How Oprah shaped the world
New Smithsonian exhibit looks at her influence on American culture, both the good and bad
WASHINGTON — Oprah euphoria. You know it. You’ve felt it. You’ve studied the faces of those folks in the studio audience. It’s the ecstasy of anticipation.
Is she about to give me a new car? Will I also get to be a better me, have a better body, enjoy spicier conjugal relations? Be better read, happier, more productive and less crushed and deformed by my past?
Oprah euphoria is defined by the realization that the answers to these questions might actually be “yes.”
Winfrey’s power to make at least some items on your wish list come true is a testament to that most fundamental of American creeds: the possibility of personal transformation.
Watching Oprah, a new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture, also is a testament to Oprah and her extraordinary story.
But also to the rest of us, black and white, American and beyond. It’s a testament to our culture’s transformation, to who we have become.
Is it strange that a woman who is the biggest single donor to this museum should be treated to an exhibition, and so soon after its opening?
You bet it is. It’s not a good look.
Yet it’s hard to argue Winfrey is undeserving of such an exhibition. She had the highest-rated talk show of all time. It aired all over the world for 25 years. No African-American woman has had a bigger effect on the culture over the last 30 years.
Like few others, Winfrey has used her celebrity to do good. She got people reading again. She established a school in South Africa. She funded scholarships at historically black universities. She helped house people after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Her donations come to more than US$400 million.
More than that, she has encouraged people to think and care about important issues.
The exhibition has been nicely done. You walk from the first section, which evokes the America Oprah grew up in, her upbringing and her early career, into a mock-up of the Chicago set of The Oprah Winfrey Show, replete with couch, camera, production notes and green room.
There follow displays about fashion and dieting, Oprah’s Book Club, her work with Hollywood, the Oprah Winfrey Network and her philanthropy.
The exhibition doesn’t ignore the criticism she’s faced: for neglecting black issues on her show and privileging the concerns of whites; for promoting unhealthful diets; and of course, for “Oprahfication,” which the Collins English Dictionary defines as “the perceived increase in people’s desire to discuss their personal problems, attributed to the influence of confessional television programs.”
But inevitably, as the museum show shifts from examining how America shaped Oprah to how Oprah shaped America, it begins to feel like a triumphal march, a sort of biographical bubble bath.
Like many transcendently famous people, Winfrey has the aura of a freshly hatched superhero.
Her actual story is more incredible. She was born in rural Mississippi in 1954. Her ancestors were slaves, her grandparents farmers. She was raped by a cousin at age nine, molested repeatedly, sent to a juvenile detention home at 13, made pregnant at 14. She gave birth to a premature baby who died.
She would later speak forcefully about the long-term effects of trauma. Her honesty gave people around the world courage to speak up about similar experiences, similar struggles. The #MeToo movement is hard to imagine without Winfrey’s precedent.
As a child, Winfrey spent more time in church than any place besides home. She read spirituals and sermons in front of rapt congregations. She was a big reader.
Growing up, she saw few black people on TV. Those she did see weren’t hosting prime-time shows on major networks.
Winfrey built a career not just as a trailblazer in the fight for racial equality but also as one of the greatest TV personalities in history — and, as it turned out, an entrepreneurial genius to boot.
Winfrey’s show shaped the cults of celebrity, theatrical confession and self-improvement.
Along with that has come prurience, the hyper-dramatization of petty gripes, the disappearance of decorum.
Winfrey isn’t personally responsible for all that. She rode a wave that was already breaking.
In the meantime, she set a standard for listening with interest, care and dignity, and for responding with empathy, intelligence and generosity. There are things people used not to talk about. Things that needed to be talked about but were not.
Winfrey helped make that happen.