00:05:16.180Today, the term zombies conjures up brains craving blood vests like Dawn of the Dead.
00:05:20.800But those pop culture interpretations obscure the actual grim origins of zombies and their connection to slavery.
00:05:27.280I read this really amazing in-depth article in The Atlantic by Mike Birani, and it was about the tragic forgotten history of zombies.
00:05:38.840And so it's talking about the ways that Haitian enslaved people, their deepest fear was that if they died by suicide because the plantations were so brutal, the French were so brutal in their slavery of Haitians, that they would be trapped in their bodies and that they would be trapped on these plantations forever.
00:06:02.060And then once Haitian voodoo evolved, that zombie mythology evolved as well. And basically there was a sorcerer that would take these dead bodies and resurrect them for evil purposes, you know, and use them for free labor.
00:06:21.260And that's what I saw. That's what I saw in my mind when I heard about this hologram and this idea of taking Whitney, who was not able to rest and not able to control her own image in her lifetime, now in death, being used for free labor once again and racking in money for the estate for the next six months in this hologram residency.
00:06:51.260The thing about this that strikes me as particularly sad is that I saw the ways that Whitney was stripped of her humanity and identity in life.
00:06:59.160Aspects of who Whitney was as a person were obscured to make her more marketable to mainstream white audiences.
00:07:05.420Music labels were segregated by race, and in the beginning, her sound was intentionally manufactured to have white crossover appeal.
00:07:13.160Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records, signed Whitney when she was just a teenager after an A&R rep saw her singing with her mother's nightclub act.
00:07:21.260Davis became a huge force in shaping Whitney's image and career.
00:07:25.280He vetoed her releasing anything too black-sounding for her first two albums.
00:07:30.220His choice came with a real cost for Whitney.
00:07:33.520At the height of her success in the 80s, Whitney was booed by black audiences at the Soul Train Awards
00:07:38.380when the host introduced her as a nominee for Best R&B Artist.
00:07:43.080Reverend Al Sharpton even organized a boycott of her music, calling her Whitey Houston,
00:07:47.800on flyers that you can check out in the link in our show description.0.58
00:07:51.260Being stripped of this aspect of her identity was hard for Whitney.
00:08:05.420Now, in the 80s, the music industry was deeply homophobic.
00:08:09.000And to find mainstream success, an artist would sometimes have to conceal parts of themselves.
00:08:13.620So it isn't surprising that Whitney herself did not talk openly about her sexuality,
00:08:17.940and we'll never get to hear about it in her own words.
00:08:19.940But her closest friend and confidant, Robin Crawford, an openly gay Black woman who would spend decades by Whitney's side as her assistant and creative director, opened up about her romantic relationship with Whitney.
00:08:31.780They met at summer camp as kids and quickly became inseparable.
00:08:35.320But soon after Whitney signed with Clive Davis at Arista, she ended their intimate relationship because, quote,
00:08:41.320it would make our journey even more difficult, Crawford remembers in her memoir, A Song for You, My Life with Whitney Houston.
00:08:47.760In the 2000s, the years leading up to her tragic death, Whitney dealt with addiction and family issues,
00:08:53.680like the 2003 arrest of her husband Bobby Brown for allegedly hitting her in the face.
00:08:58.080And the same media who'd once been happy to portray her as Black America's sweetheart
00:09:02.040gleefully made her the butt of jokes for failing to live up to the narrow role they'd written her into.
00:09:08.820Whitney wasn't really able to be her full self when she was alive,
00:09:11.840And now, as a hologram, rendered back to life without any of the baggage that comes with being a complex living person, Whitney is now an always-on, always-camera-ready version of herself who can perform on command and generate income for others forever.
00:09:26.520And in a way, the hologram suggests that that's what music executives really wanted from her all along.
00:09:31.800I was really struck by in your piece is sort of that element of, you know, that 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 and how deeply kind of sad that is not being able to rest given the kind of life that Whitney Houston did live.
00:09:57.640And I think there's something so incredibly sad, but also relatable about the life that Whitney Houston lived, you know, in order for her to be to be sort of like marketable as an artist, she was stripped from so much of what made her her, right?
00:10:12.160Her blackness, her queerness, so much of like the things that made Whitney who she was.0.65
00:10:18.120And 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.0.91
00:10:31.380And 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.
00:10:52.200they don't have to include her Blackness, her queerness, her addiction issues, her family
00:10:56.920issues. She can just be a hologram moneymaker for them in death forever. Right. And it's probably0.99
00:11:04.660a lot more profitable for them with her not being able to be alive and to have the issues that she0.63
00:11:12.940was dealing with. You don't have to worry about whether or not she's going to go out on stage
00:11:18.700because they can put her out whenever they want to.
00:11:21.760Like it's really, like I was saying in my piece,
00:11:24.760it's that the worst Black Mirror episode.
00:11:55.820And, you know, we heard so much about how dangerous and unsafe it is for women and Black
00:12:05.640women in particular in the music industry.0.74
00:12:07.520And so I have no doubt that there are plenty of executives who would be all about, you
00:12:12.100How can we just make money off of this person and not have who they actually are get in the way of our money?
00:12:18.020Some musicians, like Anderson .Paak, don't want to leave it up for executives or estate executors to sort out in the event of his death.
00:12:26.560Last year, the musician got a tattoo on his forearm reading,
00:12:29.660When I'm gone, please don't release any posthumous albums or song with my name attached.
00:12:34.180Those were just demos and never intended to be heard by the public.
00:12:37.180He debuted this tattoo in August of 2020.
00:12:40.180just a few months after the late Prince's previously unreleased album, Welcome to America, was posthumously released.
00:12:46.540While the album earned critical praise, I really can't say if the artist, who died without a will and was so notoriously protective of ownership over his music and likeness
00:12:55.280that he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol from 1993 to 2000, would have wanted this album to see the light of day.
00:13:01.940You talk about all these different Black artists who have taken great steps to avoid their likeness being used in these ways after death, you know, including Anderson .Paak's tattoo that's like, you know, if I die, please do not use my likeness or release any songs that were not meant to be released to the public.
00:13:17.240Like, do you think that there is this like the societal expectation that Black artists specifically are just sort of there to be mined for their creativity, for entertainment and profit, even in death?
00:13:30.140And that like specifically that we as Black folks are just expected to be these never ending wells of profit generating creativity just forever.
00:13:42.220And like technology would certainly like facilitate that.
00:13:45.660Absolutely. Okay, so there's this great music journalist named Simon Reynolds, who actually coined the term ghost slavery when talking about this topic. And that's, you know, what slavery is, right? It was created for, in America, it was created to enslave mostly African people, but also indigenous people, you know, in order to work for free and to build their wealth.
00:14:11.200And so absolutely, this is just another extension of that. You know, I do believe that, you know, Black musicians and entertainers have been the people who've been able to kind of break through a bit of these white supremacist layers that exist in this country, that this country was founded on.
00:14:28.420But they only want you to be able to do that to a certain extent. And especially if you start to become political or if you start to become a problem in any way that could jeopardize, for one, white supremacy or, you know, any of the structures that are in place.
00:14:47.020you get a little too mouthy, a little too uppity. As a Black person, of course, they want to put1.00
00:14:52.960you back in their place. So I do feel like if, you know, they, as long as the music is bringing
00:15:01.200profit, there won't be a problem. But if there is a way to control Black artists as much as possible,0.99
00:15:09.400that's what's going to happen. You know, we've seen it in these 360 deals. We've seen it0.99
00:15:13.720um, in so many different ways, um, in the music industry. And that is what, I think that's kind
00:15:20.720of why Rihanna's over, like, why, why would I stay here? This, you know, you can't even make
00:15:25.840money in the same way you have to be on the road. You have to do all of these different things
00:15:29.340as, as artists in order to maintain your integrity and to make money. Um, it's just a lot more
00:15:34.960difficult today, um, to be able to do that. So, yeah, I mean, I think people are starting to
00:15:39.960understand that and starting to come up with other ways to protect themselves.
00:15:43.980I don't think a tattoo is going to do it.
00:15:47.400I hope Anderson .Paak has another plan, like a will.
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00:18:35.500To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want artistic control.
00:18:40.080So Prince absolutely did not want to be a hologram.
00:18:43.220And what's even worse is that Prince didn't even really seem to like Justin Timberlake.
00:18:47.440The two had a whole history of making shady digs at each other while Prince was still alive.
00:18:52.080So bringing Prince back as a hologram against his wishes to jam with a musician he didn't even really like just seemed like adding insult to injury.
00:18:59.900Now, in the end, the Super Bowl halftime show didn't technically use a hologram.
00:19:03.520It was more of a projection of Prince performing on a screen paired up alongside Justin's performance.
00:19:09.880I think that was the problem with Prince.
00:19:12.100Prince 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.
00:19:24.980But, you know, we did see that performance with Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl, what is supposed to be a tribute.
00:19:30.800And 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.
00:19:44.400You 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.
00:20:01.600And Prince died intestate. So, you know, they have complete control, his estate, to do whatever they want to do with his image. And so that's why you see these commercials with his music in that you never saw before. You see people being able to go to Paisley Park, which he would never want, you know.
00:20:18.820So there's just so many things that can happen to you once you're dead.
00:20:23.640And, you know, we've been looking at it from the perspective of, you know, celebrities.
00:20:27.720But I think this is definitely something that's going to start impacting our regular day-to-day lives in the near future as well.
00:20:38.660So in your piece, you bring up, you argue that the announcement that Facebook slash meta, if you want to say that,
00:20:46.560Like their whole argument or their whole announcement about the metaverse, do you think that the vibe is that they want, that our sort of tech overlords want to be able to reproduce and reanimate anyone, famous or non-famous, anyone, anywhere, and that that will be a common, you know, technological advancement available to everybody in our tech future?
00:21:08.580Do you think that that's like what they're after?
00:21:09.980I mean, I think that is just a thing that happens when the technology is available.
00:21:19.120So, you know, especially when people like Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of our tech overlords are concerned about profit.
00:21:26.200We've seen several former Facebook employees coming forward and sharing damning information, showing that Facebook is a company that is for profits over people every single time.
00:21:45.160This is just something that could happen as a result of that.
00:21:49.000You provide the technology, it's going to happen.
00:21:51.860It's just like you create a platform where people can express their opinions.
00:21:55.320there's going to be harassment, you know, there's going to be racism, there's going to be terrorism,
00:21:59.780there's going to be all these other things. And so, you know, if you're not actively preventing
00:22:04.680that from happening, then of course it's going to happen. You're giving people the space to do
00:22:09.320what people do. In the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests all around the globe after the
00:22:14.900murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by police, Change.org and the George
00:22:19.500Floyd Foundation created a 3D hologram of the late George Floyd to be projected onto Confederate
00:22:24.720monuments in the South. George Floyd's brother Rodney Floyd said, since the death of my brother
00:22:30.060George, his face has been seen all over the world. The hologram will allow my brother's face to be
00:22:35.120seen as a symbol for change in places where change is needed the most. I had the chance to see the
00:22:39.740projection in Richmond, and it really was powerful. So holograms can be a way for a family to heal and
00:22:45.020grieve and turn their loss into something larger. But when someone's likeness becomes a symbol in
00:22:49.880way, it's not always empowering and respectful. It also opens up the possibility that their
00:22:55.100likeness could be used in offensive ways. For instance, Floydies is a collection of jokey
00:23:00.280NFTs that depict pixelated images of George Floyd with red eyes, have co-opted his image
00:23:06.800seemingly to intentionally create outrage. We've seen this recently with George Floyd. You know,
00:23:12.640he was celebritized in his death and just his image has been, I think, one of the most exploited
00:23:19.820in recent history. And for him, for his image to go on a hologram tour of the South to all of these
00:23:29.800former Confederate statue locations, you know, and that was, you know, something that was supported
00:23:37.140by his family. His family was behind that along with change.org. And so I just think when people
00:23:44.040are grieving, whether it's an icon that you loved or, you know, a dear loved one, a friend or family
00:23:53.720member that you love, like people find ways to grieve and, you know, virtual reality, augmented
00:24:01.900a reality. These are becoming more and more available and affordable for everyday people.
00:24:09.200I know I have an Oculus that was given to me by HBO PR during Lovecraft Country's run. They had
00:24:17.640some activations in the Oculus world, VR world, that they wanted press to see. And they did a
00:24:25.940concert, a hologram concert. The point is that they want this to be a regular situation.
00:24:32.680They want everybody to have an Oculus, especially Facebook just bought Oculus,
00:24:36.760you know, shortly after HBO did all those activations in Oculus. And so now you have
00:24:44.720to sign in with your Facebook account in order to use that. So this is definitely something that is
00:24:52.040going to be available to a great deal of people. And you can create avatars. And so who's to say
00:24:59.700somebody won't create an avatar based on their loved one, you know? And I think, you know,
00:25:06.240we really have to decide like whose life is the most important. Is it, you know, the wishes of
00:25:13.600the person who's now dead or the person who's still alive and wants to grieve and needs to
00:25:18.140grieve and however they choose to grieve should be okay. I mean, it's definitely something that
00:25:25.700we should all be thinking about. So not just musicians and not just with tattoos. We need
00:25:30.840to start putting this in our wills. Don't use my image in any of these ways.
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00:27:08.620It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:27:16.520Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:27:25.700Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:28:02.460Who better than a superstar from yesterday
00:28:04.320that can be completely controlled via voice acting and digital rendering?
00:28:08.620This digital actor will never show up to work late, get arrested for public drunkenness, or be involved in any scandal of the types that we've seen in recent years that caused an entire production to stop.
00:28:18.720It is highly likely that these digital resurrections or recreations will absolutely become commonplace.
00:28:25.400It's such an interesting peek into kind of a bleak tech future.
00:28:30.260Like, a big part of what we talk about on this show is, like, imagining what our collective futures will look like with technology.
00:28:36.300And some of it is very beautiful, but some of it is very bleak.
00:28:39.860And so this idea of being ready for whatever bleak thing will be the next iteration of
00:28:46.780our tech future, I think is a really, really good kind of like cautionary point.
00:28:51.100And I also think, you know, talking about how Facebook bought Oculus, there was a time
00:28:56.120where Facebook's motto was move fast and break things, right?
00:28:59.620Like their entire thing was just like, keep going, keep going, move, move, move.
00:29:03.800don't stop and think about the ramifications. Don't stop and think about the precedent that
00:29:07.960you're setting. Don't stop and think about how this thing will be misused or can result in real
00:29:13.800world harms. Just keep moving. Just move fast. And I wonder if that attitude, if that climate
00:29:20.220has really got us in a place where we are making so many new technological advances and then
00:29:27.520normalizing them or making them commonplace, but not stopping to think about what kind of
00:29:33.780of future they will actually create. Like in your piece, you use this great Prince quote,
00:29:38.000if I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived at the same time. And I wonder,
00:29:41.940is there an element here of focusing so much of what we could do or can do that nobody is
00:29:49.120pumping the brakes and thinking, what should we be doing? Is this right? Is this going to make for
00:29:54.520a better, brighter future or a more harmful, more bleak future? Exactly. Exactly. And I think it's
00:30:02.580the same with concerts. You know, we should have gone out to see Whitney Houston in concert. If we
00:30:07.280didn't, wow, we really messed up. You know, that should make us be even more vigilant about going
00:30:13.920to see Beyonce, going to see Stevie Wonder, going to see all these other people that we love who are
00:30:19.540icons while we have the chance. That's what life does. Life teaches us, you know, lessons. And the
00:30:28.640point is not to create a world where we didn't, you know, miss the boat. It's to learn from the
00:30:34.760mistakes and to try better, you know, with the information that you have now. So, I mean, I
00:30:41.000definitely think it is teaching us a dangerous lesson that, you know, technology, we can use
00:30:46.700technology to, you know, erase history. And that's not the point. The point should not be to erase
00:30:56.000history. It should be to learn from history and grow from history and do better. Um, and I think,
00:31:00.440you know, when we see, you know, someone like Kanye West who created this hologram of Kim
00:31:06.920Kardashian's, um, father, who's been passed away for, for decades now, um, and to have him show up
00:31:14.960at Kim's 40th birthday party and tell her all these things, um, that, you know, you may want
00:31:21.900a father to tell you. But it's just like, he isn't actually saying these words. You know,
00:31:30.460this isn't, he has no, you know, concepts, perhaps. I mean, we don't really know. But I mean,
00:31:36.400like this hologram definitely has no concept of what's going on in the present world.
00:31:41.200You know, has no idea about, you know, her children or any of that. Like,
00:31:45.160it was just so odd. And, you know, personally, I would have divorced him off of this alone.
00:31:49.380But, 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.
00:32:15.920Is 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.
00:32:32.060And 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.
00:32:46.080You know, so I am concerned. I am really concerned.
00:32:52.000After a company called Kalita created a hologram of Kim Kardashian's late father,
00:32:56.960they said they were flooded with requests to do the same for regular, though presumably wealthy, people
00:33:01.540asking for hologram recreations of their loved ones.
00:33:04.940And companies like Deep Nostalgia, which uses AI to create digital renderings of loved ones that smile and move,
00:33:11.220are already incredibly popular with people who want to feel more connected to their lost loved ones.
00:33:16.380So could this be a useful way to process grief and the past?
00:33:19.180In 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.
00:33:34.880Tech companies are the keepers of this information, with a one-size-fits-all memorialization mechanism.
00:33:40.660They've got ideas about what's good for you, and grief and bereavement are baked into the design.
00:33:45.020she says i've been in therapy for a very long time and one of my therapists kind of repeated
00:33:50.940mantras to me is there are no shortcuts to grieving there's no shortcuts to processing and so
00:33:56.240you know if there was a tech like a technology enabled future that allowed me to experience
00:34:03.340things that i'm like i never got to experience or you know basically i there's no shortcut to
00:34:09.420processing. And so if I was able to have a hologram of the perfect solution, a perfect
00:34:17.360recreation of what I wish I always had, I am then not doing the work of processing the fact that I
00:34:22.760never got that in reality. And there is no shortcut to processing. You just have to move through it
00:34:30.180and make peace with it. And I guess I wonder if technology is enabling us to think of things
00:34:39.180as shortcuts, like if you didn't appreciate Whitney Houston when she was here, or worse,
00:34:44.900you got on the pop culture bandwagon of mocking her and like mocking her humanity, maybe you
00:34:52.040shouldn't get to have a future enabled by technology where you can go see her anytime
00:34:57.120you want for as long as you live. Maybe you shouldn't be processing why it is that you
00:35:02.580treated her that way when she was living. And I wonder if this technology is building in
00:35:07.360this, this, these shortcuts for not having to do that deep work of processing what it is we do
00:35:13.920while we're here to people who are actual humans. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know,
00:35:19.740it's interesting because I also, I write fiction, you know, and a part of my process is re-imagination.
00:35:28.640You know, I have a whole novel that like re-imagines the ending of slavery in a way that is
00:35:33.360empowering for Black people in a way that sets us off on a different future as a way of processing
00:35:40.700the ways in which we are existing in this present terrible future as a result of slavery that has
00:35:50.100not been addressed or repaired or, you know, and it's now trying to be, you know, by these
00:35:56.720right-wing extremists, you know, being erased from our history and from, you know, being taught
00:36:04.880in schools. So I'm just, you know, I understand the ideology behind, you know, how reimaginations
00:36:17.080can help process and help heal and move through grief. I'm just wondering what the limitations
00:36:24.500are. You know, I'm, I'm wondering, you know, what is, I think our tech overlords should be
00:36:31.860thinking what is the worst that could happen and putting up safeguards right now. And they're not
00:36:38.060going to do that. That's such a good point. And we, I feel like we've already seen how technology
00:36:45.800is being misused. If you don't put in safeguards for the reality of how a lot of people will
00:36:51.880probably misuse it. We have deepfake technology. I've seen very interesting, useful interpretations
00:36:59.580of deepfakes. There are artists who make deepfakes of Mark Zuckerberg taking accountability for the
00:37:04.720harm he has caused, for instance. But we already know that how deepfake technology is being used
00:37:09.300is to harass and abuse marginalized people, women, queer people, women of color. And so this idea
00:37:15.620that we can just quickly put out new technology that is going to completely change and alter
00:37:21.620how our society understands how it works and not put in those safeguards or even really stop to
00:37:27.800think about the precedent they set, I think is really a problem. Yes, absolutely.
00:37:34.240So I have to ask, you know, in reading your piece, it's obvious that this piece is sort of like a
00:37:40.060love letter to Whitney Houston and her legacy. What is your, do you have a favorite Whitney
00:37:44.980Houston song or moment that, that you want to share with us? Hmm. That might be a hard question
00:37:52.240because there's so many to pick from. There really are. I mean, I feel like I want to dance
00:37:58.900with somebody. Um, and I know she was, it really hurt my, my heart to hear how she was criticized
00:38:04.940for this song, um, by, you know, like Al Sharpton and, and, you know, other, um, prominent black
00:38:12.280people back when this was released. But I remember my dad had a VHS of just like Whitney Houston
00:38:20.480videos and stuff like that. And I remember as a kid watching that video and she was so happy and
00:38:29.800you know, I just in the hair, you know, like it was just so beautiful. And I just thought she was
00:38:35.260the most beautiful woman. And I was like, yes, how nice would that be to dance with somebody who
00:38:40.620loves you. Like how ideal. Like I just, I remember so vividly as a kid being just like so enthralled
00:38:47.600by this video. And my dad also had this, her original record, you know, where she's got the,
00:38:55.320I think her hair is pulled back, but it looked like she had just like a low, like shaved head.
00:39:03.240And I just, like, yeah, all you see is her stunning face. And I'm like, wow, this is the
00:39:08.560most beautiful woman. Like I just, I remember being so touched by her music so early on in
00:39:13.820my life. I mean, The Bodyguard was my favorite movie. I wanted to be an actress because of The
00:39:18.980Bodyguard. Like, I mean, there's just so much. Waiting to Exhale is like hands down the best
00:39:24.600soundtrack that has ever existed to a movie. You know, she's just, she was so gifted and she was
00:39:31.380so talented. And then when I found out later on that she has literally produced like all the teen
00:39:36.020girl movies, like the princess diaries. And I mean, just, she, she did so much that shaped
00:39:43.100my childhood, including Cinderella. I mean, that, you know, we definitely, it was, that was
00:39:51.380appointment television. Like we stopped everything as a family to watch Cinderella and to watch
00:39:57.540Brandy, who I also loved so much, be the first black Cinderella and to have Whitney Houston
00:40:03.200be the godmother I mean it just there are so many things and so many of those songs as well like I
00:40:10.300just I remember always having this kind of countercultural mind as a kid and just these
00:40:16.000ideas these feminist ideas that I didn't know what the words were or how to describe them but like0.62
00:40:21.880I just felt like Whitney Houston in her music and definitely in the music in Cinderella like it was
00:40:27.640so much about, you know, just feeling empowered as a woman and not taking the positions that we
00:40:36.180are put in in society, laying down, you know, to fight, to be an individual and to use your own
00:40:45.600voice. And so then to later find out that there were so many ways that Whitney was not allowed
00:40:50.180to do that was just very devastating, very hard to hear and experience. And, you know, it definitely
00:40:59.060gave me fuel to make sure that I and the people around me as much as possible were given the
00:41:07.680space to be who they are and to be celebrated and supported for who they are so that nothing
00:41:13.500like this would ever happen. It's a tragedy that we lost Whitney Houston and it was so unnecessary.
00:41:21.440We could have made a society that was not queer phobic, that was not lesbophobic, that was not anti-Black, that was not misogynistic, that would have allowed Whitney Houston to thrive.
00:41:36.300And we, you know, we all can play a role in creating that world so that it doesn't happen to another person.
00:41:46.140I mean, Whitney taught me that nothing is worth living your authentic life and living your authentic truth.
00:41:52.640Exactly. That's beautiful. Brooke, is there anything that I have not asked or have not brought up that you want to make sure gets included?
00:42:02.240I think that was pretty much it. I got in my dig about Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake, so I feel accomplished every chance I can to just be like, fuck Justin Timberlake.0.98
00:42:14.280Like, I just want to say that Zuckerberg can go to hell.1.00