Ken Tucker recently reviewed the 1976 movie album “Sparkle.” He summed it up by calling it “a rich, risk-taking collection.” This record¾and the film¾figured prominently in my transition from a rule following people pleasing fourteen-year-old to a fly in the face of authority delinquent. It appeared in more than one scene of my book. Perhaps you don’t believe that kids model what they see on the screen. But for Patty and me, “Sparkle” became a guidebook. We were selective though. We latched onto Sister, the doomed female character. Talented and beautiful, vibrating with potential, she nevertheless becomes enamored with Satin, a known drug dealer and pimp. Ultimately, she died of an overdose. We girls left the theater determined to emulate Sister in whatever ways we could. Thinking about how closely my friend’s path cleaved to the Sister narrative is hair raising, disorienting, and ultimately disturbing. More harrowing of course because her story is real. Like the young child she left behind. Real.
What surprised me about Tucker’s review was a complete lack of focus on the lyrics. I’m not a music critic, so perhaps it is in their job descriptions to foreground tunes over words. It reminded me of one of the first lessons I learned in an Early Childhood Development course: a toddler sees the world quite differently from you. I mean, not a revelation exactly as anyone knows we all have different perspectives. But it did make me able to more easily put myself, say, in the shoes of a small child. All this build up to say that the takeaway between Patty and me from both the album and movie was clearly so subjective that it didn’t even merit a mention in the 50th anniversary celebration by Tucker.
I took away a full spectrum of messages, but all spotlighting one theme. On one end of the spectrum the lyrics are promotional numbers extolling romantic love. On the opposite end, they elevate devotion, even submission to your man. If I had to capture it in one phrase, it would be give yourself over to your man.
A friend recounted for me recently being caught in the dragnet of a police raid back in his drug dealing days. I went on to say drug dealer ranked as his all-time favorite job.
“That’s disturbing,” I said not giving it a thought.
“You know, like Walter White. Like an outlaw.”
I don’t have to access piles of studies on the matter to know that we are influenced by what we see on screens. Young folks for the most part strive to, if not be, then appear to be “cool.” We all know this. Elvis shakes, rattles, and rolls on the Ed Sullivan show and suddenly every teen boy wants to don a leather jacket, comb their hair into a ducktail, pick on a guitar. For Patty and me Sister was our north star. And the advice Aretha doled out acted as reinforcement to exactly what Sister modeled¾put your man above all else. Speaking for myself, sifting through lyrics took precedence over the music.
Hearing the songs on “Sparkle” come at me over my smart phone shifted my mood. Getting brought to the point of blubbering reminded me of the power that the album held over me and Patty. How we started plotting our lives according to the map laid out by Sister. I’m sure there are statistics about this. One in five kids will act on a negative stereotype portrayed on the screen. I qualified as that one in five, or whatever the odds are. Thankfully, only long enough to see, as Lear put it, “O, that way madness lies.”
I managed to reverse course. If only Patty did. Clearly, a film character can’t be strictly to blame for all that happened to Patty. It’s complex. And major sidebar: the film is set in 1958, a time when being subservient to your man didn’t come off as so off-putting. But the fact that the lyrics had such a profound effect on Patty and me, and Tucker glossed over them completely, intrigued me. And he called the album “risk-taking.” How I wondered. For being an NPR review, it didn’t dive very deep. That said, I have to give Tucker props for doing a Fresh Air piece on the album at all. The album that might have changed my life.
