A brouhaha is bubbling about the much-praised Steven Spielberg film ”The Color Purple,” the story of an abused Georgia black woman`s climb to self-respect and independence during the years 1909 to 1943.
The film may be a hymn to the human spirit and a tribute to the inner strength of black women, but, detractors say, the movie accomplishes its theme at the expense of men, particularly black men, who are portrayed either as bullying brutes or wimps.
Is ”The Color Purple” fair to men? On Dec. 26, Tribune editorial writer Clarence Page, 38, and Tribune Tomorrow section editor Ruby Scott, 34, met with film critic Gene Siskel, 39, to discuss the controversy.
SISKEL: There has been a hue and cry among members of the black community –virtually all men, many of whom have not seen ”The Color Purple”–
complaining that this is a racist portrayal of black man, that it perpetuates the image that black men are rapists and irresponsible thugs. Do you think
”The Color Purple” is racist?
PAGE: No. As much as I always look out for racist depictions of blacks and any other ethnic group in movies, my red flag certainly did not go up in this case. As negative as some people might think its black male characters are, the behavior of the white characters, male and female, is much worse. Actually, I think it is one of the finest movies I have ever seen.
The question really is: Is it sexist as well as racist? The movie celebrates womanhood and talks about a woman discovering herself, and because this story is about women, it is the men who are the flat characters. For years we`ve seen movies where the women were flat characters and the male characters had depth. In this case the male characters are flat and this offends a lot of men.
There is also the historical question of the way black men were treated in the movies in the past. So in the black community, there is an especially keen sensitivity to negative portrayals of black men.
SISKEL: You`re saying that if the colors had been switched and the actors had been white, white males might have a similiar objection: ”This is just a feminist tract.”
PAGE: Absolutely. It`s interesting that whites are not objecting, because the white people in this movie are the real losers. They don`t look good–male or female. But because you have so many other movies that feature white characters of all types, that has not been a big issue. But in the black community how black males are portrayed is a very big issue.
And it`s true that the black males in this movie for the most part are either brutes or wimps. At the end of the movie, without giving away the ending, I see the men starting to learn something. But it`s easy for someone who really feels offended about the portrayal of the men in the movie to overlook that, and I can see where the controversy is coming from. But I liked the movie anyway.
I think it`s wonderful that this movie does such a beautiful job of talking about womanhood. Not just black women, but women in general and even deeper than that: a human sense. It talks about self-discovery and self-esteem. That`s the real theme of this story. It`s a story that appeals across color lines and across sexual lines.
I think it`s unfortunate there has been such a negative reaction by some black critics, because it`s turning other black people off who may not want to see the movie now, just because they heard it had such a negative message about black men.
SISKEL: And in the first scene, when they see a stepfather raping his daughter, their flag is going to go up and it may never go down.
PAGE: Even that could be forgiven if it were followed by a scene with a heroic, wonderfully warm, fatherly black figure, but it`s not. I think people feel you get one brutish black character after another or one wimpish or dumb- acting black male character after another. Some people feel sensitive about that.
SCOTT: I saw the movie twice. I saw it with my mother. She`s 67 and we just sat there and let the movie wash over us. We just experienced it. We loved it. We cried. And then I started to think about it. I cried twice as a matter of fact.
SISKEL: I cried once myself.
PAGE: I cried three times.
SCOTT: Then I started to think about it. I started to wonder why the men in the movie acted like that. And I saw a historical feasiblity to it. I saw this as a legacy of slavery– sort of ”the sins of the father,” the fathers being the white slave masters. This is all black people had seen as far as how to treat one another: women being treated as chattel. White women were treated as chattel as well, but they were more birds in gilded cages. This I saw as coming from slavery.
SISKEL: Are you saying that black men who see this film should realize where this physical behavior, which you don`t dispute occurred, comes from?
That it comes from how they were taught to behave toward women?
SCOTT: Yes. And how white slave masters behave toward women–their own women. You tend to perpetuate what you experience, much in the same way an abused child grows up to be a child abuser.
SISKEL: But somebody can say, ”Wait a minute. During slave times, weren`t the black people kept apart from the white household?” I mean everyone knew what was going on, but wasn`t there a sense of community and some tenderness, even as common victims. Wasn`t there some sheltering of the family among the slaves, so that some positive images, some dignity, was maintained.
SCOTT: Oh, I`m sure there was. I don`t doubt that at all. But what I`m thinking of is that for the white slave master, any comely looking black woman was pure game to be brought into the master`s bed. Any plain-looking woman was kept in the fields or back in the kitchen. No, I`m not saying there was no family feeling. But you perpetuate what you experience.
PAGE: You can call this my black male perspective, but if there`s any flaw that can be spotted here, it`s that there`s not enough said about why the men behave the way they do. The same complaint was registered about the play
”For Colored Girls . . . ”. I view this story in the same context.
The book is a little more fair to men, but the brutish male characters are still key to the story. You do get a little more humanizing toward the end. But there`s not much said in this story about why these men behave the way they do. They just do. And the women react. The women are what they are because of the way they have been handled by men: They either fight back or they turn to each other because of the way these men behave.
SCOTT: The movie pulled a couple of punches that the book didn`t pull.
SISKEL: Alice Walker`s timid endorsement of the film confirms that the movie is a softened version of the book.
PAGE: In many respects, yes. I don`t think the movie suffered for it though.
SISKEL: You`re complaining that the black male characters did not have enough background, that we didn`t understand where their anger, hostility and brutish behavior come from. But this is common to all supporting characters in movies, especially minorities. When you`re a supporting character in a movie, you have to come on, do your thing and get off, so the stars can get back on. I hope the black viewer of ”The Color Purple” would know it is not a racist attitude as much as it is a cinematic convention.
PAGE: I would agree. And this gets back to what I was saying earlier about the way women have traditionally been treated in the movies. We have been so accustomed to women playing the supporting roles so the male can shine, that when we see the male put in that supporting role, it looks unusual.
It reminds some critics of ”Birth of a Nation,” in which the brutish black male was a prop, designed to support the main theme of the movie, the romanticizing of the Ku Klux Klan. The brutish black male character was used to perpetuate a racist stereotype. But in this movie, I don`t think so. One could complain that an anti-male stereotype is being perpetuated in ”The Color Purple.” I`ll buy that argument, though I don`t necessarily agree with it. But I don`t see it as an anti-black male movie.
SCOTT: The second time I saw the movie, I saw it with a black male and I thought, ”Get out the notebook and watch him get really angry about this movie,” but he was floored . . .
SISKEL: How old?
SCOTT: Forty-five. He was floored by the similarities between Mister and his own father. We sat there and cursed this man for the whole movie. He totally identified with Celie. Now that may be an unusual reaction but I had expected something different.
SISKEL: I ran into two technicians, a Channel 2 camera crew. Two black men, upwardly mobile, in their late twenties or early thirties who had not seen the movie and were concerned about it. They were very upset. ”We never get enough positive images and here we get some more negative ones.” That`s what they said.
I said the images of black men in popular entertainment aren`t the greatest. However, it`s not as bad as you might think. The number-one television show is fronted by Bill Cosby. The number-one movie star, in terms of box office drawing power, is Eddie Murphy. And the top rock music draws are Michael Jackson, Prince and Bruce Springsteen. Two out of the top three are black men.
But what is missing is the average, normal, potent guy. I use the word
”potent” because I have seen American popular media castrate the black man. When you have television stars who are pint-sized little boys and they are among the most popular images of black men in television, well, if I were a 39-year-old black man, I`d say, ”Where am I on the screen? Where is the black journalist? Where is the black mini-cam operator? Where is the black guy working in business? Where are we? We`re invisible.”
I told them I`m sorry you`re getting negative male behavior, but I believe there is historical fact behind the film. Black men, possibly for the reasons Ruby has mentioned, have acted brutishly toward black women and, indeed, white men have acted brutishly toward white women. Therefore, I said, you should be focusing your anger, which is legitimate, at the lack of variety in black imagery. But not at this movie.
PAGE: I agree with that, but at the same time I understand the sensitivity of people who question why or how such a film gets approved for production, especially in light of how few films about black people come out of Hollywood. I understand why many people in the black community would be skeptical about a movie that contains negative black male images. At the same time, not enough is said about the lack of movies about black women, and that`s why I think this movie is very valuable.
SISKEL: What`s your reaction to the people who complain about ”The Color Purple”?
PAGE: I hear men, both old and young, say they don`t want to see the movie because they`ve heard it`s got these negative images of black males, and that disturbs me a great deal. I tell them, ”Well, look, see it yourself, then judge. Don`t take someone else`s word for it.”
SISKEL: Is that the way you say it, ”See it yourself,” or do you say more?
PAGE: We talk about the story, we talk about why it`s got these negative black male images. In my view, the movie is about what happens with black women. The men are props, as women have been treated as props in the past, and I`m not offended by that, as some black men apparently are.
SISKEL: If I were black, I would say, ”How are black kids going to be affected by this–teenage kids? What will they think when they see this picture?”
PAGE: I hope they get some valuable lessons out of it: that women are people, too; that you can get self-esteem, an important message for everybody, male and female. It`s a very important story for everyone.
But what amazes me is that most of the people I know who have read the book and that I`ve seen in the movie theatres are white. I know more white women who`ve read the book than black women. At least that`s my personal knowledge; it`s not a scientific survey. I`m amazed at the broad range. I was reading the book in a pancake house and this waitress came over and said,
”Oh, what a wonderful book!” and I said, ”You`ve read it?” and she said, ”Oh, yes, I love it!” People all over, especially women, not just black women, but women especially love this book . . . I think it says something to them.
SCOTT: Going back to what was said about young people, I definitely think they should see it. It`s a historical piece. My reaction to the movie was, first of all, look what slavery did to us. Because it wasn`t that far removed–we`re talking 1909, and after that, look what we have had to overcome, look what we have overcome. It turns out to be a very positive story.
The second time I saw it, it came out more forcefully. The bad guy in the movie was Mister, and he was almost a caricature, but I didn`t feel that way about all the men in the movie. They weren`t that well-developed, but I know men like Harpo, who are under the thumb of their father (Mister), trying to live up to their father`s expectations and never quite being able to do it. And I know men like Shug`s husband, Grady.
SISKEL: You know men like Grady?
SCOTT: A lot of my father`s friends are like that. (Laughter) In that sense, I didn`t come away feeling overwhelmingly, ”God, what a bunch of jerks!”
SISKEL: I want to push you both a little further, because neither of you have disputed any of the portrayals of the men. You`ve said you know people like the male characters. One would have to conclude from this that the movie is historically accurate.
