I'm sorry, but an Amy Winehouse biopic won't redeem us

Cut to the Feeling is a monthly column by Anne T. Donahue about the art and pop culture that sparks joy, grief, nostalgia, and everything in between.

When Amy Winehouse died in July 2011, it was shocking. Despite having spent the greater part of the 2000s being dragged on newly minted celebrity gossip sites, it was largely assumed that a powerhouse like Amy wouldn't succumb to the demons we mocked her for. Yes, she'd become a living meme and a walking punchline, but she was also an artist whose lived experiences fed vulnerable ballads we played and replayed and assigned our own meanings to. Arguably, we expected to have it both ways: we wanted to ring the art out from the musician while using the person as a marker for how some people just can't handle fame. We were awful to her, and when she died, we realized it was too late to redeem ourselves.

We like to think we know better now. Nought-era tabloid mainstays like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have found their way back into our good graces and onto our TV screens, and the well-being of Britney Spears was (briefly) priority number one in the wake of her conservatorship trial. In hindsight, we've started to acknowledge our mistakes and culpability in feeding the gossip empires that have proven detrimental to the well-being of the people we purport to care about. And I guess that's why there's an Amy Winehouse movie out this week.

Back to Black tracks the life of the late singer, including her tumultuous relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil that fuelled the drug and alcohol addiction she suffered from. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, it clearly seeks to attach personhood to someone hailed as both an icon and cautionary tale. Which, on one hand, is fair: Amy Winehouse deserves to be remembered as the complex and complicated woman she was. But on the other, not even the best intentions can redeem us for our complicity in her downfall.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Give any of us enough time between the present and past, and we tend to see a larger picture take shape that gives context to why particular events unfolded the way they did. We start to understand intentions better and what parts of history led us to The Big Thing (whatever it may be) and why we received it in a specific way. Ironically, the 2000s have emerged as the latest decade to reclaim as we tell ourselves that the revival of cargo pants and low-rise jeans are different from the first time our culture-centric conversations revolved around Amy, Paris, Britney, and Lilo. And can you blame us? Nostalgia helps us make sense of an era and the people we were amidst it, and we use everything we've learned to convince ourselves that we're better and smarter now; that we won't make the same mistakes again.

And to a point, there's truth in that. This time, along with our butterfly clips and renewed Y2K aesthetic, there are also bigger conversations happening about the male versus female gaze, the misogyny that wove its way into coverage of the decade's biggest stars, and the fame machine that caused indelible damage to most people who touched it. Along with the comfort of wide-legged jeans (which I will never, ever give up again), our preoccupation with the past can shed light on where we once huddled in ignorance or failed to listen to anybody but our booming, main character voices. It's the precious illusion of being given a do-over — the greatest gift of all.

Yet we also know that we can't rewind the clock, nor can we take anything back. We can learn from our mistakes, but there's no number of Amy Winehouse biopics or investigative documentaries that will alleviate us from the blame we deserve for the way we talked about her or most people of the time. Yes, many of us misunderstood addiction, the media, and the stronghold mental health disorders have, but using tragedy as the pinnacle of storytelling — even good storytelling — doesn't do service to the folks it's meant to honour.

This isn't to say that all biopics are bad, or that to focus on the catalysts for seismic events as part of a larger narrative should be avoided. But when I think about Back to Black, I wonder what we could possibly glean outside of a sensationalist interpretation of a personal life we exploited for content. I wonder what revelations we could have that we didn't have after watching the 2015 documentary, Amy. I wonder why we keep ringing our hands about how everything that could have been different while still sharing Britney Spears' Instagram videos and making jokes about her dancing. And I wonder if we really learned anything at all, or if retrospect is a lens we like to use to convince ourselves we're not simply falling into old habits once again.