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

Did you know that Moms for Liberty is actively trying to ban this book, a book that was recently adapted into a major motion picture for the second time? Alice Walker's award winning book, Color Purple, has been controversial since it was first published in 1982. Subjects like rape, incest and domestic violence were spoken about in this book in a raw and unflinching way that resonated with a lot of black women at the time. One of those women being Oprah, whose life was changed forever after she

accepted the role of Sophia in Spielberg's 1985 adaptation of the book that has since become a classic. Now, I was not alive in the eighties, so I was predominantly familiar with The Color Purple because of Steven Spielberg's film. And I remembered the film as a classic film that I would watch with my family, but I didn't really remember. A really important part of the story, which is that Sealey is a lesbian. And it wasn't until I started to read the book in preparation for the videos that I've

been working on about The Color Purple, that I realized that Sealy's depiction as a lesbian woman is actually incredibly clear in the book. And like me, in the eighties, a lot of people were first introduced to the story of The Color Purple through the film. When you read the book, that is made incredibly clear because she speaks very vividly about not experiencing attraction to men, even describing them occasionally as frogs. But despite that, at the time, a lot of people protested the film, a

nd especially this sort of idea that lesbianism is a solution to abusive relationships between black men and black women. And what we're seeing right now with this new adaptation is an entire new era of people making a lot of the same criticisms they previously did with Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's book. And there's a bit of a difference now, because in this new adaptation, Celia's sexuality is indeed quite a bit more clear. And when looking at the Color Purple and its adaptat

ions from either side of the camera, there is this very ironic trend of mishandling and mistreating black women and their labor. So that's what we're going to talk about in this video. Hi, my name is Kat Black, and this is Movies in My Closet. When Alice Walker sat down to start writing The Color Purple, she never imagined that it would win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983. She actually started to write this book for her mother, who wouldn't even fin

ish the book because of its foul language. Growing up in the small farming town of Georgia, Alice Walker knew many women who had been abused by men. One of those women being her grandmother, a woman who would serve as the primary inspiration for the protagonist of the color Purple. Seeley Lake Seeley, Walker's grandmother was brutally abused by her husband and raped instead of made love to. So naturally, she was drawn to her husband's gorgeous lover, a woman who treated her with kindness, who lo

oked at her and saw her full potential. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence, she moved to New York City and started to write The Color Purple. New York was too congested and the characters weren't quite speaking to her there, so she decided to move to San Francisco. She had much of the same issue there as well, so she decided to move a little bit north up to a place called Bonneville. And it was there that the characters finally started to speak. Now the Color Purple is an epistolary novel, mea

ning that it's comprised predominantly of letters. The book follows a woman named Celie through 30 years of her life, and we see her go from abuse child to empowered woman. At the very beginning of the book, Celie is writing Letters to God because she has no one else to speak to, and she feels so deeply that no one else would care what she has to say. In the novel, it's immediately clear that Celie is being sexually abused by her father, and that's just one of the many forms of abuse that, becau

se of her circumstance, has been normalized to her. Eventually, she has two children by her father, and those children are taken away from her. And it's incredibly clear that Celie has not known love or acceptance from really anyone, with the exception of her sister Nettie. Nettie is Sally's solace, and she's one of the only people in the book who demonstrates a desire to help her in any way. While Celie is denied an education, Nettie is allowed to go to school, and Nettie puts a lot of effort i

nto educating Celie so that she learns how to read and write. Celia's father decides to sell her to a man named Mr. who, like most men before her, is abusive towards her. And this is one of the first times where the sisters are separated. Eventually, Nettie starts to visit Sealey and ends up staying with her. And unfortunately, while Nettie was staying with them, Mr. would try to rape her. And when Nettie refused, she's kicked out of the home and the two sisters are separated once again. And it'

s from that point in the book where all of the letters are now written to Nettie, because one of the promises they make to each other is that they will always write each other through Sally's hope of one day seeing Nettie once again and the lessons that she learns from the powerful women around her. Celia eventually finds the power and strength to leave her relationship and start her own life, and they eventually do, at the very end of the book, reunite. Now, this book was pretty well-received.

It won a Pulitzer Prize and a few other awards, and a lot of people were pretty eager to adapt this book into a film. Producer Peter Gruber would call Alice Walker for film rights after already getting Quincy Jones to sign on to do the score. And Jones was the very first to suggest Steven Spielberg as a director. And believe it or not, Steven Spielberg was actually pretty reluctant to take the position. The book was introduced to him by Kathleen Kennedy, who sort of gave the book to him as somet

hing that he might enjoy and not necessarily a project to work on. And because he was introduced to the book in that way and genuinely liked the book, he was a little bit more open to the idea, but he was still pretty nervous, especially because he was a white man doing a book about black women's trauma. In an interview with the New York Times, he said, I told Quincy, I don't know if I'm the filmmaker for this. Don't you want to find a black director or a woman? And Quincy asked. You didn't have

to come from Mars to do it, did you? He said This movie should be directed by the person who loves it the most, and I love it more than anyone else. Spielberg was a genuine fan of Alice Walker's work, and after they sat down for lunch in San Francisco, Alice Walker felt very, very comfortable with Steven Spielberg taking on the position because he was very familiar with the source material when they were casting for Spielberg's adaptation. Oprah was just at the very beginning of her talk show c

areer. Like I said, she really loved the book and she auditioned for the role Sophia, but hadn't really heard back from anyone. In fact, she became really anxious about this, and she started to believe that the reason why she wasn't called back was because of her weight. She actually started going to a fat farm in order to lose the weight. That's how convinced she was that the reason she wasn't getting the role was her size. But eventually she would get a call from Steven Spielberg himself, who

would tell her that she lost another pound. She would also lose the role. Now, this role for Oprah was incredibly life changing. And when you hear her talk about her time working on The Color Purple, she often speaks about it in a lot of very sort of woo language, a lot of really positive, like life changing, spiritual, uplifting type language, because it was really inspirational to her. In fact, Amblin production, which is Steven Spielberg's production company, was a huge inspiration for Oprah

when she started Harpo Studios. And her time on The Color Purple inspired her to purchase the rights for the Oprah show, believe it or not. She wasn't her own boss. She didn't actually own the Oprah show. And after her time on The Color Purple, she finally felt like she could claim and own her own destiny. Alice Walker wanted to cast relatively unknown actors in this adaptation because she really wanted to reflect one of the themes of the book, raising from Obscurity. So fear would actually be O

prah's first acting role. But for Will be Goldberg, who played Celie, this would be a new sort of challenging role for her to play because she was predominantly experience doing comedy at the time. Whoopi Goldberg was mostly well known for her one woman show in San Francisco, and so clearly felt like a departure from the previous things that she's done. Fortunately for her, Alice Walker had already seen her on Broadway and was really, really interested in having her play. Seeley. The film was re

ally well-received at the time. It made $98.4 million to its $15 million budget. It would receive 11 Academy Award nominations, but unfortunately would not win any. Now, while there was a lot of very positive reception to the film. There were a lot of people who were being introduced to this book for the first time through the film who were particularly upset with the themes around black men and especially around silly sexuality. So in preparation for this video, I read the book that I watched t

he Spielberg film, and then I watched the newest adaptation. And I have a lot to say about the way that the themes of this book are translated between these adaptations. The book really nails Home how alienated Sealey feels and how a be used and unsafe Her reality is. Pretty much every male character in this book is abusive towards Celie in some way. And sometimes while she's discussing the abuse that she has experienced at the hands of men, she's also drawing attention to the fact that she is a

lesbian. Part of the frustration of her situation is she's forced to be in relationships with men when she's not attracted to them. She literally lives in a time where her father, who is raping her, has the ability to sell her to a man who would ultimately also go through the same thing that is an incredibly bleak existence that is really, really nailed in the book that isn't quite as apparent in the first adaptation or this newest one. Now, Alice Walker was pretty nervous about the way that Sp

ielberg would adapt some of these narratives. She questioned whether or not she should sign away her movie rights. She told California magazine the thought of it was too risky. The idea of movies from literature in general and the thought of what the White Factory of Hollywood would do to it. Ultimately, Alice Walker had her reservations, but she decided to get together a group of five women and really talk about the merits of an adaptation. And what they came down to is it was better for the st

ories to be told, even if they're told by white Hollywood, essentially, that working within the system, especially with a very successful and very well-known director, is one of the best ways to draw attention to the plight of minorities. And she recognized that stories like this have the ability to actually enact real change. Ultimately, Walker would indeed sell the movie rights, but she would stay on the project as a consultant and also had a final decision on the script and its director. And

one of the things that she noted when she read the script for the film is that she felt more empathy for its male characters. And if you've read the book, you kind of understand why that is, because almost all of the male characters kind of are described in a very sort of black and white way. So the film in so many ways, and I think this is even more clear in the newest adaptation, really does go further than the source material when it comes to humanizing black men. But that really did not come

across to groups like the NAACP and the Coalition Against Black Exploitation. A lot of black men at the time felt that the depiction of black men in the film was a little too one sided. In the New York Review of Books in 1987. Darryl Pinckney said that he felt that the novel portrayed a black man from a distance that is entirely from the point of view of the women as knaves, incapable of reflection, tyrants filled with impotent rage or as totemic do gooders could actually update his comments in

2021 and say that Alice Walker is a part of a group of black women who characterize all black men as rapists and NAACP's official magazine The Crisis. Herb Boyd argues that the film depicts black men in a degrading and odious matter, saying that the film is counterproductive and based on an insular world where black male chauvinism is the principal contradiction. Black men are the main enemy, and by this world's logic, lesbianism is a viable solution. In the book, it's pretty clear that Sealey

is a lesbian. But part of why it's clear in the book is because, like I said, it's an epistolary novel. So a lot of what's in the book is sealy's internal narrative Sealy's internal dialog. And you don't really get a lot of that in the first adaptation. And in the first adaptation, there are several more explicit scenes between Shug and Sealy that are completely removed. And I think that this is kind of an important difference because sugar is supposed to represent a great change, especially bec

ause she is the first woman that she's attracted to. Shug Avery is a worldly woman. She is somebody who represents to Sealy this sort of independent woman who goes where she wants to go because she wants to go. It's very clear that no one controls Shug Avery, not even her partners throughout the book. And she is a really powerful character. And Sealy's attraction to her is very important because Shug Avery's sexual freedom is one of the many reasons why Sealy admires her, like one of the scenes

that they remove from both of the adaptations is where Shug teaches Sealy how to masturbate because Sealy has never had sex for pleasure. Sealy is only known sex as a type of violence being done to her. And as somebody who used to have that relationship with sex, I definitely identified with that and Shug was the first person who took a genuine interest in her and actually helped her achieve orgasm, something that has never happened to her. And while I guess there's a way for you to interpret a

lot of the things that happen in the book as not necessarily relating to her sexuality, I do think it is pretty interesting that so many people have a discomfort with seeing Sealy portrayed the way she is in the book and also seeing her portrayed the way that Alice Walker wanted to see her portrayed. In the book. She sees a photo of Shug Avery and she falls madly in love with the photo before she ever meets the woman. In fact, one of the biggest sort of letdowns that she experiences when she fir

st meets Shug Avery is should Avery calls her ugly. You know, this woman that she has been admiring for so long calls her ugly. And that moment is later flipped around when Chuck Avery tells her that she sees the beauty in her. I guess there's a way for you to watch the movie and ignore her sexuality. But to me, it's pretty important. And it was disappointing to see the way that it was adopted in the first film. When asked about the film's very tame portrayal of Sealy sexuality, Spielberg said i

t was an artistic decision. I didn't categorize it as a lesbian relationship so much as a love relationship of great need. No one had ever loved Sealy other than God and her sister. And here Sealy is being introduced to the human race by a person full of love. I didn't think a fall out love scene would say it any better. And, you know, when I read that, it kind of frustrated me because this is a very common pattern that you see in the way that people interpret lesbian relationships. It is so com

mon for people to look at two women in a relationship and say, those are just two roommates. Those are just two best friends. Right? And it sort of comes from lesbo phobia. This idea that relationships between two women are not valid are not nearly as important or valuable as relationships between a man and a woman. And interestingly enough, this is actually something that's addressed in the book when Shug Avery eventually goes and marries a man. This is completely devastating to Sealy because s

he loves Shug Avery, and she's having to, as a lesbian, sit there and process that Shug Avery as a bisexual has access to a kind of life that she doesn't really have. And part of why Shug Avery entering into this relationship is so devastating to her is because at a certain point, Shug gives her the impression that they're going to run away together, and they never actually do. And as a reader, you also pick up on the fact that even though Shug is an incredibly important to Sealy, Shug doesn't n

ecessarily see their relationship as seriously as Sealy does, especially because Shug has all these relationships all the time. Right. For Sealy, it's one of the few times she's ever had a relationship like this. And you can sort of see that there is a little bit of imbalance there. It's initially very hurtful to Sealy that Shug is in a new relationship with a man, but she eventually gets over it and learns to accept it. So information the book makes it very, very clear that Sealy is a lesbian.

In 1997, Walker even said, It is clear that Shug is like me bisexual, that Sealy is a lesbian. Do I regret that my version of the book was not filmed? I have accepted that it wasn't. However, in 2011, Steven Spielberg was asked again about why they didn't show Sealy's relationship the way that it was in the book, and he had actually a far more understandable answer, saying there were certain things in the relationship between Shug, Avery and Sealy that were finally detailed analysis book that I

didn't feel could get a PG 13 rating. And I was shy about it in the sense that perhaps I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more sexually honest encounters between Shug and Sealy, because I did soften those. I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss, and I got a lot of criticism for that. However, despite the fact that Sealy and Shug Avery's relationship was severely toned down, the Black Coalition Against Exploitation

would file an official complaint with the AFA catalog about the film's depiction of black men and what they described as a subtle promotion of lesbianism. And the same organization said in a 1996 copy of the L.A. Times that lesbianism is anti survival, anti productive, and it's at worst genocidal. Mainstream talk shows like today and Donahue, who just happened to be Oprah's biggest competition, would host live debates about the Color Purple. Love it or hate it. No one can deny that The Color Pur

ple, both the book and the first adaptation have become American classics. So much so that in 2023, Warner Brothers decided to adapt it yet again. And when news of this new adaptation came out, a lot of people were really upset with it. They did not want a new adaptation of the book. They thought that the original film was good enough, but a lot of people didn't understand that this new 2023 adaptation of The Color Purple is actually an adaptation of a musical. The Color Purple Musical was adapt

ed from a book by Marsha Norman. She had previously won a Tony Award for her work on the book for The Secret Garden Musical. Brenda Russell, Ali Willis and Stephen Bray wrote the music, and after workshopping the show in Georgia in 2004, it premiered on Broadway in 2005. It premiered to much acclaim, actually winning two Tony Awards. This was actually my introduction to the Color Purple Musical, and I didn't know. But Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks both actually performed their roles on Br

oadway and were brought onto this project to reprise them since premiering in 2005. The musical has had several successful runs and revivals. But in 2019, a woman named Cee Umba, who was supposed to play Celie, got into a lot of trouble because of her homophobic comments. As it turns out, she, like a lot of other people, wasn't fully aware that Sealy's character is a lesbian to the point where she actually ended up suing the theater and her casting agent for offering her a gay role. Her lawyer w

ould actually argue that Steven Spielberg's depiction of Sealy was the most well-known version of Sealy, and that depiction of her doesn't necessarily make it clear that she is a lesbian. And like I said, the musical was based on both the book and the first adaptation of the book. And one of the things that they tried to do in the musical is make it a lot more clear that Sealy is queer. To me, there's something so interesting about wanting to portray these characters in this book. Yet somehow re

moving their sexuality. Alice Walker is an openly bisexual woman. She wrote these characters from her own experience. And it's sort of interesting to me that the only version of this story that could be sold is a version of the story where that aspect of the story is severely toned down. Like you enjoy the work of Black Sapphic women, but you don't actually want to portray black Sapphic women. There's also something kind of fascinating to me about wanting to portray Celia as a character, but not

reading the book because it's pretty clear pretty quickly that Sealy is a lesbian in the book. And I can actually imagine being an actor and agreeing to portray a character and literally not doing research like reading the book that the character is from. I don't know. To me, that's kind of like basic, but, you know, whatever. Going into the newest adaptation, there was a focus on modernizing the story and also addressing some of the issues that a lot of people had with the previous adaptation.

Oprah came on to this project as a producer, and she was incredibly hesitant about making a new adaptation. She told The Hollywood Reporter Maybe it was ego. I just felt like we've already done it. I don't think we can do it any better. And now it's actually a classic. How are you going to improve on that? However, after MeToo, she, along with producer Scott Sanders, felt like now was the time to reintroduce the Color Purple to a new generation. Despite the fact that a lot of people felt that S

teven Spielberg as a white man did a really, really great job with the first adaptation of The Color Purple for this new adaptation, there was a focus on getting a black director, and they tapped Blitz BAZAWULE, who at the time was really only known for working on Beyonce's Black is King movie for that reason. Warner Brothers was pretty nervous about giving Blitz. Boswell the ability to take on a big project like this, especially because it's being held up against the previous adaptation, which

of course many people consider to be a classic. However, at Oprah Winfrey's insistence, they decided to go with Blitz sponsor Roulette. Alice Walker was really happy to hear about this, saying, I think it just felt really good to have a black man directing, not just because he's a black man, but because he's hugely talented and also a black young man to do the screenplay. Because I want people to see that we're all trying to evolve in our relationships with each other. I hope that this evolution

and this sense is helpful to people now. Blitz Bowser Woolley was very focused on modernizing this story and presenting it for a contemporary audience that might be tired of trauma films and being more familiar with the previous film, which I would say is very book accurate for the most part. I was pretty confused by some of the commercials because it certainly looked like a much more uplifting story than I remember it being on my main channel. I made a video about an influencer named Mitra Mil

ler who did an ad for The Color Purple, and it was an ad that for me really came off as pretty callous because of the way that she's describing the Color Purple. But actually, after watching the movie, I sort of understand a little bit why this was sort of something that they would do when advertising for the film, because in comparison to the book and in comparison to the first adaptation, this is a much happier version of Alice Walker's story. Now, like I said, this was also my first introduct

ion to the Color Purple Musical, so I don't know if that's just how the musical is. I'm actually very curious to know how people who like the musical feel about the adaptation of the musical, because I guess when I think of Color Purple Musical, I almost only want to see a more uplifting version of that because I don't know if I want a lot of songs about all of the traumatic things that happened to Sealy. So maybe in general the adaptation is a bit more positive. I don't know. But the way that I

watched the adaptation was after reading the book and then immediately watching the first adaptation and then immediately watching the newest version of the film. And it was kind of jarring how tone down a lot of the themes were. Suraj PE Hanson, who plays Shug, had this to say about this more uplifting narrative. We don't want to hollow in the mud. We don't want to stay stuck in our traumas. We laugh, we sing, we go to church, we dance, we celebrate, we fight for joy. We find joy, We keep it.

That's all we have and possible. I echoed this, saying, I believe that for the first time we are going to get the opportunity to see the machinations of how Sealy overcame the trauma. And in a way, I really do understand why the film came together the way it did. I also think that to some degree we are all tired of seeing these films about slavery, so we can kind of understand the way that they shifted and changed it in so many ways. I enjoyed the new adaptation, but I enjoyed it as something th

at's distinctly separate from the first adaptation and from the book. Because even though it's the same story, it's a very different approach to the story. And I found that a lot of the story points don't really hit as heavily because of the things that were changed. However, something that is really interesting for me to think about as I think about the depiction of Sealy's relationship with Shug Avery, is that how it was depicted in both of these adaptations is truly reflective of how people f

eel about lesbian relationships at the time it's being made, right? Because while the new adaptation still doesn't include a lot of the more intense scenes between Shug and Sealy, it does, however, depict them as being in a relationship. It shows them as two women who love each other and are attracted to each other. It's not at all ambiguous in any way. The eighties were not an amazing time for LGBT representation and we were also a far more homophobic society. So it's interesting for me to thin

k about how things have changed and how that resulted in us having a more clear representation of the source material. But that doesn't mean that the depiction is perfect. The song What About Love? Where you see Seeley and shook Avery? Being lovey dovey towards each other is actually a song that within the world of the musical only happens in Sally's imagination. So you could still look at that and interpret the relationship differently. Marcus Gagliardi wrote the screenplay for the film and he

also happens to be an openly queer man, and he saw it as one of his personal responsibilities to rectify the erasure of Celia's queer relationship that happened in the previous adaptation. But much like last time, there are a lot of people who were first introduced to this story through the film, and those people still have a lot to say about Celia's sexuality. Now, one of the only reasons why Alice Walker was even open to her book being made into a film is because she wanted for her story to ge

t out there. And it's very interesting to me to look at both of the adaptations and see that. So many people had the same issues with both films because so many people only ever see these films and don't ever read the original book, which again, is incredibly clear about Celia's sexuality. But with this new adaptation comes a lot of the same old debates about the Color Purple and a lot of people who are upset with the film's depiction of black men and the representation of lesbian women in this

context. And one of the most notable figures to speak out against the new Color Purple adaptation is 41 year old rapper Lil Boosie. Lil would run to Twitter and say I had to walk out of the Color Purple movie and two other older couples walked out. Also because I had my daughters with me and it seemed like a rainbow love story. Good acting, but whoever wrote the script is pushing the narrative hard. As a parent, I will not let my little girl watch this film. And, you know, again, it's fascinatin

g to me that people would go into The Color Purple thinking it was something other than this incredibly upsetting story about trauma. But I guess that for a lot of people, they only know about the Color Purple as like a classic black film. You know, like the Sapphic context is completely stripped from, I think a lot of black people's understanding or knowledge of the story. And I find that to be really fascinating. And it sort of highlights this pattern of a appreciating the work and contributio

ns of black queer people while also arguing that they shouldn't exist in the same space as you. And this, of course, is not the first time that little Boosie has made homophobic comments. If you're unfamiliar with little Boosie, this Reddit comment summarizes him very well. He's a homophobic rapper who has eight children from six different women said that he would allow a prostitute to sleep with his 13 year old son. Went on a homophobic rant against Lil Nas X telling him to kill himself and sai

d letting his kids watch porn was way better than watching cartoon men kissing. I feel like the most I know about Lil Boosie is that he lives in complete fear constantly of people making him into a homosexual. And Boosie, I have news for you. That's not how it works. If you're feeling that way already, that's totally okay. That's valid. You can love who you love. No one can put a woman in front of me and make me attracted to her because I'm not attracted to women. It just doesn't work that way f

or me. No one can make you gay. No one can force you to be attracted to something you're not attracted to. And if you feel like that's possible, it's probably likely that you yourself are withholding a lot of your own internal feelings. People can't make you gay, but I'm positive. If I were to search through your porn history, I would probably see some geisha. In fact, in 2007, Lil Boosie had a song called They Darken, which is about what you think it would probably be about. It's about two wome

n having sex. Now I'm going to try to read one of his raps as well as I can. I got my bitch up in the room. I'm tryin to rip her ass apart, brung my other bitch and made her eat her in the dark. Now she die. Can now she die? Can. I don't know how the song actually goes, but he's a lyrical genius. Very predictably, dudes like Lil Boosie only like lesbians when they can fetishize them, they're only interested in seeing a lesbian relationship. If it's too hot, sexy girls performing to their satisfa

ction. If two women come together genuinely out of love, this is something that they absolutely refuse to verify, to validate because it does not play to their desires. It is so telling to me that that is the way that so many cis head men who have complained about this film consume content that depicts LGBT people but doesn't quite actually accept LGBT people. To me, it's just another reminder that beneath homophobia is quite often misogyny. There's a little bit of a dissonance between the theme

of the book and how many black women were treated behind the scenes. To me, one of the most obvious examples of this, of course, is how Alice Walker's sexual party and her actual experiences as a black Sapphic woman are consistently downplayed and erased. It's obviously disempowering to the original person that wrote the book, right? There's a little bit of dissonance between the production of these adaptations and the themes in this book. At its core, The Color Purple is about powerful black w

omen who overcome their circumstance and forge a path for themselves in this world. And Alice Walker is a woman who in so many ways has done that in her own life. But in both adaptations, Alice Walker's work has been minimized in order to essentially make a profit. And it's really hard for me to look at that and not see that as a continuation in of the pattern of how black women's work is often disregarded and disrespected. In fact, one of the controversies related to the new adaptation of The C

olor Purple has to do with the compensation of the black woman standing in front of the camera.