The Consequence of Erasing Celie's Sexuality (The Color Purple) 

Me: Not knowing anything about anything about modern rap/hip-hop (my exposure starts at 80's and ends around Chronic 2001 era with minor exceptions for viral/cultural zeitgeist singles): Kat says the name of the single and my metalhead background hears, "Nau scheint die klein" ^Which is way less homophobic/exploitative and also really funny translated especially when applied to this fellow.

Also, all of the work that you put into this including the background of each iteration especially the original adaptation and who and why they were involved and cultural context is not only fascinating and evidence of the quality applied to your research but methodically and wonderfully presented. This is absolutely excellent and I wanted to say thank you for clearly going above and beyond a standard review. I hope you're as pleased with the final product as I (as well I'm sure the rest of the audience) feel and appreciate. It certainly shows.

can’t wait for the next video!

I can’t wait for the next video you are so articulate and have really great insight im so happy you spoke on this too

Thank you for this incredible analysis. As a general musical theatre geek as well as an admirer of the 80's film adaptation of the book, I was aware of perhaps 40% of everything surrounding the journey of The Color Purple through the years. But it's nothing compared to the amount of information you provide in your video. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your perspective. I can't wait for the next video.

*Black lesbians specifically

Let's be honest..in that time, escaping to another men would be the easier version...

@@saraa.4295 not necessarily.

​@@saraa.4295That's what got Mister's wife before Celie killed.

@@j.t.7671 well, not saying running away with another man would be easy, but especially if the other guy has more power than the abusive guy, it was by far the safer option than escaping with another woman in those time.

THAT PART.

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

EXACTLY. Very suspicious and bizarre.

​​@@LoneWulf278normalcy. Dworkin addressed it in her book right wing women chapter one about the view these Christian women had on lesbians and rape. They would protest that all lesbians were rapists yet despite knowing multiple women who had been raped by men, and none by women, they protested lesbians, because at least with men there was a twisted feeling of normalcy, and they were too afraid of lesbians as an unknown.

So glad folks are pointing this out more! Like, it can be said and implied with equally as much impact, without showing it explicitly. It feels like these choices aren't made with survivors in mind, queer and black femmes especially

I think that was the problem with coded media in the 80s. As a 45 year old woman I now realize while I was glad to ‘crack the code’ because it was there for me to ‘crack’, this ‘wink wink’ nature of 80s media did allow the audience to think their interpretation was the correct one and we who ‘saw it as more’ were just ‘trying to make it more than what it was’.

Exactly but you got a remember that a lot of these people that are doing reviews about the book or the original movie we’re not even born during that era.. So it’s easy to talk about what should’ve been done and how things weren’t done because they weren’t born in that era, but I actually prefer sex seems to be somewhere in an allusion whether is straight or gay. I don’t feel like I need to see a whole porno in the middle of the movie and for you to tell me explicitly what’s going on with that relationship that’s the whole point of a movie for me to draw my own conclusions. Also, it makes it more family-friendly if you don’t have a lot of sex scenes in the movie.

exactly, however the movie needed to be told with more mystery. It isn't earasing lesbianism. I also think it would have been more offensive to film an erotic scene and mis represent the movie

​@@primadonna3843what?

I feel like there never SHOULD have been a code to crack in the first place. Echoing other comments, why is it okay to show cishet sex, graphic violence, language, and SA, but unambiguous queer sex is off the table? And that’s the thing to. SO many “scenes” didn’t even have to be nude necessarily. Even a REALLY intense makeout, them in bed together in afterglow could have still made it even more obvious, and shown a lot more respect to queer love/sex/relationships being JUST as real and valid as any other. But I ALSO feel… just let them have the actual love scenes. Stop downplaying and IMPLYING something that is NOT negative. Ceelie being attacked was fine to show, but her making love to the woman she loves needed to be deciphered?

what a great way to explain it and your totally right in every way.

Thank you

Telling “OUR” 😂stories tht depict men in a evil shallow point of view. While being sensitive to how women are depicted is CRAZY hypocritical.

@@thenicksaints so those men don’t exist? Every story has a right to be told and not all the men were bad the preacher dad and harpo, harpo messed up listening to sealy about putting hands because that’s all she knew was men putting hands to control their women and there are so many women who think like that because of the men in their environments. I grew up with great men but I also know their is good in bad in every group of people women and men

Fact of the matter is... a MAN is often the villain in a woman's story. Don't like it? Challenge your fellow men about their tendency towards abusive and predatory behavior instead of bitching about women sharing their stories. @@thenicksaints

It didn't get washed away with time- it got washed away with politics. If you want the full story, read the book.

"lesbian themes" lol more like lesbian PLOT

I feel like the film should have been a miniseries instead of a feature film. The Broadway musical was a more accurate adaptation because it was closer to the book than the 1985 adaptation. The director Blitz Bazawule made too many changes to the story in the 2023 adaptation. It wasn't a direct copy and paste adaptation of the Tony Award winning musical. Most of the songs from the Broadway production wasn't in the film and the songs helped told the story.

​@joshuamcdowell9745 your reply is perfect and the exact way I feel! The 2023 film just ripped out the spirit present in the Broadway musical! It is why it is my favorite adaptation of this story and one of my "sacred" texts

OMFG! Yes! I was just about to comment this but now I don’t have to. It’s STILL normalized even today. We never wanna tear down anyone we put on a pedestal no matter how destructive, abusive, problematic, etc they are….pastors included.

Yikessss coming from women whining and forcing themselves into narratives for “diversity” tell me did the color purple have a diverse view of black men ??

@@finland4ever55 “black men can be super psyco” the mayonnaise sheltered girl is a Racist lol shocker

In New Zealand, the suffrage movement was led by a women's temperance organisation. Gender-based violence - and the economic and social conditions that enable is - has driven feminism since the start.

But the problem is that we have so many depictions of Black men being monsters and so many depictions of Black women becoming victims. This industry is overly saturated with these depictions of my community. It's exhausting! That's not to negate the fact that those things happen in real life, but at what point in time will it be okay to play into the psyche of Black people in a positive manner, on a regular basis? At what point in time will it be okay to see healthy heterosexual relationships within the Black community? At what point in time will it be okay to see healthy parenting within the Black community? At what point in time will it be the norm to see us depicted as the superheroes, not just sprinkles of a few here and there, ten years apart? The fact that the norm is toxic relationships between Black men, women, and children constantly smeared all over the silver screen, time and time again, is highly disturbing, and I know seeing these messages has brainwashed us into believing that that's how we should treat each other. At some point in time, we have to stop allowing the atrocities from slavery to be carried through the generations and separate from those who paint the narrative for our community to be so broken!

As much as I wanted to love the remake and thought it did some things well, every musical number honestly pulled me out. I get it is an adaptation of a stage musical but I think the moments it was straight film between the musical numbers were pretty good. But every song, except those actually ‘in story’ (like shug singing in the Juke Joint) made me disconnect from the story.

I find that interesting that so many people didn't get it. I immediately did the first time I saw the movie. But then again, I'm a bisexual woman so I understand the nuanced. I didn't see any attraction or interest in men so it was easy for me to assume that she was a lesbian and truly attracted to and in love with Shug.

Same thing i thought. The fact they reconciled at the end in the book and she forgave and he realized his wrong doing never seem to depicted in the movie. I listened to it on audible before the musical came out and was so surprised by the lesbian relationship in a good way. I think celie was attracted to suge independence, confidence and ability to stand up to men in a way she never women could. I also like how suge helped her adjust her relationship to god and spirituality. I think that aspect is something i wish people would talk about because it was such a beautiful view point. With how she taught her to not see god as simply as a man which would make a woman have a sympathy for men and she themselves less then men. And instead taught her that god is in her and god is everything. God is even as simply the beauty of the color purple. Thus the title of movie. The color is god.

I’ve read the book and seen the Spielberg version. And I think that growth on Mr’s part is there in the movie - it just isn’t acknowledged by Celie because Mr isn’t doing it to be forgiven but to do right by this woman he mistreated her whole life. He’s the one who brings Nettie home to Celie. He knows what he’s done, how he’s brought the sisters back together and that’s enough. He knows he can’t expect or ask for Celie to forgive him so he doesn’t place that burden on her. He rights a major wrong he committed and that has to be enough. If he’d gone to Celie and told her what he’d done, she’d have every right to spit in his face and we would have cheered her. As it was we watched a horrible man do what little he could to make some effort at making amends. It humanized him without justifying or forgiving him in any way.

Yes, I thought so too.

These kinds of bigots will always have their priorities in the wrong order, I'm not surprised.

It's even more ironic since he's an actual degenerate predator that orchestrated the rape of his own son and nephew yet wants to come out the side of his mouth about gay people.

I worked at Walking Dead conventions and the number of parents who were vocally angry that the show depicted two men kissing was astounding. I asked "you were okay with them being exposed to graphic violence and extreme gore but not a quick scene of same-sex affection?" And they each responded unironicly, "Exactly!".

​@@liamdamonThat's why TWD was such a good show (in the beginning before it got way too sadistic just for the sake of being sadistic.) Because in the beginning, the show forced us to see humanity and our inhumane ways. The characters were just trying to hold on to a shred of morality and goodness in the face of horrific events. Love is love. Love in any form is ALWAYS better than zombies! Of course the deeper message flew right over a lot of fools heads.

The way his daughter is a lesbian tho💀.. that man is weird in the head

I could imagine that Spielberg was a bit hesitant to make a movie where every black male character is an irredeemable rapist who is a rapist just because he is bad... This was a common racist accusation thrown at black men once, so going there full force in this movie could feed the racists narrative, or put Spielberg into hot water for perpetuating racist stereotypes...

Same here. I think the medium of film has always had a weird and untrustworthy relationship with abuse stories. If you think about the countless biopics about serial ki11ers, you realize that abusers are always the ones who get the complex and empathetic stories. It’s really not common that victim characters get the complexity. It makes me appreciate the book even more. It also makes me realize that the status quo depends on women identifying with the emotions of the people abusing them more than their own. Otherwise, this one story wouldn’t be so threatening. 🤔

Ok but... ? The character in the book is VERY real and relatable, and not at all simple. Scarily so. Mr.___ isn't some outlier, some psychotic weirdo monster. He is the guy next door. He's your dad. He's your boyfriend. He's who your brother might become if you don't teach him better. He doesn't have any stand out characteristics, one might even say he's painfully average and THAT'S THE POINT. Alice Walker is showing us an ordinary, normal household through a broken mirror. It's Rosemary's Baby, but they're black and the horror isn't pregnancy but domestic violence and heteronormativity. It's about how women are so abused they don't even know what is and isn't abuse (Celie wasn't just abused by her husband, but also by her father: she literally has no recollection of a time when she wasn't being abused and THAT IS ON PURPOSE). It's about how the narrative of manhood and womanhood is itself abusive. It's about how *we* not only erase but encourage abuse. He doesn't have a name, because he is the archetypal man of our society. He is the standard to which all men are held. The entire goddam point here is that if you let society tell you who you are then Mr. ___ is who you will be. The monster is society, he is only it's tool. He *is* toxic masculinity, and nothing more than that. He conforms to society so closely that he no longer has any identity outside of it. He has pleased society, become a respectable man, but lost himself. I feel like you're confusing empathy and justification. One can have empathy for people who do terrible things without justifying the things they did. Their actions were morally wrong, their feelings were valid and could have been dealt with in a better way. They should learn that better way. People don't "decide to be r*pists". They *do* decide to "assert my authority" or "show her I'm a real man". The entire point is that they are given permission by society to not consider the woman's perspective, and whether or not she consents. Indeed, the whole point here is that even Celie doesn't think about whether she consents until Shug points out that she should. Women are not seen as being able to consent, and their consent is not deemed necessary. That's the goddam point.

@@sophiejones3554 good point. I'm not sure it was the main focus of the book though, i think for the book, it was more the point to see it all from the perspective of the abused, someone unable to change the larger system. The movie, knowing it will have a larger audience than the book had, and much bigger than the book anticipated to have when written, was by its nature more rounded. In the book you see nothing, unless celie sees it. That's not how it is in the movie, so it's natural you see a larger picture. And yes, mister may be a terrible husband eveb by the standards of his time, but not remarkably so.

@@saraa.4295 idk, I think the "main focus" of the book would depend on who you ask: which is the chief sign of a top quality book in my opinion. Main focus or not though, the theme was strongly present there in the choices the author made. That's all I ever intended to say here.

I mean look at the P. Diddy situation. Many are ignoring the fact he’s a predator who uses unbalanced power dynamics to dominate and control (and allegedly sexually victimize people of both genders) just to say ‘wait, Diddy is gay.’ The fact there are (alleged) sexual victims who happen to be male is causing more rukus then the fact the fact that they are sexual victims.

0:41

Ew

It's not just him though...violence is always treated much more casually in American culture. Just look at the TV, there are cop shows, any amount of gun deaths, the news shows auful things, and noone bats an eye, but when we see Janet Jackson's nipple for half a second ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.

Well the original film did come out long before the widespread acceptance of gay rights in anyway. Actually I can't remember if it was in the middle of the epidemic when homophobia was rampant or right before. And the new movie waters down all of that and makes it happy fun time.

Exactly. It’s so crazy. 😂

dead on.

The fact that they are so freaked out and confused by female masturbation (or just pleasure at all) but have also spent the last few thousand years spilling so much ink writing medical texts about the ✨️mystery of the female orgasm✨️ and have managed to 'discover' the clitoris like three seperate times

But not surprising

Exactly. The fact that there are not a lot of novels or plays etc. from the black American male perspective shows how non-introspective most of them are. How about a male gay perspective on living in the closet on the downlow?

@@erincrow7084 not at all sadly.

tale as old as time

it one black woman story and not every black women story

When I came out as a teenager in the early 80s, a black female coworker and friend was shocked that there were gay black people. Her mother (and her church) told her that being gay was strictly a white thing. This friend later came out as a lesbian.

I read The Color Purple in high school (not as assigned reading- of course the school wouldn't assign something with such progressive ideas- I just checked it out from the library.) It blew me away. I felt like I was in on the "secrets" from the book that most people (the ones who just saw the movie) didn't know. The lesbian element... the spiritual element... the rejection of colonized religious brainwashing... it almost felt like I was privy to a special imaginary fantasy. I think that made it feel even more precious to me. I also read The Temple of My Familiar, which was sort of loosely a sequel-ish to The Color Purple. Not really, a sequel, though... but Celie and Shug did briefly show up in it, which was really cool. I might have this next part mixed up with another Alice walker book (it's been a few decades since I went on my Alice Walker reading binge😂)... but I think one of the characters in TTOMF was a bisexual massage therapist living in San Francisco. (Alice Walker must have put a lot of herself into that character.) She was very independent, relaxed, free, progressive, and accepting of herself and others. I remember thinking she was living the dream, baby! 😂 I really need to go on another Alice Walker reading binge! I feel like I'd appreciate it even more now, as a grown, middle aged woman.

​@themaggattack Hi, I'm reading TTOMF right now and you are correct, the massage therapist in the book is actually Celie's grandaughter Fanny (Olivia's daughter). She grew up in the house with her mom, Grandma Celie and Mama Shug. Celie and Shug grew old together, and had Celie's kids and grandkids around for a time. Beautiful, really.

I'm sorry you went through that. It's amazing what humans do to our loved ones

that’s so sad :( that you had to hear that blatant lie & that this type of erasure is perpetual and continues today..

Exactly! When I read that book as a young girl one of the most impactful parts I remember is Shug telling Celie to stop picturing God as a white man. She told her to kill the white man in her head and realize God comes in the form of everything.

Thank youuuu that’s literally how it got its name!! I loved the books message about rethinking Christianity. I thought it was so ahead of its time.

Christianity had a big influential part in the making of the film (the original). They definitely treaded lightly when it came to Shug’s sexuality and the scene. Black Christianity can be worse than White Christianity because it stays 10 toes down to hold on beliefs that were taught.

@@regisnyder True. It's not just her sexuality, its the depiction of her as a sinner that needed to be saved; a loose woman with no morals. The scene with her singing in the church is not in the book and one of the reasons why I hate the movie's depiction of Shug. They created an all around more palatable character for the black conservative community.

​@@porscheamartinYes, it's sad how they had to pander to the Madonna/whore dichotomy, dial it down due to homophobia, and seek a big name white male producer just to get attention for the movie. They did the best they could do for the 80's, though. I haven't seen the musical screen adaptation yet... I can appreciate that it's swinging to the other side of the pendulum from oppression p*rn to a celebration of how Celie found happiness... but... I'm just hoping that one day someone will re-make it as the book was actually written. To include the most important parts of the book. Especially the part about religion and freedom from colonized Christian brainwashing. Which indeed was the crux of the whole story.

Not to be pedantic here, but did you mean patience? If not, this is a good observation, because women who admitted to being abused were a lot of times sent to asylums or declared insane. They don’t have any more “patients” to forcefully institutionalize now.. but even that’s a concept we’re seeing reversed SMH

That's what I've been saying for a long time. They have their heads firmly up their backsides

Does anyone not object to being generalized? Who benefits from stereotyping?

@yoyodre the bear

@@olivewash8419 this is why we picked the bear.

Im glad kat brought up the musical, i wish she delved more into its representation of the deep love that it had no bones about showing between Seely and Shug. The musical features one of the most beautiful love songs in musical theatre, let alone an incredibly important moment of lesbian theatre history, as there is barely a handful of lesbian relationships in musicals, let alone shows revolving around lesbianism. There song “what about love?” brings me to tears, from its beautiful harmonies, to its moving lyrics, its one of the most honest depictions of love in my mind. The original version with Fantasia in the og broadway cast is my favorite

🎯

I cant help but think that the people who were offended by the book are themselves abusive - or have run cover for abusers.

​@@redmaple1982 that's exactly what I was thinking lmfao why aren't they more angry about the actions of the abusive men instead 💀 weird

Yes-Celie was both a lesbian *and* the victim of sexual abuse by men.

Yeah, Quincy Jones wasn't stupid. He knew having Spielberg direct it would put the type of shine on it that having a black or female director wouldn't. He knew how to use an ally when he needed to.

Exactly. I was a kid amd i got it

Same, and I watched it as a kid in the 90s who didn't really watch any other media with LGBTQ people showing affection- so it wasn't a matter of being able to recognize those things from practice. It was just obvious to me.

Lena is an SA apologist, so I agree

Lmao

@@maffieduran😮 please please fill me in

Dee Rees would have done a great job with The Color Purple musical

I will never forgive Lena Waithe for Them season 1, that shit was unnecessary.

hahahahaha stop☠☠☠

Wait… but it’s not. It’s pronounced like BOO like a ghost abd then “C.” BOO-C.

@@TckleBxx Chile... That's the same way you say "bussy".

^ what she said. you’re still saying it wrong.

this is the first video so kat might speak more about this in a future one ❤

Wdym by “option”? You don't choose to be attracted to different genders, you just are! If I were to call being a monosexual homosexual an option is be the bad guy.

Too bad so many people are trying to ban books these days! Please vote!

But Nettie was just as dark and was seen as the pretty sister which helped.

@@andiman44 Can we just stop denying colorism, please? Dark skin girls are not made happier because the other dark girl may have been called pretty. You're still getting treated badly. She's probably getting treated badly too, just as Nettie was in the story. Thanks.

@@raichutoyou No one is denying anything. Far too often dark skinned black women and girls are explicitly depicted as the least attractive person in the cast and Nettie was the one time a dark skinned girl was portrayed as explicitly beautiful (which I still rarely see to this day). Didn’t say colorism didn’t exist because of it or even that pretty dark skinned people don’t deal with it. Learn to read.

Because that's the next video

i thought the exact same thing.

Holy heck, I was just having the same thoughts! You're not the only one!

The original movie may still be on Netflix. That's where I saw it years ago.