The Color Purple- a case study…
July 14, 2008
Scene from the Color Purple- Oprah Winfrey as Sofia
Lately I’ve been thinking about how much I Love “the Color Purple”. The Book, the film and recently the musical are all powerful portrayals of the struggles of what it meant to be a double minority in a poor, racist, and sexist society. I am most familiar with the movie rendition, and thanks to the magic of TV One (shout out to Cathy Hughes) I got a replay of it this weekend and fell in love with it again.
I really truly love this movie, not just because it’s given me these wonderful quotes:
“You told Harpo to Beat me! All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men, but I ain’t never thought I’d have to fight in my own house!”
“You aught to beat Mr____’s head in and think on heaven later!”
“You Sho’ is ugly!”
“I’s Married now!”
“I curse you. Until you do right by me everything you think about is gonna crumble!”, Until you do right by me, everything you even think about gonna fail! “
“Don’t do it Miss Celie he ain’t worth it”
“Harpo, Who dis woman?”
“When I seen you, I knowed de was a God”
“ I love Harpo God knows I do, But I’ll kill him dead for I let him Beat me”
“See Daddy Sinners have soul too”
“I hear she got that nasty women’s disease”
“Maybe- God is- Trying! ( To tell you something)”
But I really love this story because of how wonderfully it portrays the double burden of race and gender. This is a time period when a woman was only as good as the man who married her, where men ruled with an iron fist and the world had little concern for a black child in a “house full of men.” Miss Celie’s abuse begins in a her childhood. She is raped, impregnated, has her children stolen and is forced into marriage by the very man who should have been protecting her- her father. This and the rest of the women in this story are faced with insurmountable hurdles but still manage to champion over them all. It truly is the woman’s struggle to find approval.
Celie’s struggles with accepting herself and finding her own value, Sofia’s struggle to be accepted as a strong, thinking, woman in spite of race and sex, and Shug’s struggle to be valued as more than just a sexual being and accepted by her father.
The Shug/Celie Love story is often simplified as a lesbian love affair but it’s much more than than. The sexual relationship is symbolic of transformation. Both of them find what they’re lacking in each other. Celie finds beauty, power and self-fulfillment and Shug finds an identity that is outside of her sexual one. The ability to be caring and loving without someone wanting something other than that love.
But “The Color Purple” is just as much about black men as it is about women. It’s easy to look at it and vilify the men in the story as hateful misogynists. But it’s important to look at some things
!. All of these men are black, in the south, in the early 1900’s. They had no real control over anything in their lives. They worked 4 times harder for only a quarter of the pay, they were feared and hated by the society around them (remember when they were going to help Mrs. Millie and she freaked out about “Being attacked”). So these men controlled the only thing that the larger society didn’t care about and that was black women.
2. Harpo was a good man, it was the burden of the rest of society that challenged him. The call of his father (even Celie) put on him to “control his woman.” And it was Harpo’s need to prove his manhood that ruined his relationship. Harpo and Sofia could have avoided a lot of drama if they’d never listened to the advice of Mr____ in the first place.
3. Mr__________ is a brute and a tyrant, We can all agree on that, but Mr____ spent his whole life never getting “the girl”. In all books, the handsome, well off (or what would be considered well off in that day) man gets the girl of his dreams but that never did happen for him. He was in love with Shug, but Shug was in love with everyone else (including Miss Celie). He even had feelings for Celie’s Sister, but she’d rather go to Africa then to be with him. So he uses Celie as his punching bag as an escape from his own anger and perpetuates the cycle of abuse his father doled out to him
There is so much we can learn from this rich narrative. The thing I took from it is that the women in this story, give each other the respect that the rest of the world didn’t give them. How many best friends do you know that call each other Miss all the time (Miss Sophia, Miss Celie etc.). Other women didn’t call Shug a “ho” the men did. In spite of the conflict and the foolishness
Thanks Alice Walker!
What can we learn from this dynamic film/book/play??
What movie, book or play speaks to you???
Shannon the Tampa Diva
mrkeyz
