The Color Purple Purple as a Feminist Novel about Women - Essay Example

Running Head: The Color Purple The Color Purple is a feminist novel in which all good comes about by the actions of women; it is spoilt by unnecessarily unfavourable to men [Name of the writer] [Name of the institution] The Color Purple is a feminist novel in which all good comes about by the actions of women; it is spoilt by unnecessarily unfavourable to men The Color Purple, by black feminist writer Alice Walker, is not a good novel. Therefore, one had every right to expect that it would make an excellent Hollywood film since Hollywood has never been able to make great films from great books. And because the film has been recognized rather lavishly with awards and nominations for awards, not to mention a very strong box office as well, it is safe to assert that the novel has indeed been transformed into an excellent Hollywood film. A book like The Color Purple lends itself to the glossy and excessively sentimental treatment that Hollywood is so capable οf providing for its "serious subjects" or those endearing pop-culture literary attempts at some sort οf social protest. The Color Purple offers Hollywood, rather like a traditional trifle on a wedding gown, a bit οf something old and a bit οf something new. The old stuff is race, which, in this post-Dr. King age οf a perfectly integrated society, where indeed a Negro can marry his white bosss daughter, is not only unworthy οf any trenchant discussion, but scarcely worthy οf notice. Blacks have long ceased to be exotic or exciting or even interesting, largely because it has been determined by an act οf cultural fiat that, except as nostalgic objects οf some historical past, they no longer exist. Dr. Kelly Miller predicted back in 1925 in the New York Amsterdam News that the Negro race would die out, and I guess in the 1980s we can hear, to use an old black folk phrase, "the death bell toning. "So, it is a perfect age to make a movie about race when one is no longer confronted with the question which side are you on? And racism is something that occurred long ago and far away. Feminism, though, is something quite lively and intriguing for Hollywood and it has been pursued by the filmmakers out there with all the naive gracelessness and enervating bathos that will eventually cease to make it an object οf real thought but rather a shrewd diversion from thought itself. Feminism becomes for us through our films not even something remotely identifiable with a "social problem" but the mere cause for shocks and quakes to the nervous system, something to keep us from being bored that will become a part οf the collected fund οf contemporary boredom. I sometimes think the sole purpose οf the film The Color Purple is simply to stave off boredom with, ironically but not unexpectedly, all the elements οf boredom. (Selzer 1995) There has been in recent weeks a good deal οf teeth gnashing and hand wrenching in some quarters οf the black community over the film, Hollywoods latest treatment, among other things, οf Afro-American life. One might almost be happy that this decidedly inept film had been made if the ensuing debate in the black community about the meaning οf the depiction οf black men and black women in American popular culture would produce anything like critical clarity. It will not. So black folk will simply experience another round οf murderous name calling and posturing, the sort οf emotionalism that passes for constructive argument in the black community, a place where many people still innocently think that mere outrage over insults means something in this world. The Color Purple is one οf such a long line οf inept Hollywood films about black life--a cultural enterprise that started with King Vidors Hallelujah in 1929--that this sort οf thing has become a cherished tradition. (Cummings 2005) The Color Purple is a very bad film, so undeniably bad that one wonders how Steven Spielberg--its director--ever acquired any sort οf reputation as a competent artist. (I suppose it is, finally, its utter mediocrity that makes The Color Purple such an outstanding Hollywood film in much the same way that Lilies οf the Fields was. In Hollywood films about black folk the powers that be usually hit what they aim for.) Spielberg is well considered because, in part, his films make enormous amounts οf money, which means that they cease to be films at all and become entrepreneurial events. This ability to make money has always been consistently mistaken by Americans for talent or genius, depending upon how much money is made. Also, Spielberg is loved by American audiences because he makes very expensive B movies, which means that he combines hokum and splendour, that indeed he cares very much about richly etching the details οf hokum, corn, and trash. As a result, he has bestowed an enormous significance on a mediocre art. His purpose is not to make the B movie any less mediocre but to make it a more grandiose spectacle. He does not remind me so much οf David Lean or Cecil B. DeMille, who also loved the epic, the grand spectacle; Spielberg brings to mind the late jazz orchestra leader, Stan Kenton: give me a cast οf thousands and I will give you not order but the degenerative excesses οf order. This art οf the maximum, which is supposed to heighten ones sensations by playing so blatantly upon the emotions, becomes in the end merely prosaic. (Wood 1998) In The Color Purple cliches fall upon one another, trip over one another really, in such a tumble that one is forced to think that Spielberg was really directing a parody or a comedy and was not succeeding. There is no need to waste the artistic significance and power οf such excess by taking it seriously; but apparently he does, just as Stan Kenton did in jazz orchestration. Sunrises and sunsets abound; children are seen running through grassy meadows οf flowers that exist nowhere in the South οf the black farm worker; Africa is the land οf wild animals and huts. We even have a brief "coon" episode οf singing in a church, a barroom brawl, and a happy ending, this last being the only aspect οf the novel that Spielberg used unaltered. And, οf course, in Spielberg, as in the novels οf Henry James, everyone has enough to eat and money is, at best, only a moral abstraction. The whole did not resemble a movie so much as an interminably long television program, which, I think, for Spielberg was precisely the point οf all those cliches. They may not have succeeded as comedy but they did succeed in intoxicating the audience with the comfort οf things familiar. In the end, the film is like a very expensive, very large greeting card; and a card, after all, has no meaning except in the experience οf receiving it. The Color Purple has meaning only in the experience οf having watched it. The audience emerges from the theatre in much the same frame οf mind in which fans emerge from a wrestling match, saying collectively, "I cried," "I laughed," "I was angry." It is not the experience οf catharsis but rather something more akin to the experience οf receiving therapy or counselling (the white 1980s version οf mojo hands, voodoo, and St. John the conqueror root: psychoanalysis and self-help for the masses). The film does not purge ones emotions or free ones secret self; in short, it does not produce the true power οf dream. (Cutter 2000) It simply, in the absolute darkness οf the theatre, allows one to evoke endlessly a series οf absolutely trite responses to a series οf emotional, manipulative, trite situations; for the film does indeed trivialize its themes by condemning the modes οf irony, ambiguity, and, ultimately, realism; so, instead οf being searing, it is merely heart warming. And a chronically insecure American audience is reassured about its bourgeois pretensions and the moral integrity οf the society itself. The Color Purple does not broaden ones ability to respond but reduces it, and the audience finds this both charming and soothing. The characters on the screen have meaning only insofar as they provide this insular, protective, and narcotic experience for the audience. They mean nothing otherwise. References Cummings, Kathleen. Chapter Three: "The Color Purple" & Beyond. Alice Walker (9781429812252), 2005, p3-3 Cutter, Martha J. Philomela Speaks: Alice Walkers Revisioning οf Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple.. MELUS, Fall/Winter2000, Vol. 25 Issue 3/4, p161 Selzer, Linda. Race and domesticity in The Color Purple. African American Review, 1995, Vol. 29 Issue 1, p67 Wood, James. The Color Purple. New Republic, 1998, Vol. 218 Issue 9, p29-32 Read More