I saw the trailer for Miss Sharon Jones! in theaters and knew that I would pay to see it when it got released, but it never did in my area. Then when I discovered that it was available on Netflix, I immediately put it in my queue, but I did not watch it immediately because life. When she died on November 18, 2016, I was too sad to see it. I finally remembered to watch it after I saw her in Luke Cage and yearned to see more. It was finally time. Unfortunately just because I was ready, it did not mean that my schedule was. Even though it was a short movie, only ninety-three minutes, I had to watch it in two sittings with my mother, who was not familiar with, but loves amazing singers.
Miss Sharon Jones! is a documentary about the titular star as she fights for her life and succeeds in returning to the stage. She is best known as the headliner of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, but their career has to be put on hold when she is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Even though she has a classic sound, she only received public vindication of her talent at forty years old so the mortal blow reverberates by threatening to cut short the harvest of the fruits of her labor.
If you expect Miss Sharon Jones! to be a chronicle of her entire life, including a talking head analysis of her greatest hits, keep moving. Even though there are clips of her performing, and we hear her music, her performances are treated as bookends to the real story, her struggle to save her body and soul. Her friends jump into action. One woman opens up her home and provides nutritional advice. The documentary stresses that while we admire Jones’ voice, it is not what makes her valuable although even a casual vocal aside from Jones is better than the average person’s best day of singing.
Unfortunately society is not like that, and your innate value as a human being or even your historically good work will not get your mortgage refinanced or your bank account full of money. In the background of Miss Sharon Jones!, there is a subconscious deadline: an album and a tour. People’s lives depend on her being healthy and able to perform. They love her, but at some point, they have to think of how they will provide for their families and may need to move on. There is a tension of whether or not that is a betrayal, and it creates a small measure of insecurity for Jones whether or not their love is real (it is). It appears that she may not have family so there is an unspoken fear of being alone, which never happens. There is always somebody by her side, and even the ones that Jones pays have to hide their sorrow when she isn’t looking. Family isn’t always blood.
If you or someone you love has fought cancer, Miss Sharon Jones! may be triggering, but if you never have or are only at the beginning of the process, it may be essential to get a little taste of what to expect in the coming months even though it does not cover the period when she had surgery to remove the cancer and had to recover, only the chemotherapy treatment and subsequent testing to see whether or not the cancer is gone. It is so interesting that the hair is an essential rite of passage that is initially devastating, but later has the least lingering effect and can potentially be liberating, at least for some women.
While I’m glad that I finally had the opportunity to see Miss Sharon Jones!, I don’t consider it required viewing. I think that the entire triumphant tone feels retroactively and inadvertently hopeless considering how soon she died after its release. Rest in peace, Sharon Jones. We wish that the world was a better place so we could have known you longer.