Get Some Respect, at least a little

 I saw Respect this weekend. I recommend it. The eight-dollar ticket price was equal to the songs and the walk down memory lane and Jennifer Hudson’s powerful voice and portrayal, to say nothing of hearing my favorite pop song (You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman) played and sung by the real Aretha in her late 60s.  That was fabulous.  If there’s sound track, I imagine it will do well.

It played with all the typical “biopic of singers” tropes: difficult childhood, too many badly-chosen relationships, addictions, ambition, the price of fame, etc. Is there a screenplay writing school for these? Aretha’s life was just more interesting than some. Her pregnancy at 12 and then 14 (molestation, but perhaps in a way she was convinced it was right or she was a big girl andmeant she was loved). The abuse from men trying to control her because they could control her voice and talent and thus money. How deep she was in alcoholism. Her family connections to the civil rights movement (and her upper-middle-class upbringing, at least for an African American in the ‘50s.). And her return to God and gospel music. I like that it ended with that rather than some kind of performance feedback. She was a mess and had a messy life, but at least she knew the meaning of Amazing Grace, a song written by an ex-slaveholder. What God hath wrought through cross and grace that the song unites the two and so many others. 

Respect and Freedom are the inner anthems of the lives of women like me.

Personal notes: One of our film graduates worked on it (although I didn't see her name in the credits but it is on IMDB) and I could tell it was filmed in Georgia, not Detroit. I know Georgia terrain and flora and fauna too well. There are no magnolia trees in Michigan. Also, well, I knew it was.