Speaker 1: Hi listeners.
Speaker 2: Just a quick tour plug at the top of the
Speaker 2: episode if you haven't heard. We are going on tour
Speaker 2: in early February twenty twenty four, and for the most part,
Speaker 2: Jamie and I are covering Barbie. So step outside your mojo, dojo,
Speaker 2: Casa house and come see us live. First, we will
Speaker 2: be in San Francisco for another show at SF Sketchfest.
Speaker 2: This will be February first. Then we're doing two shows
Speaker 2: in Sacramento on February second. We are doing Barbie plus
Speaker 2: Wolf of Wall Street because we needed to double up
Speaker 2: on Margot Robbie movies, so come to one or both
Speaker 2: of those. Then we are heading to Texas. We are
Speaker 2: doing a show in Dallas on February third, and then
Speaker 2: heading to Austin for a show on February fifth, and
Speaker 2: then we're coming back around to call and doing a
Speaker 2: show in San Diego on February tenth. More details and
Speaker 2: tickets are on our link tree. That's link tree slash
Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast. Guess what, These tickets make a great holiday
Speaker 2: gift for a loved one or for yourself, So grab
Speaker 2: those tickets come see us live. We always do special
Speaker 2: things at the live shows, so you don't want to
Speaker 2: miss them. We're so excited for this and we will
Speaker 2: see you there.
Speaker 3: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
Speaker 3: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 3: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 3: Vast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlin, will you write to me if
Speaker 2: someone never separates.
Speaker 1: Us, not if Danny Glover has anything to say about it.
Speaker 1: And that's a great example of something that us past.
Speaker 1: The Bechtel Test.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it started out strong, but then.
Speaker 1: I fucked it up. It's okay, I fucked it up.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, better like next time. That's why I feel
Speaker 1: every time you're like, well, this is in no way
Speaker 1: reference to this movie. But like sometimes you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this movie's gonna be about women, and then it isn't,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, we'll get him next time time.
Speaker 2: We'll try again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess the name of the movie was John
Speaker 1: Tucker Must Die. But I didn't expect that they would
Speaker 1: only talk about him. It was shocking. Well, welcome to
Speaker 1: the Bechtel Cast. My name is Jamie Lovetis.
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Drante, and this is our show
Speaker 2: where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Test simply as a jumping off point. The
Speaker 2: Bechdel Test is a media metric created by co created
Speaker 2: by really Allison Bechdel and Liz Wallace. It's known as
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Wallace Test in some circles, and it first
Speaker 2: appeared in Alison Bechtel's comic Decks to Watch Out for,
Speaker 2: examining how women don't really ever talk to each other
Speaker 2: in movies. And there are many versions of the test.
Speaker 2: The one that we observe is this two characters of
Speaker 2: a marginalized gender must have names, they must speak to
Speaker 2: each other, and their conversation has to be about something
Speaker 2: other than a man, and ideally it's a conversation with
Speaker 2: substance and not just like throw away dialogue. And that's
Speaker 2: the test.
Speaker 1: There it is. And it was also written originally not
Speaker 1: even just about women in general talking, but queer women talking, yes,
Speaker 1: which is relevant to the discussion we're going to have today.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, although it should be more relevant, but
Speaker 1: I guess we'll talk about that when we get there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we have a much requested episode coming out
Speaker 1: today that we've been sitting on for quite some time.
Speaker 1: We're covering the nineteen eighty five adaptation of The Color Purple,
Speaker 1: directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the novel by Alice Walker,
Speaker 1: starring Whoopee Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, among many other
Speaker 1: wonderful actors. We decided we were gonna sit on this
Speaker 1: episode until the new adaptation came out, which is technically
Speaker 1: and I don't know, we can get into the adaptation
Speaker 1: wormhole that we're getting to, where it's like an adaptation
Speaker 1: of a book, of a movie, of a Broadway musical
Speaker 1: and now it's the movie. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: Hairspray kind of narrative. Weird really, but that movie was
Speaker 1: announced five years ago, so we've been waiting for this
Speaker 1: episode for a long time. As you're listening to it,
Speaker 1: I believe that The Color Purple, the twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: musical version, comes out this week. So we have a
Speaker 1: wonderful returning guest to discuss this film with us. Let's
Speaker 1: get her in the mix.
Speaker 2: We do. She's a comedian host of TV I say
Speaker 2: and you know her from our episode on Secretary. It's
Speaker 2: Ashley Ray. Hey, welcome back, thanks.
Speaker 4: For having me back. I am really excited to do
Speaker 4: this movie. It's a black classic, it's something you like
Speaker 4: grow up watching.
Speaker 1: So I'm ready.
Speaker 2: I'm excited. I feel not quite as ready just because
Speaker 2: there is so much like context, like context Corner is enormous. Yes,
Speaker 2: there's lots of production stuff and adaptation stuff, and I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: Read the book. I'm pumped. I think between the three
Speaker 1: of us, like, we can make this happen.
Speaker 4: We're gonna yeah, we're gonna piece this thing together.
Speaker 2: We will.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited. So, Ashley, what's your relationship with this
Speaker 2: movie and with the book too.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I saw the movie before the book because it
Speaker 4: came out before I was born. Uh, And in my household,
Speaker 4: I think like when you have a black mom, you
Speaker 4: are just like fed this movie as soon as you're
Speaker 4: able to understand what a screen is. I can't even
Speaker 4: tell you the first time I watched The Color Purple.
Speaker 4: I just remember like my mom and aunts like quoting
Speaker 4: it constantly saying, you know, hap, oh, who is this woman?
Speaker 4: And you know, repeating the all my life I had
Speaker 4: to fight and it becomes like a family in joke
Speaker 4: for every black family. And it wasn't probably until middle
Speaker 4: school that I read the book. I was finally like, oh,
Speaker 4: I should see what this is all about. We were
Speaker 4: in school like talking about this sort of anger over
Speaker 4: Steven Spielberg directing it in that backlash. So I finally
Speaker 4: read it and I was like, oh, this is very different.
Speaker 4: I understand now that I in the movie is is
Speaker 4: a lot I think for a young person to watch.
Speaker 4: It is still very graphic, even though it is Steven Spielberg,
Speaker 4: But the book doesn't hold back. The book is just
Speaker 4: a lot more graphic. And that's when I started to
Speaker 4: really understand Alice Walker as a writer. And then I
Speaker 4: became one of those people who I think anyone kind
Speaker 4: of has those phases with this movie where you like,
Speaker 4: love it, and then you learn more about it, and
Speaker 4: then you're like, oh, I see the problems, and then
Speaker 4: you come back around to wait a second. This is
Speaker 4: a brilliant movie that features like some of the best
Speaker 4: performances from black actors, that tells a story that is
Speaker 4: real and needs to be told, and it's amazing, and
Speaker 4: I love it again.
Speaker 2: I love those cycles. Yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with it?
Speaker 1: I had seen this movie, but so long ago that
Speaker 1: I couldn't speak to specific plat points. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: it at school. I think we watched it in maybe
Speaker 1: history class. I'm not sure where we watch it, but
Speaker 1: I remember watching this movie in school. I remember scenes
Speaker 1: I remember. I mean, I certainly remember the performances. Stuck
Speaker 1: with me hard because everyone in this movie is tremendously
Speaker 1: famous and talented, and I didn't even realize until I
Speaker 1: was looking into the context for this movie that most
Speaker 1: of these actors were not like mainstream famous when this
Speaker 1: movie came out. I mean, the casting story is really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Woopy Goldberg. I guess stand uffs are stage actors. Counts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: account we're valid, but like we're people too. But most
Speaker 1: of these actors were successful on stage and hadn't made
Speaker 1: the jump to on screen. And by the time I
Speaker 1: saw it, you know, everyone was super famous, and I
Speaker 1: remember enjoying the movie. I remember being very affected by it.
Speaker 1: I wish I think that it is very telling. I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about this on previous episodes, that I
Speaker 1: did watch the movie in school. I was never encouraged
Speaker 1: to read the book in school, and I wish I
Speaker 1: had been. I'll be honest, I have not read the
Speaker 1: full book. I read passages of it to prepare for
Speaker 1: this episode, especially around the relationship between Celi and Shug,
Speaker 1: which is minus the one scene which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: is basically absent. And I read a lot of the
Speaker 1: criticism around not just the choice of Steven Spielberg for
Speaker 1: a director, but like his choices in the ways that
Speaker 1: he Spielberg defies this story. Yeah, oh, I have so
Speaker 1: much to say about I can't wait to hear it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had not extensive experience, but i'd seen the movie before,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean, speaking to your point, Kitly, there's
Speaker 1: like an infinite amount of analysis and you know, waves
Speaker 1: of discourse over the course of the last you know,
Speaker 1: forty plus years available on not just the movie but
Speaker 1: also the book and also the Broadway adaptation and also
Speaker 1: this new adaptation, and there's just so much to talk
Speaker 1: about you. Yeah, Kitlyn, was your history.
Speaker 2: Similarly fairly minimal. I had seen the movie once before
Speaker 2: in my phase of like I'm a freshman in film
Speaker 2: school and I need to have seen all those important
Speaker 2: movies and so I watched it and that was now
Speaker 2: like almost twenty years ago, so a lot of the
Speaker 2: details were foggy.
Speaker 1: We don't talk about it. I had I've never talked
Speaker 1: about this, but I also went through I considered going
Speaker 1: through that phase. And then I watched Doctor Strangelove. Oh
Speaker 1: I think I watched a sing Goals three Stooges movie
Speaker 1: and I was like, I think I get it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I did a Godfather.
Speaker 4: I did a Godfather and I was like, I see
Speaker 4: yes film people.
Speaker 1: Get that far. Yeah, I love Doctor Strange Love. And
Speaker 1: then I was like, all right, that's basically movies, right,
Speaker 1: and that was a good one. Let's quit while we
Speaker 1: were a head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw Citizen Kane and that was enough for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I really put myself through an intensive secondary film school
Speaker 2: where I was like, good for you. This was back
Speaker 2: in the day where I would have like the three
Speaker 2: Netflix DVDs at a time, and I was just like
Speaker 2: rotating through them rapidly. And then I was also going
Speaker 2: to the library and getting movies on DVD from the library,
Speaker 2: and I would estimate that I watched probably two movies
Speaker 2: a day, two to three movies a day every day
Speaker 2: for like an entire year.
Speaker 1: Oh jeez, oh my god.
Speaker 4: I did have this phase. I got really into film,
Speaker 4: like senior year of high school. But I was obsessed
Speaker 4: with one director, which I think is even nerdier, and
Speaker 4: I was like, I have to watch every single ingmar
Speaker 4: Bergmann film. I have everything about Ingmar Bergmann. And I
Speaker 4: think at one point I had rented like Wild Strawberries,
Speaker 4: the Seventh Seal, and The Virgin Spring all at once,
Speaker 4: and then I would like truly go get them from
Speaker 4: the library too.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And I put myself through that. I put myself through that.
Speaker 4: I have seen Persona so many times, and that's not
Speaker 4: good for anyone.
Speaker 1: Not good. We have yet to cover a Bergman film here.
Speaker 4: So oh my god, Persona would be a good one.
Speaker 4: I'm pitching it now. Persona I one of the women
Speaker 4: doesn't even have talk.
Speaker 1: She can't talk. Oh, I'm very down for that. Someone
Speaker 1: else recommended that to me recently too. And we're like
Speaker 1: heading into a phase of this show where it's like
Speaker 1: we have run out of the movies in certain eras,
Speaker 1: so we must look back.
Speaker 2: We've done every movie from nineteen ninety nine branch out.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's true, a lot of ninety nine,
Speaker 1: a lot of O two who knows, potent years, but
Speaker 1: we have to move on. Good years, good years. But
Speaker 1: sorry that.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I watched the movie. I didn't remember much
Speaker 2: about it, just because it was such a long time ago,
Speaker 2: and so upon this rewatch, I was like, especially struck
Speaker 2: by some tonal choices that were made, especially with the score,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, why is this the music that's playing
Speaker 2: during this moment or this scene? And I was just like,
Speaker 2: this is no disrespect to mister Spielberg and the movie itself,
Speaker 2: but I was like, this is some weird like and
Speaker 2: I know that this movie has gotten this criticism already,
Speaker 2: but like this kind of like sugar coated, like fairy
Speaker 2: tale esque version of this narrative in like, yeah, in
Speaker 2: some of these like kind of stylistic and esthetic choices
Speaker 2: that are made and just tonal choices, and I'm just like, hmm,
Speaker 2: I was not quite expecting that or didn't totally remember that.
Speaker 2: But we'll dive into it further.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, prior to this, I knew the main
Speaker 1: points about Alice Walker, which is that she wrote this
Speaker 1: book because she wrote the Pulitzer, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: much else about her, and she is also there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on there as well, which we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: and I feel is important to note, as we would
Speaker 1: with anybody, but even just like I was surprised first
Speaker 1: of all, how much production information there is available about
Speaker 1: this movie and also like how I don't mean this
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like not a positive regat thing.
Speaker 1: I just was surprised at how openly everyone was having
Speaker 1: the discussion when the movie came out, because I feel
Speaker 1: like we're so used to movies from the eighties having
Speaker 1: it be like twenty years later. We started to think,
Speaker 1: but it was like this conversation was, oh, it was
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 4: It happened immediately because people were so angry. I mean, essentially,
Speaker 4: Alice Walker never really cared about making this into a movie.
Speaker 4: She heard people wanted to do it. She was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I can whip something up. Here's some different names, like
Speaker 4: the color purple. She also suggested one that was the
Speaker 4: sunset of fabric or something, but did that didn't work
Speaker 4: and people were like, who are you thinking about as
Speaker 4: a director. Obviously everyone was like, Spike Lee, it is
Speaker 4: the eighties. Spike Lee, and a friend was like, you
Speaker 4: heard of this Steven Spielberg. He's like, super cool. If
Speaker 4: you really want people to see this movie, you probably
Speaker 4: should go with see Steven Spielberg. She straight up and said,
Speaker 4: I don't really know much about the guy, but he
Speaker 4: seems like a big deal.
Speaker 1: She has seen ET and she's like yeah, sure. She
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that was a good one.
Speaker 4: That was a good one, you know, And at the time,
Speaker 4: Spike Lee was seen as a very political choice. They
Speaker 4: go with Steven Spielberg, and Spike Lee is pissed. He
Speaker 4: was immediately pissed when this is announced. He starts working
Speaker 4: with the n Double ACP before the film is even announced,
Speaker 4: to start a campaign to discredit the film as coming
Speaker 4: from a white director, being a whitewashed version of the story,
Speaker 4: and specifically pointing out that it is the narrative is
Speaker 4: being used by a white man to tear down black men,
Speaker 4: that the film is being so unfair to mister and
Speaker 4: the men in it because a white man is directing.
Speaker 4: So they do this whole campaign. The Color Purple comes out.
Speaker 4: It was nominated for an incredible amount of Academy Awards,
Speaker 4: eleven I think, yeah, eleven doesn't win a single one
Speaker 4: because of this Spike Lee campaign. It's such a it
Speaker 4: was so like impactful, and everyone's talking it, like all
Speaker 4: the black you know magazines essence, they were all writing
Speaker 4: about this. There were all these debates about it before
Speaker 4: it even came out. So I think that is truly
Speaker 4: why there was so much discourse behind everything, and even
Speaker 4: people in the midst of making it knew that they
Speaker 4: were facing these judgments, so they tried to really document
Speaker 4: the process of making it and how the black people
Speaker 4: who were hired to be in this movie did have
Speaker 4: a say. And I think that's the only reason that
Speaker 4: any of that exists today.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: I also read that the Hollywood Beverly Hills chapter of
Speaker 2: the NAACP issued a formal complaint against the Academy of
Speaker 2: Motion Pick Arts and Scientists after the movie didn't win
Speaker 2: any of the eleven Awards Academy Awards that it was
Speaker 2: nominated for, saying that it was like all those snubs
Speaker 2: were a blackout, meaning like this is the industry's attempt
Speaker 2: to you know, suppress black projects, which.
Speaker 1: Does happen all the time. And I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with why this movie didn't win as much as
Speaker 1: it should have.
Speaker 4: It is a complicated where it is also at the
Speaker 4: same time, people weren't you know, rushing to celebrate a
Speaker 4: fully black cast movie at that time period, right, But
Speaker 4: it's you also have to know the studios want Spielberg
Speaker 4: to direct this because they knew that would give it
Speaker 4: the chance to win something. They tied it to a
Speaker 4: white director specifically to kind of get around that. So
Speaker 4: I think it ends up hurting it like it being
Speaker 4: both issues. Like, I think it ended up just kind
Speaker 4: of stepping on its own feet by going, we got
Speaker 4: to have a white guy if we're gonna get any
Speaker 4: sort of attention, and then obviously black directors were like,
Speaker 4: why do you have to do that? We're also going
Speaker 4: to be unhappy. And then no one's happy, right, right
Speaker 4: except for us the audience, because I mean, we got
Speaker 4: a treat of a film.
Speaker 1: So the premiere of the movie was protested by I
Speaker 1: think that same chapter of the NAACP because of its
Speaker 1: depiction of rape, which again is like a very big
Speaker 1: valid thing to discuss. And then there's so many perspectives
Speaker 1: on this movie. I also watched a clip from Whoopi
Speaker 1: Goldberg two years ago in which she was discussing how
Speaker 1: frustrating it was to be starring in this film and
Speaker 1: have this beer breakout and feel like there were people
Speaker 1: in her own community that were like trying to sabotage
Speaker 1: this movie, and it's just like, yeah, that also makes
Speaker 1: total sense. Yeah right.
Speaker 4: She also had Alice Walker herself trying to just like
Speaker 4: she just didn't really care for it. She was kind
Speaker 4: of like it was fine, and then every few years
Speaker 4: she'd be like, actually, guys, just not really a great movie,
Speaker 4: really not happy with how they did it. And one
Speaker 4: of her big issues was how they treated the character
Speaker 4: of Mister in the book. He is more layered, he
Speaker 4: has more dimensions. He is more like a grandfather figure
Speaker 4: at times, not that you ever truly feel sympathy for him,
Speaker 4: but there are more layers there, moments of kindness that's
Speaker 4: totally gone in a Spielberg film because he needs the
Speaker 4: big bad, the villain until he has like his moment
Speaker 4: of redemption. So I can understand that. And obviously that
Speaker 4: criticism fed into these complaints from black male groups who
Speaker 4: are like, see, it's just made to make us look bad,
Speaker 4: but you just can't win here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unbelievably just a shreki in number of onion
Speaker 1: layers going on. Yeah with this discussion.
Speaker 4: Because it's like, at the same time, am I mad
Speaker 4: that this is a Hollywood movie that did a twist
Speaker 4: and made a man one dimensional?
Speaker 1: Not really, it's not his story, right, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it seems like a really strong example of what
Speaker 1: an impossible position black creatives are put in in this
Speaker 1: time in particular. But also ill where like you're saying, Ashley,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, let's get the prestige white director, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure helps with your budget, it helps with your marketing,
Speaker 1: it helps with your chance at awards, and you know,
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg is this proven starmaking director, so it's like, Okay.
Speaker 1: Then Alice Walker spoke to this pretty openly of she
Speaker 1: was essentially convinced that, like, the best way to have
Speaker 1: a successful movie with an all black cast is to
Speaker 1: work from within the system, and she became amenable to that.
Speaker 1: But then, like you're saying, Ashley that that's like there's
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of backlash that comes with that. There's
Speaker 1: choices that feel dissonant and bizarre. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the way that as Mister is presented in the movie,
Speaker 1: combined with the weird last ten minutes, Like, was he
Speaker 1: that bad? You're like, yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The only good side is that he doesn't bother them,
Speaker 4: Like he sets up this reunion and just gets kind
Speaker 4: of like, I'm gonna I'm gonna just day over here,
Speaker 4: enjoy what I did, not come over and tell you
Speaker 4: I did it. And it's like, Okay, that's the one
Speaker 4: redeeming thing, but I still wish you'd sliced your throat
Speaker 4: like we could have. In the scene where she's teaching
Speaker 4: her how to spell, Nettie is teaching Sealy how to spell,
Speaker 4: I was like, teacher, how to spell poison.
Speaker 1: Girl, teacher, how to spell poison?
Speaker 4: Tea t try to sell shovel, Get her in the ground,
Speaker 4: Get him in the ground, please.
Speaker 1: I also at the end, I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: care how close they still live to each other.
Speaker 4: I don't like how stile like the other neighbors and
Speaker 4: not a fan of that. Uh, just like this whole time,
Speaker 4: she's just been living next to her weird ass stepdad
Speaker 4: who assaulted her and okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I mean I kind of like he disappears
Speaker 1: for so long.
Speaker 4: Yeah you by the time she goes to the funeral,
Speaker 4: you forget his relation to them.
Speaker 1: You're like, who is this? Is this mystery? Truly, I
Speaker 1: was like who is this man?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because I mean in the aging makeup in this he's
Speaker 1: all over the place. For sometimes you're like, how old
Speaker 1: does everybody? Ever? One seems to be? There's there are
Speaker 1: scenes in this movie, and again, I really enjoyed the movie.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful movie. There are seeds where there's everyone
Speaker 1: at the table. You're like, I have no idea. I
Speaker 1: have no idea. Everyone's a different age. Yeah, there are children.
Speaker 2: And adults that I'm like, who are these people? Are
Speaker 2: they grown up children of the who? And who is
Speaker 2: this little kid? And I never knew who anyone was
Speaker 2: unless they were like one of the core cast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like this whole half second half of the movie,
Speaker 4: Oprah's character Sophia looks older than Sealy and it's kind
Speaker 4: of like whoopy. Goldberg was like, I just don't want
Speaker 4: to do aging makeup, Like just not me. I'm not
Speaker 4: doing the aging makeup. Everybody else can do it, big role, Like,
Speaker 4: but she looks the same, like they show her when
Speaker 4: she hits like eighteen nineteen. She looks the same for
Speaker 4: the rest of the movie. Yeah, and everyone else has
Speaker 4: like the at least like gray spray pain in their hair.
Speaker 4: But you know, it's a choice. It's still again a
Speaker 4: great movie.
Speaker 1: I under Yeah, it's like I unders say that different
Speaker 1: characters are living different like it makes sense that they
Speaker 1: would look older. But yeah, in a few scenes, I
Speaker 1: was like, ah, but there's so much to talk about
Speaker 1: with this movie that we should probably just start talking
Speaker 1: about what happens.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
Speaker 2: for the recap.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I'll just place a trigger warning here for
Speaker 2: such things as rape, incest, child sexual abuse, domestic abuse.
Speaker 2: A lot of heavy stuff happens in the story. Okay,
Speaker 2: So we open. It's the early nineteen hundreds in rural Georgia.
Speaker 2: We meet two sisters, Seely and Nettie, who have a
Speaker 2: very close and loving relationship. We learn that their father
Speaker 2: is sexually abusing Seely, who is the elder sister. She's
Speaker 2: fourteen years old. Seely is pregnant. She gives birth to
Speaker 2: a baby, who she names Olivia, but her father takes
Speaker 2: the baby away immediately, which is the second time he
Speaker 2: has done this. The sister's mother dies shortly thereafter, their
Speaker 2: father remarries a young girl about Cely's age, and then
Speaker 2: another man, Albert, also known as Mister played by Danny Glover,
Speaker 2: approaches Seely and Nettie's father, wanting to marry Nettie, and
Speaker 2: their father's like, you can't have Nettie, but you can
Speaker 2: have Seely. So Albert takes Sely home. He wants her
Speaker 2: to care for his three children and to cook and clean,
Speaker 2: and he is incredibly ungrateful and controlling and abusive. One day,
Speaker 2: Seely sees a woman carrying a baby through town and
Speaker 2: she just has this kind of gut feeling that it's
Speaker 2: her baby, Olivia, that her father took away from her.
Speaker 2: And she talks to the woman she holds the baby,
Speaker 2: who this woman says, oh, I nicknamed her Olivia. And
Speaker 2: so it's like, hmm, that's the name that she gave
Speaker 2: to her baby.
Speaker 1: That's nus brutal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's tough, and it's all She comes with a
Speaker 4: really dumb lie because obviously Celia is like, that's why
Speaker 4: would you just randomly call your child Olivia when what.
Speaker 1: That's not a nickname?
Speaker 4: And she's like, well, look at her eyes. Only an
Speaker 4: old person would have eyes like that. So I call
Speaker 4: her Olivia and I'm like.
Speaker 1: Well, that's not that. That doesn't connect.
Speaker 2: Don't see the logic there. What does she think Olivia is?
Speaker 2: Does she think it's short for old Olivia?
Speaker 1: I've lady eyes, Olivia, old lady eyes. That would be
Speaker 1: I would really respect that if she was committing to
Speaker 1: that opinion. Yeah, you know, Olivia, old lady eyes. It
Speaker 1: makes sense to me anyways.
Speaker 2: Bye, Okay. So then Nettie comes to stay with Cely
Speaker 2: because their father was trying to sexually abuse Nettie as well,
Speaker 2: so she ran away to be with Cely. Sely doesn't
Speaker 2: want to stay in the situation she's in. You know,
Speaker 2: this is a prison for her living there with mister.
Speaker 2: So Nettie vows to go to school and to learn
Speaker 2: to read and write so that she can teach Cely
Speaker 2: so that they can run away together and be educated
Speaker 2: and be able to like make it on their own right.
Speaker 1: It's not explicitly said, but it's like once is given
Speaker 1: to mister her education.
Speaker 4: Oh stop stop, Yeah, yeah, she's not going to school.
Speaker 4: She's truly there to deal with his horrible kids. They're
Speaker 4: horrible kids, it's not rude to say they're horrible children.
Speaker 4: As soon as she gets to the house, Harpo, the
Speaker 4: oldest son, throws a rock at her head yeah, which
Speaker 4: causes her to bleed, and in the book she like
Speaker 4: has headaches throughout like her life and stuff from it.
Speaker 4: But in the movie, they're just like, these kids suck.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Yeah, I also like that, Celi.
Speaker 1: That's like the first person that you hear her say
Speaker 1: anything like truly profoundly negative about. She's like, also, this
Speaker 1: kid sucks. I can't.
Speaker 2: Kids are rotten.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She won't talk about anyone else.
Speaker 4: She's very just timid, but when it comes to the kids,
Speaker 4: she's like, no, they are the devil. I hate them.
Speaker 4: Even Nettie's like, you gotta show them who's boss, and
Speaker 4: she's just like, no, they suck.
Speaker 1: There's no hope for these kids.
Speaker 2: They're too horrible. Okay, So one day, Albert attempts to
Speaker 2: rape Nettie when she's on her way to school, but
Speaker 2: she is able to fight him off and get away,
Speaker 2: and then this causes Albert to like kick Nettie out
Speaker 2: of his house. Celi is devastated. She calls out after
Speaker 2: Nettie to write to her, and Nettie says, nothing but
Speaker 2: death could keep me from it. Yeah. Not long after that,
Speaker 2: some mail arrives and Ceely's hoping she's getting a letter
Speaker 2: from Nettie. Albert is also excited because he's expecting a
Speaker 2: letter from someone named Sugar Avery, an old girlfriend of his.
Speaker 1: Like shug shug, shug shug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're cheering and mister slash Albert tells Cely to
Speaker 2: never open the mailbox. He like intercepts all the mail
Speaker 2: that comes in. So if she was ever receiving mail
Speaker 2: from Nettie, Seely has no way of knowing because he's
Speaker 2: taking all the mail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And he tells her he'sured out a way to
Speaker 4: mess with the mailbox, so if she touches it, he'll
Speaker 4: be able to tell it's just one of the other
Speaker 4: ways he manipulates her into just staying captive on this farm.
Speaker 2: Basically, yes, exactly. We cut to seven years later. It's
Speaker 2: now nineteen sixteen. Seely is now Whoopi Goldberg and she's
Speaker 2: still in this house with mister who is still a
Speaker 2: piece of shit. He's getting ready to see Sugg Avery,
Speaker 2: who's coming to town, and in all this time, it
Speaker 2: seems like Nettie has never written to Seely, and she
Speaker 2: worries that Nettie might have died because she says, nothing
Speaker 2: but death could keep me from it. Mister's son, Harpo
Speaker 2: played by Willard E. Pugh, is in love with a
Speaker 2: girl named Sophia played by Oprah Winfrey. She is pregnant
Speaker 2: and they're about to get married, but Mister approves of
Speaker 2: Sophia because she is like headstrong, and he's like, I
Speaker 2: don't rest her. So she's like, well, fuck you, then
Speaker 2: I'll just be over here.
Speaker 4: Basically calls her like is he slued, shames her and
Speaker 4: is like, oh you even know that Harpo's the dead,
Speaker 4: and Sophie basically like sees how he's treating Celi and
Speaker 4: is like, I don't need to be a part of
Speaker 4: this family. When you get it together, you come find.
Speaker 2: Me, you come to me, right, And then we cut
Speaker 2: to some time later when she and Harpo are getting
Speaker 2: married and they have a baby together, and Sophia again
Speaker 2: does not put up with anyone's bullshit, and Harpo is like, Cely,
Speaker 2: what should I do about Sophia? She's too headstrong, her personality,
Speaker 2: she has a personality, and I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like that.
Speaker 4: How do I get her to be like you just
Speaker 4: totally silent, giving me, you know, shaves, doing my laundry?
Speaker 1: How do I do that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And silly because all she knows is abuse. She suggests
Speaker 2: that Harpo beat Sophia, which he does. Sophia clearly fights back,
Speaker 2: and then Sophia confronts See about it, being like, how
Speaker 2: dare you suggest he hit me? Like? What the fuck?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think in like, that's one of the most iconic.
Speaker 4: The most iconic viline monologue maybe, and it's top five
Speaker 4: in all movie history, delivered by Oprah.
Speaker 1: Just Oprah to all my life. I had to fight.
Speaker 4: I had to fight my daddy, my mother, my siblings,
Speaker 4: and I'll be damned if I thought I was gonna
Speaker 4: have to fight in my own house.
Speaker 1: It's It's incredible.
Speaker 4: I'm sure every at Black listener has heard their mother
Speaker 4: deliver this.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, we'll talk about this like later in the
Speaker 1: episode two. But the continuity, I mean, and also like
Speaker 1: Oprah's personal connection to this book. Oprah, I think it's
Speaker 1: been involved in every single major adaptation of this book.
Speaker 1: She's also a producer on the Broadway musical. I believe
Speaker 1: she's also a top rank producer on the new movie.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, she's a real Alice Walker stand she's super
Speaker 4: Ino and she brings it. I mean, I truly believe
Speaker 4: this is one of her best performances. Sophie's one of
Speaker 4: my favorite characters in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Same, Yeah, her whole arc is absolutely beautiful, and it's
Speaker 4: set up here. I think before this moment, you kind
Speaker 4: of think she's, you know, just gonna be another adversary
Speaker 4: to Celi. You don't really think they're gonna end up
Speaker 4: being supportive of each other. But this moment of honesty
Speaker 4: ends up bringing them closer together.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, true. So there's this confrontation and this
Speaker 2: cycle of abuse between Harpo and Sophia goes on for
Speaker 2: a while until one day Sophia takes all of her
Speaker 2: children and leaves Harpo. Some more time passes. One night,
Speaker 2: Albert slash Mister comes home with Sugar Avery played by
Speaker 2: Margaret Avery. This is the first time we're seeing her
Speaker 2: on screen. She is sick, he's drunk. We're not really
Speaker 2: sure exactly what all is going on with her, but
Speaker 2: she's belligerent.
Speaker 4: She just has early nineteen hundred's disease. She's just very flush,
Speaker 4: she's sweaty and is just talking weird, and you're like, okay,
Speaker 4: I get to send you.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say it. She's in
Speaker 1: she's definitely in the bath and we're like, yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm like typhoid fever. She has something, but she's
Speaker 4: very just like sweaty, and you're like, oh, yeah, she's ill.
Speaker 1: She's ill for sure.
Speaker 2: According to Mister's father, she has that nasty woman's disease
Speaker 2: quote unquote, And you're like, we're like, been there. Yeah, honestly,
Speaker 2: we all have had the nasty friend nasty woman's disease, went.
Speaker 1: To a room and sat in a bathtub for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and then I was right, it's good
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, okay. So mister insists on making sugar, but
Speaker 2: he has no idea what he's doing in the kitchen,
Speaker 2: and Shug is like, what the fuck is this? This
Speaker 2: is disgusting. She throws it against the wall and then
Speaker 2: cely makes a delicious meal and Shug likes it. And
Speaker 2: this is the beginning of their friendship. Yes, now it's
Speaker 2: the summer of nineteen twenty two, Harpo and his friend
Speaker 2: Swain played by Laurence Fishburne are building a juke joint.
Speaker 2: They open it up, sug performs at it as like
Speaker 2: a singer and dancer. One night, Cely, Albert, Harpo are
Speaker 2: all there, and then Sophia shows up with her new boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Harpo meanwhile is with a woman named Squeaky Wheaky. We
Speaker 2: will find out her real name is Mary Agnes later on.
Speaker 4: That's one of those very Spielberg moments of the film
Speaker 4: where it's like this very serious thing and then there's
Speaker 4: just a running joke where it's like, squeaky you name?
Speaker 4: I thought your name was squeaky Squeaky Mary what? And
Speaker 4: it's like do we need.
Speaker 1: This me this beat, mister Spielberg. Can I have a word? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And it's like also the actors playing that her voice
Speaker 4: is I need to hear the notes Stephen gave her
Speaker 4: because you can hear him going can you go higher?
Speaker 1: Can you go squeakier? Can you be squeakier?
Speaker 4: More squeak and you're just like her line delivery. In
Speaker 4: this scene, she confronts Harpo, who has started dancing with
Speaker 4: Sophia and she's like you, she left you, you're my
Speaker 4: man now, and then she starts to oh boo hoo's
Speaker 4: this woman And it's just such an annoying squeaky I
Speaker 4: repeat it all the time anytime I'm shocked by anything,
Speaker 4: I say.
Speaker 1: Hapo, who's this woman?
Speaker 4: So iconic? But at the same time, one of those
Speaker 4: characters where I'm like, oh, Steven Spielberg really was just like,
Speaker 4: I think we get some comedy in here.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, Let's do it. It felt the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing with Mister's father, where he's sort of
Speaker 1: this like he is kind of like patriarchy the man character,
Speaker 1: but he's also like, you're supposed to kind.
Speaker 2: Of be like these kind of a goofball You're like,
Speaker 2: especially in the final scene that he's in in the
Speaker 2: like dinner scene where Whoopy Goldberg gives this amazing monologue
Speaker 2: basically being like, mister, you're the worst person on earth
Speaker 2: and I curse you and I'm gonna maybe try to
Speaker 2: kill you, but then I won't. But he's like he's
Speaker 2: being such a cartoon so many is in a different
Speaker 2: movie in that scene, Yeah, he's totally and his signes
Speaker 2: are just like, oh Mary, what what's her name or
Speaker 2: any And he's just like throwing lines where he's like.
Speaker 1: The chicken's all running the henhouse.
Speaker 4: This place is crazy in here, and like maybe she
Speaker 4: can sweep the kaboos of the train. Dude, this woman
Speaker 4: has a knife to your son's throat. Get a little serious,
Speaker 4: let's get see history action.
Speaker 2: He's just like, Wow, what an interesting Wednesday.
Speaker 4: His final scene is so after this Celi's left and
Speaker 4: he walks into his son's house and there's animals everywhere.
Speaker 4: His son is just laying on the floor looking and
Speaker 4: he's not like my son might be dead.
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 4: He just like pokes him with his and is like,
Speaker 4: I guess you've been drinking, right, It's.
Speaker 1: Like, oh no, Squeak. Yeah, I agree that, like the
Speaker 1: performance she's giving feels sort of like another movie, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure was requested, which is frustrating. And also she
Speaker 1: is far more present in the book than she is
Speaker 1: in the movie, and clearly like the screenplay scales down
Speaker 1: her presence in the story pretty considerably. But also like
Speaker 1: they leave in in that same dinner scene that Squeak
Speaker 1: is like, I want to leave with Sugar and Sealy
Speaker 1: and everyone's like, oh, Okay, great, and then she doesn't.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought she does go with them?
Speaker 1: Is she in the car like she was?
Speaker 4: She's in the car, there's no like she does go sing,
Speaker 4: she does leave.
Speaker 1: She does leave because then.
Speaker 4: Harpo and Sophia get back together. Okay, so like it's
Speaker 4: implied she goes and does have fame, but like doesn't
Speaker 4: come back. But then it's all just kind of thrown
Speaker 4: in their very last minute for her, right feel like
Speaker 4: an afterthought Like, oh, I guess she wanted to do
Speaker 4: that too, Okay, whatever, who cares if she goes or
Speaker 4: doesn't come back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're like who is she again? Like why
Speaker 2: don't we know more about her?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Like why were we supposed to care about her? Okay?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the books she also has like a more prominent
Speaker 1: role in like negotiating Sophia's prison sentence, Like here's other
Speaker 1: things that she does that seem more active and like
Speaker 1: really put her in the story as an important character
Speaker 1: that it just felt like at some point in the
Speaker 1: production they were like, well, we don't really have space
Speaker 1: to include squeaks full story.
Speaker 4: And I also think when you get Oprah Winfrey in
Speaker 4: a role, you know you gotta kind of just focus
Speaker 4: on one of Harpo's love stories.
Speaker 1: I'm not going with Squeaky. Okay, yeah, it's true. I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, given the choice, I'm like, but why is
Speaker 1: it a choice?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And then why does Sophia get back together with Harpo?
Speaker 2: He's not a good partner anyway. Yeah. So we're in
Speaker 2: this juke joint and Squeaky sees Harpo dancing with Sophia
Speaker 2: and she gets jealous and she slaps Sophia and then
Speaker 2: this big bar brawl breaks out. Afterward, Shug and Celia
Speaker 2: are like just kind of hanging out one on one.
Speaker 2: They're bonding. Shug has Steely try on her dress. She
Speaker 2: encourages Cely to smile because Celi always hides her smile
Speaker 2: because her father had told her that she had the
Speaker 2: ugliest smile ever. And then Shug says that she's planning
Speaker 2: to head out of town and Ceely doesn't want her
Speaker 2: to leave, and she says that, you know, mister beats
Speaker 2: me when you're not here because I'm not you. He
Speaker 2: beats me for not being you. And then Steely and
Speaker 2: Shug share a tender kiss.
Speaker 4: Yeah on the limp.
Speaker 1: And that's all. That's it. Steven Spielberg was like, and
Speaker 1: that's enough of that, and yeah.
Speaker 4: This is not Lilith fair stop it, ladies, is what
Speaker 4: he said behind the camera, and they backed away. The
Speaker 4: book is gay, Like the book is so so gay,
Speaker 4: they're so gay, and the movie You're just like, what
Speaker 4: is that? What is this kiss? What is is this?
Speaker 4: Just like, do they think this is what black ladies
Speaker 4: do to each other? What is this?
Speaker 2: It's so barely there that I completely forgot that that
Speaker 2: was a component of the movie until I rewatched it.
Speaker 1: That's fine, I remember that scene very clearly from what
Speaker 1: I saw in this going. But I was surprised watching back.
Speaker 1: I was like, honestly, and I tell you five, I'm
Speaker 1: surprised that much was done true, Yeah, which is saying nothing.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of Again, I was like,
Speaker 1: pleasantly surprised. I guess that at very very least. Spielberg
Speaker 1: has come out and said that he regrets pulling back.
Speaker 1: I mean, which is easy to say retrospect, but now.
Speaker 4: That everybody loves gay people, I'm sure you would have
Speaker 4: loved to make it gayer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's he's a fan of the people he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is cool. Now I would have done that. I
Speaker 1: should have done that, and.
Speaker 2: I should have. I am sorry you could have should
Speaker 2: have would a mister Steve.
Speaker 1: Whoa god is a god got him?
Speaker 4: But it's just I feel like, if you haven't read
Speaker 4: the book, that scene probably just feels very out of place.
Speaker 4: And I guess it does help to give you an
Speaker 4: idea that Cely isn't like addressing Showke with anger when
Speaker 4: she could. She could be jealous or upset that this
Speaker 4: woman is her husband's mistress. And it just really shows
Speaker 4: you how little she cares about mister, how much she
Speaker 4: just like feels that she's forced to be in this
Speaker 4: house and stuff. But you know what, it would be
Speaker 4: great as a scene where they are gay.
Speaker 1: So yeah, which that is like one aspect of Cely's
Speaker 1: character that I love so like it makes total sense
Speaker 1: given her personal history. Or she is never going to
Speaker 1: be turned against a woman, yeah, because she has no
Speaker 1: She's been given absolutely sub zero reasons in her life
Speaker 1: to trust men, So why would she allow You know,
Speaker 1: even that attempt at manipulation will never ever work on
Speaker 1: her and doesn't and doesn't work on really any of
Speaker 1: the women in this story, they're like, nice, try, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take Seli with us. I mean that happens
Speaker 1: with Sugar number of times too, where Albert tries to
Speaker 1: turn her, you know, tries to pit women against each
Speaker 1: other in a way that sometimes in real life, more
Speaker 1: often in popular movies, is always successful. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't fly here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he thinks he can say like, oh, Nettie, you're
Speaker 4: so much prettier, You're so much I love how you
Speaker 4: wear that dress, Nattie, And instead, Nattie just goes to
Speaker 4: Cely and is like, isn't he so stupid when he
Speaker 4: says all that stuff, When he's.
Speaker 1: Like saying, my teeth are pretty? What a loser?
Speaker 2: What a disgusting monster? And even their father.
Speaker 4: You know, he gets remarried and has this opportunity to
Speaker 4: like leave everything to his new wife, and it seems
Speaker 4: like she could just run away with this house and
Speaker 4: all the land. But she's like I got the money,
Speaker 4: like you guys have the have your stuff back, like
Speaker 4: I need to turn against other women, and Cely's like,
Speaker 4: let's shake girl.
Speaker 1: I love this. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's just yeah, she's so good in that respect, and
Speaker 4: but you know, maybe it's because she's a little gay,
Speaker 4: and maybe we should explore that, Stephen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe there's some more context there. Ever, think about that,
Speaker 2: mister Steves. I'm just gonna call Steven Spielberg, mister Okay.
Speaker 2: So Selly packs up her things, hoping to go with
Speaker 2: Shug to Memphis and escape mister, but he catches Sely
Speaker 2: and she can't escape. She remains trapped there. We see
Speaker 2: a scene where Shug tries to connect with her father,
Speaker 2: who she had mentioned she has a difficult, if not
Speaker 2: estranged relationship with him. He is a pastor who is
Speaker 2: very ashamed of her. He thinks that she's a sinner,
Speaker 2: and her attempt to reconnect does not work.
Speaker 4: She did have nasty woman's disease, she.
Speaker 2: Well again, that's why he doesn't want anything to do
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then we meet this white woman named Miss Milly played
Speaker 2: by Dana Ivy. She is the mayor's wife and she
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk about her because there's a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff going on with Miss Milly. But she asks
Speaker 2: Sophia to be her maid, and Sophia is like hell no,
Speaker 2: and I quote and then the mayor slaps Sophia, so
Speaker 2: she punches him and then all the white people around
Speaker 2: gang up on her, and Sophia is then brutalized by
Speaker 2: the police and then arrested and put in jail for
Speaker 2: many years. We cut to nineteen thirty, Sofia is released
Speaker 2: from jail and now has no choice but to work
Speaker 2: for Miss Milly, being her maid. She is completely dejected
Speaker 2: and broken, a shell of the person she once was.
Speaker 2: She hasn't seen her children in eight years. There's a
Speaker 2: scene where Seally helps her out at the market. It
Speaker 2: seems like Sophia cannot read or can't read well, so
Speaker 2: Seely discreetly helps her with a shopping list in what
Speaker 2: I thought was a really wonderful moment. Sometime later, Sug
Speaker 2: and her new husband come to visit Cely and Albert,
Speaker 2: and while the men are talking, Sug goes to get
Speaker 2: the mail.
Speaker 4: And if you want to know what they're talking about,
Speaker 4: it's how they both slept with Sug. That's the whole
Speaker 4: conversation is that you had your way and I had
Speaker 4: on my way, but we both had a let's have a.
Speaker 2: Drink to having her And are they smashing raw eggs
Speaker 2: on their.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's it's Easter, so the kids and then they're
Speaker 4: all painting Easter eggs and then they just get so
Speaker 4: drunk they just start smashing the eggs on their heads
Speaker 4: and just being like wept with the same lady.
Speaker 1: Life is great. So actually I am going off of
Speaker 1: synopsis versus, but it seems like to me in the
Speaker 1: book that the movie pushes her getting remarried ahead in
Speaker 1: the story, so that like she comes back with a husband,
Speaker 1: Like I think that she has a husband towards the
Speaker 1: end of the book and all of the queer subplot
Speaker 1: is removed from the movie. Yeah, that Celi is devastated
Speaker 1: that Shug has gotten remarried and that's like a huge thing.
Speaker 1: But instead they cut the love story between Sugar and
Speaker 1: Cely and add the husband way earlier for reasons I
Speaker 1: earlier understand, and it.
Speaker 4: Doesn't make sense, and Cely doesn't seem to really care
Speaker 4: mine that should got married, and Mister more importantly is
Speaker 4: like so great about it. He's like, I love this guy.
Speaker 1: This is so cool.
Speaker 4: I lost my mistress, but I've gained a friend, and
Speaker 4: no real reason for why mister as we have seen
Speaker 4: him up until this point within the movie would react
Speaker 4: that way. But sure, sure, She's like, yeah, it just
Speaker 4: kind of happens and they move on. That's the husband.
Speaker 4: We don't also know anything about him, which.
Speaker 1: Is like, you know, this is not a movie about men.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was like another character that it was
Speaker 1: like he changes kind of from scene to scene because
Speaker 1: he's like best buds with mister, but then when he's
Speaker 1: also like integral and taking Celia away, there's no acknowledgment
Speaker 1: that they were ever.
Speaker 4: Like, it's just confusing, and it's also, yeah, it's very
Speaker 4: like why this guy, Like the most of it seems
Speaker 4: like so much of shook stories about her freedom, wanting
Speaker 4: to prove herself to her dad, and so why marry
Speaker 4: this guy? And it does seem like she just gets
Speaker 4: married to make her father happy. Maybe there's a whole
Speaker 4: scene where she is standing on the road with her
Speaker 4: ring with another very famous line from the movie, I
Speaker 4: was married now, which is what my sister said when
Speaker 4: she got married, and like my mom says it all
Speaker 4: the time. Look, Paul, I was married now, I's married now.
Speaker 4: And the dad doesn't care. He's like, you're still a
Speaker 4: harlot and a whore and just keeps going.
Speaker 1: So talk about someone who did not earn his amazing
Speaker 1: daughter back in his life.
Speaker 4: No, no, but and it's just I wish we had
Speaker 4: explored why Shug decides to give up her freedom for
Speaker 4: this guy. But maybe it's just because he has a nice,
Speaker 4: really cool yellow car good enough for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, could be that. I was also confounded by that,
Speaker 2: just like I was confounded by why Sophia gets back
Speaker 2: together with Harpo.
Speaker 1: I mean. And also it's like that doesn't necessarily mean that,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I think it's confusing because in a
Speaker 1: Spielberg movie, everything seems like and all is as it
Speaker 1: should be, and so yeah, undercurt I feel like, very
Speaker 1: likely undercuts. I would guess that Alice Walker portrayed that
Speaker 1: in a more nuanced way of like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: love that they got back together, but it's not inconceivable
Speaker 1: that it point into history they would. Yeah, fair, there's
Speaker 1: something like that. But the Spielberg movies are not really,
Speaker 1: at least at this time, not capable of that level
Speaker 1: of new life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say Sophia's story definitely has more complexity
Speaker 4: in the book and the movie. By the time, there's
Speaker 4: a whole thing with Miss Millie where she like barely
Speaker 4: ever gets to really see her family because Miss Milly's
Speaker 4: so horrible. And finally when she is like having dinner
Speaker 4: with the family and it's kind of clear she's like
Speaker 4: back around more. It's because she has like dementia or something.
Speaker 4: She just like rocks back and forth. She says, she's
Speaker 4: like confused all the time, and it's clear like they
Speaker 4: had no more use for her. So she finally like
Speaker 4: can go home, and then she just like ran it,
Speaker 4: like just becomes herself again. When Squeaky starts laughing at Harpo,
Speaker 4: and Harpo says one of my favorite lines from the movie,
Speaker 4: it's bad luck to laugh at a man. You're just
Speaker 4: like it's bad luck for a woman to laugh at
Speaker 4: a man, and Sophia just busts out laughing. She's like,
Speaker 4: I've had enough bad luck to laugh at a man
Speaker 4: the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Then and then she.
Speaker 4: And then she literally says, Sophia's back. Sophia's back home,
Speaker 4: Like ah, Sophia is back. And that's how Spielberg does it,
Speaker 4: is like that one line magically makes her wake up again.
Speaker 4: And in the book, it's more like she sees Ceely
Speaker 4: have her freedom. She sees like this forgiveness that's able
Speaker 4: to happen. She realizes, you know, Harpo is the product
Speaker 4: of this long line of like horrible evil men, but
Speaker 4: at the same time he is trying to change that,
Speaker 4: and his character also has way more that happens with
Speaker 4: like the juke joint and him like stepping up and
Speaker 4: apologizing about like squeaky and stuff. So it makes sense,
Speaker 4: but for Spielberg it's just but if they're holding each
Speaker 4: other in a field, that's all you need.
Speaker 1: That's all you need.
Speaker 2: I thought that when Sophia was like I'm back, I'm back,
Speaker 2: and she does seem to revert back to her kind
Speaker 2: of old self for like, you know, very outspoken, heavily,
Speaker 2: and so I thought that was gonna lead to her
Speaker 2: being like, and I'm going with you, you too, shugs seally,
Speaker 2: I'm hitching a ride and I'm getting the hell out
Speaker 2: of here also, But instead she's like hmm, hey, Harpo,
Speaker 2: and I'm like what, yeh, that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4: She's like, I'm back and I'm ready to get back
Speaker 4: to work at the juke joint. Let me pick up
Speaker 4: a shift and.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that context, because that arc was very
Speaker 1: confusing to me and I mean again, it's like I'm
Speaker 1: not necessarily complaining that this movie doesn't give me like
Speaker 1: more information about the men necessarily, but also I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a at least in the movie it dropped
Speaker 1: threads between examining. I mean, you're given like three generations
Speaker 1: of men under the same roof in a way that
Speaker 1: like it's implied that their behavior is connected and learned,
Speaker 1: but like you don't really quite get into it. And honestly,
Speaker 1: like at first it took me a while. I had
Speaker 1: to keep reminding myself that Harpo was Albert's son because
Speaker 1: they look the same age.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the whole second half of the movie they look
Speaker 4: the same age. They just kind of like said, just
Speaker 4: put the same aging makeup on everybody.
Speaker 1: We'll figure it out.
Speaker 4: Who even knows how old black people are anyway, is
Speaker 4: what I think Steven Spielberg said behind the camera. I
Speaker 4: would guess that he was just like, go for it, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: who knows, I don't know. Every black person could be
Speaker 4: thirty years old. To me, who cares?
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, I've heard the expression black don't crack, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, do your thing with the makeup. I
Speaker 4: guess maybe, but at the end of the moon, Like,
Speaker 4: I think the worst are Harpo, who suddenly looks like
Speaker 4: he's the grandfather, Neddie, who looks the exact same she
Speaker 4: did when she left. Meddie comes back in. He're like,
Speaker 4: is she's still fifteen? Like, I know, she looks incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh I felt bad for I was like, I mean,
Speaker 2: Celia's certainly had a very difficult life, but like this
Speaker 2: feels aggressive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's like she's just truly like a baby
Speaker 4: face looks the same age as Celi's children.
Speaker 1: I was like, what was their age gap at the beginning?
Speaker 2: If she looks twenty two, Yeah, it's confusing.
Speaker 1: I did appreciate There is a small role played by
Speaker 1: formative childhood crush of mine, Carl Anderson is in this movie.
Speaker 1: I love Carl Anderson so much.
Speaker 2: What character does he play?
Speaker 1: He plays Reverend Samuel like he plays the new adoptive
Speaker 1: barely Oh oh yeah, yeah, he's barely okay, and if
Speaker 1: for like zero seconds, but I was immediately like, oh,
Speaker 1: because he played judas a JC Superstar and really changed
Speaker 1: my life. And I had this like experience with as
Speaker 1: a kid where I was like, I loved JC Superstar
Speaker 1: and I loved him so much and he had like
Speaker 1: he was just amazing. And then I found out that
Speaker 1: it was like my first time understanding that not all
Speaker 1: movies were made this year, because my mom was like, look,
Speaker 1: it's Carl Anderson. I was like, why is he old?
Speaker 1: I'm furious. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also a bigger character in the book, like he ends
Speaker 4: up uh oh, okay, marrying Nettie, which I guess is
Speaker 4: kind of implied in the movie because there's like he's there,
Speaker 4: he's there, so and you're like, I guess that's okay,
Speaker 4: Sure I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not complaining about it. But as I
Speaker 1: am complaining about or intend to complain about, how much
Speaker 1: more you find out? This was like one of the
Speaker 1: sections of the book that I did read is Nettie's
Speaker 1: full story that came in through those letters, which is
Speaker 1: like really like, I mean changed it also like alternatively
Speaker 1: changed her glossed over as it's presented in the movie.
Speaker 1: But it's like a far more nuanced, like much longer story.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the book.
Speaker 4: In the book is it's like, oh, yes, this is
Speaker 4: a full narrative. It just like goes over the full
Speaker 4: course of Nettie's life. How she ends up in this situation.
Speaker 4: She ends up becoming when mister kicks her out, she
Speaker 4: ends up becoming like a maid to the pastor and
Speaker 4: his wife who took Sealy's children, and somehow Nettie just
Speaker 4: kind of knows. She's like, I feel like these are
Speaker 4: my niece and nephew. Like I feel it, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: join this family. They go do mission work in Africa.
Speaker 4: She goes with them, and we see like the whole time,
Speaker 4: his wife is starting to suspect, like did you cheat
Speaker 4: on me with Neddie and have our kids. There's a
Speaker 4: whole arc there of like potential, like her not trusting her,
Speaker 4: and then like slowly building a friendship when she reveals
Speaker 4: like no, I'm not on I've known all I think
Speaker 4: all this time. She ends up like marrying the pastor Samuel.
Speaker 4: It's a whole deep thing. Her kids, well, I guess
Speaker 4: Celi's kids Adam, Marys. And there's an in depth thing
Speaker 4: into this woman he marries, who we see at the end.
Speaker 1: But in the books they do the facial scarring.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they do the facial scarring with their wedding, and
Speaker 4: there's also a genital mutilation and it's supposed to just
Speaker 4: be for the bride, but Adam does it with her
Speaker 4: in order to like, you know, have solidarity. He's like,
Speaker 4: I will also do the facial scarring.
Speaker 1: In the movie.
Speaker 4: Obviously, Steven Spielberg was like, I cannot have a beautiful He's.
Speaker 1: Like, oh my goodness, no.
Speaker 4: So instead we're gonna have it be done to Cely's children,
Speaker 4: and instead of it being a marriage general mutilation thing,
Speaker 4: it's like a coming of age facial scarring ceremony that
Speaker 4: we like see played over drums while Celia is possibly
Speaker 4: gonna cut mister's throat while.
Speaker 1: She's shaming him now, and like they just change it.
Speaker 4: Completely, and it's kind of like why even keep it?
Speaker 4: Like why did we need this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: That editing choice too to like didn't work for me.
Speaker 4: This is one of the Spielberg moments where I'm like,
Speaker 4: I think a black director would have been like, hey,
Speaker 4: it feels a bit here like we are suggesting this
Speaker 4: African tribe is savage evil for doing this, and we're
Speaker 4: presenting Celia in a moment where she may do a
Speaker 4: savage thing of killing someone and Shoog stops her at
Speaker 4: the last minute, Like we're kind of saying they're more,
Speaker 4: you know, less savage or more human or emotional than
Speaker 4: these people in Africa. But this is Spielberg, so he.
Speaker 1: Doesn't get it.
Speaker 4: He's just like, yeah, but the drums match up, right,
Speaker 4: Isn't that cool? And then and when Mister's like, when
Speaker 4: she tells mister to put her head back, the kids
Speaker 4: put their bag head back so they can get cut.
Speaker 1: Is that cool? Cut?
Speaker 4: And it's just one of those things tonally where it's
Speaker 4: a little like, Stephen, why did you do Africa this way?
Speaker 4: What are you white?
Speaker 2: Truly? And then why when Adam and Olivia Seely's kids,
Speaker 2: who I think for the first part of their lives
Speaker 2: lived in the US. And then also, we're living in
Speaker 2: an English speaking home their entire life, Why do they
Speaker 2: not speak English?
Speaker 1: Why do they not speak English?
Speaker 4: Yes, this is and what I think it kind of
Speaker 4: says is Netty is a horrible teacher.
Speaker 1: She taught she.
Speaker 4: Taught Celia how to read and stuff, and then she
Speaker 4: never teaches her own niece and nephew how to speak English. Also,
Speaker 4: at one point, Seely says like, my kids are in
Speaker 4: Africa learning different languages, and I was like, they didn't
Speaker 4: pick up English?
Speaker 1: Though, like what.
Speaker 2: What was the even though they're parents and they're like
Speaker 2: Nanny would have been speaking English. But it's one of
Speaker 2: those other moments, yeah, where it's like Spielberg where you
Speaker 2: just like Africa, so let's you know, they got to
Speaker 2: say Swahili or something right, and it's like, that's not
Speaker 2: how that would work. And that's the whole part of
Speaker 2: the book is them navigating Africa as African Americans and
Speaker 2: the differences they face and how they're treated and some
Speaker 2: people treat them like they're British or some people treat
Speaker 2: you know, and he just you can tell he was
Speaker 2: like I can't handle this. He was like, don't don't no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: No, no, thank you. I can't know. How about we
Speaker 4: just have their African village get pillage, they cut someone,
Speaker 4: We're done.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right. In the book, there's like a whole process of
Speaker 1: I mean again, I feel like it also has to
Speaker 1: do with like how missionary work is presented. We're in
Speaker 1: the Spielberg movie, it's like, well, it was going great
Speaker 1: and then something terrible happened, where in the book it's
Speaker 1: more subtle and Nettie becomes really discouraged with how missionary work,
Speaker 1: like how that has sort of manifested in Africa. She's
Speaker 1: over it, which of course is like not touched on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also there's more background about Neddie and Celia's paternity. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is not touched on, yo, And.
Speaker 4: It's a very important detail and part of the story
Speaker 4: because you spend most of the movie going, oh no,
Speaker 4: this poor girl victim of incest her kids by products
Speaker 4: of it. How horrible, but she still loves them and
Speaker 4: wants them back. And then in the movie it's just
Speaker 4: like a blip where Celi's like, and then I found
Speaker 4: out actually Paul was my step pa. Kids are good, right,
Speaker 4: It's truly just like after the and so my kids
Speaker 4: aren't my siblings and my kids are just my kids.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 4: Anyway, moving on, zooms through it zoomster, and it's like
Speaker 4: this is a major thing. The person who she's at
Speaker 4: the funeral, this person who changed the course of her life.
Speaker 4: She finds out actually it's a whole story of like
Speaker 4: their birth father was a store owner who got lynched.
Speaker 4: He you know, was like respected in the black community
Speaker 4: and basically imply like a civil rights leader. He gets killed.
Speaker 4: The mother like loses her mind, and in that moment
Speaker 4: of just depression and issue she's going through, this guy
Speaker 4: swoops in and realizes, oh, I can get control of
Speaker 4: her house and her store and all this land because
Speaker 4: she's so out of it, Like I can just marry
Speaker 4: her and also get access to her young daughters. And
Speaker 4: he takes advantage. Which that's a compelling story. Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2: Why gloss over them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like erases that super super important plot point
Speaker 1: about their mother because it's like there is a lot
Speaker 1: I mean in this at least does come through in
Speaker 1: the movie. Is like there's a huge connection. Like the
Speaker 1: emphasis is put on mothers and daughters over mothers and
Speaker 1: sons over father's and daughters. Like there's a strong I mean,
Speaker 1: even like with the emphasis of Seally is thinking of Olivia,
Speaker 1: talks about Olivia more then she talks about Adam, poor.
Speaker 4: Adam, which is like, okay, I mean you also knew
Speaker 4: Adam longer, like you kept okay, you don't even cared?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, sure are you guys not cool? But yeah,
Speaker 1: Like the emphasis is put on mothers and daughters, so
Speaker 1: why not include more.
Speaker 4: About their mother because like the mother is Celi's like
Speaker 4: old enough to understand when her mom dies, Like they're
Speaker 4: teenagers by the time she dies, so it's a little
Speaker 4: like what was their relationship? Like it it's hinted at
Speaker 4: that she the mom is aware that the dad is
Speaker 4: assaulting her and was angry and they've like broken hearted,
Speaker 4: but he makes her feel like she's the reason your
Speaker 4: mom was broken hearted and died because you tempted me,
Speaker 4: evil child whatever sick stuff. But in reality, it's like
Speaker 4: she's never processed losing the actual father of her children.
Speaker 4: And it's like, wouldn't that have been something to see
Speaker 4: or have cely talk about with Nettie after they're at Mister's,
Speaker 4: like how do they miss their mom?
Speaker 1: What was their mom?
Speaker 4: And we never get that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like an absent mother is so often
Speaker 1: like explained away by like, well, she passed before you
Speaker 1: remembered her, and it's like, no, she knows like high
Speaker 1: school aged.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's literally as a funeral, like pushing the funeral
Speaker 4: because she's like, I'm gonna get married and like two
Speaker 4: months like right.
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, I was. I was disappointed that that was
Speaker 1: scaled back on and it also felt like, I mean,
Speaker 1: in the many ways that the movie sanitizes the events
Speaker 1: of the book. That felt like a pretty significant sanitizing,
Speaker 1: like erasing the fact that there fat there was a
Speaker 1: civil rights leader who was lynched by white people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and instead it feels like Steven uses it as
Speaker 4: a way to go, ooh, you know what incest is icky,
Speaker 4: let's backtrek right.
Speaker 1: That feels like the point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess what you're about to see a family
Speaker 4: reunion and you don't have to worry that it's gross
Speaker 4: with incest.
Speaker 1: We cleared that up. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: like movie style avoidance. Yeah, like unbeknownst to me. I
Speaker 1: mean like when I went back to read the passages,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, he like sidestepped five different issues
Speaker 1: by making that choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And just the choice to make it like a
Speaker 4: rush sentence read in a letter is so weird to me.
Speaker 4: And just even the choice to not get into Seely's
Speaker 4: ability to still love and want these children and to
Speaker 4: care about them and to want to hear about even
Speaker 4: knowing at that point like they're where she believes they
Speaker 4: come from. All of that is like an interesting aspect
Speaker 4: of Seely's character that I just he just didn't want
Speaker 4: to deal with and that's the part where I'm like,
Speaker 4: what do you think this was gonna be on the
Speaker 4: Disney Channel? Like make a real movie seriously?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well there's a little bit more of
Speaker 2: the recap lift then yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a long movie.
Speaker 1: It's a lot.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it really is. It is very long, and
Speaker 2: it's still left out so much. Yeah, almost like it
Speaker 2: should have been a mini series. Maybe I decay. Yeah, anyway, Okay,
Speaker 2: so we've come to the part where oh yeah, the
Speaker 2: two men, Mister and Shug's new husband are cracking eggs
Speaker 2: over their heads and goofing around. Sure, and while they're
Speaker 2: distracted with that, Shug goes to get the mail and
Speaker 2: she sees a letter to Steely from Nettie and Seely
Speaker 2: reads it, and the letter says that that Nettie has
Speaker 2: been writing to her all of these years, and so
Speaker 2: Cely realizes that Albert probably kept those letters from her.
Speaker 2: So Cely and Shug snoop around Albert's stuff and they
Speaker 2: find all the letters that Nettie had sent over the years,
Speaker 2: and she reads them all and she learns about how
Speaker 2: what we were talking about, Nettie had been living in
Speaker 2: Africa with Ceely's two children, because Seely's father sold the babies,
Speaker 2: Adam and Olivia to that woman who we saw at
Speaker 2: the beginning. Her name is Corene, and then Nettie found them.
Speaker 2: It kind of glosses over this detail. I don't think
Speaker 2: it even mentions it, like she became their maids, just
Speaker 2: like I found them, and then I joined them on
Speaker 2: this missionary trip to Africa. But guess what, we're all
Speaker 2: coming back to the US soon, or we're trying to
Speaker 2: or something. And then one day, when everyone has gathered
Speaker 2: for dinner, we've got Cely, Albert Shug, Shug's husband, Sophia Harpo,
Speaker 2: Albert's father, Squeaky is there, a bunch of kids, and
Speaker 2: I don't know whose kids those are. But Seally starts
Speaker 2: laying in to Albert, saying that she's leaving him. He's
Speaker 2: a terrible person, his kids are rotten. She's had enough,
Speaker 2: and she curses him, saying that his mistreatment of her
Speaker 2: will come back onto him, and then Sealy, Shug and
Speaker 2: Squeaky aka Mary Agnes leave. We cut to a couple
Speaker 2: years later. Sometime later, Albert slash Mister is living in squad.
Speaker 2: His life is in shambles. It seems like Seely's curse
Speaker 2: is like coming true.
Speaker 1: I thought that that was well done because it's like
Speaker 1: she didn't need to curse him. He was never fling.
Speaker 4: It was never gonna be okay. He can't even feed himself.
Speaker 4: But I do love there's like those Spielberg comedy moments.
Speaker 4: He goes to the mailbox which now has like gut
Speaker 4: bullet holes in it, and as he's getting the mail,
Speaker 4: like a screen on one of his windows falls, like
Speaker 4: his whole house is.
Speaker 1: Just falling apart.
Speaker 4: Literally, there's pigs and stuff and it's just it's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we get that scene that
Speaker 2: we were just talking about where Seely's father dies, but
Speaker 2: it turns out that he wasn't even her biological father.
Speaker 1: Yep boop. Yeah, they just zip through plot points he did.
Speaker 4: Don't worry, no insid no, it's all good.
Speaker 2: And from this Celly inherits her real father's house and store.
Speaker 2: So she opens up a clothing shop slash specifically a
Speaker 2: pants store. She's making pants.
Speaker 4: With one size fits all, pants that do seem to
Speaker 4: fit all.
Speaker 2: I was like a sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wrote dud Celey founded the Sisterhood of the Traveling
Speaker 2: Pants purely she like Harbo, who is very small man,
Speaker 2: and Sophia, they truth like wear the same pants and
Speaker 2: they do fit.
Speaker 1: They look nice on the nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one day Cely and Sug are walking through
Speaker 2: a field with purple flowers, and Sug says something like,
Speaker 2: it pisses God off when you walk through a field
Speaker 2: and you see purple and you don't notice the color purple,
Speaker 2: because purple just wants to be loved the way that
Speaker 2: everybody wants to be loved. And we're like, oh, so
Speaker 2: that's where Okay, they said it.
Speaker 1: And that's the color purple.
Speaker 2: That's the name of the movie.
Speaker 1: They have that conversation. Are like, but where as straight friends,
Speaker 1: I would like to have this discussion with you in
Speaker 1: a field in.
Speaker 4: A very straight way. And I don't mean like those
Speaker 4: lavender lesbians. I just mean purple is nice, Okay.
Speaker 1: The straight color purple is the straightest colors for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why the Purple Teletubby is famously the straight
Speaker 2: just one. Yeah, well you just pulled that out like effortlessly,
Speaker 2: had the Purple Teletubby it's in my mind.
Speaker 4: Well, so you think it when you think purple Barney.
Speaker 4: Also yes, yeah, also so straight, very straight.
Speaker 2: Okay. So the movie ends with a couple different scenes.
Speaker 2: One Shug finally reconnects with her father. One day at church,
Speaker 2: she comes like marching in, singing gospel.
Speaker 4: It's a choir battle. It's everything that happens in this movie.
Speaker 4: And then Steven Spielberg goes, you know what, be fun
Speaker 4: a choir battle, Like they are at the juke joint.
Speaker 4: She's singing for a performance and the church is also going,
Speaker 4: and the church people are mad that they can hear
Speaker 4: the juke joint music. So they're like sing a song
Speaker 4: in the choir and shook hearing it. Is like, you
Speaker 4: know what, let's bring it to their doorsteps. And so
Speaker 4: they started playing and singing and walk over and then
Speaker 4: the church is like, okay, you guys win, you win.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other soloist gracefully accepts. Yeah, she's truly like for.
Speaker 4: A moment, she like comes out of the cues and
Speaker 4: she's like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna go sing my
Speaker 4: heart out.
Speaker 1: And then she's like, you know what, never mind, never mind,
Speaker 1: never mind.
Speaker 4: It is implied at this point that Shug must be
Speaker 4: pretty famous because mister this whole time has been listening
Speaker 4: to her record and hearing her on the radio and
Speaker 4: just constantly playing her famous song Sister. So it's implied
Speaker 4: she like does blow up. So there's I guess some
Speaker 4: probably level of that choir girl being like, oh my goodness,
Speaker 4: the famous sug Avery's here. Maybe we don't know Steven
Speaker 4: didn't want to let us know.
Speaker 1: That part unclear. Yeah, I was like, is she charting?
Speaker 1: Can I have afmation?
Speaker 2: She's selling tickets like she on the Billboard top one hundred,
Speaker 2: How big is she that?
Speaker 1: Okay that she's on jukeboxes? But okay, yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: very Spielberg sentimental. But I really do let the scene
Speaker 1: where Seally doesn't know that Shug is about to sing
Speaker 1: a song that she wrote for her and oh it's
Speaker 1: so it's yeah, if only they had let them be gay,
Speaker 1: like that would be gay, truly let them be gay.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I will say the church battle choir scene
Speaker 4: also again feels very Spielberg, just in terms of how
Speaker 4: much the church people inquire, people are smiling.
Speaker 1: There's this.
Speaker 4: To me, it felt there's just a minstrelly aspect to
Speaker 4: some scenes where I feel a white director being like
Speaker 4: smile Moore, smile more like I hear that note and
Speaker 4: I feel it because like, even when they're playing the piano,
Speaker 4: they're all just like smiling so big at Sugar and
Speaker 4: You're just like, do they even know.
Speaker 1: This and who she is? Like?
Speaker 4: Why are they also invested in this situation? Doesn't her
Speaker 4: dad hate her, probably never really talks about her, And
Speaker 4: suddenly they're all just like, oh, yay, and it's just yeah,
Speaker 4: it's so just yeah.
Speaker 2: They're just excited that number one superstar Sugay America suggavery
Speaker 2: has graced them.
Speaker 4: Has graced them, and is just hugging their pastor very intimately.
Speaker 1: For some reason.
Speaker 2: They're like, Wow, our pastor knows a famous person. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also, as someone who has well a complicated relationship
Speaker 2: with the concept of a father, I was like, why
Speaker 2: is she so obsessed with trying to like when his
Speaker 2: affection He seems like a not very good person, But
Speaker 2: maybe that's just a me thing.
Speaker 1: Well. It also feels like, because this movie is overtly
Speaker 1: critical of many things, religion is not really one of them,
Speaker 1: which it seems like the book is more ready to
Speaker 1: engage with. My feeling and again, I don't know how
Speaker 1: Shug's relationship with their father's presented in the book necessarily,
Speaker 1: but it felt like he was this kind of amalgamation
Speaker 1: of like, if she can reconcile with her father, she
Speaker 1: can reconcile with religion and like quote unquote respectable society,
Speaker 1: or like it felt like he was also like a
Speaker 1: symbol of other stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the book, it's a lot of like he
Speaker 4: hates her because he feels like God gave her this
Speaker 4: voice and she could use it in church for the Lord,
Speaker 4: but he, you know, she brings shame upon them in
Speaker 4: the family. A lot of why she is even sleeping
Speaker 4: with mister like how she becomes a mistress and she's
Speaker 4: like her relationships with married men. They go more into
Speaker 4: that because it's sort of like her trying to get
Speaker 4: her father's attention and approval and love. So it's like
Speaker 4: this manifestation of daddy issues. So it again just makes
Speaker 4: more sense because Alice Walker is a writer who knows.
Speaker 1: What she's doing.
Speaker 4: But yeah, in the movie, I don't think you really
Speaker 4: get how not having her father has impacted Shug. You know,
Speaker 4: it feels good to I guess see them come back together.
Speaker 4: But again it's like, why did she care so much
Speaker 4: about getting married to impress him? Why did she care
Speaker 4: so much about like showing him right?
Speaker 2: If we knew more about it, I would have an
Speaker 2: easier time understanding her what is compelling her to seek
Speaker 2: out this love and affection from him, But we just
Speaker 2: don't know enough.
Speaker 1: So I'm just like, right, I mean, in the SPIELBERGI
Speaker 1: way that in the kind of eleventh hour of this movie,
Speaker 1: there are two tacitly implied redemption arcs for men who
Speaker 1: are abusive in different ways, where we I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we're led to believe. I don't think that we're
Speaker 1: led to believe that Sugar had been physically abused by
Speaker 1: her father, but like neglected and abandoned essentially emotionally. They
Speaker 1: have no relationship, and then he sort of like never
Speaker 1: has to say sorry. He's just like, oh, today is
Speaker 1: the day I decide I decide to forgive you, even
Speaker 1: though you have done nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then with Albert, I mean, I think, like you're
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, Ashley, it would make I can't really
Speaker 1: see a world where it's like Albert's redemption arc, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not totally redemption. It's close enough. I don't
Speaker 1: know the way it's presented in the Spielberg movie. You're
Speaker 1: just like he should have to move to a different
Speaker 1: city at least, Like why is he still should have.
Speaker 4: To lose his property or something? And yeah, it'll be
Speaker 4: I guess we're going to do this part in the
Speaker 4: synopsis because it's like the very end that they rush
Speaker 4: Mister's whole arc of like him just deciding, you know what,
Speaker 4: I have been cursed, let me fix this.
Speaker 2: And I almost didn't understand fully what was happening because
Speaker 2: we see him get a letter from like the federal government.
Speaker 4: Like it's the immigration and Naturalization and in the book
Speaker 4: this is explained that basically to come back to America,
Speaker 4: Nettie and her kids need like a sponsor, someone who's
Speaker 4: already in America. So they've been asking Celi and they're
Speaker 4: trying to petition and be like this is the only way,
Speaker 4: you know, we don't know anyone else back in the States,
Speaker 4: like we need you to do this, and there's like
Speaker 4: a fee that they have to pay, and obviously these
Speaker 4: letters are never getting to Cely. And then finally Mister's like,
Speaker 4: you know what, let me do it.
Speaker 2: I'll do it all, redeem myself by paying the fee.
Speaker 1: I'll pay the little fee.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense. I figured it must have been
Speaker 2: something like that, but it's not.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, like why and why would like they need
Speaker 4: Celia or Mister to get involved in any way?
Speaker 1: Like what if they went over there?
Speaker 4: Couldn't they just be like we were born in America,
Speaker 4: we have passports and come back.
Speaker 2: But yes, yeah, in any case, So the movie ends
Speaker 2: with after mister had paid the fee, Nettie returning with
Speaker 2: Cely's children, Adam and Olivia, as well as Tashi, who
Speaker 2: I think is Adam's wife, and then there's just this
Speaker 2: beautiful tear reunion and then the movie ends. So that
Speaker 2: is the color purple.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: I mean we also get Mister looking at them and
Speaker 4: he walks his horse into the sunset. He wist, well,
Speaker 4: I did a good thing and I'm not cursed anymore.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and then we know you have to move.
Speaker 4: You have to move, you gotta and we get the
Speaker 4: iconic Also another famous thing that me and my cousin
Speaker 4: used to you all the time, handshake me and you
Speaker 4: us never part.
Speaker 1: Me and you us have one heart, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they're children again who found each other, and.
Speaker 2: I feel like they're among the color purple. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When this happens, Oh yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Makes you think, all right, let's take another quick break
Speaker 2: and we will come back to discuss, and we're back.
Speaker 1: I knew we were gonna have half a discussion in
Speaker 1: the middle of it. It's hard not to. It's hard,
Speaker 1: but I do. I'm glad that we I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: we should start with the erasure of the sug and
Speaker 1: Cely relationship, because that seems like the biggest erasure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is that they have this beautiful relationship. In the books,
Speaker 4: it is super gay. You understand the love they have
Speaker 4: for each other, and that beyond just being into each other,
Speaker 4: it is a safety that they find and each other
Speaker 4: as women, that they've both been so disappointed by men
Speaker 4: and hurt by men. And I think it really is
Speaker 4: a disservice to Ceely's character because in the movie, her
Speaker 4: ability to be romantic, to be sexual is just completely
Speaker 4: washed away. She's basically played as though she has the
Speaker 4: mentality of a child, like she never really like steps
Speaker 4: into that adulthood of I'm gonna speak up for myself.
Speaker 4: I know what I want I have feelings for this
Speaker 4: person instead, it kind of is suggested, and then she
Speaker 4: has this big monologue at the dinner table where she's like,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna speak up finally. But it's so much more
Speaker 4: beautiful when you see that in this relationship with Shoog,
Speaker 4: she's able to find her voice and stand up for
Speaker 4: herself and finally start to fight. So to remove it,
Speaker 4: it's just again one of those really disappointing acts arcs
Speaker 4: of it. I think again that's what made me kind
Speaker 4: of fall out of love with the movie when I
Speaker 4: realized what I could have had reading the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been a ton written about it. We'll link
Speaker 1: to a friend of this show, Princess Weeks, wrote a
Speaker 1: wonderful essay about it a couple of years ago, I
Speaker 1: think possibly when it was first announced that this new
Speaker 1: adaptation was going to come out. I wanted to share
Speaker 1: there's a quote that's been pretty widely circulated that we've
Speaker 1: referenced before, because I think it's very easy for directors
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, I would have done this differently today. Sorry,
Speaker 1: but you know, to hand him the bare minimum. He
Speaker 1: didn't double down on the decision and say and I
Speaker 1: do it again today. But the quote that is widely circulated,
Speaker 1: I think during every round of this necessary discourse about
Speaker 1: how this relationship is completely erased. So Spielberg says, quote,
Speaker 1: there were certain things in the lesbian relationship between sug
Speaker 1: Avery and Sely that were finally detailed in Alice's book
Speaker 1: that I didn't feel could get a PG. Thirteen rating,
Speaker 1: and I was shy about it. In that sense, perhaps
Speaker 1: I was the wrong director to acquit some of the
Speaker 1: more sexually honest encounters between Sugar and Sealy because I
Speaker 1: did soften those. I basically took something that was extremely
Speaker 1: erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a
Speaker 1: simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that
Speaker 1: ud quote. I wonder why, Stephen, I wonder why weird
Speaker 1: weird that that happened. And I was curious because I
Speaker 1: have not seen the musical, and I know that that
Speaker 1: is that adaptation of the so in the original musical,
Speaker 1: and I've heard I mean again, never trust a movie.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's it's hard. There has been a
Speaker 1: lot of talk, and I think at least press buzz
Speaker 1: that the new adaptation will actually rise to the occasion
Speaker 1: of the source material and include the queer relationship, which
Speaker 1: I'm interested in seeing how it's done because it seems
Speaker 1: like there was another round of criticism in how the
Speaker 1: original Broadway musical plays it down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, it's the musicals not gay at all, and
Speaker 4: it's a musical, so it would be gay. It's yeah,
Speaker 4: it's not. I saw when Michelle Williams was in it
Speaker 4: on Broadway, and I mean, I loved it. I love
Speaker 4: the music, I do like the musical, but I mean,
Speaker 4: if Spielberg's goal was to make the movie Pg. Thirteen,
Speaker 4: they were like, we got to make sure this musical
Speaker 4: has like a g rating, Like people have to be
Speaker 4: able to bring their six year olds to enjoy the
Speaker 4: bright colors. So it's definitely even more just like whitewashed
Speaker 4: and kind of like those details are missing. It's still
Speaker 4: really fun, though, But at the same time, I've always
Speaker 4: kind of wondered, why this story, Why is this the
Speaker 4: story about black female struggle that is depicted so raw,
Speaker 4: so honestly in the book. Why is this what you've
Speaker 4: decided should be turned into a PG. Thirteen general audience affair?
Speaker 4: Like can we be honest about it? Like can't we
Speaker 4: have our r rated narratives because that's what this is.
Speaker 1: And it feels so telling, just like, and this discussion
Speaker 1: has been had with a number of movies, but like,
Speaker 1: what can you get away with in a PG thirteen rating?
Speaker 1: And why is showing a lesbian relationship not okay when
Speaker 1: we see I mean, I think that's like sort of
Speaker 1: my central issue with the way that this movie's adapted.
Speaker 1: There's a million ways to criticize it, but that like,
Speaker 1: on its face, this movie is very, very comfortable with
Speaker 1: showing the black women at its center being tremendously abused
Speaker 1: and are not comfortable or like shy and pull away
Speaker 1: and fade to black when it comes to showing these
Speaker 1: same characters experiencing actual joy and pleasure, Like the pleasure
Speaker 1: is erased or just hinted at, but the abuse you see,
Speaker 1: you know, for the most part pretty clearly the thing
Speaker 1: that bugged me the most. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: the scene where Sophia punches the white guy in the face.
Speaker 1: They don't show it. They have a car pass like
Speaker 1: it's like when SpongeBob is swearing and it's like the
Speaker 1: dolphins sound yeah they do that. I was just like,
Speaker 1: they're comfortable showing black women the abuse the entire movie.
Speaker 1: But they're like, but we don't want to show a
Speaker 1: white man getting punched in the face.
Speaker 4: Oh, they do cut back when when Sophia is on
Speaker 4: the ground with her skirt up, you see, and then
Speaker 4: they're like, you should see this, you should see this
Speaker 4: woman in the must I'm real.
Speaker 2: They show the sheriff like pistol whipping her, yeah, in
Speaker 2: the head, and then you show the yeah. She collapses
Speaker 2: to the ground, her skirt flies up, exposing her underwear,
Speaker 2: Like why is that okay to show? But not?
Speaker 1: I mean, it just feels like an admission of what
Speaker 1: the creative team was comfortable showing and what they were like, well,
Speaker 1: we cut it short of showing a relationship between two
Speaker 1: black women that's sexual and punching a white guy in
Speaker 1: the face any sort of abuse or humiliation. Pg. Thirteen
Speaker 1: No problem, which is just as much an issue with
Speaker 1: the ratings system as it is with the creative choices,
Speaker 1: because theoretically, in a just world, there would be some
Speaker 1: fucking pushback for that.
Speaker 2: There's a documentary. I've referenced this on the show before,
Speaker 2: but a documentary called This film is not yet rated,
Speaker 2: and it explores largely how sex scenes or like romantic
Speaker 2: scenes between or among queer people, even though they will
Speaker 2: be framed and choreographed like basically identically to like hetero
Speaker 2: sex scenes, the movies with queer sex depicted in them
Speaker 2: will be given like NC seventeen ratings, where again basically
Speaker 2: identical like choreography and like body place and like the
Speaker 2: same level of nudity. It's not as though like you're
Speaker 2: seeing like hardcore porn like dicks getting sucked or anything
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think it also like is inherently connected
Speaker 1: to just like seeing women experiencing pleasure in movies at
Speaker 1: all is so deem. I always think about the like.
Speaker 2: The but I'm a Cheerleader episode. I think we talked
Speaker 2: about this a lot mm hmm, because that movie there's
Speaker 2: like sex scenes and that had to be largely cut
Speaker 2: to be able to get an R rating or I
Speaker 2: forget which, but there was scenes that like the MPAA
Speaker 2: was like, this is too scandalous, so we're gonna give
Speaker 2: you like either an NC seventeen or an R rating
Speaker 2: basically make it inaccessible to people.
Speaker 1: But even within like heterodynamics too, where it's like a
Speaker 1: blow job can be in a pg. Thirteen movie no problem.
Speaker 1: But if someone's going down on a maybe that's we
Speaker 1: gotta keep that. We can't let them know. We coun't
Speaker 1: lock it up.
Speaker 4: Only release it in France. Don't even bring it to
Speaker 4: my shores.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: And yeah, just again in this I even the kiss
Speaker 4: between sug and Cely, I feel like it's a little
Speaker 4: just even further degraded because when Seely finally does see
Speaker 4: Nettie again, they also share this like long kiss obviously
Speaker 4: not sexual, they are sisters, but it makes it feel like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is just a form of black female connection. True,
Speaker 4: like Europeans they just deeply kiss when they really care
Speaker 4: about each other.
Speaker 1: We don't do that.
Speaker 4: I think it makes sense for Nettie because she is
Speaker 4: coming from Africa and like has these customs and is
Speaker 4: saying her sister out for a long time.
Speaker 1: But between Sugar.
Speaker 4: And Avery, no, that's not just like black girlfriends like
Speaker 4: my lady girl.
Speaker 1: No, it's gay. It's supposed to be gay.
Speaker 2: He's not a sexy kiss. It's like they peck each
Speaker 2: other on the lips a couple of times, and then
Speaker 2: like when they finally do the deeper kiss, it immediately
Speaker 2: like pans away to like see their hands very lightly,
Speaker 2: like their fingertips are like kind of touching each other's
Speaker 2: shoulders and like hip or something like that.
Speaker 1: But I want an oral history of that day on sets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not an intimate kiss. It's just it's not
Speaker 2: hot and heavy.
Speaker 4: It's just like, Yeah, I think Stephen was behind the
Speaker 4: camera going not the whole hand on her shoulder, just
Speaker 4: just the fingertips, just the tip tip, just just please,
Speaker 4: little touching, not too much.
Speaker 2: So that was disappointing, very telling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's like one of the most
Speaker 1: famously mishandled areas of this movie. But there's just so
Speaker 1: much that is I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about Alice Walker in general and specifically what her relationship
Speaker 1: to this production was, but I feel beholded to say
Speaker 1: Alice Walker, very famous, writer, very well respected, also has
Speaker 1: her fair share of pretty tremendous fuck ups in terms
Speaker 1: of expressing anti Semitic stances, spreading Holocaust denial, and most
Speaker 1: recently siding with JK. Rowling. So yeah, we're not going
Speaker 1: to get into those issues in detail today, but I
Speaker 1: do want to acknowledge them because they're all from the
Speaker 1: last ten years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's not Tony Morrison. Okay, there's reasons we yeah,
Speaker 4: like some other people a little more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it particularly that I was reading her
Speaker 1: history with anti Semitism and you're like, Alice, yeah, because
Speaker 1: she's also pro Palestinian liberation, which is not anti semitic,
Speaker 1: but she's also anti Semitic, and you're just like, you
Speaker 1: are not helping. You're not helping as it pertains to
Speaker 1: this movie. Sorry, my blood pressure just raised as Pertaises
Speaker 1: movie because we hinted at this earlier where we're like,
Speaker 1: how did we get to Steven Spielberg and who was
Speaker 1: their pushback?
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 1: From what I can gather, Alice Walker, like you're saying, Ashley, like,
Speaker 1: she didn't really want the movie to be adapted, especially
Speaker 1: a story that is so rooted in black womanhood and
Speaker 1: there's a queer relationship, Like how would you imagine in
Speaker 1: the eighties that someone wouldn't fuck it up until it
Speaker 1: was unrecognizable. What convinced her was what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: where she was like, well, let's see if we can
Speaker 1: produce a decent adaptation of this From the inside. I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting that her contract included that she
Speaker 1: would serve as a project consultant, and that fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the production team outside of the cast, which is
Speaker 1: obviously vast majority black actors, but that fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the production team would be African American women or quote,
Speaker 1: people of the third world unquote. Pretty vague, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little vague, okay, but that she, you know, was integral
Speaker 1: for her to approving this project at all, to bring
Speaker 1: in people who are massively underrepresented in film into this production,
Speaker 1: which I think is really fucking cool. Like, that's great.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons, if not the main reason
Speaker 2: she was reluctant to have this be adapted to a movie,
Speaker 2: is because she knew how poorly black people and women
Speaker 2: and black women in particular are treated by Hollywood, and
Speaker 2: she's like, I don't want that same thing. I don't
Speaker 2: want it to get mishandled if my movie gets adapted.
Speaker 1: But like we.
Speaker 2: Mentioned, she I read that she convened with a group
Speaker 2: of five women to discuss the merits of accepting this
Speaker 2: offer to have her book adapted to film, and they
Speaker 2: were like, well, if this does get made, it could
Speaker 2: help improve the exploitation of black people and black women
Speaker 2: in movies, so let's just kind of yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: an inside job, and.
Speaker 4: We get to put a ton of black actors who
Speaker 4: haven't had this chance to blow up in a Steven
Speaker 4: Spielberg movie.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, Let's go. And I love that there's
Speaker 1: like equal emphasis behind the camera too, like ye, it's
Speaker 1: it's really cool. And what I found frustrating was that
Speaker 1: she so she was not a screenwriter by trade, but
Speaker 1: she was a Pulitzer Prize winning fucking writer, and she
Speaker 1: does not get screenplay credit. She wrote the first draft
Speaker 1: and then they kicked it to a white guy who
Speaker 1: had previously or no, hadn't even written Indiana Jones in
Speaker 1: the Last Crusade yet, but they, I mean, the sole
Speaker 1: credited writer is oh, I don't know how to say
Speaker 1: his name, Meno may Mayeus Mayeus. Yeah, and that Alice
Speaker 1: Walker was sort of forced to accept that, even though
Speaker 1: she still insisted that she'd be given final script approval.
Speaker 1: So she worked on the script throughout, but she's obviously
Speaker 1: not credited, and which is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And she also,
Speaker 1: I mean, I listened to an interview that she did
Speaker 1: more recently about just like how she was learning about
Speaker 1: movie production through working on this where it sounds like Spielberg.
Speaker 1: You know, she had things where she was like, all right, Spielberg,
Speaker 1: these are the things I need you to shoot. I
Speaker 1: will not compromise on these scenes being shot. And he
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I'll shoot him. And many of
Speaker 1: them didn't end up in the movie. And that's how
Speaker 1: I learned about how editing sucks. And then I think
Speaker 1: the other really influential black creative voice behind the camera
Speaker 1: here is Quincy Jones, who is one of the main producers.
Speaker 1: I guess he was. I watched an interview from the
Speaker 1: eighties where he was really integral and pushing for Spielberg
Speaker 1: as a director, and then he also curated this iconic
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones score, And I mean, the score of this
Speaker 1: movie is fucking ridiculous. It's great, but yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's just it's so fucking telling and frustrating
Speaker 1: that Alice Walker doesn't have at least a shared credit, Like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: she doesn't know how to write a screenplay, fair enough,
Speaker 1: but also, why do we have to have Meno Mayes
Speaker 1: come in to do it like some white Dutch dude?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that for me, that was when
Speaker 4: I cause I didn't realize, you know, when you're a kid,
Speaker 4: you don't know what all those names and the credits mean.
Speaker 4: And as a high school after reading the book, I
Speaker 4: realized like, wait a second, Wait a second, she didn't
Speaker 4: write she doesn't say she wrote it.
Speaker 1: Who is this?
Speaker 4: And that yes, when I started to fall out of
Speaker 4: love with the movie and start to question, you know,
Speaker 4: why were certain things cut? Why are certain things presented
Speaker 4: this way? I think then you start to wonder like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: mister is a more one dimensional character. And Alice Walker
Speaker 4: had a ton of issues because she based the character
Speaker 4: on like her grandfather, I think, and she was hurt
Speaker 4: by that. And then you start to be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: well we're some white Dutch guy didn't understand the complexity
Speaker 4: of like living up to the patriarchal burdens your father
Speaker 4: has given to you while also like harming women and
Speaker 4: all of this. So of course it just doesn't translate
Speaker 4: into the script.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say most, if not all, of the
Speaker 2: male characters in the movie feel extremely caricatureish, slash just
Speaker 2: like stereotypical. Now do I appreciate that at its core,
Speaker 2: this movie is about like women sticking together and forming
Speaker 2: bonds and friendships to protect each other against the abusive
Speaker 2: behavior of the men in their life, and like eventually
Speaker 2: being able to escape their abusers. Yes, but like we've said,
Speaker 2: it fails to portray any of the nuance and any
Speaker 2: of the contexts that explains why these men are like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, it's just not It's kind of the movie
Speaker 4: makes you wonder why to Shug go to be with
Speaker 4: mister Why does she engage in a relationship with him
Speaker 4: if she sees how he treats Seely? And the book
Speaker 4: does a better job of outlining like how he can
Speaker 4: be this sweet, romantic person and you know, like he
Speaker 4: can be everything she wants sometimes, But then there's this darkness,
Speaker 4: and I think that makes it a little more believable
Speaker 4: because I think, you know, for us, by the time
Speaker 4: Seely's decided like maybe I should slit his throat, it's like, girl,
Speaker 4: you should do on this twenty minutes ago, Like what yeah,
Speaker 4: girls kill him?
Speaker 1: Get it? I'm over this good his ass? Right, And
Speaker 1: even though it sounds like I mean Spike Lee had
Speaker 1: a arguably outside's reaction, I do understand why he was
Speaker 1: concerned about how black men are portrayed in movies that
Speaker 1: are written and directed by white boy guy is a
Speaker 1: very very valid concern. It becomes complicated by like that
Speaker 1: big use to undercut or like be implied that that
Speaker 1: is undercutting both Alice Walker and an all black cast
Speaker 1: in an industry where at that time it rarely have
Speaker 1: ever happened. But I also, like I do think that
Speaker 1: I'm glad, I guess not glad, I mean I'm interested
Speaker 1: to hear that Alice Walker wrote Albert to be less
Speaker 1: one dimensional. Not because I think that like abusers should
Speaker 1: have more lore, Yeah, but I do think that, like
Speaker 1: it's We've talked about this trope a million times on
Speaker 1: the show where it's like patriarchy, the guy just the
Speaker 1: guy that does all of the patriarchy things, and he
Speaker 1: is the bad guy and we get rid of him
Speaker 1: at the end and then misogyny is solved, which it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually do very much to move the needle on
Speaker 1: how we talk about anything, and particularly with like white
Speaker 1: writers and directors, it feels like there are tropes on
Speaker 1: how black men are portrayed in Hollywood, present in these
Speaker 1: characters because of what is taken out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so okay, yeah, it's just really one of those like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess the people who were mad.
Speaker 1: I still like the movie. But everybody's right. It's just
Speaker 1: truly right. This Spike Lee is right.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I wish that we could have
Speaker 4: seen these other versions where maybe Spike Lee did it,
Speaker 4: where Alice had more say in the script.
Speaker 1: But what we got, you know, is.
Speaker 4: Passed generations to generations. I don't I truly do watch
Speaker 4: this movie probably every year.
Speaker 1: With my family.
Speaker 4: It is always being played on BD. You know, the cast,
Speaker 4: I think is what ended up making it what it became.
Speaker 4: So you know, you get Oprah, It's gonna stick.
Speaker 1: I mean, right right, there's I haven't read the full book,
Speaker 1: but there is an interesting excerpt slash discussion of it
Speaker 1: written in the New Republic recently in the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, let's say, but there is a book written
Speaker 1: by writer Salamisha Tillett called In Search of the Color Purple,
Speaker 1: the Story of an American Masterpiece. Just a series of
Speaker 1: essays and just reflections on not just this, not just
Speaker 1: the movie or the book, but how the culture received it,
Speaker 1: I mean, which is a lot. And I learned a
Speaker 1: little more about how Alice Walker was treated in not
Speaker 1: even just the fallout of the movie, but the fallout
Speaker 1: of the book, which I think again complicates that we
Speaker 1: were just talking about, where it makes a ton of
Speaker 1: sense that black directors and black male directors in particular
Speaker 1: would have an issue with Steven Spielberg portraying Mister in
Speaker 1: the way that he does in this movie, But the
Speaker 1: fact that that same energy was applied to Alice Walker
Speaker 1: when the book first came out reads very, very differently.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that when The Color Purple the book
Speaker 1: came out, an excerpt or a piece on it was
Speaker 1: included in MSS magazine, and it was on the cover
Speaker 1: of the magazine, and Gloria Steinem was essentially tasked with
Speaker 1: defending Alice Walker for including her work that had black
Speaker 1: male characters who were abusive towards black women. And how
Speaker 1: that is a completely different discussion. I have a quote
Speaker 1: from Salamisia Tillett sort of speaking to that her she
Speaker 1: says quote. The controversy also took such a firm hold
Speaker 1: because it drew upon a stereotype that at the time
Speaker 1: was well known among African Americans but far less familiar
Speaker 1: to white people. The black women as race trader. Likewise
Speaker 1: till it powerfully pulls from the color Purple controversy as
Speaker 1: an example of how black women have been asked to
Speaker 1: silence their own pain to supposedly serve the greater cause
Speaker 1: of racial uplift. Threaded throughout these attacks on the color
Speaker 1: purple is the idea that the danger of reinforcing stereotypes
Speaker 1: about black male sexuality is too great to allow room
Speaker 1: for black women to have justice. Unquote sounds like an
Speaker 1: interesting book. I'm just like, man, Yeah, that gets that
Speaker 1: sums it up. Yeah, that is Yeah, that's why Spike
Speaker 1: Lee was angry.
Speaker 4: That was absolutely you know, I think a lot of people,
Speaker 4: even in the black community today, it's I think beloved,
Speaker 4: Like I grew up loving it because I have a
Speaker 4: single mom. But I do think there is still some
Speaker 4: a lot of animosity where people want to call this
Speaker 4: like black tragedy porn. You know that it's just this
Speaker 4: sad thing about black women getting beaten and so it
Speaker 4: should be written off or trauma porn, And you know,
Speaker 4: I think that's just so far from the truth. This
Speaker 4: is a lot of it is based on Alice Walker's
Speaker 4: real life. I think these are stories that need to
Speaker 4: be told. And at the time, there was a large
Speaker 4: contingent of people who were like, if we tell these stories,
Speaker 4: they won't give us our respects, our justice. We won't
Speaker 4: and it's like they never will, they never will. Sorry,
Speaker 4: well they're never going to do it, so let us
Speaker 4: tell our stories.
Speaker 2: And it wouldn't be as much of an issue if
Speaker 2: there were just more stories about black characters living their
Speaker 2: normal lives, and you would be able to see black
Speaker 2: joy and you would be able to see black men
Speaker 2: not being abusive and being very loving, caring partners and
Speaker 2: parents and things like that. But because especially at this
Speaker 2: time when this movie's coming out, there were so few
Speaker 2: exist samples of of any other mainstream stories about black people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, the kind of reaction to that would have
Speaker 2: been like this is all we get, like the and
Speaker 2: especially black men being represented this way, right, because there
Speaker 2: there was very little else to look to to say, well,
Speaker 2: here's an example of how we're not all abusers.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you know, in another world, I wish I
Speaker 4: could see the version of the movie that is made
Speaker 4: with a black male director and how they would have
Speaker 4: approached that with Alice Walker or a black woman. But yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 4: let's not get too crazy. We literally just got a
Speaker 4: black woman to direct a Marvel movie. Let's not push it.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's getting great reviews. I'm really excited to see it.
Speaker 1: I haven't been excited to see it a Marvel, but
Speaker 1: I was, like, I had a lot of fun. I
Speaker 1: was good. I got burned by doctors trade. Oh I
Speaker 1: didn't even mister mister weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got burned by that one last year. But I
Speaker 1: give them one a year, and I've been saving the
Speaker 1: Marvels for this year. It's a good one. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: new adaptation is being directed by Blitz, the Ambassador Blackmail director. Again.
Speaker 1: I guess I just wonder because very different dynamics, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it also reminds me of like, well, we had
Speaker 1: our discussion about Carrie years ago, where it's like an
Speaker 1: adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation, and like can
Speaker 1: you weed out these mistakes or erasures from the eighties
Speaker 1: if you're still adapting it on that, Like, I'm very
Speaker 1: curious how what creative choices are changed and what are not,
Speaker 1: and like how could you we just need more original stories?
Speaker 4: I think is this this is really the answer, because
Speaker 4: you know, seeing it, Like I know when I go,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna want to hear the lines I love. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna want to hear see the classic moments, like that's
Speaker 4: what we're there for at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: Because it's the color Purple, so it makes it hard
Speaker 4: to expand that story. And then you add on that
Speaker 4: it's the musical, and I think it's gonna be great,
Speaker 4: but I am expecting, truly to see a movie version
Speaker 4: of the musical. I don't think it's gonna really blow
Speaker 4: my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really. My fear is always like, wow, it's
Speaker 1: the like queerest movie of the year, and there's like
Speaker 1: a little like yeah in like the background of a
Speaker 1: scene where something else is happening and they're like, wow,
Speaker 1: the revolution is here, folks. So you're like, all right,
Speaker 1: but okay, of what we have in this movie, I
Speaker 1: really genuinely do, even though it is, you know, like
Speaker 1: very Spielberg soapy. I think we're like Alice Walker's, like
Speaker 1: the relationship dynamics between the women in The Color Purple
Speaker 1: are extremely complex. I really appreciate that Seely is allowed
Speaker 1: to make mistakes throughout the story. I feel like women
Speaker 1: are very rarely allowed to make mistakes and not encourage
Speaker 1: the audience to turn on her. But we see relationships
Speaker 1: between women grow and change over the years, which is
Speaker 1: how life works. But when Cely, you know, at first,
Speaker 1: tells Harpo you should beat Sophia, Sophia confronts her, Cely apologizes,
Speaker 1: doesn't do it again, and they have a kind of
Speaker 1: beautiful relationship moving forward, and it comes full circle when
Speaker 1: you know Cely, I mean again, it's like Spielberg, where
Speaker 1: it's like Celi said the magic words and Sophia was back,
Speaker 1: and also putting the impetus on her as if Harpo
Speaker 1: had no choice but to do what she said when
Speaker 1: he doesn't even take her seriously, like it's ridiculous. But
Speaker 1: that Cely, you know, really shows up for Sophia in
Speaker 1: as many ways as she can, and that Sophia appreciates
Speaker 1: that and the relationship grows, that's beautiful. I mean, the
Speaker 1: relationship with Sugar is always going to be frustrating because
Speaker 1: you know what's not there. Yeah, but I mean I
Speaker 1: think of what we have, I still like what we have.
Speaker 1: It's just like, yeah, knowing that there is more is
Speaker 1: incredibly frustrating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that you didn't get more because some white
Speaker 4: Dutch guy and Steven Spielberg, they just don't want it.
Speaker 2: It's on the this is too sexy for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's like again like the ratings thing in
Speaker 1: the culture as it was. It also had no issue
Speaker 1: showing mister having sex with a very young Cely, like
Speaker 1: no problem.
Speaker 2: You know, statutory raping.
Speaker 4: Yeah her, she's like straight up fourteen or fifteen in
Speaker 4: that scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean we've already talked about it. But
Speaker 1: it's just like it's so ridiculous. But I mean, women
Speaker 1: are still very much showing up for each other, and
Speaker 1: the way that Ceely grows as a character is almost
Speaker 1: entirely comes from within herself and also from observing the
Speaker 1: women around her, and it's done in a very sanitized
Speaker 1: way in this movie. But it does happen. And I
Speaker 1: cry when the movie told me to cry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sobbing. When Eddie's there and or and the
Speaker 4: scarf is blowing in the wind, I'm sobbing. I'm sobbing.
Speaker 1: They got me, It's true. Two fun production facts that
Speaker 1: I found that Oprah when Oprah was like in I
Speaker 1: guess some meeting with Steven Spielberg. Early in the production
Speaker 1: of this movie, she was like, Oh, Harpo's Oprah backwards.
Speaker 1: That's weird. Yes, this is a big thing in Oprah lore.
Speaker 2: Yes, Harpo was Oprah Backwards as a young subscriber to
Speaker 2: OH magazine as a child.
Speaker 1: I knew that story before I saw the movie.
Speaker 4: I think that's why her production company is named Harpo.
Speaker 4: Like she names her whole thing Harpo because of that.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm pretty sure that the New or maybe
Speaker 1: it is like technically owned, but like the New Color
Speaker 1: Purple adaptation is like produced by Harpo, which is like
Speaker 1: just the irony o.
Speaker 4: Yeah, her talk show was produced by Harpo, so like
Speaker 4: she had a Harpo Studios in Chicago, like she's in it.
Speaker 4: She was like, that was my man in the movie,
Speaker 4: and I've taken that.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean and just a quick mention. I mean again,
Speaker 1: if you're if you grew up within Oprah lore, you
Speaker 1: probably know this already. But that part of the reason
Speaker 1: that Oprah felt so extremely strongly about this material was
Speaker 1: that she had grown up having experiences like Sealy and
Speaker 1: had been incestually abused, and understandably was very connected to
Speaker 1: Alice Walker's work and lobbied for this part hard and
Speaker 1: then killed it. It was a wonderful job.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other detail that I wanted to add, just because
Speaker 1: I think it's funny, is there was a casting director
Speaker 1: who I wrote his name down, casting director named Ruben Cannon,
Speaker 1: who was choosing the main cast and recommended Whoopy Goldberg.
Speaker 1: Whoopy Goldberg came into audition and did her stand.
Speaker 2: Up routine first of all, which is so weird iconic,
Speaker 2: and second of all, did a joke about.
Speaker 1: Et smoking weed. And I just think that that is
Speaker 1: funny because that in no way proves that you could
Speaker 1: play the part of Seely. But she still was unbelievable,
Speaker 1: Like I can't believe that just like has to be
Speaker 1: the best debut film performance of all time. But she
Speaker 1: got it by being like, what if eed smoked weed?
Speaker 1: Yeah awesome.
Speaker 4: At the time, she was like the biggest black female
Speaker 4: stand up in the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do know.
Speaker 4: Alice Walker was actually not very happy that she was
Speaker 4: cast because she felt that Seely should have been larger,
Speaker 4: more overweight, and someone who is like considered kind of
Speaker 4: like more mainstream unattractive, whereas Woobie Goldberg is like gorgeous.
Speaker 4: So that was another thing where Alice Walker was like
Speaker 4: I just wasn't happy. I felt like, you know, I
Speaker 4: wrote these characters who looked like real people and they
Speaker 4: got actors and it's like, well that's kind of how
Speaker 4: movies go.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, what Bee is incredible in this performance,
Speaker 2: in her monologue at the dinner table toward the end
Speaker 2: is just my favorite.
Speaker 1: Thing, so good. So I always forget that she because
Speaker 1: I mean, she's so famously egot, but I always forget
Speaker 1: that she did not win for this movie. She went
Speaker 1: for Ghost. I think she won, which is a wonderful performance.
Speaker 1: But like, of the two, you're like, really okay, okay. Sure.
Speaker 2: There's a few kind of themes or just like things
Speaker 2: that the movie explores that I feel are like kind
Speaker 2: of connected or just like all in the same vein
Speaker 2: of like power dynamics in relationships between characters. There is
Speaker 2: like characters relationships with their fathers, which again is like
Speaker 2: very emphasized in this movie in a way that it
Speaker 2: seems like maybe the book doesn't do quite so much,
Speaker 2: or that it like places as much physis on like
Speaker 2: mother child relationships. And then the way that women are
Speaker 2: perceived by men and treated by men in this movie
Speaker 2: where there's just you know, all these things of like
Speaker 2: with suggavery Love, the character you have like Albert's father
Speaker 2: is insulting her and you know, saying she's unclean, she's
Speaker 2: a Jezebel, she has nasty women's disease, all of her
Speaker 2: children have different fathers, things like that. It's literally sounding
Speaker 2: like Trump in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Right, it's like a nasty woman if I had to
Speaker 1: guess who you were.
Speaker 2: But right, and then you have like Seely's voiceover, and
Speaker 2: at this point in the movie you don't really know
Speaker 2: what dynamic Sugar and Seely have quite yet, but Steely's
Speaker 2: voiceover is like saying, like, folks don't like it when
Speaker 2: people are too proud or too free. And because Sugar
Speaker 2: like this woman who has who has autonomy over her
Speaker 2: life and her choices and her career, you know, and
Speaker 2: she has this what's considered to be this kind of
Speaker 2: unsavory profession where she's singing in juke joints and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. Everyone thinks like the men especially and like
Speaker 2: the older generation of men with like Albert's father and
Speaker 2: her own father, like see her as this sinner, and
Speaker 2: then you have like Sophia as this very headstrong person
Speaker 2: doesn't take bullshit from anyone. Albert and Harpo alike are
Speaker 2: threatened by this, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and briefly so is Cely.
Speaker 4: Yeah true, yes, yeah, And like I think it's so
Speaker 4: clear in the scene where she first sees Sophia and
Speaker 4: she talks about how Sophia and Harper were coming to
Speaker 4: meet the dad at Mister for the first time, and
Speaker 4: Celi is like, she.
Speaker 1: Came storming up.
Speaker 4: She's I can see him from so she's so big,
Speaker 4: Like she's so horrible, she's so headstrong and loud, and
Speaker 4: I think some of that is jealousy, but then slowly
Speaker 4: she comes to kind of accept her. But I think
Speaker 4: that is a theme, like how these three main women
Speaker 4: all have to deal with their power dynamics against men
Speaker 4: in different ways. Where Seely, you know, knows she doesn't
Speaker 4: have like the privilege of beauty, so she has become
Speaker 4: more timid, where Sophia realizes she doesn't have that, but
Speaker 4: she decides to become more head strong and outspoken, and
Speaker 4: she has that family support where she's allowed to do that,
Speaker 4: you know, and even in their wedding, like her family
Speaker 4: keeps mister away from her.
Speaker 1: And is like, no, we're not dealing with you.
Speaker 4: So she is able to do that. But then you
Speaker 4: also have sug who isn't She doesn't have that fit,
Speaker 4: but she does have her beauty and she uses that
Speaker 4: to get what she, you know, needs to survive in
Speaker 4: this patriarchal society.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, And then like to the the power dynamic
Speaker 2: thing where there are various conversations where you know, like
Speaker 2: Neddie says to seely, like you need to have the
Speaker 2: upper hand over Mister's kids, and you know, you got
Speaker 2: to show them whose boss. And then like mister tells
Speaker 2: his son Harpo that he needs to have the upper
Speaker 2: hand over Sophia, And there's all these like because this
Speaker 2: is a very patriarchal society and because men are conditioned
Speaker 2: to think that they have to control these women, who
Speaker 2: if they aren't controlled, they'll end up like sug as
Speaker 2: these Jezebel's quote unquote right, and you're like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: I might be hot and talented, you'll you'll get nasty
Speaker 2: women's disease, You'll have to sit in a tug. If
Speaker 2: you don't control your woman, she'll get that disease. And
Speaker 2: then but Shug has most, if not all, of the
Speaker 2: power in her relationship with Albert. You see him like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'll bend over backwards for you, I'll do whatever you want.
Speaker 2: I'll try to cook for you, even though I don't.
Speaker 2: I can't. I don't know to cook at all. Like,
Speaker 2: it's just interesting to see how the various characters kind
Speaker 2: of just use what they have, like the tools that
Speaker 2: they have, like you said, Ashley, like what they have
Speaker 2: got going for them that they can kind of almost
Speaker 2: exploit to not feel so powerless in a world where
Speaker 2: poor black women have so little power, especially in like
Speaker 2: Jim Crow era South.
Speaker 1: Yet this is taking place and the book.
Speaker 4: Is and I think this is another area where Alice
Speaker 4: is upset in how the movie makes the men really
Speaker 4: one dimensional, because the book is very clear that one
Speaker 4: of the reasons these men feel they need to control
Speaker 4: a woman is because they are also controlled in this
Speaker 4: racist Jim Crow society is that they and we kind
Speaker 4: of see it in the scene with Miss Millie when
Speaker 4: she's like, oh, you know, Sophia, you can spend all
Speaker 4: Christmas with your family and I'll drive home and then
Speaker 4: she can't, and all these black men are trying to
Speaker 4: help her, but she immediately is like, they're trying to
Speaker 4: attack me, and you know, they start to be submissive
Speaker 4: to her, and so it's kind of at there. It's
Speaker 4: like the first time you see Harpo like stand down
Speaker 4: to a woman and be like, oh no, missing ma'am,
Speaker 4: we're trying to help you. And it's also one of
Speaker 4: my favorite examples of just white feminism guilt and privilege
Speaker 4: in that scene because she just immediately starts. But in
Speaker 4: the movie that isn't so clear, like what is driving
Speaker 4: their need to control. It does feel very like mister
Speaker 4: just wants seely because he needs someone around the house
Speaker 4: take care of his kids and clean. But in the
Speaker 4: book it's a little more like he has this expectation
Speaker 4: that if he is meant to be subservient in the society,
Speaker 4: someone should be subservient to him. So that is why
Speaker 4: he has this sealy person. Even though he does like
Speaker 4: have romantic feelings for sug that he has a whole mistress,
Speaker 4: like they to have sex, they hook up, but to him,
Speaker 4: it's like, no, to prove my manhood and to have
Speaker 4: a sense of self when my black masculinity is degraded.
Speaker 1: I need to have a Seily type. So the book
Speaker 1: I think is.
Speaker 4: A little more interesting with that. But in the movie
Speaker 4: it's just like, dude, are you being such a dick?
Speaker 1: That's ather' like area where like I think, like Spike
Speaker 1: Lee's criticism is applicable where there is this void of
Speaker 1: historical context and it's made to more seem like, well,
Speaker 1: it's in the nature of these characters who behave this
Speaker 1: way and because you're not given I mean it's like
Speaker 1: you do get the year, but there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of historical specificity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like none of the black men in the film
Speaker 4: like really face any racism other than that moment with
Speaker 4: the car, like you never it's never, you know, you'd
Speaker 4: see Cely afraid in a shop because a white shop
Speaker 4: owner is you know, like looking at her and it's
Speaker 4: like you need something, missus, you know, and you see
Speaker 4: that discomfort.
Speaker 1: You see Sophia be harmed. But like the men, it.
Speaker 4: Seems like, oh do they just like have it pretty good.
Speaker 4: They're just like building their juke joints, having businesses, they
Speaker 4: enjoying their farms, like what no right, you know, And
Speaker 4: then they come in at the end with this oh yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 4: Actually their dad was lynched because he was a civil
Speaker 4: rights guy, so don't so. Yeah, so the guys don't
Speaker 4: have it easy.
Speaker 2: Because you aren't very closely listening to that one very briefs.
Speaker 4: You miss a entire you miss the whole thing. If
Speaker 4: you don't, if you don't hear that.
Speaker 1: Yes, when it's like that. Originally it was a huge
Speaker 1: plot weight as well. It should have been the glazing
Speaker 1: over stuff like that just like removes historical specificity and
Speaker 1: does make the men seem abusive in a complete void, And.
Speaker 2: It could have been such an interesting thing to examine
Speaker 2: that tendency for marginalized people feeling so powerless and disempowered
Speaker 2: by the world around them that some people will try
Speaker 2: to then exert any power over anyone else that they can.
Speaker 2: And that's obviously not something to admire. That's you know,
Speaker 2: not good behavior, but it happens very frequently, and it's
Speaker 2: I haven't seen many movies that really explore that very
Speaker 2: thoughtful or in like a nuanced way, where you know,
Speaker 2: marginalized people will marginalize someone who they perceive to have
Speaker 2: less power than them. Yeah, and to me, it's such
Speaker 2: a fascinating thing but yeah, movies just kind of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will say, if you've read or seen their
Speaker 4: eyes were watching God as Erniel Hurston. So Oprah also
Speaker 4: was producing this one, but they made it a series,
Speaker 4: a limited series, so they had more time, they dig
Speaker 4: into more things, and I thought it was incredibly done.
Speaker 4: But that's like the only time where I really feel
Speaker 4: an adaptation has done a great job of trying to
Speaker 4: really capture the history, the political tone, the racism. Maybe
Speaker 4: Oprah learned by the time he got to that one.
Speaker 4: She was like, guys, I know, we gotta do right.
Speaker 1: Or just like had creative control, Like that's yeah.
Speaker 4: And her adaptation of Beloved is also really good. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it.
Speaker 1: So I gotta put the blame on Spielberg.
Speaker 2: I mean fair, I'm comfortable. I mean, mister Steve, mister Steve,
Speaker 2: it's on you, Steve. Oh oh, I had this is
Speaker 2: a really goofy observation.
Speaker 1: But because we just covered Steel Magnolias Ashley, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: miss Millie and Clari Belcher similar the mayor's wife. Oh,
Speaker 1: they're like alternate universe Clari Belcher. Anyways, that was just
Speaker 1: a thought I had because that is a Southern movie
Speaker 1: that conspicuously erases anyone who is not white from the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I also thought that, I'm curious, I didn't read this
Speaker 1: section of the book, so I don't know how sanitized
Speaker 1: that exchange is because I know that the way that
Speaker 1: Squeak was involved in sort of negotiating Sophia's prison sentence
Speaker 1: isn't really Yeah, it's not in there.
Speaker 4: None of her prison sentence is really in there. It's
Speaker 4: really detailed, like the what she goes through, the torture
Speaker 4: they put her through, like they go visit her. Those
Speaker 4: are deeps, like you know, bringing her stuff and trying
Speaker 4: to help her, and how they slowly see her like
Speaker 4: become less of herself. And then when she gets out,
Speaker 4: her like having to work for that family is more
Speaker 4: of like a punishment. It's more than being like we
Speaker 4: got you. Well, the movie kind of makes it like
Speaker 4: she didn't have a choice, like you know, this was
Speaker 4: the only job she could get, I guess, but it
Speaker 4: really shows that it's a more sinister act of like
Speaker 4: white aggression.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do agree that this is like a pretty
Speaker 1: solid example of white woman. Multiple times, at every scene
Speaker 1: she's in, she is weaponizing, and every scene in the movie,
Speaker 1: she's like, but I've always been so nice to you.
Speaker 1: I'm so good to you. So Fa, well, she's like
Speaker 1: doing donuts in the backyard. I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: oh my god.
Speaker 4: She's just plunging so Vi in the face, like I'm
Speaker 4: so kind to you.
Speaker 1: Why don't you accept it?
Speaker 4: And then Sophia doesn't get to spend Christmas with her family.
Speaker 4: She has to leave immediately because Miss Millie can't drive.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm glad that there is the inclusion of the
Speaker 2: Miss Millie character because it does i think, maybe better
Speaker 2: than other things that the movie glosses over, but like
Speaker 2: it does really show her as this like specific type
Speaker 2: of white woman who fetishizes black people. Not in like
Speaker 2: a sexual way that we know of with Miss Milly,
Speaker 2: but there's probably a better word for it. But like
Speaker 2: she like is very drawn to Sophia and her children.
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, aren't you the cutest little little kid?
Speaker 2: Kiss kiss, kiss on the face. And she's like, Sophia,
Speaker 2: please work for infantilizing.
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure, infantilizing.
Speaker 4: I think it's also with Sophia the mammification of black women,
Speaker 4: where she sees, you know, this larger black woman who
Speaker 4: she believes should want to take care.
Speaker 1: Of her and be, you know, her nanny.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and I think she's like the type of
Speaker 2: white person who thinks they're being an ally to black
Speaker 2: people and who like understands, i think, probably on only
Speaker 2: a very very surface level, like the plight of black people.
Speaker 2: But she's not an ally to them. She's still like
Speaker 2: extremely scared of black people, and she's not trying to
Speaker 2: be an ally. She doesn't want to be a friend.
Speaker 2: She wants Sophia to work for her. Like, so it's
Speaker 2: all these things where she like has this very warped
Speaker 2: perception of like she thinks she's doing the right thing,
Speaker 2: and yeah, she's very much not. And that is a
Speaker 2: dynamic that still exists very much to Okay, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm glad that the movie like shows that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Spielberg got that part right. He did manage to
Speaker 4: nail down that part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good job, mister Steve. Is there anything else anyone
Speaker 2: wants to discuss?
Speaker 1: I mean, we could keep going forever, but that was
Speaker 1: about everything that I had.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like we touched on everything that's at Yes,
Speaker 4: it's just so it's such a long movie. There's so
Speaker 4: much that happens. It's I mean truly, there's so much
Speaker 4: that happens that at the end they're like, can we
Speaker 4: just have a letter that like speeds this all up
Speaker 4: just one less. She's like, your dad isn't really your
Speaker 4: dad is stepdads?
Speaker 1: Is we on the land? By the way, your kids
Speaker 1: are good?
Speaker 4: I got them and we're good.
Speaker 1: Gets to gets to the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does feel rushed in those like last
Speaker 2: twenty minutes or so. Yeah, they're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: so much happened.
Speaker 1: But what I can't keep up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, does the movie pass the Bechdel test?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's quite a lot. The main or at
Speaker 2: least the moments of like Levity and this pretty heavy
Speaker 2: movie are women interacting with each other and their friendship
Speaker 2: and their bond and I like that very much about
Speaker 2: this movie. Yeah. As far as our nipple scale, our
Speaker 2: scale of zero to five nipples, where we evaluate the
Speaker 2: movie based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens,
Speaker 2: I'll give this I think three nipples, and I might
Speaker 2: be swayed to give it more or maybe less.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think that Spielberg, mister Steve directing this movie, and
Speaker 2: that other white guy whose name I forget, who is
Speaker 2: credited as writing the screenplay, even though you know many
Speaker 2: drafts were written, some of them by Alice Walker, and
Speaker 2: she consulted on the project through the development of the
Speaker 2: script along the way. Again she's not credited, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: But because when you watched the movie you can tell
Speaker 2: that it was a book adapted by a black writer
Speaker 2: and then like whitewashed and straight washed and things like that,
Speaker 2: would the movie have had the budget and the just
Speaker 2: like renown that it ended up getting if Spielberg didn't
Speaker 2: direct it. Possibly not. So it's like this very catch
Speaker 2: twenty two thing, but there's components of it that end
Speaker 2: up being very disappointing because of how these white filmmakers
Speaker 2: handled certain things. But again, at its core, this is
Speaker 2: a movie about like sisterhood and female friendships and female
Speaker 2: relationships and women looking out for each other and protecting
Speaker 2: each other for the most part from the abuse that
Speaker 2: men inflict upon them. So the premise I like very much.
Speaker 2: The performances are great, There's just something to be desired
Speaker 2: in the way the story unfolds as told by these
Speaker 2: white filmmakers. So I'm excited to see the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three adaptation and to see hopefully a lot of course correction,
Speaker 2: another great cast, Yes, great cast, wonderful casts, So I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to it. I'll give this nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: adaptation three nipples. I will give one to Whoopi Goldberg,
Speaker 2: I'll give one to Oprah, and I'll give my final
Speaker 2: nipple to Margaret Avery, who plays sug who.
Speaker 1: At the time was kind of the only famous person
Speaker 1: in this movie, which is wild. Yeah, okay, I'll beat
Speaker 1: you at three. I've tempted to go more only because
Speaker 1: I love the performances so much. But I think based
Speaker 1: on the discussion we've had, and I agree with that
Speaker 1: you're saying, Kaitlin, like, where a lot of the production
Speaker 1: dissonance is connected to what an impossible situation Black creatives
Speaker 1: were put into it this time and still are often
Speaker 1: put it to now, and that's how you end up
Speaker 1: with Spielberg. And when you end up with Spielberg, what
Speaker 1: are the consequences of that? And I mean, we talked
Speaker 1: it through pretty considerably, and it feels like it makes
Speaker 1: total sense to me why there will always be new
Speaker 1: rounds of discourse about this movie good, bad, and different.
Speaker 1: And I also, you know, I think that it is
Speaker 1: a beautifully made movie. The performances are like you can't
Speaker 1: argue with a single one of them. And also everything
Speaker 1: we just said in the last two and a half hours.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to say three. Let's go with three.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give one to Oh sorry, my kitten
Speaker 1: is like hungry and so ruining my life. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give one to Whoopee. I'm going to give one
Speaker 1: to Oprah, and I'm going to give one two. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh. Her name is ray Dawn Chong, who plays
Speaker 1: Mary Agnes aka Squeak. Because she is Tommy Chong's daughter.
Speaker 1: I love oh and I thought, how how fun for
Speaker 1: a nepotism. That's a fun nepotism. Nepotism. So I will
Speaker 1: give the final to her and that fun nepotism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Ashley, Yes, I'm going to give it four.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give four.
Speaker 4: I agree with everything you've all said, but I think
Speaker 4: at the end of it, for me, no matter what
Speaker 4: happened behind the scenes, the anger that it caused. Black
Speaker 4: women as a community took this movie and we made
Speaker 4: it our own. Like my mom sees her story in
Speaker 4: this my grandmother, my aunt's. It is a language between us,
Speaker 4: like if you see like a friend that you haven't
Speaker 4: seen a long time, you will do the handclap motion
Speaker 4: in the airport like it's we embraced it. I already
Speaker 4: knew as soon as the movie was announced the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three one, I was gonna go see it. So
Speaker 4: despite the shortcomings, which I think within our community we
Speaker 4: can see and address and talk to, we're able to
Speaker 4: appreciate this movie. It's why it's become such a big
Speaker 4: thing for us amongst the general public. Yes, I wish
Speaker 4: it had done a better job, but at the end
Speaker 4: of the day, you know what Oprah's in this movie.
Speaker 4: It's for black women, and we were happy with it.
Speaker 4: So I'm going to give it for I will also
Speaker 4: give it to Whoopee, to Oprah. I'm going to actually
Speaker 4: give one to Danny Glover because he was so good
Speaker 4: in this role that every black woman I knew hated
Speaker 4: him for so long. He'd be in other things and
Speaker 4: people would just be like, I can't I can't look
Speaker 4: at his face.
Speaker 1: It's mister, I hate him so much.
Speaker 2: Being is lethal weapon.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's the one with Bruce willis Diehard. Is he
Speaker 1: in die Hard?
Speaker 2: We're not.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: But he took a different turn in his career when
Speaker 4: he realized I cannot keep playing angry men who beat women.
Speaker 1: So respect to that he.
Speaker 2: Turned it around and then he is in Lethal Weapon.
Speaker 1: I yeah, he is. I was like, is that a joke?
Speaker 1: I was like, I have no idea. I've never seen
Speaker 1: the little weapons, so I'm just like, well, and he's
Speaker 1: also most iconically and Saw one.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, one, And that's your most famous role. We
Speaker 2: all can agree with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be the lead on the open Tanny
Speaker 1: Kloffer best remembered for Saw One.
Speaker 4: And I'm gonna give the final nipple to the song's
Speaker 4: sister because if you you should just go listen to
Speaker 4: it on its own. It's a really it's a banger,
Speaker 4: just great.
Speaker 1: So good. I feel like diegetic movie songs are rarely good,
Speaker 1: and this one is so good. It's so good. It's great.
Speaker 2: Well, Ashley, thank you so much for coming back and
Speaker 2: coming on for a big old discussion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and come back anytime. Let's talk about the musical.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: What was the Igmar Bergmann movie?
Speaker 4: Person per Yeah, I'll get you a whole list of
Speaker 4: Bergman movies. We can talk about Persona cries and whispers.
Speaker 4: Do someone like jam a piece of glass and their couch? Yeah,
Speaker 4: well we can maybe talk about it someday. He does
Speaker 4: not like women?
Speaker 2: Oops?
Speaker 1: Sure does it? Does he not? Where can we find you?
Speaker 2: Where? People? Yeah?
Speaker 4: You can follow me at the Ashley Ray everywhere on
Speaker 4: the apps if you still do that, or listen to TV.
Speaker 4: I say with Ashley Ray my podcast. Wherever you do that,
Speaker 4: I talk about TV.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the best.
Speaker 2: It's great. Thank you.
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Speaker 2: Wow, what a what a darn good special?
Speaker 4: What a deal?
Speaker 1: Truly deal.
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