Analysing Amy: The Girl Behind The Name
The stars include Amy Winehouse (archive footage), Mitch Winehouse, Tyler James and many more.
Amy Winehouse was born in 1983, a second child to cab driver Mitch and his wife Janis, a pharmacist, from North London. Her parents split when she was 9 years old, herself and her older brother Alex both moved to Southgate, North London to live with their mother. This was just minutes from The Priory, which was the rehab clinic in which Amy would be revisiting just months before her death.
The film starts with a home movie from 1998, which depicts a 14 year old Amy Winehouse singing along with her best friend at a birthday party. Everything seemed so together then the truth of the death foretold really came to light.
From me the main part of this film was showing different viewpoints but also different representations of what was truly going on in her life, and what brought her to this tragic end. The main representations in my opinion was the music industry, how it drove her to the ground but also her environment around her and the people that were her influence in the fall of her career.
In my opinion the representation is extensive from age, gender, influences etc. anything could have been said for these things to have occurred.
From watching the film you got an understanding of the music industry and the destruction it can cause to the people in it, much like the whole deal going on at the moment with Kesha who has been made to stay with her record label, even though the man who is her boss did allegerly rape her and has not allowed any music to be produced. They are seen as untouchable and this was the same in Amy Winehouse's case but also the people that surrounded her.
She joined the Brit school and by 16 she won herself a contract with Simon Fuller's management company, which led to her being signed by Island Records. In 2003 she released her first album Frank, but was dissatisfied with the album as she said she was 'only 80 per cent behind the album', so even at the beginning it seemed like she wouldn't have much of a say in her future. That same year she met Blake Fielder-Civil, who brought drugs and alcohol binges into the picture. in 2006 after her rapid weight loss she brought out her album Back To Black, which went on to win 5 Grammys, including song and record of the year for Rehab. Soon after this it began to go downhill, what did the music industry do? Nothing. In the beginning they gave her everything and made her rise to be the Amy Winehouse we first new but when it all began to fall apart all they wanted was the money being produced by herself, but soon even the fans were beginning to give up with her after drunkenness on stage, cancellations and erratic behaviour. She was addicted not just to the drugs but to Blake, she didn't want to disappoint him and if she did, she ruined herself.
But could she walk away from the lifestyle, not it was it now and her death was in everyone's eyes but we were all blinded, but soon to be hit with the reality.
Throughout this, what were the media doing? they were aggressively documenting and perhaps even expediting her death. Throughout Amy's career all you could see was her going downhill and nowhere near rising, but to the media it was all a story and i think everyone truly forgot that it was someone's life, it was truly like watching a film and you truly knowing the ending but not sure until it actually happens, in this case it was all too late. The film has had many different opinions and many from her father Mitch, saying it depicted him as an absentee father, but in actual fact the truth is just staring him straight in the face, the true monster's reflection has now become clear to the world and this won't be let go of now. Media was a role in her death as they depicted Amy's demise like a film, with no emotion and privacy, leaving her no time to just step back and look at what her life had become and to see how she was killing herself by keeping the poisonous people around.
After disappointments and cancellations, her audience soon became unimpressed and done with her. Many concerts she was drunk or even unable to perform due to being unstable and not under control. You see in the film how she begins to go downhill and then in the end she is not truly there, everything is building up and soon the blow would come, that truly could have been prevented. Her music was soon becoming overshadowed by the drugs and relationships, many forgetting why she was still making music. She occasionally also fought back to the audience, really she didn't know what she was standing up for other than her husband who had corrupted her life and destroyed it. Love really did make Amy blind in this instance.
Overall from the onset you see someone who could have had their life together, but then you factor in what she was living with and the influences she had been around and you do have to begin to think if one person had taken her away from the situation would she have listened and in my honest opinion i don't think you could have stopped her and the decisions she was making, the only person that she could have listened to was pulling her deeper to her death. From me her death was predicted but when it came it was a shock because you have this optmism that she might beat the lifestyle and live for her passion and talent, but those things had changed from the second she was introduced to the music industry but also family and relationships around her. The music industry allowed her to earn the money and the relationships allowed her to kill the money to in reality kill her, all truly tragic and sad.
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