Wannabe

Starred review from April 24, 2023
“Pop culture shapes us, and we shape it right back in an invigorating feedback loop of creativity and interpretation,” contends Harris, host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, in her refreshing debut, which reflects on the music, movies, and TV shows that have had a formative impact on her life. In “Isn’t She Lovely?” Harris recounts how as a teenager she took pains to tell people she was named after a lyric in the Stevie Wonder song and not Another Bad Creation’s 1990 hit “Iesha,” lamenting that this impulse was driven by internalized anti-Blackness and her desire to distance herself from the “unusual Black” spelling, which she feared would mark her as “ghetto.” Harris is an astute observer of the artist/audience relationship, as when she suggests that fans pressure artists to become politically outspoken because fans construct their own identities around their cultural tastes, and so wish for their fandom to express their values. Other pieces explore the racist pushback against casting a Black actor as Ariel in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid and the lack of narrative closure offered by the endless parade of Hollywood reboots, remakes, and prequels, serving up insightful perspectives in animated prose that affirm Harris’s status as a first-rate cultural critic. As incisive as they are entertaining, these essays are a treat.