There have been two recent documentaries about Whitney Houston’s life, and they “shed new light on many of the particulars of Houston’s life and death: her upbringing in the church, her turbulent marriage to Bobby Brown, her shortcomings as a parent. But at a moment when musicians, generally, have greater control than before over the production and distribution of their work, the films also consider the immense pressures Houston navigated in order to appeal to a white mainstream — pressures still faced today by black and queer artists seen as crossover pop acts.”