A little anger from Ms. When-They-Go-Low-We-Go-High
“So little of who I am happened in those eight years,” says Michelle Obama toward the beginning of a surprise-surprise documentary on Netflix.
And with that, we get both a thesis statement and a throwing down of the gauntlet. You think you know me? the former first lady appears to be teasing, having lived in the snow globe of worldwide fame for so long now.
As with any gifted public persona — the kind you think you kinda know because you can easily see yourself having a coffee with them — the film “Becoming,” picking up where her mega-bestselling memoir left off, answers that question in the affirmative as well as the negative. Yes, she is the Michelle we know: enormously popular, a near-consensus figure in an age of little consensus. No, she remains just out of reach, just out of view, that sort of halo doing what it will inevitably do to any person captive to it.
“I am from the South Side of Chicago. That tells you as much about me as you need to know.” So signals the journey that we go on with her, as the doc kick-starts its trail — half a tour diary (think “Truth or Dare” minus the Madonna cone-bras, as Obama went off on her monster book jaunt in 2018); the other half an introspective look into what makes this remarkable woman tick.
There are insights into her family dynamics, like in the funny-serious confession that she makes that her brother was the chosen one. My mother liked Craig better than me, Obama jests, making the point that even at White House functions, where she would be surrounded by butlers and other fawners, “my mother would be like: Where is Craig? It was like, ‘C’mon lady, I am the first lady, what more do I have to do?’ ”
There are throwbacks to a childhood in which Obama was witness to the racial vicissitudes of her neighbourhood, reflected in the school photos from then: how, in the kindergarten one, there is diversity, but by the eighth grade photo, the class is uniformly Black because of a big white flight to the suburbs.
There are also detours to the subject of marriage counselling — that having been one of the more surprising revelations in Michelle’s memoir, which made big news when it was published. When she is shown discussing that chapter in her life with one onstage moderator, Gayle King, Obama shares that what she got most out of those sessions with Barack, earlier on in the union, was one simple takeaway: “My happiness is not dependent on him making me happy.”
What ultimately distinguished this documentary for me, however, and the Michelle we have come to know? The anger that occasionally emanates from the 56-year-old, like a passing eclipse. We are so unused to seeing this from her, Ms. When-They-Go-Low-WeGo-High, that it almost comes as a relief. So sanctified is she in the image that the culture has superimposed on her as a superpositive, oh-so aspirational mortal goddess — and with Obama having been all too conscious about slipping into the trope of the Angry Black Woman during her time as a public persona — that it’s almost jarring when, for instance, she reflects on the 2016 election.
While she can wrap her head around those who voted for Trump, what gnaws at her are “those people who didn’t vote at all … people who think it’s a game,” she says. The fury of it all! Seeming to take it personally — on behalf of her husband and his legacy — Obama goes on, “Those people who couldn’t bother to vote, that is my trauma.”
When asked at another point if she still clings to her now famous motto — the whole go low/go high thing — she waits a few beats and says, “I try.” A response that is tantamount to throwing up hands and saying: “Hey, I’m only human!” Again: a relief, in that the only ones not to be trusted in these times where there is so much to be angry about in our politics — when you see the injustice, the madness — are those who do not have any rage in them. Or are resigned to things. Possibly the truly scary ones.
Another thing: it is not all that surprising that the real star of a doc about Michelle Obama is not Michelle Obama but the scores of young women — many of them of colour — whom the camera gazes upon throughout the 90 minutes of this thing. They are everywhere: looks of awe on the faces of Black girls, in particular; one woman with purple hair shown in a bout of uglycrying (as Oprah would put it) when she reaches Obama in a book-signing line.
Having been in a room myself where Obama was speaking, and having felt the palpable energy, this part of the film — though it is made by the Obamas’ production company and is nothing if not laudatory — does not lie. It could not even if it wanted to. No wonder that when Joe Biden was recently asked in an interview if he could see himself selecting her as his running mate in the coming election, he said quickly and with delight, “in a heartbeat.”
Alas, he also said, “I don’t think she has any desire to live near the White House again.”
And why would she? Not only is Mrs. Obama free at last, but staying at an altitude above politics keeps her more famous, and more influential, than she could ever be otherwise.