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Whitewashing The Dreamgirls Beyonce Diana Ross and The Commodification of Blackness

1) The document discusses the careers of Diana Ross and Beyoncé, two African American female pop stars who faced scrutiny about their "blackness" from the media. 2) It examines how their star images were constructed in relation to ideas of "blackness" and "whiteness" through their performances, promotional materials, and critical reception. 3) A key focus is the 2006 film version of Dreamgirls, where Beyoncé played the role of Deena Jones, inspired by Diana Ross, blurring the lines between their real and fictional personas.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
116 views20 pages

Whitewashing The Dreamgirls Beyonce Diana Ross and The Commodification of Blackness

1) The document discusses the careers of Diana Ross and Beyoncé, two African American female pop stars who faced scrutiny about their "blackness" from the media. 2) It examines how their star images were constructed in relation to ideas of "blackness" and "whiteness" through their performances, promotional materials, and critical reception. 3) A key focus is the 2006 film version of Dreamgirls, where Beyoncé played the role of Deena Jones, inspired by Diana Ross, blurring the lines between their real and fictional personas.

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Michael K
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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5.

WHITEWASHING THE DREAMGIRLS:


BEYONCÉ, DIANA ROSS AND THE
COMMODIFICATION OF BLACKNESS

Jaap Kooijman

‘Is Beyoncé the Diana Ross of our generation?’ a television reporter asked
Oprah Winfrey on the red carpet at the premiere of the 2013 documentary
Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream. Her response was clear: ‘No, she is the Beyoncé
of our generation. You cannot compare her to Diana Ross. Diana Ross was
Diana Ross, and Beyoncé is Beyoncé’ (Graham 2013). Winfrey is right, of
course, as the careers of these two African-­American female superstars are
more than three decades apart, during which the media landscape has changed
drastically. Much more than Ross ever was, Beyoncé is ‘an ambulant brand, an
advertisement for a new gilded age when commodities overpower e­ verything –
including race’ (Cashmore 2010: 138). Back in the post-­civil rights era of the
1970s, when Diana Ross became a solo superstar, no one could have envi-
sioned an African-­American female pop star featured on the cover of the ‘The
100 Most Influential People’ issue of Time magazine, as Beyoncé was in May
2014. As with many of her achievements, Beyoncé’s appearance on the Time
cover has been perceived as a sign of a ‘post-­racial’ era in which race is no
longer a barrier to superstardom. However, as Farah Jasmine Griffin argues,
although Beyoncé does ‘occupy a space unimagined by earlier generations’,
this does not signify a ‘post-­racial’ time, but ‘a historical moment in which
race and racism operate differently than in the past’ (Griffin 2011: 132–3). To
perceive the shift from the ‘post-­civil rights’ Ross to the allegedly ‘post-­racial’
Beyoncé as sheer progress fails to recognise how race and racism still function
in society and media today.
Beyoncé might not be the Diana Ross of our generation, yet the similarities

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between the two superstars cannot be ignored. Both Ross and Beyoncé started
as out as lead singer of a very popular African-­American ‘girl group’, the
Supremes and Destiny’s Child; both were managed by a strong male father
figure from whom they had to distance themselves publicly to claim their inde-
pendence; and both became global superstars, not just as bestselling pop singers
performing in grand stadiums around the world, but also as movie actresses
and fashion icons featured on the covers of glossy magazines. Significantly,
both Diana Ross and Beyoncé publicly announced that they transcended ‘race’,
that they were ‘universal’ and ‘colour blind’ in response to continuous scru-
tiny by the media, music critics and fans questioning their ‘blackness’. ‘I don’t
think in terms of race [. . .] it’s people – not this race or that race’, Diana Ross
told Ebony magazine in 1981 (Massaquoi 1981: 44–6). Beyoncé, in turn, told
Vogue in 2009: ‘I’m universal [. . .] no one’s paying attention to what race I am.
I’ve kind of proven myself. I’m past that’ (Cashmore 2010: 144).
However, as Alice Echols has pointed out, contrary to white artists who
‘are hailed for their brave transgressions’ when crossing the racially defined
categories of the entertainment industry, black pop artists ‘who defy the tests
of “blackness” [. . .] may achieve superstardom, but they often find their racial
crossings leave them open to charges of self-­loathing and selling-­out’ (Echols
2002: 197). Debates about Diana Ross tend to centre on ‘questions of racial
authenticity’ (Brooks 2014: 206), labelling her as ‘an honorary white girl’
(Kempton 2005: 265) who was ‘out-­whiting whitey’ (Cardwell 1997: 118).
In a 1976 Village Voice article, Jamaica Kincaid described Ross as the ‘last
of the black white girls [. . .] who had mastered without the slightest bit of
self-­consciousness or embarrassment, being white’ (Kincaid 1976: 152). In
stark contrast, four decades later, Judy Rosen of The New Yorker described
Beyoncé as ‘by far the “blackest” – musically and aesthetically – of all the
post-­Madonna pop divas; she represents African-­American women’s anger
and power like no one in popular culture since Aretha Franklin’ (Rosen 2013).
Times indeed seem to have changed, but Beyoncé’s ‘blackness’, musically
and aesthetically, continues to be scrutinised and debated. The release of her
2011 solo album 4 prompted the question why Beyoncé’s skin colour seemed
lighter than on the covers of her previous albums, similar to the rumours
about Ross ‘airbrush[ing] herself into Doris Day oblivion’ on her album covers
(Taraborrelli 1989: 394). Discussing the issue of ‘whitewashing’ is impor-
tant to reveal how race is strategically used by the industry, as became clear
when Beyoncé was featured in a 2008 L’Oréal advertisement for hair colour
products; Beyoncé’s skin colour was significantly lighter in the advertisement
printed in Elle magazine than the very same one in Essence, a glossy targeted
at African-­American women (Cashmore 2010: 145). However, too often the
debate is reduced to the question of whether or not the artist is ‘still black
enough’ or instead has ‘become white’. In his seminal essay ‘What is This

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“Black” in Black Popular Culture?’, Stuart Hall argues that ‘black popular
culture is a contradictory space’ that ‘can never be simplified or explained in
terms of the simple binary oppositions that are still habitually used to map it
out’ (Hall 1992: 26). Arguments of ‘whitewashing’ or ‘being not black enough’
tend to fall back upon a crude black–white dichotomy to make value judge-
ments about the artist’s (lack of) ‘authenticity’, rather than to examine the
roles that race and gender continue to play in the entertainment industry, and
specifically in African-­American female superstardom.
This chapter neither questions the ‘blackness’ of Beyoncé or Diana Ross,
nor defends them against the accusations of being ‘whitewashed’. Instead, I
examine how ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ function in the construction of their
star images (Dyer 1998), shaped not only by their performances on record
and film, but also by their offscreen appearances in promotional material and
interviews, as well as critical reception and tabloid press stories (see Kooijman
2014). Following Richard Dyer, without denying their individual agency, I
perceive these two African-­American female superstars as ‘embodiments of the
social categories in which people are placed and through which they have to
make sense of their lives, and indeed through which we make our lives’ (Dyer
2004: 16). Rather than focusing on one star in one specific era, I emphasise
the historical link between Beyoncé and Ross in an attempt to show how their
star texts are interconnected and continue to inform each other over time.
Beyoncé’s performance as the Ross-­inspired character Deena Jones in the film
version of the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls (Bill Condon, 2006) most
explicitly merges the star images of Beyoncé and Ross, connecting them both
to the question of ‘whitewashing’ and the betrayal of authentic ‘black’ culture.
The chapter’s starting point is the revisionist narrative of the original 1981
Broadway musical Dreamgirls, in which the story of Diana Ross and the
Supremes is reduced to a tale of the group’s record company Motown betray-
ing authentic ‘black’ culture in its aim to become economically successful in
mainstream ‘white’ culture. This simple binary opposition is most apparent in
the replacement of the group’s ‘original lead singer’ Effie White (!), embody-
ing ‘blackness’, by the more commercial Deena Jones, embodying ‘whiteness’.
Subsequently, I will discuss how the casting of Beyoncé as Deena in the 2006
film version not only added star power to the Broadway original, but also
used the already existing connection between Beyoncé and Diana Ross to give
form to the Deena character. Moreover, much of Beyoncé’s performance of
Deena is clearly modelled after the fictional character Mahogany that Ross
plays in Mahogany (Berry Gordy, 1975), thereby blurring the lines between
‘real’ and fictional personas even more. Finally, I will compare the song
‘Listen’, performed by Deena/Beyoncé, to ‘It’s My Turn’, the final solo hit
single by Ross before leaving Motown in 1981, the year when Dreamgirls first
appeared on Broadway. Connecting the ‘post-­civil rights’ Diana Ross to the

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allegedly ‘post-­racial’ Beyoncé foregrounds the historical continuity in African-­


American female superstardom, as well as showing how star images can travel
over time, informing each other through ‘real’ and fictional personas.

Blackness as authenticity
Set in 1960s Chicago, the musical Dreamgirls tells the story of the African-­
American girl group the Dreamettes, who become the Dreams after their
manager Curtis Taylor replaces the group’s soulful lead singer Effie White
with the less talented yet better-­ looking and more commercial-­ sounding
Deena Jones in an attempt to reach a mainstream (read white) audience. With
Deena as the group’s focal point, Effie is pushed into the background and is
eventually forced to leave the Dreams, by then renamed Deena Jones and the
Dreams. As a single mother on welfare (her daughter fathered by Curtis),
Effie attempts a comeback with the ballad ‘One Night Only’, but soon finds
out that Curtis is paying radio stations to boycott her single in favour of a
disco version sung by Deena (by now married to Curtis). When the scheme is
exposed, Deena leaves Curtis and reconciles with Effie, whose ballad version
becomes a number-­one hit song. As a grand finale, Effie joins Deena for the
final performance of the Dreams. Starring Jennifer Holliday as Effie and
Sheryl Lee Ralph as Deena, Dreamgirls opened on Broadway in December
1981 and received rave reviews, including from The New York Times, which
named Holliday’s solo ‘And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going’ as ‘one of the
most powerful theatrical coups to be found in a Broadway musical since Ethel
Merman sang “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” at the end of Act I of Gypsy’
(Rich 1981: C11).
Dreamgirls is a thinly veiled retelling of the story of the Supremes, in which
Deena Jones stands for Diana Ross, Effie White for Florence ‘Flo’ Ballard,
Lorrell Robinson for Mary Wilson, and Curtis Taylor, Jr for Berry Gordy, Jr,
founder and president of Motown. A Dreamgirls cover story in Ebony maga-
zine (May 1982) made the connection explicit:

Although enough names and details have been changed to avoid legal
problems, Dreamgirls is remarkably similar [. . .] to the story of the
Supremes – three girls from Detroit who were the Primettes, then the
Supremes, then Diana Ross and the Supremes. While, in the story of
the Supremes, singer Florence Ballard was dropped from the group
for reasons which many Supremes fans still consider ‘unexplained’,
in Dreamgirls, Effie is dropped because she is overweight, not very
­glamorous, thought of as a troublemaker, and has a voice that is a bit
‘too black’ for ‘crossover’ appeal to White audiences in, say, Las Vegas.
(Bailey 1982: 92)

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The article leaves out one significant difference between the two stories.
Whereas the fictional Effie has a successful comeback and reconciles with
Deena and the Dreams, the real Florence did not succeed as a solo singer and
died in poverty at the age of thirty-­two from cardiac arrest, eight years after
she had left the Supremes. In earlier drafts of the musical, Effie was supposed
to die before the intermission, much to the protest of Jennifer Holliday, who
had been promised a starring role on Broadway and did not ‘see how [she
would] accomplish this being in a secondary role’ (Lawson 1981: C5). By
refusing to be pushed into the background, Holliday mirrored her onstage
Effie character, eventually resulting in a fictional happy end that imagined how
Florence Ballard’s solo career could have been a success.
The credibility of Dreamgirls as telling the story of the Supremes was
reaffirmed by the responses of the two remaining original Supremes. Diana
Ross refused to see the show, sending her good friend Michael Jackson
instead (Hirshey 1984: 164); Mary Wilson went to see it several times,
knowing ‘in [her] heart that this story rang far truer than the producers could
have ­ imagined’ and prompting her to title her bestselling autobiography
Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme (Wilson 1986: xii). In her book on girl
groups, Jacqueline Warwick correctly points out that ‘since the success of the
Broadway musical Dreamgirls, it has become customary to lament Ballard as
the truly gifted singer in the Supremes, unjustly ousted from the position of
lead singer for purely political reasons when Berry Gordy [. . .] groomed the
conniving and untalented Diana Ross for stardom’ (Warwick 2007: 159–60).
Nevertheless, by identifying their second Motown single ‘Buttered Popcorn’
(1961) – the only one on which Ballard sings lead – as the group’s first single,
Warwick repeats the suggestion that Ballard was the original lead singer of the
Supremes. In reality, Ross sang lead on almost all of the songs from the start,
including on their first and only pre-­Motown single ‘Tears Of Sorrow’ (1960),
during their audition at Motown, and on their first Motown single ‘I Want A
Guy’ (1961). As Berry Gordy remembers the audition in his autobiography, it
was the ‘whiny voice of the girl singing lead’, meaning Ross, that caught his
attention and made him sign the group (Gordy 1994: 146). Pointing out this
historical inaccuracy does not undermine the musical’s main point that Curtis/
Berry favoured Deena/Diana over Effie/Florence because of her commercial
potential, but does raise the question why Ballard has to be perceived as the
‘original lead singer’ to make the Dreamgirls narrative work.
The answer lies in a simplistic black–white dichotomy on which the musical
is based: the full-­figured, darker-­skinned Effie White with a powerful soul
voice embodies ‘blackness’, whereas the skinny, light-­skinned Deena Jones
with a pop voice embodies ‘whiteness’. Labelling Ballard the ‘original lead
singer’ not only emphasises the authenticity of Effie/Florence in opposition
to the artificiality of Deena/Diana, but also makes the choice for the latter

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an unfair one, a betrayal of ‘blackness’. In his biography The Lost Supreme:


The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard (note the Dreamgirls reference), Peter
Benjaminson uses this black–white dichotomy to explain why Gordy chose
Ross over Ballard:

His decision to back Diana totally over Flo also demonstrated how little
Gordy cared about race and how much he cared about success and money.
Diana epitomized style over substance and strove to look like Twiggy and
Jacky Kennedy, two of the whitest women there ever were. Flo was just
the opposite. She carried the essence of soul – a deep sadness – inside her
and in her voice. Gordy believed correctly that whites preferred style to
soul, and because whites were the major record buyers, he saw Ross as
commercial success personified. (Benjaminson 2008: 77–8)

By equating ‘whiteness’ to artificiality (‘style’) and ‘blackness’ to authenticity


(‘substance’ and ‘essence’), Benjaminson uses the ‘simple binary oppositions’
that Stuart Hall recognised as simplifying the debate. Such a perspective fits the
widely accepted perception of Florence Ballard as the ‘antidote’ to Diana Ross,
placing the latter’s ‘alleged lack of black female authenticity’ in juxtaposition
to the former’s ‘quintessential, if not stereotypical, black femininity’ (Lüthe
2011: 188).
Although using the same dichotomy, Craig Werner presents a far more
nuanced interpretation in his discussion of Ross – whose pop voice ‘lacked the
earthy power that had made Flo the original lead singer’ – by opposing her
individual objective to a communal one: ‘Unlike the gospel singers who dedi-
cated their voices to uplifting their communities, Ross used her voice to escape’
(Werner 1999: 98). Yet Werner too uses Ballard as an authentic counterpoint
to the artificiality of Ross:

Moving on up assumed a distinctly individual meaning when Diane


changed her name, took top billing for the commercially reconstituted
Diana Ross and the Supremes, and finally embarked on a solo career
that led her through the silver screen to the disco inferno. Flo Ballard
descended into the somewhat more literal hell of welfare and died of
heart disease at age thirty-­two. The wrong Supreme had the lead in Lady
Sings the Blues. (Werner 1999: 99)

Werner’s reference to the 1972 biopic starring Diana Ross as Billie Holiday
says nothing about the acting abilities of either Ross or Ballard. Instead, like
Dreamgirls, he uses the two Supremes as opposing poles in a black–white
dichotomy to describe the crossover into ‘white’ commercial mainstream
culture, in which the individual success of Ross is achieved at the expense of
Ballard, who stands for the ‘black’ community that is left behind.

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Returning to Dreamgirls, however, the artificial escapism that Diana Ross


embodies is much closer to the musical genre than the authentic ‘black’ culture
embodied by Florence Ballard. Nelson George has called this the ‘irony’ of
Dreamgirls, as the musical, in its staging and musical styles, is in itself an
example of its main premise, namely of how ‘gritty soul music [is] being dis-
carded in favour of insubstantial musical styles’ (George 2004: 44). This irony
becomes most apparent in the musical’s signature song ‘And I Am Telling
You I’m Not Going’. In interviews, Jennifer Holliday revealed that she was
asked ‘to tone it down’ and to ‘make [the song] more pop’, which she refused
as that would have meant she ‘sold out’ (White and Branson 1993: 304),
again mirroring her fictional character Effie. However, ‘And I Am Telling You
I’m Not Going’ is far from ‘gritty soul music’ but a typical Broadway torch
song, a bombastic and melodramatic showstopper, befitting a camp style that
celebrates artificiality and theatricality. Dreamgirls as a whole ‘reflects the
camp, surreal view of black divas that is a significant part of the gay aesthetic’
(George 2004: 44). Not surprisingly then, the three main men responsible for
Dreamgirls were gay/bisexual white men born in the early 1940s: author and
lyricist Tom Eyen, composer Henry Krieger and director Michael Bennett. Also
Bill Condon, the director of the 2006 film version, is an openly gay white man.
Without suggesting that Dreamgirls is a ‘gay [white] man’s fantasy’, as
several reviewers commented about the film (Laurie 2012: 549), the musical
fits within a camp tradition of ‘diva worship’ that in its search for ‘utopian
ideals’ finds expression in excess and flamboyance (Jennex 2013: 344). The
musical genre in general is one of the most prominent forms of entertainment
that ‘offers the image of “something better” to escape into, [. . .] the sense that
things could be better, that something other than what is can be imagined and
maybe realized’ (Dyer 2002: 20). Effie’s story of how authentic ‘black’ culture
is betrayed might be the main premise of Dreamgirls, yet ends up function-
ing merely as a dramatising backstory to the spectacle offered by the musical
performances, including Effie’s own showstopping ‘And I’m Telling You I’m
Not Going’. Through its celebration of excessive glamour and fabulousness as
embodied by Deena and the Dreams, Dreamgirls literally presents the utopian
vision that dreams can come true, thereby challenging its own simplistic black–
white dichotomy of the ‘authentic’ versus the ‘artificial’.

The commodification of blackness


When Jennifer Hudson won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe in
the category of best supporting (!) actress for her role as Effie White in the film
version of Dreamgirls, she gave a shout-­out to Jennifer Holliday and dedicated
her win to ‘a lady who never really got a fair chance [. . .] Florence Ballard,
you’ll never be forgotten’. The casting of Hudson as Effie was fitting, as her

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experience on the television talent show American Idol in 2004 echoed the
Dreamgirls narrative. In spite of her vocal mastery, Hudson was voted off early
on, an event that many (including pop star Elton John) believed was based
predominantly on her being full-­figured and black (Meizel 2011: 179–80).
Starring in Dreamgirls was a triumphant revenge similar to Effie’s comeback,
as was Hudson’s posing on the cover of the American Vogue (March 2007).
However, like Jennifer Holliday before her, Hudson could not repeat her acting
success, suggesting that Effie in Dreamgirls is the only starring role available
to ‘larger’ African-­American actresses. Mirroring the choice for Deena over
Effie, Hudson’s co-­star Beyoncé subsequently starred as Etta James in Cadillac
Records (2008), even though to some critics Hudson seemed the more obvious
choice (Laurie 2013: 519).
The presence of Beyoncé added a star power to the film missing from the
musical, thereby increasing the importance of Deena Jones as a main character
and enhancing the idea that Dreamgirls was really about Diana Ross after all.
While Sheryl Lee Ralph, who played Deena in the Broadway version, always
insisted that she ‘was not playing Diana Ross’ (Ralph 2011: 124), Beyoncé
told reporters that during the filming she felt as if she ‘was channelling Diana
Ross’ and that she had a ‘shrine’ of Ross photographs in her dressing room
(Ulmer 2006). The film also stayed closer to the story of the Supremes by
changing the setting from Chicago (back) to Detroit and by imitating the
group’s style through close copies of their album covers and television perfor-
mances. Moreover, Dreamgirls tapped into the connection that already existed
between Diana Ross and Beyoncé. From the start of her career with Destiny’s
Child, Beyoncé had been compared to Ross, including by herself. In interviews,
Beyoncé named the Supremes as the group’s main inspiration ‘because they
were glamorous [and] that’s what Destiny’s Child tries to do’ (Farley 2001).
Most tellingly, Destiny’s Child mimicked an iconic 1968 publicity picture of
the Supremes on the cover of Vibe magazine (February 2001), with Beyoncé
posing as Ross in the middle. Beyoncé recognised that the comparison to Ross
made her look like ‘a diva [who goes] around kicking people out of the group’,
leaving the media and fans to wonder when she would ‘do a Diana Ross’ and
go solo, which Beyoncé eventually did in 2003 (Bogle 2007: 361–2; Pointer
2014: 59). The Deena Jones character resembled both Ross and Beyoncé to
such an extent that Beyoncé feared ‘that audiences would think [Dreamgirls] is
my life story’ (Ulmer 2006).
While during the first half of the movie, the Deena character is modelled
after Diana Ross of the 1960s, during the second half Beyoncé’s performance
seems inspired mainly by the fictional character that Ross performed in the
movie Mahogany (1975), directed by Berry Gordy after he fired the white
British director Tony Richardson (Gordy 1994: 335–9). In Mahogany, Ross
plays Tracy Chambers, a young woman from the Chicago South Side who

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dreams of escaping the ghetto and becoming a successful fashion designer.


The white fashion photographer Sean McAvoy (Anthony Perkins) discovers
Tracy, takes her to Rome, and turns her into the top model named Mahogany.
After becoming a successful fashion designer, Tracy realises that a life of
glamour and richness does not bring her happiness and she returns to her
black boyfriend Brian (Billy Dee Williams) in Chicago. Gerald Early has called
Mahogany ‘a brilliant film’, not for its cinematic qualities but because the film
succeeds ‘to mythify Ross herself as dramatizing the dilemma of crossover
success’ (Early 2004: 121–2). Similar to Dreamgirls, the movie seems based on
a simplistic black–white dichotomy: ‘blackness’ embodied by Brian in Chicago
stands for authenticity, whereas ‘whiteness’ embodied by Sean in Rome stands
for artificiality. However, again similar to Dreamgirls, the film undermines this
dichotomy with its camp flamboyance. Miriam Thaggert has suggested that by
having Tracy return to Chicago, ‘the film cannot envision “Diana Ross’s dream
come true” – of being successful’ (Thaggert 2012: 734), but that is exactly
what the film does: not Tracy who returns to authentic ‘black’ culture, but
Mahogany who is a success in the artificial ‘white’ world of fashion shapes the
Diana Ross star image, turning ‘a child of black, working-­class Detroit [. . .]
into a Mahogany pop-­culture goddess’ (Brooks 2014: 209). As Richard Dyer
has argued, Mahogany tries to reconcile discourses of race that are irreconcil-
able (the black–white dichotomy and the dilemma of crossover success) by
depending on the appeal of the star’s performance (in this case, through the use
of montage sequences) as ‘the magical resolution of the irresolvable’; whether
or not the movie succeeds ‘depends a lot on how much you go for Diana Ross
and sensuous montage’ (Dyer 1986: 136–7).
The almost four-­ minutes-­long montage sequence depicting how photo­
grapher Sean turns Tracy into the ‘inanimate object’ Mahogany is the most
significant and spectacular part of Mahogany (see Figure 5.1). With the instru-
mental ‘Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?)’ as
soundtrack, the sequence opens with close-­ups of make-­up being applied to
Tracy’s mouth and eyes, followed by her being photographed in different set-
tings, outfits and poses. In Dreamgirls, the montage sequence of Deena’s photo
shoot for Vogue, with ‘When I First Saw You’ sung by Curtis (Jamie Foxx) as
soundtrack, closely follows the Mahogany one, showing how Curtis ‘made’
the star Deena, like Sean ‘made’ supermodel Mahogany (and by extension,
Mahogany’s director Berry Gordy ‘made’ Diana) (see Figure 5.2). Jane Gaines
has argued that the Mahogany montage sequence is not only a clear example
of ‘woman-­as-­spectacle’ but also presents a makeover from ‘black’ to ‘white’:

Effected with wigs and make-­up colours, the transformations are a play
on and against ‘darkness’; Diana Ross is a high-­tech Egyptian Queen, a
pale medieval princess, a turbaned Asiatic, a body-­painted blue nymph.

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Figure 5.1   Diana Ross as Mahogany in montage sequence from Mahogany (Berry
Gordy, 1975).

Figure 5.2   Beyoncé Knowles as Deena Jones in montage sequence from Dreamgirls
(Bill Condon, 2006).

As her body colour is powdered over or washed out in bright light, and as
her long-­haired wigs blow around her face, she becomes suddenly ‘white’.
(Gaines 1988: 18)

This creation of Mahogany echoes the familiar narrative of Josephine Baker,


who, in the 1920s, left the racially segregated America for Europe, where she
became a celebrated icon of ‘the black woman as something of a super-­sexy

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noble savage’ (Bogle 2007: 92). Similarly, while enabling her to escape the
American reality of racial discrimination, the ‘white’ fashion world of Europe
reduces Mahogany to a spectacle of the exotic Other, turning her into an inani-
mate object to be desired because of her/its darkness. Tracy/Ross is not literally
becoming ‘white’, but her skin colour is disconnected from ‘black’ culture,
only to be consumed as a fashionable accessory by ‘white’ culture: ‘Losing her
black community identity, Tracy becomes Mahogany, acquiring the darkness,
richness and value the name connotes; that is, her blackness becomes com-
modified’ (Gaines 1988: 19).
Here a connection can be made to the ‘real’ Diana Ross and Beyoncé,
whose images, similar to their fictional counterparts Mahogany and Deena,
are also shaped within the context of fashion and glamour photography. For
example, both Ross and Beyoncé made the cover of Vanity Fair (March 1989
and November 2005, respectively), an event that can be seen as an indication
of superstardom, ‘particularly for African-­ American stars who rarely saw
their faces on the full cover of Vanity Fair’ (Bogle 2007: 362). Only two other
African-­American female stars have been featured on a Vanity Fair single-­
person cover: Tina Turner (May 1993) and, most recently, Scandal actress
Kerry Washington (August 2013). The two covers are remarkably alike, as
Ross and Beyoncé are both photographed with their bare back turned to the
viewer, while looking over their left bare shoulder. The Ross cover, shot by
Annie Leibovitz, shows a nude Diana wrapped in a white sheet, a childlike
pose that is reinforced by the title ‘Diana Ross: A Star Is Reborn’. With her
black skin literally wrapped in whiteness, the Ross portrait ‘contrasts white-
ness and blackness’, as bell hooks has argued: ‘Whiteness dominates the page,
obscuring and erasing the possibility of any assertion of black power. The
longing that is most visible in this cover is that of the black woman to embody
and be encircled by whiteness’ (hooks 1992: 71). Whiteness also dominates
the Beyoncé cover, shot by Patrick Demarchelier, as the ‘beylightful, beyli-
cious, beylovely [. . .] Beyoncé’ is positioned against and engulfed by an ultra-­
bright white background. The commodification of blackness is emphasised by
the word ‘HIP-­HOP’ printed in bright orange letters across Beyoncé’s body.
While initially the cover raised the question of whether or not Vanity Fair had
­‘whitened’ Beyoncé’s skin colour (which assumes that an ‘authentic’ shade of
skin colour exists), the real significant issue is the way whiteness and blackness
are contrasted. Similar to the Mahogany montage sequence, the two covers
are (using the words of the above-­quoted Jane Gaines) a play on and against
­‘darkness’ in which both Diana Ross and Beyoncé become suddenly ‘white’ –
they have been commodified.
That ‘becoming white’ is more about commodification than actual skin
colour is made clear by the portrait of Diana Ross that Andy Warhol made for
her 1982 Silk Electric album. When designing the portrait, Warhol wondered

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‘what colour I should make her – I wonder if she wants to be black or white’
(Warhol 1989: 400). The final portrait (a close-­up of her face looking over her
left bare shoulder, similar to the Vanity Fair cover) had Ross ‘looking as white
as [Ronald] Reagan himself’, as Sue Steward and Sheryl Garratt argue, con-
cluding that ‘once black artists do, against all odds, “cross over” to a bigger
audience, their fight becomes one of remaining black’ (Steward and Garratt
1984: 50). By taking the whiteness of the Andy Warhol portrait literally rather
than recognising its overt symbolism of commodified culture, Steward and
Garratt fall back upon the black–white dichotomy in which ‘remaining black’
signifies authenticity and ‘becoming white’ signifies artificiality. In her discus-
sion of the Warhol portrait, Nicole Fleetwood does not mention the colour
of Diana Ross at all (with the exception of noting her ‘shiny red’ lips), but
instead places the image in a longer tradition of Ross publicity photographs
that can be viewed as ‘a disruption of iconic whiteness’, arguing that ‘Ross is
noted for the cultivation of her iconic face and for producing a cross-­racial and
gender-­varied desirability’ (Fleetwood 2015: 63). Instead of either ‘remaining
black’ or ‘becoming white’, the Ross image challenges such a rigid black–white
dichotomy.
The artificiality of commodified culture enables photographers of both
Diana Ross and Beyoncé to use their skin colour as a matter of ‘artistic choice’
in which ‘black’ and ‘white’ are perceived as merely expressions of fashion,
seemingly free from politics. Not surprisingly then, in the Mahogany-­style
photo shoot called ‘African Queen’ by Mark Pillai for the French fashion
magazine L’Officiel Paris (February 2011), Beyoncé is pictured in a wide range
of colours, from an extremely light-­skinned portrait to a controversial ‘black-
face’ one. Although in Dreamgirls Deena/Beyoncé is also shown in a dark-­
painted full-­body shot as part of the fictional Vogue photo shoot, this time
Beyoncé’s donning blackface understandably sparked controversy. However,
like Mahogany in Rome, Beyoncé in Paris moves in an artificial and com-
modified ‘white’ world of fashion, disconnected from explicit ‘black’ politics
and history. The L’Officiel Paris photo shoot functions in a similar way to the
Mahogany montage sequence and the Vogue photo shoot in Dreamgirls, sug-
gesting that Mahogany and Deena as well as Diana Ross and Beyoncé occupy
an ahistorical and utopian space in which ‘black’ or ‘white’ no longer seem to
matter – but obviously still do. These images of Mahogany, Deena, Diana Ross
and Beyoncé may challenge the black–white dichotomy; they are produced
within an entertainment industry that continues to reduce black female artists
to icons of the exotic other, while maintaining iconic whiteness as the ideal
standard of beauty.

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The voice of independence


Beyoncé’s ‘Listen’ is one of the four new songs added to the film version of
Dreamgirls, which made the film eligible for the Academy Awards. More
importantly, the song plays a key role in the film’s narrative, appearing imme-
diately after the scene in which Curtis reveals to Deena why he chose her as
the lead singer of the Dreams: ‘Your voice has no personality, no depth, except
for what I put in it.’ The bombastic pop ballad is a direct response to Curtis,
enabling Deena to proclaim her independence from him: ‘I’m more than what
you’ve made of me/I followed the voice you think you gave to me/but now I’ve
got to find my own.’ The song showcases the vocal prowess of Deena, and by
extension of Beyoncé, thereby refuting the film’s main premise that Deena has
a weak yet commercial voice, as well as assuring the audience that Beyoncé
is vocally as powerful as her co-­star Jennifer Hudson. Nevertheless, the pro-
claimed independence is limited, revealing the patriarchal control that Curtis
maintains over Deena. Although she eventually does leave Curtis, Deena sings
the song under his guidance in his recording booth at his studio (Laurie 2012:
547).
The notion that Deena’s voice has ‘no personality’ and ‘no depth’ is remi-
niscent of comments made about the ‘artificial’ voice of Diana Ross, the main
instrument of Berry Gordy’s crossover strategy: ‘Among Motown’s singers,
only Diana Ross had a truly “pop” voice, that is, an absolutely depthless,
completely synthetic voice’ (Early 2004: 58–9). Also the patriarchal relation-
ship of Curtis and Deena resembles the one of Gordy and Ross, as becomes
clear in the way the latter two describe each other. To Ross, Gordy was ‘at
times my surrogate father, at other times my controller and slave driver’ (Ross
1993: 108), while Gordy recalled how Ross captivated him: ‘I saw the butterfly
emerge from the cocoon and I was dazzled. She was magic and she was mine’
(Gordy 1994: 195, my emphasis). Dreamgirls is all about patriarchal control,
telling the story of a black company trying to succeed in a white-­dominated
entertainment industry, a tale in which the black male entrepreneur Curtis
ends up playing the villain. Timothy Laurie has pointed out the irony that this
‘critique of black macho leadership’ is expressed in a film made by white male
producers claiming to tell a ‘universal’ story (Laurie 2012: 541–4). Moreover,
Dreamgirls suggests that, while Curtis/Berry keeps Deena/Diana under patri-
archal control, the white-­dominated entertainment industry can offer black
female artists the opportunity to find independence and economic success.
And indeed, as Mark Anthony Neal shows in his discussion of Motown’s
1970s crossover attempt into Hollywood, like Deena, Diana Ross was ‘caught
between the patriarchal struggles of two opposing corporate entities: the diver-
sified [yet white-­dominated] corporate conglomerate and the independently
owned black business’ (Neal 1999: 91). In reality, Hollywood had (and has)

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only a few opportunities for African-­American female stars like Ross, while
the actual impact of Motown in Hollywood remained relatively small. As Neal
concludes, ‘Ross’s image as an independent black woman was as saccharine as
her singing voice, while Gordy parlayed this imagery into a limited victory for
black capitalist patriarchy’ (Neal 1999: 90).
Eventually, in 1981, Diana Ross left Motown for a multimillion contract
with RCA, the same year that the musical Dreamgirls premiered on Broadway.
Her final Motown solo hit single was ‘It’s My Turn’, a pop ballad that, similar
to ‘Listen’, is a self-­affirmative proclamation of independence. In her autobi-
ography, Ross discusses how the song expressed her need ‘to step up and take
my share of chances’ after feeling ‘completely disempowered’ at Motown: ‘All
of these people [including Berry Gordy] were making decisions for me, and
I had no voice’ (Ross 1993: 203). Both ‘It’s My Turn’ and ‘Listen’ enunciate
the symbolic shift from a weak, powerless voice to a strong, empowered one.
However, whereas the enhanced vocal prowess of the performance by Deena/
Beyoncé physically embodies this shift, Ross’ voice on ‘It’s My Turn’ does not
sound distinctively different from her previous hit songs, just as ‘­depthless’,
‘synthetic’ and ‘saccharine’ as before. Rather than judging Ross’ voice in such
harsh terms, Richard Dyer and Daphne Brooks have recognised its escapist and
utopian character. As Dyer argues, Ross has ‘an almost unreal voice’ that has
‘the vocal “purity” of white song, but is also capable of all the “dirty” notes as
well’ (Dyer 1982: 36). According to Brooks, its ‘hyper-­femme “womanly” and
yet “childlike” delicacy’ makes Diana Ross’ voice ‘its own kind of powerful
statement of extremes, a queer gateway and an invitation to [. . .] never stop
imagining that we might travel to other places – kinder, gentler, freer’ (Brooks
2014: 206–7). Imagining these ‘other places’ is what makes up the ‘dream’
of Dreamgirls (and Mahogany as well), embodied by both Diana Ross and
Beyoncé. Whether or not the dream can actually be fulfilled is less relevant
than the pleasure the escapist fantasy provides, as Richard Dyer wrote about
Ross in 1982, but which also seems to apply to Beyoncé three decades later:
‘Ross epitomizes a success that is still out of reach of most black people or
women (or indeed of working class white men). But isn’t that part of her act,
too? The sheer ecstasy of the whole Diana Ross thing is an outrageous revelling
in what success could feel like, but not how to achieve it’ (Dyer 1982: 37; see
also Kooijman 2016).
‘Listen’ reappears early on in the 2013 HBO autobiographical documentary
Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream. The film’s second scene, entitled ‘Independence’
on the DVD edition, shows how Beyoncé fires her manager and father Mathew
Knowles, followed by her singing ‘Listen’ to herself in the back of her limousine
on her way to The Oprah Winfrey Show. In this way, another layer of meaning
is added to the song, now not just expressing how Deena/Diana breaks
with Curtis/Berry, but also how Beyoncé only can become fully independent

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by breaking with her father. Independence from patriarchal control is the


­documentary’s starting point and remains its main theme throughout the film.
The documentary is presented as ‘A film by Beyoncé Knowles’ (note the use
of her last name) and Beyoncé is not only its main topic and star, but also its
co-­director, co-­writer, executive producer and narrator. The narrative follows
her individual growth as artist, wife and eventually mother, all in addition to
being a superstar. However, the documentary reveals little about how Beyoncé
actually achieves and maintains her independence within the entertainment
industry. Moreover, her growth is presented as predominantly female empow-
erment, leaving race unmentioned. In the documentary, Beyoncé compares
herself to Nina Simone, the singer and civil rights activist who is known for
her political engagement and race-­conscious repertoire, which is surprising, as
a comparison to pop divas such as Diana Ross, Madonna or Whitney Houston
would seem to make more sense (Stanley 2013). Yet, instead of mentioning
her political activism, Beyoncé emphasises Simone’s artistry, using her as an
example to point out that the contemporary entertainment industry relies too
much on the glamorous façade of stardom rather than the star’s artistic merits.
In this way, and similar to the fictional Effie, Nina Simone functions as a sign
of authenticity in a documentary that most of all celebrates the flamboyant
success of Beyoncé, the Deena/Diana of her own Dreamgirls.

Life is but a Dreamgirl


On 26 June 2007, Viacom’s BET (Black Entertainment Television) network
broadcast the annual BET Awards. The show opened with Jennifer Hudson
performing ‘And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going’. One minute into the song,
Hudson invited ‘my Dreamgirl, the original Dreamgirl, miss Jennifer Holliday’
to join her on stage. Performed as a duet, the song became a battle of the divas,
with both Effies showing off their acrobatic vocal prowess. Throughout the
performance, the camera showed the ecstatic audience response in medium
shots, but once the duet had ended, two specific persons were singled out in
close-­up: first Diana Ross then Beyoncé, both applauding enthusiastically.
Beyoncé also performed, singing ‘Get Me Bodied’ from her B’Day album
rather than a song from Dreamgirls. She entered the stage in a golden robotic
armour suit, out of which she emerged merely dressed in a bikini, Mahogany-­
style. That evening, almost all ‘Dreamgirls’ were winners: Jennifer Hudson
won the awards for Best Actress and Best Newcomer, Beyoncé for Best Female
R&B/Pop Artist, and Diana Ross the Lifetime Achievement Award. In her
acceptance speech, Ross thanked ‘the brilliant and extraordinary Berry Gordy’
(who was present in the audience and was shown in close-­up) ‘for getting me
started in this industry and believing in me’, as well as ‘all of the Supremes,
especially Mary Wilson’ (who was not present). The Lifetime Achievement

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Award really was ‘honouring the Motown legacy’, Ross said, using the oppor-
tunity to promote ‘high standards’ in black pop music: ‘We do not have to say
the F-­word, we do not have to bump and grind [. . .] you can stand tall and
be classy, be ladies and gents, and have a long career.’ Ross’ words fittingly
emphasised that both the Motown legacy and her own superstardom were
all about social mobility, moving on up from the stereotypical expressions of
‘black’ culture. When Ross jokingly called her advice a ‘diva master class’, the
camera zoomed in on Beyoncé.
The 2007 BET Awards broadcast reveals not only how the star images
of Beyoncé and Diana Ross are connected, but also repositions them as the
main characters in the Dreamgirls narrative. Although both Effies – Jennifer
Holliday and Jennifer Hudson – are recognised and applauded, the television
show – as does the movie – ends up celebrating the success that the Deena/
Mahogany/Diana/Beyoncé character embodies. Like Ross, Beyoncé can be
perceived as ‘dramatizing the dilemma of crossover success’ (Early 2004: 122),
as the performances by both African-­ American female superstars address
questions about maintaining authenticity in a process of commodification, in
which authenticity is equated with ‘remaining black’, while commodification
is equated with ‘becoming white’. These questions are explicitly expressed
in both their portrayals of the fictional characters Mahogany and Deena, as
well as through their own ‘real’ star images, often challenging the simplistic
black–white dichotomy on which the dilemma of crossover success is based.
Although in the current, allegedly ‘post-­racial’ times, Beyoncé is less easily criti­
cised for ‘becoming white’ than Ross was three decades earlier, there is a clear
continuity in the way both African-­American female superstars are expected
to account for their ‘blackness’ and how their commodification is discussed in
racial terms, based on a black–white dichotomy signifying ‘authenticity’ versus
‘artificiality’. Such a black–white dichotomy might remain irresolvable, yet
both Dreamgirls and Mahogany provide ‘a magical resolution’ (Dyer 1986:
136) by relying on the excess and flamboyance of the star’s performance, pre-
senting a utopian dream space where race no longer seems to matter. Whether
or not the dream works, to echo the words of Richard Dyer, depends a lot on
how much you go for Diana Ross and Beyoncé, and sensuous montage.

Coda: post-­Formation
This chapter was written before Beyoncé released the single and music video
‘Formation’ on 6 February 2016, and before she performed the song live
during the Super Bowl halftime show the next day. As many commentators
have pointed out, with her performance, which included explicit references
to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, as well as Michael Jackson, Beyoncé
presented herself as ‘unapologetically black’, prompting the comedy television

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show Saturday Night Live to feature a sketch entitled ‘The Day Beyoncé Turned
Black’ (13 February 2016). This is not to suggest that political ‘­blackness’
was absent from Beyoncé’s earlier work. As the analysis of Beyoncé’s 2006
album B’Day (on which ‘Listen’ from Dreamgirls features as bonus track) by
Daphne Brooks convincingly shows, the album ‘articulates the questions and
concerns of black women who are wary of having their movements controlled
and policed in the public eye’, particularly in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
(Brooks 2008: 201). However, ‘Formation’ and the subsequent audiovisual
album Lemonade, released on 23 April 2016, present these political concerns
far more explicitly – and indeed unapologetically – to such an extent that they
cannot be ignored or dismissed.
When comparing the 2016 Super Bowl performance to Beyoncé’s perform-
ing ‘At Last’ as part of the festivities of President Barack Obama’s first inau-
guration in 2009, this political change becomes apparent. Both performances
were targeted at a general audience, larger than Beyoncé’s own, and both
explicitly referred to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, albeit in signifi-
cantly different ways. As I have discussed in more detail elsewhere, Beyoncé’s
performance of ‘At Last’ – from the 1942 Hollywood musical Orchestra
Wives but best known in the soulful 1961 rendition by Etta James – evoked
Martin Luther King, Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and as such the performance
became a celebration of the progress that had been made; Beyoncé serenading
the first African-­American president reinforced the promise of the American
Dream and the possibility of its fulfilment (Kooijman 2013: 147–8). Beyoncé’s
performance of ‘Formation’ at the Super Bowl, in stark contrast, emphasised
what had not been achieved, that racial discrimination is still rampant and that
black militancy (hence the Black Panthers and Malcolm X) is needed to render
such injustice visible. The two performances do not contradict each other, but
instead bring the complexities of race and gender to the foreground, thereby
reinforcing Stuart Hall’s earlier quoted reminder that ‘black popular culture is
a contradictory space’, which cannot be reduced to such simple binary opposi-
tions such as ‘black’ and ‘white’ or ‘authentic’ and ‘artificial’ (Hall 1992: 26).

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Greg DeCuir, Alexander Dhoest, Richard Dyer, Martin
Lüthe, Maarten Reesink, and the participants of the Revisiting Star Studies
conference (Newcastle, 2013), the Research Colloquium of the John F.
Kennedy Institute (Berlin, 2015) and the NEH Videographic Criticism work-
shop (Middlebury, 2015) for critically commenting on earlier drafts and
­presentations of this chapter.

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