerer that would take these dead0.89
00:06:36.420bodies and resurrect them for evil purposes, you know, and use them for free labor. And that's
00:06:42.580what I saw. That's what I saw in my mind when I heard about this hologram and this idea of taking
00:06:51.500Whitney, who was not able to rest and not able to control her own image in her lifetime, now in
00:06:59.440death, being used for free labor once again and racking in money for the estate for the next six
00:07:09.080months in this hologram residency. The thing about this that strikes me as particularly sad is that
00:07:14.780I saw the ways that Whitney was stripped of her humanity and identity in life. Aspects of who
00:07:20.480Whitney was as a person were obscured to make her more marketable to mainstream white audiences.
00:07:25.900Music labels were segregated by race, and in the beginning, her sound was intentionally
00:07:30.640manufactured to have white crossover appeal. Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records,
00:07:36.060signed Whitney when she was just a teenager after an A&R rep saw her singing with her
00:07:40.400mother's nightclub act. Davis became a huge force in shaping Whitney's image and career.
00:07:45.740He vetoed her releasing anything too black-sounding for her first two albums.
00:07:50.480His choice came with a real cost for Whitney.
00:07:53.720At the height of her success in the 80s, Whitney was booed by Black audiences at the Soul Train Awards when the host introduced her as a nominee for Best R&B Artist.
00:08:03.540Reverend Al Sharpton even organized a boycott of her music, calling her Whitey Houston on flyers that you can check out in the link in our show description.
00:08:11.960Being stripped of this aspect of her identity was hard for Whitney.
00:08:15.220Sometimes it gets you down. You're not Black enough for them. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop.1.00
00:08:19.960The white audience has taken you away from them, she explained in an interview.
00:08:25.880Now, in the 80s, the music industry was deeply homophobic.
00:08:29.460And to find mainstream success, an artist would sometimes have to conceal parts of themselves.
00:08:34.080So it isn't surprising that Whitney herself did not talk openly about her sexuality,
00:08:38.420and we'll never get to hear about it in her own words.
00:08:40.680But her closest friend and confidant, Robin Crawford, an openly gay Black woman
00:08:45.460who would spend decades by Whitney's side as her assistant and creative director,
00:08:48.860opened up about her romantic relationship with Whitney.
00:08:52.260They met at summer camp as kids and quickly became inseparable.
00:08:55.680But soon after Whitney signed with Clive Davis at Arista,
00:08:58.800she ended their intimate relationship because, quote,
00:09:01.800it would make our journey even more difficult.
00:09:03.920Crawford remembers in her memoir, A Song for You, My Life with Whitney Houston.
00:09:08.220In the 2000s, the years leading up to her tragic death,
00:09:11.960Whitney dealt with addiction and family issues,
00:09:13.840like the 2003 arrest of her husband Bobby Brown for allegedly hitting her in the face.
00:09:18.560And the same media who'd once been happy to portray her as Black America's sweetheart
00:09:22.500gleefully made her the butt of jokes for failing to live up to the narrow role they'd written her into.
00:09:29.300Whitney wasn't really able to be her full self when she was alive.
00:09:32.300And now, as a hologram, rendered back to life without any of the baggage that comes with being a complex living person,
00:09:39.440Whitney is now an always-on, always-camera-ready version of herself who can perform on command and generate income for others forever.
00:09:47.000And in a way, the hologram suggests that that's what music executives really wanted from her all along.
00:09:52.620I was really struck by in your piece is sort of that element of, you know, these Haitian enslaved people, how they, that was like their deepest fear, you know, being exhumed, being reanimated and being trapped in this cycle of having to work to make money from their labor forever.
00:10:11.320and how deeply kind of sad that is not being able to rest
00:10:15.520given the kind of life that Whitney Houston did live.
00:10:18.140And I think there's something so incredibly sad
00:10:22.040but also relatable about the life that Whitney Houston lived.
00:10:24.900You know, in order for her to be sort of like marketable0.75
00:10:28.060as an artist, she was stripped from so much
00:10:34.700so much of like the things that made Whitney who she was.0.76
00:10:38.560And I feel that, you know, she played that game. And then when she stepped away to be a more authentic version of herself, how quickly America turned on her, how quickly America turned her into a joke.
00:10:51.840And so I do think there's some sort of cautionary tale about this tightrope that we all have to walk as black women. And that's why so many of us identify with her. But as this hologram, it's like in her death, they have been able to strip her from all of these things that make her her so that they have this marketable version that they can just make money off of.
00:11:12.660they don't have to include her blackness, her queerness, her addiction issues, her family
00:11:17.380issues. She can just be a hologram moneymaker for them in death forever. Right. And it's probably0.99
00:11:25.120a lot more profitable for them with her not being able to be alive and to have the issues that she0.63
00:11:33.400was dealing with. You don't have to worry about whether or not she's going to go out on stage
00:11:39.160because they can put her out whenever they want to.
00:11:42.240Like it's really, like I was saying in my piece,
00:11:45.280it's that the worst Black Mirror episode.
00:14:07.660Okay, so there's this great music journalist named Simon Reynolds who actually coined the term ghost slavery when talking about this topic.
00:14:16.060And that's, you know, what slavery is, right?
00:14:19.060It was created for, in America, it was created to enslave mostly African people, but also0.82
00:14:27.360indigenous people, you know, in order to work for free and to build their wealth.0.92
00:14:31.760And so absolutely, this is just another extension of that.
00:14:34.440You know, I do believe that, you know, Black musicians and entertainers have been the people
00:14:40.400who've been able to kind of break through a bit of these white supremacist layers that
00:14:46.300exist in this country that this country was founded on. But they only want you to be able
00:14:52.220to do that to a certain extent. And especially if you start to become political, or if you start to
00:14:59.140become a problem in any way that could jeopardize, for one, white supremacy, or, you know, any of0.82
00:15:06.040the structures that are in place, you get a little too mouthy, a little too uppity. As a Black person,0.97
00:15:12.560And of course, they want to put you back in their place.
00:15:14.680So I do feel like as long as the music is bringing profit, there won't be a problem.1.00
00:15:24.960But if there is a way to control Black artists as much as possible, that's what's going to happen.1.00
00:20:11.520To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want artistic control.
00:20:15.780So Prince absolutely did not want to be a hologram.
00:20:18.940And what's even worse is that Prince didn't even really seem to like Justin Timberlake.
00:20:23.160The two had a whole history of making shady digs at each other while Prince was still alive.
00:20:27.500So bringing Prince back as a hologram against his wishes to jam with a musician he didn't even really like
00:20:32.640just seemed like adding insult to injury.
00:20:35.660Now in the end, the Super Bowl halftime show didn't technically use a hologram.
00:20:39.240It was more of a projection of Prince performing on a screen paired up alongside Justin's performance.
00:20:45.600I think that was the problem with Prince.
00:20:47.820Prince also spoke out quite a bit about, you know, how he thought holograms were demonic, that he would never want that for his life and said that this is never going to happen to me.
00:21:00.720But, you know, we did see that performance with Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl, what is supposed to be a tribute.
00:21:06.520And I think it really was supposed to be a hologram. And I think if not for the outcry of the public, because the public did know that Prince didn't want that, that they kind of maybe changed it to something else.
00:21:20.120You know, we still saw a projection of Prince, but it wasn't quite a hologram. But, you know, when the estate has control over your likeness, they can do whatever they want, you know, unless you're explicitly in your will saying this isn't what you want.
00:21:37.340and Prince died intestate. So they have complete control, his estate, to do whatever they want to
00:21:44.300do with his image. And so that's why you see these commercials with his music in that you never saw
00:21:49.360before. You see people being able to go to Paisley Park, which he would never want. So
00:21:54.860there's just so many things that can happen to you once you're dead. And we've been looking at
00:22:00.960it from the perspective of celebrities, but I think this is definitely something that's going
00:22:06.480to start impacting our regular day-to-day lives uh in the near future as well yeah let's talk about
00:22:14.140that so in your piece you bring up you argue that the announcement that uh facebook slash meta if
00:22:21.520you want to say that like their whole argument or their whole announcement about the metaverse
00:22:25.880do you think that the vibe is that they want that our sort of tech overlords want to be able to
00:22:32.620reproduce and reanimate anyone, famous or non-famous, anyone, anywhere, and that that will
00:22:37.520be a common technological advancement available to everybody in our tech future. Do you think
00:22:44.620that that's what they're after? I mean, I think that is just a thing that happens when the
00:22:52.620technology is available. So, you know, especially when people like Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of
00:22:59.360our tech overlords are concerned about profit, or like we've seen, you know, several former
00:23:05.380Facebook employees coming forward and sharing damning information, showing that Facebook is
00:23:13.220a company, slash meta, is a company that is for profits over people every single time.
00:23:20.880This is just something that could happen as a result of that. You know, you provide the
00:23:25.600technology, it's going to happen. It's just like you create a platform where people can express
00:23:30.460their opinions. There's going to be harassment. There's going to be racism. There's going to be
00:23:34.980terrorism. There's going to be all these other things. And so if you're not actively preventing
00:23:40.400that from happening, then of course it's going to happen. You're giving people the space to do
00:23:45.060what people do. In the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests all around the globe after the
00:23:50.620murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by police, Change.org and the George Floyd
00:23:55.480Foundation created a 3D hologram of the late George Floyd to be projected onto Confederate
00:24:00.440monuments in the South. George Floyd's brother Rodney Floyd said, since the death of my brother
00:24:05.780George, his face has been seen all over the world. The hologram will allow my brother's face to be
00:24:10.840seen as a symbol for change in places where change is needed the most. I had the chance to see the
00:24:15.460projection in Richmond, and it really was powerful. So holograms can be a way for a family to heal and
00:24:20.740grieve and turn their loss into something larger. But when someone's likeness becomes a symbol in
00:24:25.620this way, it's not always empowering and respectful. It also opens up the possibility
00:24:30.400that their likeness could be used in offensive ways. For instance, Floydies is a collection
00:24:35.420of jokey NFTs that depict pixelated images of George Floyd with red eyes, have co-opted his
00:24:42.140image seemingly to intentionally create outrage. We've seen this recently with George Floyd. You
00:24:48.200You know, he was celebritized in his death and just his image has been, I think, one of the most exploited in recent history.
00:24:58.080And for him, for his image to go on a hologram tour of the South to all of these former Confederate statue locations, you know, and that was, you know, something that was supported by his family.
00:25:13.580His family was behind that, along with change.org.
00:25:18.180And so I just think when people are grieving, whether it's an icon that you loved or, you know, a dear loved one, a friend or family member that you love, like people find ways to grieve.
00:25:33.660And, you know, virtual reality, augmented reality, these are becoming more and more available and affordable for everyday people.
00:25:44.760I know I have an Oculus that was given to me by HBO PR during Lovecraft Country's run.
00:25:52.660They had some activations in the Oculus world, VR world, that they wanted press to see.
00:26:01.240And they did a concert, a hologram concert.
00:26:03.620The point is that they want this to be a regular situation.
00:26:08.400They want everybody to have an Oculus.
00:26:10.440Facebook just bought Oculus shortly after HBO did all those activations in Oculus.
00:26:18.660And so now you have to sign in with your Facebook account in order to use that. So this is definitely something that is going to be available to a great deal of people. And you can create avatars. And so who's to say somebody won't create an avatar based on their loved one?
00:26:39.240You know, and I think, you know, we really have to decide, like, whose life is the most important. Is it, you know, the wishes of the person who's now dead or the person who's still alive and wants to grieve and needs to grieve and, you know, however they choose to grieve, you know, should be okay.
00:26:58.340I mean, it's definitely something that we should all be thinking about.
00:27:03.040So not just musicians and not just with tattoos.
00:27:05.880Like, we need to start putting this in our wills.
00:27:08.520Like, don't use my image in any of these ways.
00:30:57.200voice acting and digital rendering. This digital actor will never show up to work late, get arrested
00:31:02.560for public drunkenness, or be involved in any scandal of the types that we've seen in recent
00:31:06.740years that cause an entire production to stop. It is highly likely that these digital resurrections
00:31:12.340or recreations will absolutely become commonplace. It's such an interesting peek into kind of a bleak
00:31:20.220tech future. A big part of what we talk about on this show is imagining what our collective
00:31:25.620futures will look like with technology. And some of it is very beautiful, but some of it is very
00:31:30.220bleak. And so this idea of being ready for whatever bleak thing will be the next iteration of our tech
00:31:38.120future, I think is a really, really good kind of like cautionary point. And I also think, you know,
00:31:43.720talking about how Facebook bought Oculus, there was a time where Facebook's motto was move fast
00:31:49.480and break things, right? Like their entire thing was just like, keep going, keep going, move, move,
00:31:54.480move. Don't stop and think about the ramifications. Don't stop and think about the precedent that
00:31:58.940you're setting. Don't stop and think about how this thing will be misused or can result in real
00:32:04.780world harms. Just keep moving. Just move fast. And I wonder if that attitude, if that climate
00:32:11.200has really got us in a place where we are making so many new technological advances and then
00:32:18.500normalizing them or making them commonplace, but not stopping to think about what they will,
00:32:24.260what kind of future they will actually create like in your piece you use this great prince quote
00:32:28.540if i was meant to jam with duke ellington we would have lived at the same time and i wonder
00:32:32.740is there an element here of focusing so much of what we you know could do or can do that nobody
00:32:39.880is pumping the brakes and thinking what should we be doing is this right is this going to make
00:32:45.300for a better brighter future or a more harmful more bleak future exactly exactly and you know
00:32:53.120I think it's the same with concerts. You know, we should have gone out to see Whitney Houston in
00:32:57.480concert. If we didn't, wow, we really messed up. You know, that should make us be even more vigilant
00:33:03.660about going to see Beyonce, going to see Stevie Wonder, going to see all these other people
00:33:09.020that we love who are icons while we have the chance. That's what life does. Life teaches us,
00:33:16.620you know, lessons. And the point is not to create a world where we didn't, you know,
00:33:23.120miss the boat. It's to learn from the mistakes and to try better, you know, with the information
00:33:29.740that you have now. So, I mean, I definitely think it is teaching us a dangerous lesson that,
00:33:36.320you know, technology, we can use technology to, you know, erase history. And that's not the point.
00:33:45.760The point should not be to erase history. It should be to learn from history and grow from history and do better.
00:33:50.860And I think, you know, we see, you know, someone like Kanye West, who created this hologram of Kim Kardashian's father,
00:34:00.000who's been passed away for decades now, and to have him show up at Kim's 40th birthday party and tell her all these things that, you know,
00:34:12.060you may want a father to tell you. But it's just like, he isn't actually saying these words.
00:34:21.200You know, this isn't, he has no, you know, concepts, perhaps. I mean, we don't really know.
00:34:27.060But I mean, like, this hologram definitely has no concept of what's going on in the present world.
00:34:32.180You know, has no idea about, you know, her children or any of that. Like,
00:34:36.140it was just so odd. And, you know, personally, I would have divorced him off of this alone.
00:34:40.360But, you know, that's just, I definitely see us creating holograms of our dead loved ones to be at our weddings and to be at the births of our children and all of these things, you know, and I'm just, I just wonder if that is actually, I'm not a psychologist in any way, but I do wonder what the psychological impact of those things will be.
00:35:06.900Is that healing or is that causing more damage? I feel like all the Black Mirror episodes tell us this is actually going to cause more damage because this isn't the real person. Like you want the real person here. The real person is not here. So this fake stand in is not doing it and they're not going to do it.
00:35:23.040And the point is to learn how to move through grief, how to expand through grief, how to increase the amount of love that you put out into the world as a result of the grief, you know.
00:35:38.180So I am concerned. I am really concerned.
00:35:42.960After a company called Kalita created a hologram of Kim Kardashian's late father,
00:35:47.960they said they were flooded with requests to do the same for regular, though presumably wealthy, people
00:35:52.520asking for hologram recreations of their loved ones.
00:35:55.920And companies like Deep Nostalgia, which uses AI to create digital renderings of loved ones that smile and move,
00:36:02.200are already incredibly popular with people who want to feel more connected to their lost loved ones.
00:36:07.360So could this be a useful way to process grief and the past?
00:36:10.160In a piece for the fall called Deep Fakes, Dead Relatives, and Digital Resurrection, Dr. Elaine Cassett, psychologist and the author of All the Ghosts and the Machines, says that right now, tech is ushered in new territory of collapsing the dead and the living together.
00:36:25.860Tech companies are the keepers of this information, with a one-size-fits-all memorialization mechanism.
00:36:31.640They've got ideas about what's good for you, and grief and bereavement are baked into the design.
00:36:36.000she says i've been in therapy for a very long time and one of my therapists kind of repeated
00:36:41.920mantras to me is there are no shortcuts to grieving there's no shortcuts to processing and so
00:36:47.220you know if there was a tech like a technology enabled future that allowed me to experience
00:36:54.340things that i'm like i never got to experience or you know basically i there's no shortcut to
00:37:00.420processing. And so if I was able to have a hologram of the perfect solution, a perfect
00:37:08.340recreation of what I wish I always had, I am then not doing the work of processing the fact that I
00:37:13.740never got that in reality, right? And there is no shortcut to processing. You just have to move
00:37:20.620through it and make peace with it. And I guess I wonder if technology is enabling us to think of
00:37:29.800things as shortcuts. If you didn't appreciate Whitney Houston when she was here, or worse,
00:37:35.940you got on the pop culture bandwagon of mocking her and mocking her humanity, maybe you shouldn't
00:37:43.320get to have a future enabled by technology where you can go see her anytime you want for as long
00:37:49.220as you live. Maybe you shouldn't be processing why it is that you treated her that way when she
00:37:55.240was living. And I wonder if this technology is building in these shortcuts for not having to do
00:38:01.920that deep work of processing what it is we do while we're here to people who are actual humans.
00:38:08.220Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's interesting because I also, I write fiction and a part of
00:38:15.220my process is re-imagination. I have a whole novel that re-imagines the ending of slavery in a way
00:38:23.620that is empowering for Black people in a way that sets us off on a different future as a way of
00:38:31.100processing the ways in which we are existing in this present terrible future as a result of
00:38:39.940slavery that has not been addressed or repaired or, you know, and it's now trying to be, you know,
00:38:47.060by these right-wing extremists, you know, being erased from our history and from, you know,
00:38:55.400being taught in schools. So I'm just, you know, I understand the ideology behind, you know,
00:39:06.660how reimaginations can help process and help heal and move through grief. I'm just wondering what
00:39:14.860the limitations are. I'm wondering, I think our tech overlords should be thinking, what is the
00:39:23.700worst that could happen and putting up safeguards right now? And they're not going to do that.
00:39:31.380That's such a good point. And I feel like we've already seen how technology is being misused if
00:39:38.960you don't put in safeguards for the reality of how a lot of people will probably misuse it.
00:39:43.800Like, you know, we have deepfake technology. I've seen very interesting, useful interpretations of deepfakes. There are artists who, like, make deepfakes of Mark Zuckerberg taking accountability for the harm he has caused, for instance.
00:39:56.860But we already know that how deepfake technology is being used is to harass and abuse marginalized people, women, queer people, women of color.
00:40:04.840And so this idea that we can just quickly put out new technology that is going to completely change and alter how our society understands how it works and not put in those safeguards or even really stop to think about the precedent they set, I think is really a problem.
00:40:24.000So I have to ask, you know, in reading your piece, it's obvious that this piece is sort of like a love letter to Whitney Houston and her legacy.
00:40:34.340What is your, do you have a favorite Whitney Houston song or moment that you want to share with us?
00:40:46.480I mean, I feel like I want to dance with somebody and I know she was, it really hurt my heart to hear how she was criticized for this song by, you know, like Al Sharpton and, you know, other prominent black people back when this was released.
00:41:06.040But I remember my dad had a VHS of just like Whitney Houston videos and stuff like that.
00:41:14.420And I remember as a kid watching that video and she was so happy.
00:41:20.680And, you know, I in the hair, you know, like it was just so beautiful.
00:41:25.300And I just thought she was the most beautiful woman.
00:41:27.840And I was like, yes, how nice would that be to dance with somebody who loves you?
00:41:33.180Like I just, I remember so vividly as a kid being just like so enthralled by this video.
00:41:40.760And my dad also had this, her original record, you know, where she's got the, I think her
00:41:47.400hair is pulled back, but it looked like she had just like a low, like shaved head.
00:41:54.240And I just like, yeah, all you see is her stunning face.
00:41:57.980And I'm like, wow, this is the most beautiful woman.
00:42:00.720I just I remember being so touched by her music so early on in my life. I mean, The Bodyguard was my favorite movie. I wanted to be an actress because of The Bodyguard. Like, I mean, there's just so much. Waiting to Exhale is like hands down the best soundtrack that has ever existed to a movie.
00:42:17.700um you know she's just she was so gifted and she was so talented and then when I found out later
00:42:24.100on that she has literally produced like all the teen girl movies like the princess diaries and
00:42:29.400I mean just she she did so much that shaped uh my childhood um including Cinderella I mean that
00:42:39.200you know we definitely it was that was appointment television like we stopped everything as a family
00:42:46.340to watch Cinderella and to watch Brandy, who I also loved so much, be the first Black Cinderella
00:42:52.740and to have Whitney Houston be the godmother. I mean, it just, there are so many things and so
00:42:59.340many of those songs as well. Like I just, I remember always having this kind of countercultural mind
00:43:05.100as a kid and just these ideas, these feminist ideas that I didn't know what the words were
00:43:11.240or how to describe them, but like, I just felt like Whitney Houston in her music and definitely
00:43:16.760in the music in Cinderella, like it was so much about, you know, just feeling empowered as a woman
00:43:23.260and not taking the positions that we are put in, in society, laying down, you know, to, to fight,
00:43:32.900to be an individual and to, to use your own voice. And so then to later find out that there were so
00:43:39.500many ways that Whitney was not allowed to do that was just very devastating, very hard to hear and
00:43:47.600experience. And, you know, it definitely gave me fuel to make sure that I and the people around me
00:43:56.060as much as possible were given the space to be who they are and to be celebrated and supported
00:44:01.540for who they are so that nothing like this would ever happen. It's a tragedy that we lost Whitney
00:44:07.680Houston. And it was so unnecessary. It didn't have to be this way. We could have made a society
00:44:13.920that was not queer phobic, that was not lesbophobic, that was not anti-Black, that was not
00:44:21.860misogynistic, that would have allowed Whitney Houston to thrive. And we, you know, we all can
00:44:30.020play a role in creating that world so that it doesn't happen to another person. That's so
00:44:35.820beautiful and so right. I mean, Whitney taught me that nothing is worth living your authentic life
00:44:41.200and living your authentic truth. Exactly. That's beautiful. Brooke, is there anything that I have
00:44:47.960not asked or have not brought up that you want to make sure gets included?
00:44:53.220I think that was pretty much it. I got in my dig about Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake,
00:44:59.420so I feel accomplished. Every chance I can to just be like, fuck Justin Timberlake.1.00
00:45:05.260Like, I just want to say that Zuckerberg can go to hell.1.00