Cardiffgal
12-24-2006, 10:35 AM
'Dreamgirls' playing my song of hope
By Leslie Gray Streeter (leslie_streeter@pbpost.com)
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 23, 2006
There are many reasons why I love Dreamgirls — the great costumes, the Motown-type extravagance and the fact that I've been dying to sing And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going in karaoke. But the primary key to my devotion is very simple.
I love it because it's about the big girl.
And very few things ever are.
This might be a shock if your only exposure to Dreamgirls has been through commercials for the movie, which opens on Christmas Day. The only girl usually mentioned in the ads is Beyonce Knowles, who plays Deena White.
But the movie's not really about Deena. No, the stand-out part in Dreamgirls is Effie White. The Big Girl. She's a total diva, too — as talented as she is difficult to deal with. She has amazing star power, little professionalism and absolutely no ability to suffer fools gladly.
She is also unmistakably large, and not in the way Hollywood usually addresses the issue: Let's cast a perfectly average size 12 and pretend she's heavy because everyone else is a 2!
As played by both Jennifer Holliday in the Broadway version and Jennifer Hudson in the movie, she's sexual, gorgeous and nowhere near the usual standard. Being big is part of what contributes to Effie's downfall, as she gets shoved out of the lead slot in the '60s trio The Dreams (think the Supremes) in favor of little, crossover-friendly Deena. She is then shoved out of the group altogether.
So things don't go immediately well for our friend Effie. But that's part of why I loved Dreamgirls, and why in 1982, on Broadway it was so far ahead of its time. It dealt with a big, black woman as a complex, fully fleshed-out character, with complex motivations.
Do you know how rare that was... how rare that is?
You can take out the word "big" and substitute "black," or "tall," or "dorky," whatever the thing is that usually gets the girl shoved aside for the more traditional leading lady.
But not this time, Barbie. Not this time.
When you are little, you learn that unless you are a certain kind of girl, it's not going to be about you. And you figure out pretty snappy whether you're one of those girls. Bifocal-wearing, crazy-haired, slightly pudgy me was not. I was never big like Effie, so I didn't have all the same issues. But I was wholeheartedly an "other." And I got it.
I learned that I could look for someone like me only on the fringes or, more accurately, somewhere behind the leading lady. I was strictly best friend or sidekick material. This was pre-Hairspray, of course. And if you think things have changed that much, consider the subsequent career of big-girl star Ricki Lake, more famous as ringleader of a freak-show carnival of baby daddies and teen hookers than as an actress.
To paraphrase Janis Ian, dreams and second-banana parts were all they gave for free to ugly-duckling girls like me. So you can imagine how excited I was when, at 11, I saw a television commercial for this Broadway musical called Dreamgirls. At that point, the musicals I was most familiar with were The Sound of Music (about a skinny blond nun who turns out to be pretty), Grease (about a skinny blond girl who doesn't become popular until she becomes a slut like everyone else) and The Wiz (about a skinny black girl who, no matter what lies the movie version told you, didn't look a thing like 30-year-old Diana Ross.)
. . . .
By Leslie Gray Streeter (leslie_streeter@pbpost.com)
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 23, 2006
There are many reasons why I love Dreamgirls — the great costumes, the Motown-type extravagance and the fact that I've been dying to sing And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going in karaoke. But the primary key to my devotion is very simple.
I love it because it's about the big girl.
And very few things ever are.
This might be a shock if your only exposure to Dreamgirls has been through commercials for the movie, which opens on Christmas Day. The only girl usually mentioned in the ads is Beyonce Knowles, who plays Deena White.
But the movie's not really about Deena. No, the stand-out part in Dreamgirls is Effie White. The Big Girl. She's a total diva, too — as talented as she is difficult to deal with. She has amazing star power, little professionalism and absolutely no ability to suffer fools gladly.
She is also unmistakably large, and not in the way Hollywood usually addresses the issue: Let's cast a perfectly average size 12 and pretend she's heavy because everyone else is a 2!
As played by both Jennifer Holliday in the Broadway version and Jennifer Hudson in the movie, she's sexual, gorgeous and nowhere near the usual standard. Being big is part of what contributes to Effie's downfall, as she gets shoved out of the lead slot in the '60s trio The Dreams (think the Supremes) in favor of little, crossover-friendly Deena. She is then shoved out of the group altogether.
So things don't go immediately well for our friend Effie. But that's part of why I loved Dreamgirls, and why in 1982, on Broadway it was so far ahead of its time. It dealt with a big, black woman as a complex, fully fleshed-out character, with complex motivations.
Do you know how rare that was... how rare that is?
You can take out the word "big" and substitute "black," or "tall," or "dorky," whatever the thing is that usually gets the girl shoved aside for the more traditional leading lady.
But not this time, Barbie. Not this time.
When you are little, you learn that unless you are a certain kind of girl, it's not going to be about you. And you figure out pretty snappy whether you're one of those girls. Bifocal-wearing, crazy-haired, slightly pudgy me was not. I was never big like Effie, so I didn't have all the same issues. But I was wholeheartedly an "other." And I got it.
I learned that I could look for someone like me only on the fringes or, more accurately, somewhere behind the leading lady. I was strictly best friend or sidekick material. This was pre-Hairspray, of course. And if you think things have changed that much, consider the subsequent career of big-girl star Ricki Lake, more famous as ringleader of a freak-show carnival of baby daddies and teen hookers than as an actress.
To paraphrase Janis Ian, dreams and second-banana parts were all they gave for free to ugly-duckling girls like me. So you can imagine how excited I was when, at 11, I saw a television commercial for this Broadway musical called Dreamgirls. At that point, the musicals I was most familiar with were The Sound of Music (about a skinny blond nun who turns out to be pretty), Grease (about a skinny blond girl who doesn't become popular until she becomes a slut like everyone else) and The Wiz (about a skinny black girl who, no matter what lies the movie version told you, didn't look a thing like 30-year-old Diana Ross.)
. . . .