"What Happened?"... Wrong Question

Dear Liz Garbus,

After watching “What Happened, Miss Simone?”, I truly felt as if I knew Nina. I tasted her voice. I could predict her next outburst. I savored the next time she would discipline the audience. I could run my fingers over her pride. Now, as I listen to her songs, I can see her hunched back protecting the piano keys. Her constant glance at the audience to make sure every member is devoting his or her full attention exclusively to her. Liz Garbus you truly breathed life into the woman and I thank you for that.

However, with this exposé comes a certain degree of discomfort: you showed Simone’s “demise”, characterizing nearly as a fundamental flaw in her persona. All of a sudden, Nina – as a result of her fame and widely-accepted success – was at fault for “losing control.” She was supposed to “keep it together.” People said she shouldn’t have played political songs. She should have kept it together. Eventually, she even believed this: She says, “I wouldn’t change being part of the Civil Rights Movement. I wouldn’t change that. Buts of the songs that I sang have hurst my career. All of the controversial songs the industry has decided to punish me for. They put a boycott on all of my records and it’s hard for me to incorporate those songs anymore because they aren’t relevant to the times.” (1:26:44)

Even the title of the film, “What happened, Miss Simone?” accentuates the fact that something “wrong” happened. It implies that Nina Simone is no longer a “Miss Simone” but an entirely different title. In exposing her life, you seem to push her legacy in a different direction. She is no longer an iconic singer, but an iconic singer with problems. My question is: why is there such a stigma regarding her problems? How can audiences expect her to go through so much without changing her behavior? How can we expect her to have witnessed the horrors of the Jim Crow era and not write a song about it? I simply hope that the audience is able to recognize that many of the struggles that Nina went through were triggered by the society she lived in. I worry that the audience and society as a whole expects Nina to fit a mold. One that isn’t realistic for anyone -- let alone a woman who has gone through so much -- to fit into.