The Bechdel Cast - The Color Purple (1985) with Ashley Ray

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

We're closing out the year with an episode on The Color Purple (1985) with special guest Ashley Ray! Check out linktr.ee/bechdelcast for info about our upcoming tour! Also, here's Princess Weekes's piece we mentioned in The Mary Sue, "Remembering The Color Purple as a Queer Story" - https://www.themarysue.com/remembering-the-color-purple-as-a-queer-story/ (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @theashleyray on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality,

cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, listeners. Just a quick tour plug at the top of the episode. If you haven't heard, we are going on tour in early February 2024. And for the most part, Jamie and I are covering Barbie. So step outside your Mojo Dojo Casa house and come see us live. First, we will be in San Francisco for another show at SF Sketch Fest. This will be February 1st. Then we're doing two shows in Sacramento on February 2nd. We are doing Barbie plus Wolf of Wall Street because we needed to double up on Margot Robbie movies. So come to one or both of those. Then we are heading to Texas. We are doing a show in Dallas on February 3rd, and then heading to Austin for a show on February 5th. And then we're coming back around to California and doing a show in San

Diego on February 10th. More details and tickets are on our Linktree. That's's link tree slash Bechtel cast. Guess what? These tickets make a great holiday gift for a loved one or for yourself. So grab those tickets. Come see us live. We always do special things at the live shows. So you don't want to miss them. We're so excited for this. And we will see you there. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's

effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. Will you write to me if someone never separates us? Not danny glover has anything to say about it and that's a great example of something that doesn't pass the test yeah it started out strong but then i fucked it up it's okay i fucked it up i'm sorry

better luck next time that's how I feel every time. You're like, well, this is in no way a reference to this movie. But like, sometimes you're like, oh, this movie is going to be about women. And then it isn't. And you're like, well, we'll get them next time. Next time, we'll try again. Yeah. I guess the name of the movie was John Tucker Must Die.

But I didn't expect that they would only talk about him. It was shocking. Well, welcome to the Bechtel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point. The Bechdel test is a media metric created by co-created by really Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace. It's known as the Bechdel-Wallace test in some circles. And it first appeared in Alison Bechdel's comic, Dykes to Watch Out For, examining how women don't really ever talk to each other in movies. And there are many versions of the test. The one that we observe is this. Two characters of a marginalized gender must have names, they must speak to each other, and their conversation has to be about something other than

a man. And ideally, it's a conversation with substance and not just like throwaway dialogue and that's the test there it is and it was also written originally not even just about women in general talking but queer women talking yes which is relevant to the discussion we're going to have today oh yeah yeah although it should be more, but I guess we'll talk about that when we get there. But yeah, we have a much requested episode coming out today that we've been sitting on for quite some time. We're covering the 1985 adaptation of The Color Purple

directed by Steven Spielberg based on the novel by Alice Walker starring Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, among many other wonderful actors. We decided we were going to sit on this episode until the new adaptation came out, which is technically, and I don't know, we could get into like the adaptation wormhole that we're getting to where it's like an adaptation of a book, of a movie, of a Broadway musical, and now it's the movie.'s kind of like a hairspray kind of narrative weirdly but that movie was announced five years ago so we've been waiting for this episode for a long

time as you're listening to it i believe that the color purple the 2023 musical version comes out this week so we we have a wonderful returning guest to discuss this film with us. Let's get her in the mix. We do. She's a comedian, host of TV I Say, and you know her from our episode on Secretary. It's Ashley Rae. Hey! Welcome back. Thanks for having me back. I am really excited to do this movie. It's a black classic. It's something you like grow up watching. So I'm ready. I'm excited. I feel not quite as ready just because there is so much like context, like context corner

is enormous. There's lots of production stuff and adaptation stuff. And I was like, I'm going to read the book. I'm pumped. I think between the three of us, like we can make this happen. We're going to, yeah, we're going to piece this thing together. We will. No, I'm very excited.

So Ashley, what's your relationship with this movie? And with the book too. Yeah. I saw the movie before the book because it came out before I was born. And in my household, I think like when you have a black mom you are just like fed this movie as soon as you're able to understand what a screen is i can't even tell you the first time i watched the color purple i just remember like my mom and aunts like quoting it constantly saying you know harpo who is this woman and you know repeating the all my life i had to fight any it's it becomes

like a family in joke for every black family and it wasn't probably until middle school that I read the book I was finally like oh I should see what this is all about we were in school like talking about this sort of anger over Steven Spielberg directing it and that backlash so I finally read it. And I was like, Oh, this is very different. I understand now that I in the movie is, is a lot I think, for a young person to watch. It is still very graphic, even though it is Steven Spielberg. But the book doesn't hold back. The book is just a lot more graphic. And that's when I started to really understand Alice Walker as a writer. And then I became one of those people who

I think anyone kind of has those phases with this movie where you like love it, and then you learn more about it. And then you're like, Oh, I see the problems. And then you come back around to wait a second, this is a brilliant movie that features like some of the best performances from black actors that tells a story that is real and needs to be told. And it's amazing. And I love it again. So I love love those cycles. Yeah. Yeah. Jamie, what's your relationship with it? I had seen this movie, but so long ago that I couldn't speak to specific plot points. I remember seeing it at school. I think we watched it in maybe history class. I'm not sure where we watched it. But I remember watching this movie in school. I remember scenes.

I remember, I mean, I certainly remember the performances stuck with me hard because everyone in this movie is tremendously famous and talented. And I didn't even realize until I was looking into the context for this movie that most of these actors were not like mainstream famous when this movie came out. I mean, the casting story is really fascinating. Whoopi Goldberg,

I guess stand-ups are stage actors. That counts. We count. We're valid. But like, we're people too. But most of these actors were successful on stage and hadn't made the jump to on screen. And by the time I saw it, you know, everyone was super famous. And I remember enjoying the movie. I remember being very affected by it. I wish, I think that it is very telling. I think we've talked about this on previous episodes, that I did watch the movie in school. I was never encouraged to read the book in school. And I wish I had been. I'll be honest, I have not read the full book. I read passages of it to prepare for this episode, especially around the relationship between Celie and Shug, which is minus the one scene, which we'll talk about is basically absent. And I read a lot of the criticism around not just the choice of Steven Spielberg for a director,

but like his choices in the ways that he Spielbergifies this story. Oh, I have so much to say about that. I can't wait to hear it. So yeah, I had not extensive experience, but I'd seen the movie before. And yeah, I mean, speaking to your point, Caitlin, there's like an infinite amount of analysis and, you know, waves of discourse over the course of the last you know 40 plus years available on not just the movie but also the book and also the broadway adaptation and also this new adaptation and there's just so much to talk about yeah yeah caitlin what's your history similarly

fairly minimal i had seen the movie once before in my phase of like, I'm a freshman in film school, and I need to have seen all those important movies. And so I watched it. And that was now like, almost 20 years ago. So a lot of the details were foggy. We don't talk about it. I had a we've never talked about this but i also went through i considered going through that phase and then i watched dr strange love oh yeah i watched a singles three stooges movie and i was like i think i get it yeah i did a godfather i did a godfather and i was like i see yes film people, film people. I didn't even get that far. Yeah. I loved Dr. Strangelove, and then I was like, all right, that's basically movies, right? And that was a good one.

Let's quit while we're at it. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Santos! Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the

united states to how it became a global symbol of mexican culture we learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring this is lucha libre behind the mask listen to lucha libre behind the mask as part of my cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying, and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds.

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Or ahead. Yeah, I saw Citizen, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or ahead. Yeah, I saw Citizen Kane and that was enough for me. Yeah. No, I really put myself through an intensive secondary film school where I was like, Good for you. This was back in the day where I would have like the three Netflix DVDs at a time. And I was just like rotating through them rapidly and then I was also going to the library and getting movies on DVD from the library and I would estimate that I watched

probably two movies a day two to three movies a day every day for like an entire year oh jeez oh my god I did have this phase i got really into film like senior year of high school but i was obsessed with one director which i think is even nerdier and i was like i have to watch every single ingmar bergman film i feel everything about ingmar bergman and i think at one point i had rented like wild strawberries the seventh seal and the virgin spring all at once and then i would like truly go get them from the library too and I put myself through that I put myself through that I have seen persona so many times and that's not good for anyone not good we have yet to cover a Bergman film here so oh my god persona would be a good one

I'm pitching it now persona I one of the women doesn't even talk she can't talk I'm very down for that someone else recommended that to me recently too and we're like heading into a phase of this show where it's like we have run out of the movies in certain eras so we must look back we've done every movie from 1999 and we must branch out do you think that was true a lot of 99 a lot of o2 Potent years. But we have to move on. Good years. Good years. But sorry. Was that the history? Oh, yes. I watched the movie.

I didn't remember much about it just because it was such a long time ago. And so upon this rewatch, I was like, especially struck by some tonal choices that were made, especially with the score. And I'm like, why is this the music that's playing during this moment or this scene? And I was just like, this is no disrespect to Mr. Spielberg and the movie itself. But I was like,

this is some weird, like, and I know that this movie has gotten this criticism already, but like this kind of like sugar coated, like fairy tale-esque version of like sugar-coated, like fairy tale-esque version of this narrative and like, and some of these like kind of stylistic and aesthetic choices that are made and just tonal choices. And I'm just like, hmm, I was not quite expecting that or didn't totally remember that. No.

But we'll dive into it further. I mean, honestly, like prior to to this i knew the main points about alice walker which is that she wrote this book because she went the pulitzer and i didn't know much else about her and she is also there's a lot going on there as well uh which we'll talk about and i feel is important to note as we would with anybody but even just like I was surprised first of all how much production information there is available about this movie and also like how I don't mean this like I don't know like not a positive or negative thing I just was surprised at how openly everyone was having the discussion when the movie

came out because I feel like we're so used to movies from the 80s having it be like 20 years later, we started to think, but it was like this conversation was going on. It happened immediately because people were so angry. I mean, essentially, Alice Walker never really cared about making this into a movie. She heard people wanted to do it. She was like, yeah, I can whip something up. Here's some different names, like The Color Purple.

She also suggested one that was The Sunset of or something i don't but that one didn't work and people were like who are you thinking about as a director obviously everyone was like spike lee it is the 80s spike lee and a friend was like you heard of this steven spielberg he's like super cool if you really want people to see this movie you probably should go with Steven Spielberg she straight up said I don't really know much about the guy but he seems like a big deal I will pick him seen et and she's like yeah sure yeah she truly was like yeah that was a good one that was a good one you know and and at the time Spike Lee was seen as a very political choice they go with Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee is pissed. He was immediately pissed when this is announced. He starts working with the NAACP before the film is even announced to start a campaign to discredit the film as coming from a white director being a whitewashed version of the story.

And specifically pointing out that it is this narrative is being used by a white man to tear down black men. That the film is being so unfair to Mr. and the men in it because a white man is directing. So they do this whole campaign. The Color Purple comes out. It was nominated for an incredible amount of Academy Awards. 11, I think. Yeah. 11.

Won nothing. Doesn't win a single one because of this Spike Lee campaign. It's such a, it was so impactful. And everyone saw it. All the black magazines, Ess it, like, all the Black, you know, magazines, Essence, they were all writing about this. There were all these debates about it before it even came out. So, I think that is truly why there was so much discourse behind everything. And even people in the midst of making it knew that they were facing these judgments,

so they tried to really document the process of making it and how the black people who were hired to be in this movie did have a say. And I think that's the only reason that any of that exists today. Interesting. I also read that the Hollywood Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP issued a formal complaint against the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Scientists after the movie didn't win any of the 11 awards academy awards that it was nominated for saying that it was like all those snubs were a blackout meaning like this is the industry's attempt to you know suppress black projects which does happen all the time and i'm not saying that that had nothing to do with

why this movie didn't win as much as it should have it is a complicated where it is also at the same time people weren't you know rushing to celebrate a fully black cast movie at that time period right but it's you also have to know the studios want spielberg to direct this because they knew that would give it the chance to win something. They tied it to a white director specifically to kind of get around that. So I think it ends up hurting it, like it being both issues. Like I think it ended up just kind of stepping on its own feet by going, we got to have a white guy if we're going to get any sort of attention. And then obviously black directors were like, why do you have to do that? We're also going to be unhappy. And then no one's happy right right except for us the

audience because i mean we got a treat of a film the premiere of the movie was protested by i think that same chapter of the naacp because of its depiction of rape which again is like a very i think valid thing to discuss and then there's so many perspectives on this movie. I also watched a clip from Whoopi Goldberg two years ago, in which she was discussing how frustrating it was to be starring in this film and have this beer breakout and feel like there were people in her own community that were like trying to sabotage this movie. And it's just like, yeah, that also makes total sense. Yeah, right. And she also had Alice Walker herself trying to just like she just didn't really care for it. She was kind of like it was fine.

And then every few years she'd be like, actually, guys, just not really a great movie. Really not happy with how they did it. And one of her big issues was how they treated the character of Mr. in the book. He is more layered. He has more dimensions. He is more like a grandfather figure at times not that you ever truly feel sympathy for him but there are more layers there moments of kindness that's totally gone in a spielberg film because he needs the big

bad the villain until he has like his moment of redemption so i can understand that and obviously that criticism fed into these complaints from black male groups who are like see it's just made to make us look bad but you just can't win here yeah it's unbelievably just a shrekian number of onion layers going on yeah with this discussion because it's like at the same time am i mad that this is a hollywood movie that did a twist and made a man one-dimensional not really it's not his story right i mean i think it seems like a really strong example of like what an impossible position black creatives are put in in this time in particular but also still where like you're saying ashley it's like well let's get the prestige white director which i'm sure helps with your budget it helps with

your marketing it helps with your chance at awards and you know steven spielberg is this proven star making director so it's like okay then alice walker spoke to this pretty openly of of she was essentially convinced that like the best way to have a successful movie with an all black cast is to work from within the system. And she became amenable to that. But then like you're saying, Ashley,

it's like, there's a tremendous amount of backlash that comes with that. There's choices that feel dissonant and bizarre. Oh yeah. I mean, the way that as Mr. Is presented in the movie combined with the weird last 10 minutes like was he that bad you're like yes yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah the only good side is

that he doesn't bother them like he sets up this reunion and just gets kind of like i'm gonna i'm gonna just stay over here enjoy what i did not come over and tell you i did it and it's like okay that's the one redeeming thing but i still wish she'd sliced your throat like we could have in the scene where she's teaching her how to spell uh netty is teaching celie how to spell i was like i teach her how to spell poison girl teach her how to spell poison teach her how to spell shovel get her in the ground get him in the ground please like i also at the end i was like i don't care how close they still live to each other i don't like how nearby he is don't like that they're neighbors and not not a fan of that uh just like this whole time she's just been living next to her weird ass stepdad who assaulted her

and okay okay yeah i mean i kind of like he disappears for so long yeah you by the time she goes to the funeral you forget his relation to them you're like who is this is this mister i was like who is this man yeah because i mean in the aging makeup in this movie is all over the place where sometimes you're like how old is everybody and everyone seems to be there's there are scenes in this movie. And again, I really enjoyed the movie. It's a beautiful movie. There are scenes where there's everyone at the table.

You're like, I have no idea. I have no idea. Everyone's a different age. There are children and adults that I'm like, who are these people? Are they grown up children of this? Who? And who is this little kid? And I never knew who anyone was unless they were like one of the core cast.

Yeah. Like this whole second half of the movie, Oprah's character, Sophia, looks older than Celie. And it's kind of like Whoopi Goldberg was like, I just don't want to do aging makeup. Like, just not me. I'm not doing the aging makeup. Everybody else can do it. She's like, it's my first big role. Like, sorry. I'm not doing the aging makeup everybody else can do it big role i'm not doing it but she looks the same like they show her when she hits like 18 19 she looks the

same for the rest of the movie yeah and everyone else has like at least like gray spray paint in their hair but you know it's a choice it's still again a great movie i under yeah i was like i understand that like different characters are living different, like it makes sense that they would look older. But yeah, in a few scenes, I was like, huh. But there's so much to talk about with this movie that we should probably just start talking about what happens. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap. And we're back. Okay, so I'll just place a trigger warning here for such things as

rape, incest, child sexual abuse, domestic abuse, a lot of heavy stuff happens in the story. Okay, so we open. It's the early 1900s in rural Georgia. We meet two sisters, Celie and Nettie, who have a very close and loving relationship. We learn that their father is sexually abusing Celie, who is the elder sister. She's 14 years old. Celie is pregnant. She gives birth to a baby who she names Olivia, but her father takes the baby away immediately, which is the second time he has done this. The sister's mother dies shortly thereafter. Their father remarries a young girl about Celie's age. And then another man, Albert, also known as Mr., played by Danny Glover, approaches Celie and Nettie's father wanting to marry Nettie. And their father's like, you can't have Nettie, but you can have Celie.

So Albert takes Celie home. He wants her to care for his three children and to cook and clean. And he is incredibly ungrateful and controlling and abusive. One day, Steely sees a woman carrying a baby through town. And she just has this kind of gut feeling that it's her baby, Olivia, that her father took away from her and she talks to the woman she holds the baby who this woman says oh i nicknamed her olivia and so it's like hmm that's the name that she gave to her baby oh that scene is brutal yeah it's tough as well she comes with a really dumb lie because obviously uh celia is like that's why would you just randomly call your child olivia when what that's yeah not a nickname and she's like well look at her eyes only an old person would have eyes like that so i call her olivia and i'm like but that's not that's that doesn't connect don't

see the logic there what does she think olivia is does she think it's short for Old Olivia? Yeah, like Old Ivy? Like what? Old Lady Eyes? What? I'm not sure. Olivia Old Lady Eyes. That would be, I would really respect that if she was committing to that opinion. Yeah.

You know, Olivia Old Lady Eyes. It makes sense to me. Anyways, bye. Bye. Bye. lady eyes it makes sense to me anyways bye okay so then netty comes to stay with seely because their father was trying to sexually abuse netty as well so she ran away to be with seely seely doesn't want to stay in the situation she's in you know this is a prison for her living there with mister so netty vows to go to school and to learn to read and write so that she can teach seely so

that they can run away together and be educated and be able to like make it on their own right it's not explicitly said but it's like once Celie is given to Mr. Her education. Oh, stop. Stop. Yeah. Yeah. She's not going to school. She's truly there to deal with his horrible kids. They're horrible kids. It's not rude to say they're horrible children. As soon as she gets to the house, Harpo, the oldest son, throws a rock at her head. Yeah.

Which causes her to bleed. And in the book, she has headaches throughout her life and stuff from it. But in the movie, they're just like, these kids suck, right? Yeah. I also like that Celie, that's like the first person that you hear her say anything like truly profoundly negative about. She's like, also, this kid sucks. I can't stand it. These kids are rotten.

Yeah, she won't talk about anyone else. She's very just timid. But when it comes to the kids, she's like they are the devil i hate them even netty's like you got to show them who's boss and she's just like no they suck there's no hope for these kids they're too horrible okay so one day albert attempts to rape netty when she's on her way to school, but she is able to fight him off and get away. And then this causes Albert to like kick Nettie out of his house. Celie is devastated. She calls out after Nettie to write to her and Nettie says,

nothing but death could keep me from it. Not long after that some mail arrives and steely's hoping she's getting a letter from netty albert is also excited because he's expecting a letter from someone named shug avery an old girlfriend of his we're like shug shugug, shug. Yeah. We're cheering. And Mr. Slash Albert tells Steely to never open the mailbox. He, like, intercepts all the mail that comes in. So if she was ever receiving mail from Nettie, Steely has no way of knowing because he's taking all the mail. Yeah, and he tells her he's figured out a way to mess with the mailbox

so if she touches it, he'll be able to tell. It's just one of the other ways he manipulates her into just staying captive on this farm, basically. Yes, exactly. We cut to seven years later. It's now 1916. Steely is now Whoopi Goldberg. And she's still in this house with Mister mister who is still a piece of shit he's getting ready to see

sugevery who's coming to town and in all this time it seems like netty has never written to seely and she worries that netty might have died because she says nothing but death could keep me from it yeah mr's son harpo played by willard e pew is in love with a girl named sophia played by oprah winfrey she is pregnant and they're about to get married but mr approves of sophia because she is like headstrong and he's like i don't trust her so she's like well fuck you then i'll just be over here basically calls her like is he slut shames her and is like oh you don't know that harpo's the dad and sophie basically like sees how he's treating seely and is like i don't need

to be a part of this family when you get it together you come find me come to me right and then we cut to some time later when she and harpo are getting married and they have a baby together and sofia again does not put up with anyone's bullshit and harpo is like silly what should i do about sofia she's too headstrong her personality it's she has a personality and I don't like that. I don't like that. How do I get her to be like you? Just totally silent, giving me, you know,

shaves, doing my laundry. How do I do that? Yeah. And Celie, because all she knows is abuse, she suggests that Harpo beat Sophia, which he does. Sophia clearly fights back and then sofia confronts seely about it being like how dare you suggest he hit me like what the fuck yeah i think in like that's one of the most iconic it's the most iconic by line it monologue maybe and it's top five in all movie history yeah delivered by oprahed by Oprah. Just Oprah to all my life.

I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy, my mother, my siblings. And I'll be damned if I thought I was going to have to fight in my own house. It's it's incredible. I'm sure every black listener has heard their mother deliver this. It's yeah. We'll talk about this like later in the episode too but the continuity i mean and also like oprah's personal connection to this book

oprah i think has been involved in every single major adaptation of this book she's also a producer on the broadway musical i believe she's also a top-ranked producer on the new movie. Yeah. She's a real Alice Walker stan. She's super into it. And she brings it. I mean, I truly believe this is one of her best performances. Sophie's one of my favorite characters in it. Yeah, same.

Yeah, her whole arc is absolutely beautiful. And it's set up here. I think before this moment, you kind of think she's, you know, just going to be another adversary to seely you don't really think they're gonna end up being supportive of each other but this moment of honesty ends up bringing them closer together so yeah yeah true so there's this confrontation and this cycle of abuse between harpo and sofia goes on for a while until one day Sophia takes all of her children and leaves Harpo. Some more time passes.

One night, Albert slash Mr. comes home with Suge Avery, played by Margaret Avery. This is the first time we're seeing her on screen. She is sick. She's drunk. We're not really sure exactly what all is going on with her, but she's belligerent. She just has early 1900s disease. She's just very flush and sweaty and is just talking weird.

And you're like, okay, I get to send you a descent. I don't even know what to say. She's in, she's definitely in the bath and we're like, yeah, yes.

I'm like typhoid fever. She has something, but she's very just like sweaty bath and we're like yeah yeah yes i'm like typhoid fever she has something but she's very just like sweaty and you're like oh yeah she's ill she's ill for sure according to mister's father she has that nasty woman's disease quote unquote and you're like and we're like been there yeah honestly we all have had the nasty woman's disease. That nasty woman's disease. Went to a room and sat in a bathtub for a couple of weeks and then I was ready to drink. Was good to go. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. So, Mr. insists on making Shug a meal, but he has no idea what he's doing in the kitchen. And Suge is like, what the fuck is this? This is disgusting. She throws it against the wall. And then Celie makes a delicious meal and Suge likes it. And this is the beginning of their friendship.

Yes. Now it's the summer of 1922. Harpo and his friend Swain, by lawrence fishburne are building a juke joint they open it up suge performs at it as like a singer and dancer um one night silly albert harpo are all there and then sophia shows up with her new boyfriend harpo meanwhile is with a woman named squeaky we will find out her real name is mary agnes later on that's one of those very spielberg moments of the film where it's like this very serious thing and then there's just a running

joke where it's like squeaky your name i thought your name was squeaky squeaky mary what and it's like do we need this and you're just we need this beat mr spielberg can i have a word yeah and it's like also the actress playing that her voice is i need to hear the notes steven gave her because you can hear him going can you go higher can you go squeakier can you be squeakier more squeak and you're just like her line delivery in this scene she confronts harpo who has started dancing with sofia and she's like you she left you you're my man now and then she starts with harpo who's this woman and it's this is such an annoying squeaky i repeat it all the time anytime i'm shocked by anything i say harpo who's this woman so iconic but at the same time one of those characters where i'm like oh steven

spielberg really was just like i think we get some comedy in here let's do it let's do it it felt the same sort of thing with mister's father where he was sort of this like he is kind of like patriarchy the man character but he's also like you're supposed to kind of be like, he's kind of a goofball. You're like, especially in the final scene that he's in, in the like dinner scene where Whoopi Goldberg gives this amazing monologue, basically being like, Mr. You're the worst person on earth. And I curse you and I'm gonna maybe try to kill you,

but then I won't. But he's like, he's being such a cartoon. So many characters. He's in a different movie in that scene yeah he's gonna totally and his lines are just like oh mary what what's her name or any and he's just like throwing lines or he's like the chickens all run in the hen house this place is crazy in here and you're like maybe she can sweep the caboose of the train dude this woman has a

knife to your son's throat get a little serious let's get serious his reaction he's just like wow what an interesting wednesday yeah what is this his final scene is uh so after this celie's left and he walks into his son's house and there's animals everywhere his son is just laying on the floor looking dead yeah yeah and he's not like my son might be dead oh no he just like pokes him with his cane and is like, I guess you've been drinking. Right. It's like, Oh no squeak. Yeah.

I agree that like the performance she's giving feels sort of like another movie and I'm sure was requested, which is frustrating. And also she is far more present in the book than she is in the movie. And clearly like the screenplay scales down her presence in the story pretty considerably but also like they leave in in that same dinner scene that squeak is like i want to leave with shug and sealy and everyone's like oh okay great and then she doesn't oh i thought she does go with them is she in the car like she was she's in the car there's no like

she does go sing she does leave she does leave because then harpo and sofia get back together okay so like it's implied she goes and does have fame but like doesn't come back but then it's all just kind of thrown in their very last minute for her right so it feels like an afterthought like oh i guess she wanted to do that too okay whatever who cares if she goes or doesn't come back yeah and we're like who is she again like why don't we know more about her yeah like why are we supposed to care about her okay and the book she also has like a more prominent role in like negotiating Sophia's prison sentence. Like there's other things that she does that seem more active and like really put her in the story as an important character that it just felt like at some point in the production, they were like, well, we don't really have space to include Squeak's full story. And I also think when you get Oprah Winfreyrey in a role you know you gotta kind of just focus

on one of harpo's love stories i'm not going with squeaky okay i yeah it's true i mean yeah given the choice but i'm like but why is it a choice yeah yeah and then why does sophia get back together with harpo he's not a good partner anyway so we're we're in this juke joint and squeaky sees harpo dancing with sofia and she gets jealous and she slaps sofia and then this big bar brawl breaks out afterward suge and celia are like just kind of hanging out one-on-one. They're bonding. Suge has Celie try on her dress. She encourages Celie to smile because Celie always hides her smile because her father had told her that she had the ugliest smile ever. And then Suge says that she's planning to head out of town and Celely doesn't want her to leave.

And she says that, you know, Mr. Beats me when you're not here because I'm not you. He beats me for not being you. And then Steely and Shug share a tender kiss. Yeah. On the lips. And that's all. And that's it. Steven Spielberg was like, and that's all and that's it steven spielberg was like and that's enough of that and yeah this is not lilith fair stop it ladies is what he said behind the camera and they backed away the book is gay like the book is so so gay they're so gay and the movie

you're just like, what is that? What is this kiss? What is it? Is this just like, do they think this is what black ladies do to each other? What is this? It's so barely there that I completely forgot that that was a component of the movie until I rewatched it. That's fine. I remember that scene very clearly from what I saw in school. But I was surprised watching back.

I was like, honestly, in 1985, i was surprised watching back i was like honestly in 1985 i'm surprised that much was done true yeah which is saying nothing yeah i mean there's a lot of again i was like pleasantly surprised i guess that at very very least spielberg has come out and said that he regrets pulling back i mean which is easy to say in retrospect but yeah now that everybody loves gay people i'm sure you would have loved to make it gayer yeah he's he's a man of the people he's like oh uh this is cool now i would have done that i should have done that yeah and i should have i am sorry well coulda shoulda woulda mr steve well got his, got his ass. Got his ass. Got him. But it's just, I feel like if you haven't read the book, that scene probably just feels very out of place. And I guess it does help to give you an idea

that Celie isn't like addressing Suge with anger when she could. She could be jealous or upset that this woman is her husband's mistress. And it just really shows you how little she cares about Mr. How much she just like feels that she's forced to be in this house and stuff. Yeah. But you know what it would be great as a scene where they are gay.

So yeah, which that is like one aspect of Celie's character that I love. So like it makes total sense given her personal history where she is never going to be turned against a woman. Yeah. Because she has no she's been given absolutely subzero reasons in her life to trust men. So why would she allow you know even that attempt at manipulation will never ever work on her and doesn't and doesn't work on really any of the women in this story. They're like nice try. Yeah. We're going to take Celie with us. I mean, that happens with Suga a number of times too,

where Albert tries to turn her, you know, tries to pit women against each other in a way that sometimes in real life, more often in popular movies, is always successful. Yeah. And it doesn't fly here. Yeah.

He thinks he can say like, oh, Nettie, you're so much prettier. You're so much prettier. I love how you wear that dress, Nettie. And instead, Nettie just goes to Celie and is like, isn't he so stupid when he says all that stuff? When he's like saying my teeth are pretty?

What a loser. Yeah, what a disgusting monster. And even their father, you know, he gets remarried and has this opportunity to like leave everything to his new wife. And it seems like she could just run away with this house and all the land. But she's like, got the money like you guys have the have your stuff back like i i

don't need to turn against other women and celie's like let's shake girl i love this yeah it's just yeah she's so good in that respect and but you know maybe it's because she's a little gay and maybe we should export that steven yeah maybe there's some more context there ever think about that mr steve's yeah i'm just gonna call steven spielberg mr okay so silly packs up her things hoping to go with shug to memphis and escape mister but he catches silly and she can't escape she remains trapped. We see a scene where Shug tries to connect with her father who she had mentioned she has a difficult, if not estranged, relationship with him. He is a pastor who is very ashamed of her. He thinks that she's a sinner and her attempt to reconnect does not work

she did have nasty woman's disease she well and that's why he doesn't want anything to do with her yeah then we meet this white woman named miss millie played by dana ivy she's the mayor's wife. And she, I'm excited to talk about her because there's a lot of stuff going on with Miss Millie. But she asks Sophia to be her maid. And Sophia is like, hell no. And I quote, and then the mayor slaps Sophia. So she punches him. And then all the white people around gang up on her. And Sophia is then brutalized by the police and then arrested and put in jail for many years. We cut to 1930. Sophia is released from jail and now has no choice but to work for Miss Millie being her maid. She is completely dejected and broken, a shell of the person she once was. She hasn't seen her children in eight years.

There's a scene where Celie helps her out at the market. It seems like Sophia cannot read or can't read well. So Celie discreetly helps her with a shopping list in what I thought was a really wonderful moment. Sometime later, Suge and her new husband come to visit sealy and albert and while the men are talking suge goes to get the mail and if you want to know what they're talking about it's how they both slept with suge that's that's the whole conversation is that you had a your way and i had a my way but we both had a let's have a drink to having her and are they smashing raw eggs on their head yes uh it's it's easter so the kids and then they're all painting easter eggs and then they smashing raw eggs on their head yes uh it's it's easter so the kids and then they're

all painting easter eggs and then they just get so drunk they just start smashing the eggs on their heads and just being like we slept with the same lady life is great so actually i am going off of synopsis versus but it seems like to me in the book that the movie pushes her getting remarried ahead in the story. So that like she comes back with a husband. Like I think that she has a husband towards the end of the book. And all of the queer subplot is removed from the movie. That Celie is devastated that Shug has gotten remarried. And that's like a huge thing.

But instead they cut the love story between suge and seely and add the husband way earlier for reasons i didn't quite understand and it doesn't make sense and seely doesn't seem to really care mine that should got married and mr more importantly is like so great about it he's like i love this guy this is so cool i lost my mistress but i've gained a friend and no real reason for why Mr. As we have seen him up until this point in the movie would react that way. But sure, sure. She's like, yeah, it just kind of happens and they move on.

That's the husband. We don't also know anything about him. Which is like, you know, this is not a movie about men. But yeah, that was like another character that it was like, he changes kind of from scene to scene because he's like best buds with Mr. But then when he's also like integral and taking Celia away, there's no acknowledgement that they were ever friends. Like, it's just confusing. And it's also, yeah, it's very like, why this guy?

Like, most of it seems like so much of Suge stories about her freedom, wanting to prove herself to her dad. And so why marry this guy? And it does seem like she just gets married to make her father happy. Maybe there's a whole scene where she is standing on the road with her ring with another very famous line from the movie. I was married now, which is what my sister said when she got married uh and

like my mom says it all the time look paul i was married now i was married now and the dad doesn't care he's like you're still a harlot and a whore and just keeps going so talk about someone who did not earn his amazing daughter back in his life no no but and it's just i wish we had explored why suge decides to give up her freedom for this guy but maybe it's just because he has a nice really cool yellow car good enough for me yeah could be that i was also confounded by that just like i was confounded by why sophia gets back together with harpo i mean and also it's like that doesn't necessarily mean that like, I mean, I think it's confusing

because in a Spielberg movie, everything seems like, and all is as it should be. And so that undercurrent, I feel like very likely undercuts, I would guess that Alice Walker portrayed that in a more nuanced way of like, I don't love that they got back together,

but it's not inconceivable that at this point in history, they would. Yeah, fair. Or something like that. Butielberg movies are not really at least at this time not capable of that level of nuance yeah i would say sophia's story definitely has more complexity in the book and the movie by the time there's a whole thing with miss millie where she like barely ever gets to really see her family because Miss Millie is so horrible. And finally, when she is like having dinner with the family and it's kind of clear she's like back around more, it's because she has like dementia or something. She just like rocks back and forth.

She says she's like confused all the time. And it's clear like they had no more use for her. So she finally like can go home and then she just like ran it like just becomes herself again when squeaky starts laughing at harpo and harpo says one of my favorite lines from the movie it's bad luck to laugh at a man you're just like it's bad luck for a woman to laugh at a man and sofia just busts out laughing she's like i've had enough bad luck to laugh at a man the rest of my life then. And then she literally says, Sophia's back. Sophia's back home. Like, oh, Sophia is back.

And that's how Spielberg does it, is like that one line magically makes her wake up again. And in the book, it's more like she sees Celie have her freedom. She sees like this forgiveness that's able to happen. She realizes, you know, Harpo is the product of this long line of like horrible evil men. But at the same time, he is trying to change that. And his character also has way more that happens with like the

juke joint and him like stepping up and apologizing about like squeaky and stuff. So it makes sense. But for Spielberg, it's just, but if they're holding each other in a field, that's all you need. That's all you need. I thought that when Sophia was like, I'm back, I'm back. And she does seem to revert back to her kind of old self or like, you know, very outspoken. Instantly. And so I thought that was gonna lead to her being like, and I'm going with you too. Shug, Seelie, I'm hitching a ride and i'm

getting the hell out of here also but instead she's like hey harpo and i'm like what yeah that doesn't make any sense she's like i'm back and i'm ready to get back to work at the juke joint let me pick up a shift and yeah thank you for that context because that arc was very confusing to me and i mean again it's like i'm not necessarily complaining that this movie doesn't give me like more information about the men necessarily but i also i feel like there's a at least in the movie it dropped threads between examining i mean you're given like three generations of men under the same roof in a way that like it's implied that their behavior is connected and learned but like you don't really quite get yeah into it and honestly like at first it took me a while i had to

keep reminding myself that harpo was albert's son because they look the same age yeah the whole second half of the movie they look the same age uh they just kind of like said just put the same aging makeup on everybody we'll figure it out who even knows how old black people are anyway is what i think steven spielberg said behind the camera i would guess that he was just like go for it like yeah who know i don't know every black person could be 30 years old to me who cares yeah he's like i've heard the expression black don't crack so yeah so you know do your thing with the makeup i guess maybe but at the end of the movie like i think the worst are harpo who suddenly looks like he's the grandfather netty who looks the exact same she did when she left netty comes back and you're

like is she still 15 like i know she looks incredible yeah oh i felt bad for c i was like i mean celia certainly had a very difficult life. But I'm like, this feels aggressive. She's just truly like a baby face, looks the same age as Celia's children. I was like, what was their age gap at the beginning? If she looks 22. Yeah. It's confusing. I did appreciate there is a small role played by a formative childhood crush of mine carl anderson

is in this movie i love carl anderson so much what character does he play he plays reverend samuel like he plays the new adoptive father barely oh yeah yeah he's barely okay in it for like zero seconds but i was immediately like oh oh, because he played Judas, a JC superstar and really changed my life. And I had this like experience when I was a kid where I was like, I loved JC superstar and I loved him so much. He had like, he was just amazing. And then I found out that it was like my first time understanding that not all movies were made this year. Because my mom was like, look, it's Karl Anderson. I was like, why is he old?

I'm furious. Yeah. Also a bigger character in the book. Like he ends up marrying Nettie, which I guess is kind of implied in the movie because there's an old man there. He's there. So and you're like i guess that's okay sure i can't i'm like i'm not complaining about it but i was i am complaining about or intend to complain about how much more you find out this was like one of the sections of the book

that i did read is netty's full story that came in through those letters which is like really like i mean changed and also like alternatively changed or glossed over as it's presented in the movie but it's like a far more nuanced like much longer story oh yeah in the book in the book it's like oh yes there's a full narrative it just like goes over the full course of uh netty's life how she ends up in this situation she ends up becoming when mr kicks her out she ends up becoming like a maid to the pastor and his wife who took celie's children and somehow netty just kind of knows she's like i feel like these are my niece and nephew like i feel it i'm gonna join this family they go do mission work in africa she goes with them and we see like the whole time his wife is starting to suspect like did you cheat on me with netty and have our kids there's a whole arc there of like potential like her not trusting her

and then like slowly building a friendship when she reveals like no i'm the aunt i've known i think all this time uh she ends up like marrying the pastor samuel it's a whole deep thing her kids or i guess celie's kids adam marries and there's an in-depth thing into this woman he marries who we see at the end but in the books they do the facial scarring yeah they do the facial scarring with their wedding and there's also a genital mutilation and it's supposed to just be for the bride but adam does it with her in order to like you know have solidarity he's like i will also do the facial scarring in the movie obviously steven spielberg was like i cannot have a genital mutilation beautiful he's like oh my goodness

no so instead we're gonna have it be done to sealy's children and instead of it being a marriage genital mutilation thing it's like a coming of age facial scarring ceremony that we like see played over drums while sealy is possibly gonna cut mr's throat while she's shaming him so and like they change it completely. And it's kind of like, why even keep it? Like, why did we need this? Right. That editing choice too,

to like, didn't, didn't work for me. This is one of the Spielberg moments where I'm like, I think a black director would have been like, Hey, it feels a bit here. Like we are suggesting this African tribe is savage,

evil for doing this. And we're presenting celie in a moment where she may do a savage thing of killing someone and shook stops her at the last minute like we're kind of saying they're more you know less savage or more human or emotional than these people in africa but this is spielberg so he doesn't get it he's just like yeah but the drums match up right isn't that cool? And when she tells Mister to put her head back, the kids put their head back so they can get cut. Isn't that a cool cut?

And it's just one of those things tonally where it's a little like, Stephen, why did you do Africa this way? What are you, why? Truly, and then why when Adam and Olivia, Celie's kids, who I think for the first part of their lives lived in the U.S. and then also were living in an English speaking home their entire life.

Why do they not speak English? Why do they not speak English? Yes, this is, and what I think it kind of says is netty is a horrible teacher uh she taught she taught celie how to read and stuff and then suddenly she never teaches her own niece and nephew how to speak english also at one point celie says like my kids are in africa learning different languages and i was like they didn't pick up english though

like what what was the first even though their parents and their like nanny aunt would have been speaking English but it's one of those other moments yeah where it's like Spielberg where you just like Africa so let's you know they got to say Swahili or something right and it's like that's not how that would work and that's a whole part of the book is them navigating africa as african americans and the differences they face and how they're treated and some people treat them like they're british or some people treat you know and he just you can tell he was like i can't handle this he was like don't don't no no no no i no no thank you i can't uh no how about we just have their african village get? They cut someone, we're done. Yeah.

Right. And the book, there's like a whole process of, I mean, again, I feel like it also has to do with like, how missionary work is presented. Where in the Spielberg movie, it's like, well, it was going great. And then something terrible happened. Where in the book, it's more subtle. And Nettie becomes really discouraged

with how missionary work like how that has sort of manifested in africa she's over it which of course is like not touched on yeah and also there's more background about netty and celia's paternity yes that is not touched on yo and it's a very important detail and part of the story because you spend most of the movie going oh no this poor girl victim of incest her kids byproducts of it how horrible but she still loves them and wants them back and then in the movie it's just like a blip where sealy's like and then i found out actually pa was my step pa kids are good right it's truly just like after the and so my kids aren't my siblings and my kids are just my

kids that's great anyway moving on zooms through it zooms through and it's like this is a major thing the person who's she's at the funeral this person who changed the course of her life she finds out actually it's a whole story of like their birth father was a store owner who got lynched he you know was like respected in the black community and basically implied like a civil rights leader he gets killed the mother like loses her mind and in that moment of just depression and issues she's going through this guy swoops in and realizes oh i can get control of her house and her store and all this land because she's so out of it like i can just marry her and also get access to her young daughters and he takes advantage which that's a compelling story

steven spielberg why gloss over that yeah and like erases that super super important plot point about their mother because it's like there is a lot i mean and this at least does come through in the movie is like there's a huge connection like the emphasis is put on mothers and daughters over mothers and sons over fathers and daughters like there's a strong i mean even like with the emphasis of celie is thinking of olivia talks about olivia more than she talks about adam yeah or adam which is a little like okay i mean you also knew adam longer like you but okay you don't even care don't okay okay sure were you guys not cool uh but yeah like the emphasis is put on mothers and daughters so why not include more about their mother because like the mother is celie's like old enough to understand when her

mom dies like they're teenagers by the time she dies so it's a little like what was their relationship like it it's hinted at that she the mom is aware that the dad is assaulting her and was angry and they've like brokenhearted but he makes her feel like she's the reason your mom was brokenhearted and died because you tempted me you evil child whatever sick stuff but in reality it's like she's never processed losing the actual father of her children and it's like wouldn't that have been something to see or have Celie talk about with Nettie after they're at misters like how do they miss their mom what was their mom and we never get that yeah

I feel like an absent mother is so often like explained away by like well she passed before you remembered her and it's like no she was like high school aged yeah she's literally at the funeral like pushing the funeral because she's like i'm gonna get married in like two months like right uh yeah i was um i was disappointed that that was scaled back on and it also felt like i mean in the many ways that the movie sanitizes the events of the book that felt like a pretty significant sanitizing like erasing the fact that their father was a civil rights leader who was lynched by white people yeah and instead it feels like steven uses it as a way to go

oh you know what incest is icky let's backtrack right that feels like the point yeah guess what you're about to see a family reunion and you don't have to worry that it's gross with incest. We cleared that up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very like movie style avoidance. Yeah. Like unbeknownst to me, I mean, like when I went back to read the passages, I was like, oh, he like sidestepped five different issues by making that choice. Yeah. And just the choice to make it like a rush sentence,

read in a letter is so weird to me. And just even the choice to not get into Sealy's ability to still love and want these children and to care about them and to want to hear about, even knowing at that point, like they're where she believes they come from. All of that is like an interesting aspect of Sealy's character that just he just didn't want to deal with and that's the part where i'm like what do you think this was going to be on the disney channel like make a real movie seriously yeah all right well there's a little bit more of the recap

left then yeah yeah it's a long movie it's a lot it's It's yeah, it really is. It is very long. And it's still left out so much. Yeah. Almost like it should have been a miniseries, maybe IDK. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. So we've come to the part where, oh yeah, the two men, Mr. and Shug's new husband are cracking eggs over their heads and goofing around sure and while they're distracted

with that shug goes to get the mail and she sees a letter to steely from netty and steely reads it and the letter says that that netty has been writing to her all of these years. And so Celie realizes that Albert probably kept those letters from her. So Celie and Suge snoop around Albert's stuff, and they find all the letters that Nettie had sent over the years. And she reads them all, and she learns about how what we were talking about, Nettie had been living in Africa with Celie's two children, because Celie's father sold the babies, Adam and Olivia, to that woman who we saw at the beginning. Her name is Corrine. And then Nettie found them. It kind of glosses over this detail. I don't think it even mentions it, like she became their maid. But it's just like i found them and then i joined them on this missionary trip to africa but guess what we're all coming back to the u.s soon or

we're trying to or something and then one day when everyone has gathered for dinner we've got silly albert uh suge suge's husband sophia har, Albert's father, Squeaky is there, a bunch of kids, and I don't know whose kids those are. But Celie starts laying in to Albert, saying that she's leaving him. He's a terrible person. His kids are rotten. She's had enough, and she curses him saying that his mistreatment of her will come back onto him and then steely shug and squeaky aka mary agnes leave we cut to a couple years later sometime later albert slash mister is living in squalor his life is in shambles it seems like celie's curse is like coming true i i thought that that was well done because it's like she didn't need to curse him he was never he was never gonna be okay he can't even feed himself

but i i do love there's like those spielberg comedy moments he goes to the mailbox which now has like got bullet holes in it and as he's getting the mail like a screen on one of his windows falls like his whole house is just falling apart literally there's pigs and stuff running and it's just it's great yeah yeah yeah and then we get that scene that we were just talking about where celie's father dies but it turns out that he wasn't even her biological father yep yeah they just zip through plot points he died don't worry no incest no all good um and from this celie inherits her real father's house and store so she opens up a clothing shop slash specifically a pants store. Yeah. She's making

pants. With one size fits all pants that do seem to fit all. I was like sisterhood of the traveling pants. I wrote down Celie founded the sisterhood of the traveling pants. It's truly like Harpo who is very small man and Sophia they

truthfully like wear the same pants and they do fit they look nice on both of them they fit they really do look nice yeah yeah so one day Celie and Suge are walking through a field with purple flowers and Suge says something like it pisses god off when you walk through a field and you see purple and you don't notice the color purple because purple just wants to be loved the way that everybody wants to be loved and we're like oh so that's where the name okay they said it that's and that's the color purple that's the name of the movie they have that conversation they're like but we're as straight friends i

would like to have this discussion with you in a field in a very straight way and i don't mean like those lavender lesbians i just mean purple is nice okay the straightest color purple is the straightest color for sure yeah that's why the purple Teletubby is famously the straightest one. Well, you just pulled that out like effortlessly had the purple Teletubby. It's in my mind. Who else are you thinking when you think purple? Barney also. Yes. Yeah. Also so straight. Very straight.

Okay, so the movie ends with a couple different scenes one shug finally reconnects with her father one day at church she comes like marching in singing gospel it's a choir battle it's everything that happens in this movie and then steven spielberg goes you know it'll be a choir battle like they are at the juke joint she's singing for a performance and the church is also going and the church people are mad that they can hear the juke joint music so they're like sing a song in the choir and shook hearing it is like you know what let's bring it to their doorsteps and so they start playing and singing and walk over and then the church is like okay you guys win you win yeah the other soloist gracefully accepts yeah she's truly like for a

moment she like comes out of the pews she's like oh my gosh i'm gonna go sing my heart out and then she's like you know what never mind never mind never mind it is implied at this point that should must be pretty famous because mister this whole time has been listening to her record and hearing her on the radio and just constantly playing her famous song sister so it's implied she like does blow up so there's i guess some probably level of that choir girl being like oh my goodness the famous suge avery's here maybe we don't know steven didn't want to let us know that part yeah unclear yeah i was like is she charting can i have more information she's selling tickets where is she on the billboard top 100 yeah what how big is she that okay that she's

on jukeboxes but okay yeah it's you know very spielberg sentimental but i really do love the scene where celie doesn't know that suga's about to sing a song that she wrote for her and it's so it's yeah if only they had let them be gay like that would be gay truly let them be gay like that would be gay it's truly let them be gay and yeah i will say the the church battle choir scene also again feels very spielberg just in terms of yeah how much the church people and choir people are smiling there's this to me it felt there's just a minstrel-y aspect to some scenes where i feel a white director being like, smile more, smile more. Like I hear that note and I feel it.

Cause like, even when they're playing the piano, they're all just like smiling so big at Suge. And you're just like, do they even know this? Who she is? Like, why are they also invested in this situation?

Doesn't her dad hate her? Probably never really talks about her. And suddenly they're all just like, Oh, yay. And it's just, yeah, it's so just,

yeah. They're just excited that number one superstar. Suge Avery. In America. Suge Avery has graced them. Has graced them. And is just hugging their pastor very intimately for some reason. They're like,

wow, our pastor knows a famous person. Yeah. I also, as someone who has well a complicated relationship with the concept of a father i was like why is she so obsessed with trying to like win his affection he seems like a not very good person but maybe that's just a me thing well it also feels like because this movie is overtly critical of many things religion is not really one of them which it seems like the book is more ready to engage with my feeling and again i don't know how shug's relationship with her father is presented in the book necessarily but it felt like he was this kind of amalgamation of like if she can reconcile with her father she can reconcile with

religion and like quote-unquote respectable society or like i felt like he was also like a symbol of other stuff yeah in the book it's a lot of like he hates her because he feels like god gave her this voice and she could use it in church for the lord but he you know she brings shame upon them in the family a lot of why she is even sleeping with mister like how she becomes a mistress and she's like her relationships with married men uh they go more into that because it's sort of like a her trying to get her father's attention and approval and love. So it's like this manifestation of daddy issues.

So it, again, just makes more sense because Alice Walker is a writer who knows what she's doing. But, yeah, in the movie, I don't think you really get how not having her father has impacted Shug. You know, it feels good to good to i guess see them come back together but again it's like why did she care so much about getting married to impress him why did she care so much about like showing him right if we knew more about it i would have an easier time understanding her what is compelling her to seek out this love and affection from him but we just don't know enough so i'm just like right i mean in the spielberg way that in the kind of 11th hour of this movie there are two tacitly implied redemption arcs for men who are abusive in different ways where we i mean i think we're

led to believe i don't think that we're led to believe that she had been physically abused by her father but like neglected and abandoned essentially emotionally they have no relationship and then he sort of like never has to say sorry he's just like oh today is the day i decide i decide to forgive you even though you have done nothing wrong yeah yeah and then with with albert i mean i think like you're talking about earlier ashley it would make, I can't really see a world where it's like Albert's redemption arc, you know, it's not totally a redemption arc. It's close enough. I don't know. The way it's presented in the Spielberg movie, you're just like, he should have to move to a different city at least.

Like, why is he still? He should have to lose his property or something and yeah his i it'll be i guess we're getting this part in the synopsis because it's like the very end that they rush mister's whole arc of like him just deciding you know what i have been cursed let me fix this and i almost didn't understand fully what was happening because we see him get a letter from like the federal government like it's the immigration and naturalization and in the book this is explained that basically to come back to america netty and her kids need like a sponsor someone who's already in america so they've been asking celie and they're trying to petition and be like this is the only way you know we don't know

anyone else uh back in in the states like we need you to do this and there's like a fee that they have to pay and obviously these letters are never getting to sealy and then finally mister's like you know what let me do it i'll do it i'll redeem myself by paying the fee i'll pay the little fee right okay that makes sense i figured it must've been something like that, but it's not, I was just like, I don't know enough of how the like immigration and naturalization works. Like why? And why would like,

they need Celia or Mr. To get involved in any way? Like what? Why? If they went over there, couldn't they just be like, we were born in America. We have passports and come back.

Uh, but yes. Yeah. In any case. So the movie ends with after mister had paid the fee netty returning with sealy's children adam and olivia as well as tashi who i think is adam's wife yeah and then there's just this beautiful tear tearful reunion. And then the movie ends. So that is The Color Purple.

Wow. I mean, we also get Mister looking at them and he walks his horse into the sunset. His whisper, I did a good thing and I'm not cursed anymore. Yeah. And then we... No, you have to move. You have to move you have to yeah you gotta and we get the iconic uh also another famous thing that me and my cousin used to do all the time handshake me and you we us never

part me and you us have one heart you know yes so they're children again who found each other and i feel like they're among the color purple. Yeah. When this happens. Wow. Yeah. Makes you think. All right, let's take another quick break

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the Shug and Celie relationship, because that seems like the biggest erasure. Yeah, is that they have this beautiful relationship in the books. It is super gay. You understand the love they have for each other and that beyond just being into each other, it is a safety that they find in each other as women that they've both been so disappointed by men and hurt by men and i think it really is a disservice to celie's character because in the movie her ability to be romantic to be sexual is just completely washed away she's basically played as though she has the mentality of a child like she never really like steps into that adulthood of i'm gonna speak up for myself i know what i want i have feelings for

this person instead it just kind of is suggested and then she has this big monologue at the dinner table where she's like i'm gonna speak up finally but it's so much more beautiful when you see that in this relationship with shook she's able to find her voice and stand up for herself and finally start to fight. So to remove it, it's just, again, one of those really disappointing acts, arcs of it. I think, again, that's what made me kind of fall out of love with the movie when I realized what I could have had reading the book. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's been a ton written about it. We'll link to a friend of the show, Princess Weeks wrote a wonderful essay about it a couple of years ago, I think possibly when it was first announced that this new adaptation was going to come out. I wanted to share there's a quote that's been

pretty widely circulated that we've referenced before, because I think it's very easy for directors to be like, oh, I would have done this differently today. Sorry. But, you know, to hand him the bare minimum, he didn't double down on the decision and say, and I do it again today. But the quote that is widely circulated, I think, during every round of this necessary discourse about how this relationship is completely erased. So Spielberg says, quote, there were certain things in the lesbian relationship between Suge Avery and Seely that were finely detailed in Alice's book that I didn't feel could get a PG-13 rating. And I was

shy about it. In that sense, perhaps I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more sexually honest encounters between Suge and Seely, i did soften those i basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional and i reduced it to a simple kiss i got a lot of criticism for that i'm quote i wonder why steven i wonder why why weird weird that that happened and i was curious because i have not seen the musical and I know that that is that adaptation of the yeah so in the original musical and I've heard I mean again never trust a movie so it's like it's it's hard there has been a lot of talk and I think at least press buzz that the new adaptation will actually rise to the occasion of the source material and include

the queer relationship which i'm interested in seeing how it's done because it seems like there was another round of criticism and how the original broadway musical plays it down yeah oh it's the musical's not gay at all and it's a musical so it should be gay it's and yeah it's not i saw it uh when michelle williams was in it on broadway and i mean i loved it i love the music i do like the musical but i mean if spielberg's goal was to make the movie pg-13 they were like we got to make sure this musical has like a g rating like people have to be able to bring their six-year-olds to enjoy the bright colors so it's definitely even more just like whitewashed and kind of like those details are missing it's still really fun though but at the same time i've always kind of wondered why this story why is this the story about black female struggle that is depicted

so raw so honestly in the book why is this what you've decided should be turned into a pg-13 general audience affair like can we be honest about it like can't we have our r-rated narratives because that's what this is and it feels so telling just like and this discussion's been had with a number of movies but like what can you get away with in a pg-13 rating and why is showing a lesbian relationship not okay when we see i mean i think that's like sort of my central issue with the way that this movie is adapted there's a million ways to criticize it but that like on its face this movie is very very comfortable with showing the black women at its center being tremendously abused and are not comfortable or like shy and pull away and fade to black when it comes to showing these same characters experiencing actual joy and pleasure like

the pleasure is erased or just hinted at but the abuse you see you know for the most part pretty clearly the thing that bugged me the most and i was like oh the scene where sophia punches the white guy in the face they don't show it they have a car pass yeah like it's like when spongebob is swearing and it's like the dolphin sound yeah they do that i was just like yeah they're comfortable showing black women being abused the entire movie but they're like but we don't want to show a white man getting punched in the face oh they they do cut back when when sophia's on the ground with her skirt up you see and then they're like you should see this you should see this woman in the mud unreal they show the sheriff like pistol whipping her yeah in the head and then you show the yeah she collapses

to the ground her skirt flies up exposing her underwear like why is that okay to show but not i mean it just feels like an admission of what the creative team was comfortable showing and what they were like well we cut it short of showing a relationship between two black women that's sexual and uh punching a white guy in the face. Any sort of abuse or humiliation, PG-13, no problem. Which is just as much an issue with the ratings system as it is with the creative choices, because theoretically, in a just world, there would be some fucking pushback for that. There's a documentary, I've referenced this on the show before, but a documentary called This Film Is Not Yet R yet rated and it explores largely

how sex scenes or like romantic scenes between or among queer people even though they will be framed and choreographed like basically identically to like hetero sex scenes the movies with queer sex depicted in them will be given like nc-17 ratings where again basically identical like choreography and like body placement and like the same level of nudity it's not as though like you're seeing like hardcore porn like dicks getting sucked or anything like that well and i think it also like is inherently connected to just like seeing women experiencing pleasure in movies at all is so deep i always think about the like the but i'm a cheerleader episode i think we talked about this a lot because that movie there's like sex scenes and that had to be largely cut to be able to get an R rating. Or I forget which, but there was scenes that the MPAA was like,

this is too scandalous. So we're going to give you either an NC-17 or an R rating. Basically make it inaccessible to people. But even within heterodynamics too, where it's like a blowjob can be in a PG 13 movie. No problem. But if someone's going down on a woman, that's,

we got to keep that. We can't let them know. We can't let them know. Only release it in France. Don't even bring it to my shores. It's ridiculous. And, and yeah,

just again in this, I, even the kiss between Suge and Celia, I feel like it's ridiculous and and yeah just again in this i even the kiss between suge and sealy i feel like it's a little just even further degraded because when sealy finally does see netty again they also share this like long kiss obviously not sexual they are sisters but it makes it feel like oh this is just a form of black female connection true like europeans they just deeply kiss when they really care about each other we don't do that i i think it makes sense for netty because she is coming from africa and like has these customs and is saying her sister after a

long time but for between suge and avery no that's not just like black girlfriends like my lady girl no it's gay it's supposed to be gay it's not a sexy kiss it's like my lady girl. No, it's gay. It's supposed to be gay. It's not a sexy kiss. It's like they peck each other on the lips a couple times. And then like when they finally do the deeper kiss, it immediately like pans away to like see their hands very lightly. Like their fingertips are like kind of touching each other's shoulders and like hip or something like that. I want an oral history of that day on set yeah it's not an intimate kiss it's just it's not hot and heavy it's just like yeah i think

steven was behind the camera going not the whole hand on her shoulder just the just the fingertips just the tip just please just a little touchy not too much so that was disappointing very telling yeah and i think it's like one of the most famously mishandled areas of this movie but there's just so much that is yeah i want to talk a little bit about alice walker in general and specifically what her relationship to this production was but i feel beholden to say alice walker very famous writer very well respected also has her fair share of pretty tremendous fuck-ups in terms of expressing anti-semitic stances spreading holocaust denial and most recently siding with jk rowling so yeah we're not going to get into those issues in detail today but i

do want to acknowledge them because they're all from the last 10 years yeah she's she's no tony morrison okay there's there's reasons we yeah like some other people a little more oh yeah i mean it particularly that i was reading her history with antisemitism and you're like Alice yeah yeah she's also pro-Palestinian liberation which is not antisemitic but she's also antisemitic and you're just like you are not helping

you're not helping as it pertains to this movie my blood pressure just raised as pertains to this movie because we hinted at this earlier where we're like, how did we get to Steven Spielberg? And who was their pushback? You know, what was it? From what I can gather, Alice Walker, like you were saying, Ashley, like she didn't really want the movie to be adapted, especially a story that is so rooted in black womanhood.

And there's a queer relationship. How would you imagine in the 80s that someone wouldn't fuck it up until it was unrecognizable? What convinced her was what we're talking about, where she was like, well, let's see if we can produce a decent adaptation of this from the inside. I thought it was interesting that her contract included that she would serve as a project consultant and that 50 of the production team outside of the cast which is obviously vast majority black actors but that 50 of the production team would be african-american women or quote people of the third world unquote pretty. Pretty vague. Yeah, a little vague. Okay. But that she, you know, it was integral for her to approving this project

at all to bring in people who are massively underrepresented in film into this production, which I think is really fucking cool. Like, that's great. And one of the reasons, if not the main reason, she was reluctant

to have this be adapted to a movie is because she knew how poorly black people and women and black women in particular are treated by Hollywood. And she's like, I don't want that same thing. I don't want it to get mishandled if my movie gets adapted. But like we mentioned, I read that she convened with a group of five women to discuss the merits of accepting this offer to have her book adapted to film and they were like well if this does get made it could help improve the like exploitation of black people and black women in movies so let's just kind of yeah it's like an inside job and we get to put a ton of black actors who haven't had this chance to blow up in a steven spielberg movie let's do it let's go and i love that there's like equal emphasis

behind the camera too like yeah it's it's really cool and what i found frustrating was that she so she was not a screenwriter by trade but she was a pulitzer prize winning fucking writer and she does not get screenplay credit she wrote the first draft and then they kicked it to a white guy who had previously or no hadn't even written indiana jones in the last crusade yet but they i mean the sole credited writer is oh i don't know how to say his name meno may may is meno may is yeah and that alice walker was sort of forced to accept that even though she still insisted that she'd be given final script approval so she worked on the script throughout but she's obviously not credited and which is ridiculous it's ridiculous and she also I mean I listened to an interview that she did more recently about just

like how she was learning about movie production through working on this where it sounds like Spielberg you know she had things where she was like, all right, Spielberg, these are the things I need you to shoot. I will not compromise on these scenes being shot. And he was like, all right, I'll shoot them. And many of them didn't end up in the movie. And that's how I learned about how editing sucks. And then I think the other really influential black creative voice behind the camera here is Quincy Jones, who is one of the main producers. I guess he was I watched an interview from the 80s where he was really integral in pushing for Spielberg as a director. And then he also curated this iconic Quincy Jones score. And I mean, the score to this movie is fucking ridiculous.

It's great. But yeah, I don't know. I think it's just, it's so fucking telling and frustrating that Alice Walker doesn't have at least a shared credit. Like, okay, if she doesn't know how to write a screenplay, fair enough. But also, why do we have to have Mennoas come in to do it like some white dutch dude yeah and i think that for me that was one of when i because i didn't realize you know when you're a kid you don't know what all those names in the credits mean and as a high schooler after

reading the book i realized like wait a second wait a second she didn't write she it doesn't say she wrote it what who is this and that yeah when i started to fall out of love with the movie and start to question you know why were certain things cut why are certain things presented this way i think then you start to wonder like okay yeah mister is a more one-dimensional character and alice walker had a ton of issues because she based the character on like her grandfather i think and she was hurt by that and then you start to be like, oh, yeah, well, of course, some white Dutch guy didn't understand the complexity of like, living up to the patriarchal burdens your father has given to you, while also like harming women and all of this. So of the movie feel extremely caricature-ish slash just like stereotypical now do i appreciate that at its core this movie is about like women sticking together and forming bonds and friendships to protect each other

against the like abusive behavior of the men in their life and like eventually being able to escape their abusers yes but like we've said it fails to portray any of the nuance and any of the context that explains why these men are like this yeah right it's just not it's kind of the movie makes you wonder why does suge go to be with mister why does she engage in a relationship with him if she sees how he treats seely and the book does a better job of outlining like how he can be this sweet romantic person and you know like he can be everything she wants sometimes uh but then there's this darkness and i think that makes it a little more believable because i think you know for us by the time sealy's deciding like

maybe i should slit his throat it's like girl you should have done this 20 minutes ago like what yeah girl kill him get him i'm over this get his ass right and even though it sounds like i mean spike lee had a arguably outsized reaction i do understand why he was concerned about how black men are portrayed in movies that are written and directed by white people that is a very very valid concern it becomes complicated by like that being used to undercut or like be implied that that is undercutting both alice walker and an all-black cast in an industry where at that time it rarely if ever happened but i also like i i do think that i'm glad i guess not glad i mean i'm interested to hear that alice walker wrote albert to be less one-dimensional not because I think that like abusers should have

more lore yeah but but I do think that like it's we've talked about this trope a million times on this show where it's like patriarchy the guy just the guy that does all of the patriarchy things and he is the bad guy and we get rid of him at the end. And then misogyny is solved, which doesn't actually do very much to move the needle in how we talk about anything. And particularly with like white writers and directors, it feels like there are tropes on how black men are portrayed in Hollywood present in these characters because of what is taken out. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just really one of those like yeah i guess the people who were mad i still like the movie but everybody's right it's just truly everyone is right this spike lee is right at the same time i wish that we could have seen these other versions where maybe spike lee did it where alice had more say in the script. But what we got, you know,

past generations to generations, I don't know, I truly do watch this movie probably every year with my family. It is always being played on BET. You know, the cast, I think, is what ended up making it what it became. So, you know, you get Oprah, it's gonna stick. I mean... Right, right. at what it became so you know you get oprah it's gonna stick i mean right right there is i i haven't

read the full book but there is an interesting excerpt uh slash discussion of it written in the new republic recently in the last couple of years let's say uh but there is a book written by um writer salamisha tillett called In Search of the Color Purple, The Story of an American Masterpiece, which is a series of essays and just reflections on not just the movie or the book, but how the culture received it, which is a lot. And I learned a little more about how Alice Walker was treated in not even just the fallout of the movie, but the fallout of the book, which I think, again, complicates what we were just talking about, where

it makes a ton of sense that Black directors and Black male directors in particular would have an issue with Steven Spielberg portraying Mister in the way that he does in this movie. But the fact that that same energy was applied to Alice Walker when the book first came out reads very, very differently. I didn't know that when The Color Purple of the Book came out, an excerpt or a piece on it was included in Ms. Magazine and it was on the cover of the magazine. And Gloria Steinem was essentially tasked with defending Alice Walker for including her work that had black male characters who were abusive towards black women and how that is a completely different discussion. I have a quote from Salome Chatillette sort of speaking to that.

She says, quote, the controversy also took such a firm hold because it drew upon a stereotype that at the time was well known among African Americans, but far less familiar to white people, the black woman as race traitor. Likewise, Tillett powerfully pulls from the color purple controversy as an example of how black women have been asked to silence their own pain to supposedly serve the greater cause of racial uplift. Threaded throughout these attacks on the color purple is the idea that the danger of reinforcing stereotypes about black male sexuality is too great to allow room for black women to have justice, unquote. Sounds like an interesting book. I'm just like, man. Yeah, that gets that sums it up. Yeah, that is. Yeah, that's why Spike Lee was angry. That was absolutely, you know, I think a lot of people even in the black community today, it's I think, beloved, like I grew up loving it because I have a single mom. But I do think there is still some a lot of animosity, where people want to call this like black tragedy porn,

you know, that it's just this sad thing about black women getting beaten. And so it should be written off, or trauma porn. And, you know i i think that's just so far from the truth this is a lot of it is based on alice walker's real life i think these are stories that need to be told uh and at the time there was a large contingent of people who were like if we tell these stories they won't give us our respect our justice we won't and it's like they never will they never will sorry well they're never gonna do it so let us tell our stories and it wouldn't be as much of an issue if there were just more stories about black characters living their normal lives and you would be able to see black joy and you would be able to see black men not being abusive and being very loving,

caring partners and parents and things like that. But because especially at this time, when this movie is coming out, there were so few examples of any other mainstream stories about black people. Yeah, of course, the kind of reaction to that would have been like, this is all we get. Like the, and especially black men being represented this way. Right. Cause there were,

there was very little else to look to, to say, well, here's an example of how we're not all abusers. Yeah. So, yeah. You know,

in another world, I wish I could see the version of the movie that is made with a black male director and how they would have approached that with Alice Walker. Or a black woman director. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's not get too crazy. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We literally just got a black woman to direct a Marvel movie. Let's not push it. Okay. Which is getting great reviews. I'm really excited to see it. I haven't been excited to see it on Marvel. I thought I had a lot of fun. I'm really excited to see it. I haven't been excited to see a Marvel movie.

But I was like. I thought I had a lot of fun. I thought it was good. I got burned by Doctor Strange. Oh, I didn't even see that one. Mr. Weird. Yeah. I got burned by that one last year. But I give him one a year.

And I've been saving the Marvels for this year. It's a good one. Yeah, the new adaptation is being directed by Blitz the Ambassador, a black male director. Again, I guess I just wonder because very different dynamics, obviously, but it also reminds me of like when we had our discussion about Carrie years ago, where it's like an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation. And like, can you weed out these mistakes or erasures from the 80s if you're still adapting it on that like i just i'm very curious how what creative choices are changed yeah and what are not and like how could you and we just need more original stories i think is the solution is really the answer because you know seeing it like i know when i go i'm gonna want to hear the lines

i love i'm gonna want to hear see the classic moments like that's what we're there for at the end of the day because it's the color purple so it makes it hard to expand that story and then you add on that it's the musical and I think it's gonna be great but I am expecting truly to see the a movie version of the musical I don't think it's gonna really blow my mind yeah i really my fear is always like wow it's the like queerest movie of the year and there's like a little like yeah in like the background of a scene where something else is happening and they're like wow the revolution is here folks and you all right. But okay, of what we have in this movie, I really genuinely do, even though it is very Spielberg soapy,

I think we're like Alice Walker's, the relationship dynamics between the women in The Color Purple are extremely complex. I really appreciate that Celie is allowed to make mistakes throughout the story. I feel like women are very rarely allowed to make mistakes and not encourage the audience to turn on her. But we see relationships between women grow and change over the years, which is how life works. But when Celie, you know, at first tells Harpo, you should beat Sophia. Sophia confronts her. Celie apologizes, doesn't do it again. And they have a kind of beautiful relationship

moving forward. And it comes full circle when, you know, Celie, I mean, again, it's like Spielberg where it's like, Celie said the magic words and Sophia was back. And also putting the impetus on her as if Harpo had no choice but to do what she said when he doesn't even take her seriously. Like, it's ridiculous. But that Celie, you know, really shows up for Sophia in as many ways as she can and that Sophia appreciates that and the relationship grows. That's beautiful. I mean, the relationship with Shug is always going to be frustrating because you know what's not there yeah but i mean i i think of what we have i still like what we have it's just like yeah knowing that there is more is incredibly frustrating yeah and that you didn't get more because some white dutch guy and steven spielberg they just didn't want it it's on them this is too sexy for

us yeah but it's like i get like the ratings thing in the culture as it was it also had no issue showing mr having sex with a very young sealy like no problem you know statutory raping yeah she's like straight up 14 or 15 in that scene. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've already talked about it, but it's just like, it's so ridiculous. But I mean, women are still very much showing up for each other. And the way that Celie grows as a character is almost entirely comes from within herself and also from observing the women around her.

And it's done in a very sanitized way in this movie, but it does happen. And I cry when the movie told me to cry. Yes. Yeah. I'm sobbing when Nettie's there and the scarf is blowing in the wind. I'm sobbing. I'm sobbing. They got me.

It's true. Two fun production facts that i found that oprah when oprah was like in i guess some meeting with steven spielberg early in the production of this movie she was like oh harpo's oprah backwards that's weird um and yes this is a big thing in Oprah lore. Yes, Harpo is Oprah backwards. As a young subscriber to O Magazine as a child, I knew that story before I saw the movie, I think. That's why her production company is named Harpo. Like, she names her whole thing Harpo because of that, I guess. I'm pretty sure that, like, the new, or maybe it is, like, technically owned,

but, like, the new Color Purple adaptation is like produced by Harpo, which is like just the irony. Yeah, her talk show was produced by Harpo. Like she had a Harpo Studios in Chicago. Like she's in it. She was like, that was my man in the movie. And I've taken that. Oh, I mean, and just a quick mention i mean again if you're if you grew up within oprah lore you probably know this already but that part of the reason that oprah felt so extremely strongly

about this material was that she had grown up having experiences like seely and had been incestually abused and understandably was very connected to al Walker's work and lobbied for this part hard and then killed it. Did a wonderful job. The other detail that I wanted to add, just because I think it's funny, is there's a casting director, I wrote his name down, casting director named Ruben Cannon, who was choosing the main cast and recommended Whoopi goldberg whoopi goldberg

came into audition and did her stand-up routine first of all which is so weird iconic and second of all did a joke about et smoking weed and i just think that that is funny because that in no way proves that you could play the part of Celie, but she still was unbelievable. Like, I can't believe that just like has to be the best debut film performance of all time. But she got it by being like, what if E.T. smoked weed? Awesome.

At the time, she was like the biggest black female stand up in the country. Yeah. I do know Alice Walker was actually not very happy that she was cast the biggest black female stand-up in the country yeah i do know alice walker was actually not very happy that she was cast because she felt that celie should have been larger more overweight and someone who is like considered kind of like more mainstream unattractive whereas whoopi goldberg is like gorgeous so that was another thing where alice walker was like i just wasn't happy i felt like you know I wrote these characters who looked like real people and they got actors. And it's like, well, that's kind of how movies go. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, Whoopi is incredible in this performance. And her monologue at the dinner table toward the end is just my favorite thing. So good. I always forget that she, cause I mean, she's so famously EGOT, but I always forget that she did not win for this movie.

She won for Ghost? Yeah. I think she won for Ghost. Which is a wonderful performance, but like of the two, you're like, really? Okay.

Okay. Sure. There's a few kind of themes or just like things that the movie explores that I feel are like kind of connected or just like all in the which again is like very emphasized in this movie in a way that it seems like maybe the book doesn't do quite so much or that it like places as much emphasis on like mother child relationships and then the way that women are perceived by men and treated by men in this movie where there's just, you know, all these things of like with Suga Avery, love the character. You have like Albert's father is insulting her and, you know, saying she's unclean. She's a Jezebel. She has nasty

woman's disease. All of her children have different fathers things like that it's literally sounding like Trump in 2015 right like just doing that you nasty woman if I had to guess who you were quoting right and then you have like Sealy's voiceover and at this point in the movie you don't really know what dynamic Shug and Seie have quite yet, but Celie's voiceover is like saying like, folks don't like it when people are too proud or too free. And because Suge is like this woman who has autonomy over her life and her choices and her career, you know, and she has this, what's considered to be this kind of unsavory profession where she's singing in juke joints and all this stuff. Everyone thinks like the men, especially

in like the older generation of men with like Albert's father and her own father, like see her as this sinner. And then you have like, Sophia as this very headstrong person doesn't take bullshit from anyone Albert and Harpo alike are threatened by this and yeah and briefly so is Celie yeah true yes yeah and I like I think it's so clear in the scene where she first sees Sophia and she talks about how Sophia and Harpo were coming to meet the dad that missed her for the first time. And Celia is like, she came storming up. I could see him from so far. She's so big. Like, she's so horrible.

She's so headstrong and loud. And I think some of that is jealousy. But then slowly she comes to kind of accept her but i think that is a theme like how these three main women all have to deal with their power dynamics against men in different ways where celie you know knows she doesn't have like the privilege of beauty uh so she has become more timid where uh sofia realizes she doesn't have that but she decides to become more headstrong and outspoken uh and she has that family support where she's allowed to do that you know and even in their wedding like her family keeps mister away

from her and it's like no we're not dealing with you so she is able to do that but then you also have shug who isn't she doesn't have that fit but she does have her beauty and she uses that to get what she you know needs to survive in this patriarchal society exactly yeah and then like to the the power dynamic thing where there are various conversations where you know like netty says to steely like you need to have the upper hand over mr's kids and you know you got to show him who's boss and then like mr tells his son harpo that he needs to have the upper hand over Sophia and there's all these like because this is a very patriarchal society and because men are conditioned to think that they have to control these women who if they aren't controlled they'll end up like Shug as these

Jezebels quote-unquote right and you're like oh no I might be hot and talented you'll get nasty women's disease you'll have to sit in a tub if you don't control your woman she'll get that disease and then but Shug has most if not all of the power in her relationship with Albert you see him like oh I'll bend over backwards for you i'll do whatever you want i'll try to cook for you even though i don't i can't i don't know how to cook at all like it's just interesting to see how the various characters kind of just use what they have like the tools that they have like you said actually like what they have got going for them that they can kind of almost exploit to not feel so powerless in a world where poor black women have so little power especially in like Jim Crow era south yeah this is taking

place and the book is and I think this is another area where Alice is upset in how the movie makes the men really one-dimensional because the book is very clear that one of the reasons these men feel they need to control a woman is because they are also controlled in this racist Jim Crow society is that they and we kind of see it in the scene with Miss Millie when she's like oh you know Sophia you can spend all Christmas with your family and I'll drive home and then she can't and all these black men are trying to help her but she immediately is like they're trying to attack me, you know, Sophia, you can spend all Christmas with your family and I'll drive home. And then she can't. And all these black men are trying to help her. But she immediately is like, they're trying to attack me. And, you know, they start to be submissive to her.

And so it's kind of hinted at there. It's like the first time you see Harpo, like, stand down to a woman and be like, oh, no, miss and ma'am, we're trying to help you. And it's also one of my favorite examples of just white feminism, guilt and privilege in that scene. Because she just immediately starts going, in the movie that isn't so clear like what is driving their need to control it does feel very like mister just wants seely because he needs someone around the house to take care of his kids and clean uh but in the book it's a little more like he has this expectation that if he is meant to be subservient in the society someone should be subservient to him so that is why he has this seely person even though he does like have romantic feelings for

shug that he has a whole mistress like they have sex they hook up but to him it's like no to prove my manhood and to have a sense of self when my black masculinity is degraded i need to have a seely type so the book i think yeah is a little more interesting with that but in the movie it's just like dude why are you being such a dick that's another like area where like i think like spike lee's criticism is applicable where there is this void of historical context and it's made to more seem like well it's in the nature of these characters to behave this way and because you're not given i mean it's like you do get the year but there's not a lot of historical specificity yeah like none of the black men in the film like really face any racism other

than that moment with the car like you never it's never you know you'd see uh seely afraid in a shop because a white shop owner is, you know, like looking at her and is like, do you need something? Miss it, you know, and you see that discomfort. You see Sophia be harmed. But like the men, it seems like, oh, do they just like have it pretty good? They're just like building their juke joints, having businesses, enjoying their farms. Like what? No. Right.

And then they come in at the end with this oh yeah yeah no actually their dad was lynched because he was a civil rights guy so don't so yeah so the guys don't have it easy but if you aren't very closely listening to that one very brief i missed it my first view you miss the entire thing you miss the whole thing if you don't yeah if you don't hear that yes when it's like that originally was a huge plot point as well it should have been the glazing over stuff like that just like removes historical specificity and does make the men seem abusive in a complete void and it could have been such an interesting thing to examine that tendency for marginalized people feeling so powerless and disempowered by the world around them that some people will try to then exert any power over anyone else that they can yeah and that's obviously not something to admire that's you know not good behavior but it happens very frequently and it's i i haven't seen many movies that really explore

that very thoughtfully or in like a nuanced way where you know marginalized people will marginalize someone who they perceive to have less power than them. And to me, it's such a fascinating thing. But yeah, movies just kind of... Yeah, I will say if you've read or seen Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, so Oprah also was producing this one, but they made it a series, a limited series. So they had more time, they dig into more things. And I thought it was incredibly done.

But that's like the only time where i really feel an adaptation has done a great job of trying to really capture the history the political tone the racism maybe oprah learned by the time she got to that one she was like guys i know what we gotta do right or just like had creative control Like that's Her adaption of Beloved is also Really good but Yeah I think it so I gotta put the blame On Spielberg I mean fair I'm comfortable with that

I mean Mr. Steve Mr. Steve it's on you Oh oh I had this is a really Goofy observation but because we Just covered Steel Magnolias Ashley I was like wow miss millie and clary belcher similar the mayor's wife oh they're like alternate universe clary belcher anyways that was just a thought i had because that is a southern movie that

conspicuously erases anyone who is not white from the story. Yeah, I also thought that, I'm curious, I didn't read this section of the book, so I don't know how sanitized that exchange is. Because I know that the way that Squeak was involved in sort of negotiating Sophia's prison sentence isn't really touched on in the movie. Yeah, it's not in there.

None of her prison sentence is really in there. It's really detailed. Like, what she goes through, the torture they put her through. Like, they go visit her. Those are, like, you know, bringing her stuff and trying to help her. And how they slowly see her, like, become less of herself. And then when she gets out, her, like, having to work for that family is more of, like, a punishment. It's more them being like, you got you.

Uh, well, the movie kind of makes it like, she didn't have a choice. Like, you know, this was the only job she could get, I guess.

But it really shows that it's a more sinister act of like white aggression. Yeah. I do agree that this is like a pretty solid example of, uh, white woman multiple times at every scene she's in she is weaponizing every scene in the movie she's like but i've always been so nice to you i'm so good to you so she's like doing donuts in the backyard i'm like oh my god oh my god she's just punching zoe in the face like i'm so kind to you why don't you accept it and then sophia doesn't

get to spend christmas with her family she has to leave immediately because miss millie can't drive yes i'm glad that there is the inclusion of the miss millie character because it does i think maybe better than other things that the movie glosses over but like it does really show her as this like specific type of white woman who fetishizes black people not in like a sexual way that we know of with miss millie but and there's probably a better word for it but like she like was very drawn to sophia and her children she's like oh aren't you the cutest little little kid? Kiss, kiss, kiss on the face. And she's like, Sophia, please work for me.

Infantilizing. Yes, for sure. Infantilizing. I think it's also with Sophia, the mammification of black women where she sees, you know, this larger black woman who she believes should want to take care of her and be, you know, her nanny. And yeah. And I think she's like the type of white person who thinks they're being an ally to black people and who like understands, I think, probably on only a very, very surface level, like the plight of black people.

But she's not an ally to them. She's still like extremely scared of black people and she's not trying to be an ally. She doesn't want to be a friend. She wants Sophia to work for her. Like, so it's all these things where she like has this very warped perception of like,

she thinks she's doing the right thing and she's very much not. And that is a dynamic that still exists very much to this day but yeah i'm glad that the movie like shows that yeah spielberg got that part right he did uh he did manage to nail down that part yeah good job mr steve is there anything else anyone wants to discuss i mean we could keep going forever but that was about everything that I had. Yeah, I feel like we touched on everything. So much, yes. It's just so, it's such a long movie.

There's so much that happens. I mean, truly, there's so much that happens that at the end, they're like, can we just have a letter that speeds this all up? Just one letter. She's like, your dad isn't really your dad. His stepdad. We own the land, by the way. Your kids are good. I got and we're good gets gets the end of the movie yeah it really does feel rushed in those like last 20 minutes or so yeah you're like oh my gosh so much happened but what i can't keep up yeah well does the movie

pass the bechdel test? Yes. Yeah. Yes. It does. Quite a lot. The main, or at least the moments of like levity in this pretty heavy movie are women interacting with each other and their friendship and their bond. And I like that very much about this movie yeah um as far as our nipple scale our scale of zero to five nipples where we evaluate the movie based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens i'll give this i think threeipples. And I might be swayed to give it more or maybe less. I don't know. I think that Spielberg, Mr. Steve directing this movie, and that other white guy whose name

I forget, who is credited as writing this screenplay, even though, you know, many drafts were written, some of them by Alice Walker, and she consulted on the project through the development of this script along the way. Again, she's not credited. Right. Yeah. But because when you watch the movie, you can tell that it was a book adapted by a black writer and then like whitewashed and straight washed and things like that would the movie have had the budget and the just like renown that it ended up getting if spielberg didn't direct it possibly not so it's like catch 22 thing but there's components of it that end up being very disappointing because If Spielberg didn't direct it, possibly not. So it's like this catch-22 thing. But there's components of it that end up being very disappointing

because of how these white filmmakers handled certain things. But again, at its core, this is a movie about sisterhood and female friendships and female relationships and women looking out for each other and protecting each other for the most part from the abuse that men inflict upon them. So the premise I like very much. The performances are great.

There's just something to be desired in the way the story unfolds as told by these white filmmakers so i'm excited to see the 2023 adaptation and to see hopefully a lot of course correction another great cast yes wonderful cast so i'm looking forward to it i'll give this 1985 adaptation three nipples i will give one to whoopi goldberg i'll give one to oprah and i'll give this 1985 adaptation three nipples i will give one to whoopi goldberg i'll give one to oprah and i'll give my final nipple to margaret avery who plays shug who at the time was kind of the only famous person in this movie which is wild yeah okay i'll

meet you at three i'm tempted to go more only because i love the performances so much but i think based on the discussion we've had and i agree with what you're saying caitlin like where a lot of the production dissonance uh is connected to what an impossible situation black creatives were put into at this time and still are often put it to now and that's how you end up with spielberg and when you end up with spielberg what are the consequences of that and I mean we talked it through pretty considerably and it feels like it makes total sense to me why there will always be new rounds of discourse

about this movie good bad and different and I also you know I think that it is a beautifully made movie the performances are like, you can't argue with a single one of them. And also everything we just said in the last two and a half hours. So I'm going to say three, let's go with three.

I'm going to give one to, Ooh, sorry. My kitten is like hungry. And so ruining my life. I'm going to give one to whoopie. I'm going to give one to Whoopi. I'm going to give one to Oprah. And I'm going to give one to, oh my gosh,

her name is Rae Dawn Chong, who plays Mary Agnes, a.k.a. Squeak, because she is Tommy Chong's daughter, I learned. And I thought, how fun for a nepotism. That's a fun nepotism. That's a fun nepotism. And so I will give the final nipple to her and that fun nepotism. Yeah.

Ashley. Yes, I'm going to give it four. I'm going to give four. I agree with everything you've all said. But I think at the end of it for me, no matter what happened behind the scenes, the anger that it caused, Black women as a community took this movie and we made it our own. Like my mom sees her story in this, my grandmother, my aunts. It is a language between us. Like if you see a friend that you haven't seen in a long

time, you will do the hand clap motion in the airport. We embraced it. I already knew as soon as the movie was announced, the 2023 one, I was going to go see it. So despite the shortcomings, which I think within our community, we can see and address and talk to, we're able to appreciate this movie.

It's why it's become such a big thing for us amongst the general public. Yes, I wish it had done a better job, but at the end of the day, you know what? Oprah's in this movie. It why it's become such a big thing for us amongst the general public yes i wish it had done a better job but at the end of the day you know what oprah's in this movie it's for black women and we were happy with it uh so i'm gonna give it four i will also give it to whoopi to oprah uh i'm gonna actually give one to danny glover because he was so good in this role that every black woman i knew hated him for so long he'd be in other things and people would just be like i can't i can't look at his face it's mister i hate

him so much seeing his lethal weapon uh the one with bruce willis die hard is he in die hard we are not i don't know but he he took a different turn in his career when he realized I cannot keep playing angry men who beat women. So respect to that. He turned it around. And then I. He is in Lethal Weapon. Yeah,

he is. I was like, is that a joke? I was like, I have no idea. I've never seen Lethal Weapon. So I'm just like, well,

and he's also most iconically in Saw 1. Oh, Saw 1. And that's his most famous role we all can agree with that yes yeah that would be the lead on the opit tanny clover best remembered for saw one uh and i'm gonna give the final nipple to the song sister because if you you should just go listen to it on its own it's a really it's a banger just great it's so good i feel like diegetic movie songs are rarely good and this one is so good it's so good it's great well ashley thank you so much for coming back and coming on for a

big old discussion yeah yeah and come back anytime let's talk about the musical let's do it what was the igmar bergman movie personaa. I'll get you a whole list of Bergman movies we can talk about. Let's do it. Persona. Cries and Whispers. Does someone

like jam a piece of glass in their cooch? Yeah. We can maybe talk about it someday. He does not like women. Oops. He sure does it. He does.

Boy, does he not. Where can we find you online? Where can people... Yeah. You can follow me at the ashley ray everywhere on the apps if you still do that or listen to tv i say with ashley ray my podcast wherever you do that i talk about tv so yeah that's the best it's great thank you you can find us on instagram and sometimes twitter still at bechtel cast you can also follow our Patreon, aka Matreon, at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast

where for $5 a month you get two bonus episodes a month based around a hyper-specific theme that we choose or let you choose. You get access to 150 bonus episodes from the last six years of the Matreon, so sign up for that.

Wow, what a darn good special. What a deal. truly deal and you can also grab our merch at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast and check out our link tree link tree slash bechtel cast for information about some possible upcoming shows that big time we are doing big time baby yeah bye bye bye we are doing. Big time, baby. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Bye. The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted

by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskrosensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com.

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