0:00

Hi listeners.

0:02

Just a quick tour plug at

0:04

the top of the episode if you

0:06

haven't heard. We are going on

0:09

tour in early February twenty

0:11

twenty four, and for the most part, Jamie

0:14

and I are covering Barbie.

0:16

So step outside your mojo,

0:19

dojo, Casa house and come

0:21

see us live. First, we will be

0:24

in San Francisco for another show

0:26

at SF Sketchfest. This will

0:28

be February first. Then

0:30

we're doing two shows in Sacramento

0:33

on February second. We

0:36

are doing Barbie plus Wolf

0:38

of Wall Street because we needed

0:40

to double up on Margot Robbie movies,

0:42

so come to one or both

0:45

of those. Then we

0:47

are heading to Texas. We are doing

0:49

a show in Dallas on February

0:52

third, and then heading to

0:54

Austin for a show on

0:56

February fifth, and then we're coming

0:58

back around to call and doing

1:00

a show in San Diego on

1:03

February tenth. More

1:05

details and tickets are

1:07

on our link tree. That's link

1:09

tree slash Bechdel Cast. Guess

1:12

what, These tickets make a great holiday

1:14

gift for a loved one or

1:17

for yourself, So grab

1:19

those tickets come see us live. We always do special

1:22

things at the live shows, so you don't

1:24

want to miss them. We're so excited for this and

1:26

we will see you there.

1:30

On the Bechdel Cast, the questions

1:32

ask if movies have women and them,

1:35

are all their discussions just boyfriends and

1:37

husbands, or do they have individualism?

1:40

It's the patriarchy, zeph and Vast

1:42

start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

1:46

Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlin,

1:48

will you write to me if

1:51

someone never separates.

1:52

Us, not if Danny Glover

1:54

has anything to say about it. And

1:58

that's a great example of something that us

2:00

past. The Bechtel Test.

2:03

Yeah, it started out strong, but then.

2:06

I fucked it up. It's okay, I fucked

2:08

it up. I'm sorry, better like next

2:10

time. That's why I feel every time you're like,

2:12

well, this is in no way reference

2:14

to this movie. But like sometimes you're like, oh, this movie's

2:17

gonna be about women, and then it isn't, and you're

2:19

like, well, we'll get him next time time.

2:22

We'll try again.

2:24

Yeah. I guess the name of the movie was

2:26

John Tucker Must Die. But I didn't

2:28

expect that they would only talk about him.

2:30

It was shocking. Well,

2:33

welcome to the Bechtel Cast. My name is Jamie

2:35

Lovetis.

2:36

My name is Caitlin Drante, and this

2:38

is our show where we examine movies

2:41

through an intersectional feminist lens,

2:43

using the Bechdel Test simply

2:46

as a jumping off point. The

2:48

Bechdel Test is

2:50

a media metric created

2:52

by co created by really Allison

2:55

Bechdel and Liz Wallace. It's known

2:58

as the Bechdel Wallace Test in

3:00

some circles, and

3:03

it first appeared in Alison Bechtel's

3:05

comic Decks to Watch Out for, examining

3:08

how women don't really ever

3:10

talk to each other in movies. And

3:13

there are many versions of the test.

3:15

The one that we observe is

3:18

this two characters of a marginalized

3:21

gender must have names, they must

3:23

speak to each other, and their conversation

3:25

has to be about something other than a

3:27

man, and ideally

3:30

it's a conversation

3:32

with substance and not just like throw

3:35

away dialogue. And that's the

3:37

test.

3:38

There it is. And it was also written originally

3:40

not even just about women in general

3:42

talking, but queer women talking,

3:44

yes, which is relevant to the

3:47

discussion we're going to have today. Oh

3:49

yeah, yeah, although it should be more relevant,

3:51

but I guess we'll talk about that when we get there. But

3:55

yeah, we have a much requested

3:57

episode coming out today that we've been

3:59

sitting on for quite some time. We're covering

4:02

the nineteen eighty five adaptation of The Color

4:04

Purple, directed by Steven

4:06

Spielberg, based on the novel by Alice

4:08

Walker, starring Whoopee

4:10

Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover,

4:13

among many other wonderful actors.

4:16

We decided we were gonna sit on

4:18

this episode until

4:21

the new adaptation came out, which is technically

4:23

and I don't know, we can get into the adaptation

4:26

wormhole that we're getting to, where it's like

4:28

an adaptation of a book, of a movie,

4:30

of a Broadway musical and now it's the movie.

4:33

It's kind of like a Hairspray kind of narrative.

4:36

Weird really, but that movie

4:38

was announced five years ago, so we've been waiting

4:40

for this episode for a long time. As you're

4:42

listening to it, I believe that The Color Purple, the

4:44

twenty twenty three musical version, comes

4:46

out this week. So we have

4:49

a wonderful returning guest to discuss

4:52

this film with us. Let's

4:54

get her in the mix.

4:55

We do. She's a comedian host

4:58

of TV I say and you know her from

5:00

our episode on Secretary. It's

5:02

Ashley Ray. Hey, welcome back,

5:05

thanks.

5:05

For having me back. I am really excited

5:07

to do this movie. It's a black

5:09

classic, it's something you like grow up

5:12

watching.

5:12

So I'm ready.

5:13

I'm excited. I feel not

5:16

quite as ready just because there is

5:18

so much like context,

5:20

like context Corner is enormous. Yes,

5:23

there's lots of production stuff

5:25

and adaptation stuff, and I

5:28

was like, I'm gonna.

5:29

Read the book. I'm pumped. I think between

5:31

the three of us, like, we can make this happen.

5:33

We're gonna yeah, we're gonna piece this thing together.

5:35

We will.

5:37

No.

5:37

I'm very excited. So, Ashley, what's your relationship

5:39

with this movie and with the book too.

5:41

Yeah. I saw the movie before the book because

5:44

it came out before I was born. Uh,

5:46

And in my household, I think like

5:48

when you have a black mom, you

5:50

are just like fed this movie

5:53

as soon as you're able to understand what

5:55

a screen is. I can't even tell you

5:57

the first time I watched The Color Purple. I

5:59

just remember like my mom and aunts like

6:01

quoting it constantly saying, you

6:03

know, hap, oh, who is this woman? And

6:06

you know, repeating the all my life I had to

6:08

fight and it becomes like a family

6:11

in joke for every black family.

6:14

And it wasn't probably until middle school

6:16

that I read the book. I was

6:18

finally like, oh, I should see what this is all about.

6:21

We were in school like talking about this sort

6:23

of anger over Steven Spielberg directing

6:25

it in that backlash. So

6:27

I finally read it and I was like, oh, this is

6:30

very different. I understand now

6:32

that I in the movie is

6:35

is a lot I think for a young person to watch.

6:37

It is still very graphic, even though

6:39

it is Steven Spielberg, But

6:42

the book doesn't hold back. The book

6:44

is just a lot more graphic. And that's when

6:46

I started to really understand Alice Walker

6:49

as a writer. And then I became

6:51

one of those people who I think anyone kind of

6:53

has those phases with this movie where you like, love

6:55

it, and then you learn more about it, and then you're

6:57

like, oh, I see the problems, and

7:00

then you come back around to wait a second. This

7:02

is a brilliant movie that features like some of the

7:04

best performances from black actors, that tells

7:07

a story that is real and needs to be told,

7:09

and it's amazing, and I love it again.

7:12

I love those cycles.

7:15

Yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship

7:17

with it?

7:18

I had seen this movie, but so

7:21

long ago that I couldn't speak to specific

7:23

plat points. I remember seeing it at school.

7:26

I think we watched it in maybe

7:28

history class. I'm not sure where we watch it, but I

7:30

remember watching this movie in school. I remember

7:33

scenes I remember. I mean, I certainly

7:35

remember the performances. Stuck with me hard

7:39

because everyone in this movie

7:41

is tremendously famous and talented,

7:44

and I didn't even realize until I

7:46

was looking into the context

7:48

for this movie that most of these actors

7:51

were not like mainstream famous when this movie

7:53

came out. I mean, the casting story is

7:55

really fascinating. Woopy Goldberg. I guess

7:57

stand uffs are stage actors. Counts.

8:00

Yeah, account we're valid, but

8:03

like we're people too. But

8:05

most of these actors were successful on stage

8:07

and hadn't made the jump to on screen. And by

8:10

the time I saw it, you know, everyone was super famous,

8:12

and I remember enjoying the movie.

8:14

I remember being very affected by it.

8:17

I wish I think that it is very

8:19

telling. I think we've talked about this on

8:22

previous episodes, that I did watch

8:24

the movie in school. I was never encouraged

8:26

to read the book in school, and I wish I had

8:29

been. I'll be honest, I have not read the

8:31

full book. I read passages of

8:33

it to prepare for this episode, especially

8:36

around the relationship between

8:38

Celi and Shug, which is minus

8:40

the one scene which we'll talk about is basically absent.

8:43

And I read a lot of the criticism around

8:46

not just the choice of Steven Spielberg for a

8:48

director, but like his choices in

8:50

the ways that he Spielberg defies this

8:53

story. Yeah, oh, I have so much

8:55

to say about I can't wait

8:57

to hear it. So, yeah, I had

8:59

not extensive experience, but i'd seen

9:01

the movie before, and yeah, I mean, speaking

9:04

to your point, Kitly, there's like an infinite

9:07

amount of analysis

9:09

and you know, waves of discourse over

9:11

the course of the last you know, forty

9:13

plus years available on not

9:16

just the movie but also the book and also the Broadway

9:18

adaptation and also this new adaptation, and there's

9:20

just so much to talk about you. Yeah, Kitlyn,

9:22

was your history.

9:24

Similarly fairly minimal. I had

9:26

seen the movie once before in

9:28

my phase of like I'm

9:30

a freshman in film school

9:33

and I need to have seen all those

9:35

important movies and so

9:38

I watched it and that

9:41

was now like almost

9:43

twenty years ago, so a

9:46

lot of the details were foggy.

9:48

We don't talk about it. I had

9:50

I've never talked about this, but I also

9:52

went through I considered going through that phase.

9:56

And then I watched Doctor Strangelove.

9:58

Oh I think I watched a sing Goals three Stooges

10:01

movie and I was like, I think

10:03

I get it. Yeah, okay, I did

10:05

a Godfather.

10:06

I did a Godfather and I was like, I

10:08

see yes film people.

10:10

Get that far. Yeah,

10:13

I love Doctor Strange Love. And then I was like, all

10:15

right, that's basically movies,

10:17

right, and

10:20

that was a good one. Let's quit while we were a head.

10:23

Yeah, I saw Citizen Kane and that

10:25

was enough for me.

10:27

Yeah.

10:27

No.

10:27

I really put myself through an intensive

10:30

secondary film school where I was like, good

10:33

for you. This was back in the day where I would have

10:35

like the three Netflix DVDs at a time,

10:38

and I was just like rotating through

10:40

them rapidly. And then I was

10:42

also going to the library and

10:44

getting movies on DVD from the library,

10:46

and I would estimate that I watched

10:50

probably two movies a day, two

10:52

to three movies a day every day

10:54

for like an entire year.

10:56

Oh jeez, oh my god.

10:58

I did have this phase. I got really into

11:00

film, like senior year of high school. But I

11:03

was obsessed with one director, which I think is

11:05

even nerdier, and I was like, I have to

11:07

watch every single ingmar Bergmann film. I

11:09

have everything about Ingmar Bergmann. And

11:12

I think at one point I had rented like Wild Strawberries,

11:14

the Seventh Seal, and The Virgin Spring

11:17

all at once, and then I would like truly

11:19

go get them from the library too.

11:21

Wow.

11:21

And I put myself through that. I put myself

11:23

through that. I have seen Persona so many times,

11:25

and that's not good for anyone.

11:28

Not good. We have yet to cover a Bergman

11:30

film here.

11:31

So oh my god, Persona would be a good one. I'm

11:33

pitching it now. Persona I one

11:35

of the women doesn't even have talk.

11:37

She can't talk. Oh,

11:39

I'm very down for that. Someone else recommended that

11:41

to me recently too. And we're like heading

11:43

into a phase of this show where it's like we have run

11:45

out of the movies

11:47

in certain eras, so

11:49

we must look back.

11:50

We've done every movie from nineteen ninety nine

11:53

branch out.

11:55

Do you think that's true, a lot of ninety nine, a lot

11:57

of O two who knows, potent years,

11:59

but we have to move on. Good years, good years.

12:01

But sorry that.

12:05

Oh yes, I watched the movie. I didn't remember

12:07

much about it, just because it was such a long

12:09

time ago, and so upon this rewatch,

12:12

I was like, especially struck by

12:14

some tonal choices that were

12:16

made, especially with the score,

12:18

and I'm like, why is this the

12:20

music that's playing during this moment

12:24

or this scene? And I was just like, this is

12:28

no disrespect to mister Spielberg

12:31

and the movie itself, but I was like, this

12:34

is some weird like and

12:36

I know that this movie has gotten this criticism

12:39

already, but like this kind of like sugar

12:41

coated, like fairy tale

12:43

esque version of this narrative in

12:46

like, yeah, in some of these like kind of stylistic

12:48

and esthetic choices that are

12:50

made and just tonal choices, and I'm

12:52

just like, hmm, I was not quite expecting

12:55

that or didn't totally remember that. But

12:57

we'll dive into it further.

12:59

I mean, honestly, prior to this,

13:01

I knew the main points

13:04

about Alice Walker, which is that she wrote this book

13:06

because she wrote the Pulitzer, and

13:09

I didn't know much else about her,

13:11

and she is also there's

13:13

a lot going on there as

13:15

well, which

13:18

we'll talk about, and I feel is important

13:20

to note, as we would with anybody, but even

13:22

just like I was surprised first of all, how much

13:24

production information there is available about

13:26

this movie and also like how

13:29

I don't mean this like I don't know, like not a positive

13:31

regat thing. I just was surprised at how openly

13:34

everyone was having the discussion when the movie

13:36

came out, because I feel like we're so used to movies

13:38

from the eighties having it be like twenty years

13:41

later. We started to think,

13:43

but it was like this conversation was, oh, it

13:45

was going on.

13:46

It happened immediately because people

13:48

were so angry. I mean, essentially,

13:51

Alice Walker never really cared

13:53

about making this into a movie. She heard

13:56

people wanted to do it. She was like, yeah, I can

13:58

whip something up. Here's some different names,

14:00

like the color purple. She also suggested

14:02

one that was the sunset of fabric

14:05

or something, but did that didn't work and

14:08

people were like, who are you thinking about as a director. Obviously

14:10

everyone was like, Spike Lee, it is

14:13

the eighties. Spike Lee, and

14:15

a friend was like, you heard of this Steven Spielberg.

14:17

He's like, super cool. If you really want people

14:19

to see this movie, you probably should go with see Steven

14:22

Spielberg. She straight up and said, I don't really

14:24

know much about the guy, but he seems like a

14:26

big deal.

14:27

She has seen ET and she's like yeah,

14:30

sure. She was like, yeah, that

14:32

was a good one.

14:32

That was a good one, you know, And at the time, Spike

14:34

Lee was seen as a very political choice. They

14:37

go with Steven Spielberg, and Spike

14:39

Lee is pissed. He was immediately

14:41

pissed when this is announced. He starts working with the

14:43

n Double ACP before

14:46

the film is even announced, to start a campaign

14:48

to discredit the film as coming

14:50

from a white director, being a whitewashed version

14:53

of the story, and specifically

14:55

pointing out that it is the narrative

14:57

is being used by a white man to tear down black

15:00

men, that the film is being so unfair

15:02

to mister and the men in it because

15:04

a white man is directing. So they do this

15:06

whole campaign. The Color Purple comes out. It

15:08

was nominated for an incredible amount

15:11

of Academy Awards, eleven I think, yeah,

15:13

eleven doesn't win

15:15

a single one because of this Spike

15:17

Lee campaign. It's such a it was so

15:19

like impactful, and everyone's talking it, like all the

15:22

black you know magazines essence, they were all writing about

15:24

this. There were all these debates about it

15:26

before it even came out. So I

15:28

think that is truly why

15:30

there was so much discourse behind

15:32

everything, and even people in the midst of making

15:35

it knew that they were facing these judgments,

15:37

so they tried to really document the process

15:40

of making it and how the black

15:42

people who were hired to be in this movie did have a

15:44

say. And I think that's the only reason

15:46

that any of that exists today.

15:49

Interesting.

15:50

I also read that the Hollywood

15:53

Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP

15:56

issued a formal complaint against

15:58

the Academy of Motion Pick Arts and Scientists

16:01

after the movie didn't win any of

16:03

the eleven Awards Academy

16:05

Awards that it was nominated for, saying

16:07

that it was like all those snubs were

16:10

a blackout, meaning like this is

16:13

the industry's attempt to

16:15

you know, suppress black projects,

16:18

which.

16:18

Does happen all the time. And I had

16:21

nothing to do with why this movie

16:23

didn't win as much as it should have.

16:25

It is a complicated where it is also at the same

16:27

time, people weren't you know, rushing to

16:30

celebrate a fully black cast movie

16:33

at that time period, right, But it's you also

16:35

have to know the studios want Spielberg

16:37

to direct this because they knew that would give it the chance

16:39

to win something. They tied it to a

16:41

white director specifically to kind of get

16:43

around that. So I think it ends up hurting

16:46

it like it being both issues. Like,

16:48

I think it ended up just kind of stepping on its

16:50

own feet by going, we got to have a white guy if we're

16:52

gonna get any sort of attention, and then obviously

16:54

black directors were like, why do you have to

16:56

do that? We're also going to be unhappy. And

16:59

then no one's happy, right, right

17:01

except for us the audience, because I mean,

17:03

we got a treat of a film.

17:05

So the

17:07

premiere of the movie was protested

17:10

by I think that same chapter of the NAACP

17:12

because of its depiction of rape,

17:14

which again is like a very big valid thing

17:17

to discuss. And then there's

17:19

so many perspectives on this movie. I also

17:21

watched a clip from Whoopi Goldberg

17:24

two years ago in which she

17:26

was discussing how frustrating it was to be starring

17:29

in this film and have this beer breakout and feel

17:31

like there were people in her own community

17:34

that were like trying to sabotage this

17:36

movie, and it's just like, yeah, that

17:38

also makes total sense. Yeah

17:40

right.

17:41

She also had Alice Walker herself

17:43

trying to just like she just didn't

17:46

really care for it. She was kind of like it was fine,

17:48

and then every few years she'd be like, actually, guys,

17:51

just not really a great movie, really not happy with how

17:53

they did it. And one of her big issues

17:55

was how they treated the character of Mister in

17:58

the book. He is more layered,

18:00

he has more dimensions. He is more like

18:03

a grandfather figure at times,

18:05

not that you ever truly feel sympathy

18:07

for him, but there are more layers there,

18:10

moments of kindness that's totally gone

18:12

in a Spielberg film because he needs the big

18:14

bad, the villain until he has like

18:16

his moment of redemption. So I

18:18

can understand that. And obviously that criticism

18:20

fed into these complaints from black

18:22

male groups who are like, see, it's just made

18:24

to make us look bad, but

18:27

you just can't win here.

18:29

Yeah, it's unbelievably

18:32

just a shreki in number of

18:34

onion layers going on. Yeah

18:37

with this discussion.

18:39

Because it's like, at the same time, am I mad

18:41

that this is a Hollywood movie that

18:44

did a twist and made a man one

18:46

dimensional?

18:47

Not really, it's not his story,

18:50

right, I mean, I think it seems

18:53

like a really strong example of what an impossible

18:55

position black creatives are

18:57

put in in this time in particular. But also

19:00

ill where like you're saying, Ashley, it's like, well,

19:02

let's get the prestige white director, which

19:04

I'm sure helps with your budget, it helps

19:06

with your marketing, it helps with your chance

19:08

at awards, and you know, Steven

19:10

Spielberg is this proven starmaking director,

19:13

so it's like, Okay. Then Alice

19:15

Walker spoke to this pretty openly

19:17

of she was essentially

19:19

convinced that, like, the best way

19:22

to have a successful movie

19:24

with an all black cast is to work from within the system,

19:27

and she became amenable to that. But

19:29

then, like you're saying, Ashley that that's like there's

19:31

a tremendous amount of backlash that comes with that.

19:34

There's choices that feel dissonant

19:36

and bizarre. Oh yeah,

19:38

I mean the way that as Mister is presented

19:40

in the movie, combined

19:43

with the weird last ten minutes,

19:45

Like, was he that bad? You're

19:48

like, yes, yeah,

19:50

absolutely, yeah bad.

19:53

Yeah. The only good side is that he doesn't

19:55

bother them, Like he sets up this reunion

19:57

and just gets kind of like, I'm gonna I'm gonna

19:59

just day over here, enjoy what I did,

20:02

not come over and tell you I did it. And it's

20:04

like, Okay, that's the one redeeming thing, but I

20:06

still wish you'd sliced your throat like we

20:08

could have. In the scene where

20:10

she's teaching her how to spell, Nettie

20:12

is teaching Sealy how to spell, I was like, teacher,

20:15

how to spell poison.

20:15

Girl, teacher, how to spell poison?

20:17

Tea t try to sell shovel, Get her in the ground,

20:20

Get him in the ground, please.

20:22

I also at the end, I was like, I don't

20:25

care how close they still live to each other.

20:27

I don't like how stile

20:29

like the other neighbors and not a

20:32

fan of that. Uh, just

20:34

like this whole time, she's just been living next to her weird

20:37

ass stepdad who assaulted her

20:39

and okay.

20:41

Okay, yeah, I mean I kind of like he

20:44

disappears for so long.

20:45

Yeah you by the time she goes to the funeral, you

20:47

forget his relation to them.

20:49

You're like, who is this? Is this mystery? Truly, I

20:51

was like who is this man?

20:52

Yeah?

20:52

Because I mean in the aging makeup in this he's

20:55

all over the place. For sometimes you're like, how

20:58

old does everybody? Ever? One seems

21:00

to be? There's there are scenes in this movie,

21:03

and again, I really enjoyed the movie. It's

21:05

a beautiful movie. There are seeds

21:07

where there's everyone at the table. You're like, I

21:09

have no idea. I have no idea. Everyone's a different

21:11

age. Yeah, there are children.

21:13

And adults that I'm like, who are

21:15

these people? Are they grown up children

21:18

of the who? And who

21:20

is this little kid? And I never knew

21:23

who anyone was unless they were like one of the core

21:26

cast.

21:26

Yeah, Like this whole half second half of the movie,

21:29

Oprah's character Sophia looks older

21:32

than Sealy and it's kind of like

21:34

whoopy. Goldberg was like, I just

21:36

don't want to do aging makeup, Like just not me. I'm

21:38

not doing the aging makeup. Everybody else can do it,

21:40

big role, Like, but

21:43

she looks the same, like they

21:45

show her when she hits like eighteen nineteen.

21:47

She looks the same for the rest of the movie.

21:49

Yeah, and everyone else has like the at least

21:52

like gray spray pain in their hair. But

21:55

you know, it's a choice. It's still

21:57

again a great movie.

21:58

I under Yeah, it's like I unders say that different characters

22:00

are living different like it makes

22:03

sense that they would look older. But yeah,

22:05

in a few scenes, I was like, ah,

22:08

but there's so much to talk about with

22:10

this movie that we should probably just start talking about

22:12

what happens.

22:14

Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for

22:17

the recap.

22:28

And we're back.

22:29

Okay, So I'll just place a

22:32

trigger warning here for

22:35

such things as rape, incest,

22:38

child sexual abuse, domestic

22:40

abuse. A lot of heavy

22:42

stuff happens in the story. Okay,

22:46

So we open. It's the

22:49

early nineteen hundreds in

22:51

rural Georgia. We meet

22:53

two sisters, Seely and

22:55

Nettie, who have a very close

22:58

and loving relationship.

23:01

We learn that their father

23:03

is sexually abusing Seely,

23:06

who is the elder sister. She's

23:08

fourteen years old. Seely

23:11

is pregnant. She gives birth

23:13

to a baby, who she names

23:16

Olivia, but her father

23:18

takes the baby away immediately, which

23:20

is the second time he has done this. The

23:23

sister's mother dies

23:25

shortly thereafter, their

23:28

father remarries a young

23:30

girl about Cely's age,

23:33

and then another man,

23:36

Albert, also known as Mister played

23:38

by Danny Glover, approaches Seely

23:41

and Nettie's father, wanting to marry

23:44

Nettie, and their

23:46

father's like, you can't have Nettie,

23:49

but you can have Seely. So

23:51

Albert takes Sely home. He

23:54

wants her to care for

23:56

his three children and to cook

23:58

and clean, and he is

24:01

incredibly ungrateful

24:03

and controlling and abusive.

24:07

One day, Seely sees a

24:09

woman carrying a baby through town

24:12

and she just has this kind of gut

24:14

feeling that it's her baby,

24:16

Olivia, that her father took away from her.

24:19

And she talks to the woman she holds

24:21

the baby, who this

24:24

woman says, oh, I nicknamed

24:26

her Olivia. And so it's like, hmm,

24:29

that's the name that she gave to her

24:31

baby.

24:32

That's nus brutal.

24:33

Yeah, it's tough, and it's all She comes with a

24:35

really dumb lie because obviously Celia

24:38

is like, that's why would you just randomly call

24:40

your child Olivia when what.

24:42

That's not a nickname?

24:44

And she's like, well, look at her eyes. Only

24:47

an old person would have eyes like that. So

24:49

I call her Olivia and I'm like.

24:51

Well, that's not that. That doesn't

24:53

connect.

24:54

Don't see the logic there. What does she think Olivia

24:56

is? Does she think it's short for old Olivia?

25:01

I've lady

25:04

eyes, Olivia,

25:07

old lady eyes. That would be I

25:10

would really respect that if she was committing

25:13

to that opinion. Yeah, you

25:15

know, Olivia, old lady

25:17

eyes. It makes sense to me anyways.

25:19

Bye, Okay.

25:24

So then Nettie

25:26

comes to stay with Cely because

25:29

their father was trying to sexually

25:31

abuse Nettie as well, so

25:34

she ran away to be with Cely. Sely

25:36

doesn't want to stay in the situation she's in. You

25:39

know, this is a prison for her living

25:41

there with mister. So

25:43

Nettie vows to go to school

25:46

and to learn to read and write

25:48

so that she can teach Cely so that they

25:50

can run away together and

25:53

be educated and be able to

25:55

like make it on their own right.

25:57

It's not explicitly said, but it's like once

26:00

is given to mister

26:02

her education.

26:03

Oh stop stop, Yeah, yeah, she's

26:06

not going to school. She's truly there to deal with

26:08

his horrible kids. They're horrible kids,

26:10

it's not rude to say they're horrible children.

26:12

As soon as she gets to the house, Harpo, the oldest

26:15

son, throws a rock at her head yeah,

26:17

which causes her to bleed, and in

26:19

the book she like has headaches throughout like her life and stuff

26:21

from it. But in the movie, they're just like, these

26:24

kids suck.

26:24

Right, Yeah, Yeah,

26:27

I also like that, Celi.

26:29

That's like the first person that you hear

26:31

her say anything like truly profoundly

26:33

negative about. She's like, also, this kid

26:36

sucks. I can't.

26:37

Kids are rotten.

26:38

Yeah. She won't talk about anyone else.

26:40

She's very just timid, but when it comes to the kids,

26:42

she's like, no, they are the devil. I hate them.

26:45

Even Nettie's like, you gotta show them who's

26:47

boss, and she's just like, no, they suck.

26:49

There's no hope for these kids.

26:50

They're too horrible. Okay,

26:54

So one day, Albert

26:56

attempts to rape Nettie

26:58

when she's on her way to school, but

27:01

she is able to fight him off and get

27:03

away, and then this causes

27:05

Albert to like kick Nettie

27:07

out of his house. Celi is

27:09

devastated. She calls out

27:12

after Nettie to write to her,

27:15

and Nettie says, nothing

27:17

but death could keep me from it.

27:20

Yeah. Not long after that, some mail arrives

27:23

and Ceely's hoping she's

27:26

getting a letter from Nettie.

27:28

Albert is also excited because he's

27:30

expecting a letter from someone named Sugar

27:33

Avery, an old girlfriend

27:35

of his.

27:36

Like shug shug, shug shug.

27:38

Yeah, we're cheering and

27:42

mister slash Albert tells

27:45

Cely to never open the mailbox.

27:47

He like intercepts all the mail that comes

27:50

in. So if she was ever

27:52

receiving mail from Nettie, Seely

27:55

has no way of knowing because he's

27:57

taking all the mail.

27:58

Yeah, And he tells her he'sured out a way

28:00

to mess with the mailbox, so if she touches it, he'll

28:02

be able to tell it's just one

28:04

of the other ways he manipulates her into just staying

28:07

captive on this farm.

28:08

Basically, yes, exactly. We

28:10

cut to seven years later. It's

28:12

now nineteen sixteen. Seely

28:15

is now Whoopi Goldberg and

28:17

she's still in this house with mister

28:20

who is still a piece of shit.

28:23

He's getting ready to see Sugg

28:25

Avery, who's coming to town, and

28:28

in all this time, it seems like Nettie

28:30

has never written to Seely, and

28:33

she worries that Nettie might have died

28:36

because she says, nothing but death could keep

28:38

me from it. Mister's

28:40

son, Harpo played by Willard

28:43

E. Pugh, is in love with

28:45

a girl named Sophia played by Oprah

28:47

Winfrey. She is

28:50

pregnant and they're about to get

28:52

married, but Mister approves

28:54

of Sophia because she is

28:57

like headstrong, and he's like, I

28:59

don't rest her. So she's

29:01

like, well, fuck you, then I'll just

29:03

be over here.

29:04

Basically calls her like is he slued, shames

29:06

her and is like, oh you even know that Harpo's

29:08

the dead, and Sophie

29:11

basically like sees how he's treating

29:13

Celi and is like, I don't need to be a part of this family.

29:15

When you get it together, you come find.

29:17

Me, you come to me, right, And

29:20

then we cut to some time later when

29:22

she and Harpo are getting married and

29:25

they have a baby together, and

29:28

Sophia again does not put up with

29:30

anyone's bullshit, and Harpo

29:34

is like, Cely, what should I

29:36

do about Sophia? She's

29:38

too headstrong, her personality,

29:41

she has a personality, and I don't like it.

29:42

I don't like that.

29:43

How do I get her to be like you just totally silent,

29:46

giving me, you know, shaves, doing my laundry?

29:48

How do I do that? Yeah?

29:51

And silly because all she

29:53

knows is abuse.

29:56

She suggests that Harpo

29:58

beat Sophia, which

30:00

he does. Sophia clearly

30:03

fights back, and then Sophia

30:05

confronts See about it, being

30:07

like, how dare you suggest he hit

30:09

me? Like? What the fuck?

30:11

Yeah? I think in like, that's one of the most

30:13

iconic.

30:13

The most iconic viline monologue

30:16

maybe, and it's top five in all movie history,

30:19

delivered by Oprah.

30:21

Just Oprah to all my

30:23

life. I had to fight.

30:25

I had to fight my daddy, my

30:28

mother, my siblings, and I'll

30:30

be damned if I thought I was gonna have to fight

30:32

in my own house.

30:33

It's It's incredible.

30:35

I'm sure every at Black listener has

30:37

heard their mother deliver this.

30:39

It's yeah, we'll

30:41

talk about this like later in the episode two. But

30:44

the continuity, I mean, and also like Oprah's

30:46

personal connection to this book. Oprah,

30:48

I think it's been involved in

30:50

every single major adaptation

30:53

of this book. She's also a producer on

30:55

the Broadway musical. I believe she's also a

30:58

top rank producer on the new

31:00

movie.

31:01

Like, yeah, she's a real

31:03

Alice Walker stand she's super Ino

31:06

and she brings it. I mean, I truly

31:08

believe this is one of her best performances. Sophie's

31:11

one of my favorite characters in it.

31:12

Yeah.

31:12

Same, Yeah, her whole arc is absolutely

31:15

beautiful, and it's set up here. I think before

31:17

this moment, you kind of think she's, you know,

31:19

just gonna be another adversary to Celi.

31:22

You don't really think they're gonna end up being

31:24

supportive of each other. But this moment of honesty

31:26

ends up bringing them closer together.

31:28

So yeah, yeah, true.

31:31

So there's this confrontation and

31:34

this cycle of abuse between

31:36

Harpo and Sophia goes on for

31:38

a while until one day

31:41

Sophia takes all of her children

31:44

and leaves Harpo. Some more

31:46

time passes. One night, Albert

31:49

slash Mister comes home with Sugar

31:51

Avery played by Margaret Avery.

31:54

This is the first time we're seeing her on screen. She

31:57

is sick, he's

32:00

drunk. We're not really sure exactly

32:03

what all is going on with her, but she's

32:05

belligerent.

32:05

She just has early nineteen hundred's disease.

32:08

She's just very flush, she's sweaty

32:10

and is just talking weird, and you're like, okay,

32:12

I get to send you.

32:14

I don't even know what to say it. She's

32:16

in she's definitely in the bath and

32:19

we're like, yes.

32:21

Yes, I'm like typhoid fever.

32:23

She has something, but she's very just like sweaty,

32:26

and you're like, oh, yeah, she's ill.

32:27

She's ill for sure.

32:28

According to Mister's

32:31

father, she has that nasty

32:33

woman's disease quote unquote,

32:36

And you're like, we're like, been

32:39

there. Yeah, honestly, we all

32:41

have had the nasty friend nasty

32:44

woman's disease, went.

32:46

To a room and sat in a bathtub for

32:48

a couple of weeks, and then I was right,

32:51

it's good to go.

32:52

Yeah,

32:55

yes, okay. So mister

32:57

insists on making sugar, but

33:00

he has no idea what he's doing in the kitchen,

33:02

and Shug is like, what the fuck is this?

33:04

This is disgusting. She throws it against the

33:07

wall and then cely makes

33:09

a delicious meal and Shug likes

33:11

it. And this is the beginning

33:14

of their friendship. Yes,

33:16

now it's the summer of nineteen twenty two,

33:19

Harpo and his friend Swain

33:21

played by Laurence Fishburne are

33:24

building a juke joint. They

33:26

open it up, sug performs

33:29

at it as like a singer and dancer. One

33:32

night, Cely, Albert, Harpo

33:35

are all there, and then Sophia shows

33:37

up with her new boyfriend.

33:40

Harpo meanwhile is with a woman named

33:43

Squeaky Wheaky. We

33:46

will find out her real name is Mary Agnes

33:48

later on.

33:49

That's one of those very Spielberg moments of

33:51

the film where it's like this very serious thing and then there's

33:54

just a running joke where it's like, squeaky you name?

33:56

I thought your name was squeaky Squeaky Mary what?

33:58

And it's like do we need.

33:59

This me this beat, mister

34:01

Spielberg. Can I have a word? Yeah?

34:03

And it's like also the actors playing that

34:05

her voice is I need to hear

34:08

the notes Stephen gave her because you can hear

34:10

him going can you go higher?

34:11

Can you go squeakier? Can you be squeakier?

34:13

More squeak and you're just like her

34:16

line delivery. In this scene, she confronts

34:18

Harpo, who has started dancing with Sophia

34:21

and she's like you, she

34:23

left you, you're my man now, and then she

34:25

starts to oh boo hoo's this woman

34:28

And it's

34:30

just such an annoying squeaky I

34:32

repeat it all the time anytime

34:34

I'm shocked by anything, I say.

34:36

Hapo, who's this woman?

34:39

So iconic? But

34:41

at the same time, one of those characters where I'm like,

34:43

oh, Steven Spielberg really was just like, I think

34:45

we get some comedy in here.

34:46

Let's do it, Let's do it. It felt the same sort

34:48

of thing with Mister's father, where

34:51

he's sort of this like he is

34:53

kind of like patriarchy the man character,

34:55

but he's also like, you're supposed to kind.

34:58

Of be like these kind

35:00

of a goofball You're like, especially

35:03

in the final scene that he's in in the

35:05

like dinner scene where Whoopy Goldberg

35:07

gives this amazing monologue basically

35:10

being like, mister, you're the worst person on

35:12

earth and I curse you and I'm

35:14

gonna maybe try to kill you, but then I won't.

35:17

But he's like he's being such a cartoon

35:19

so many is in a different movie in

35:21

that scene, Yeah, he's totally

35:24

and his signes are just like, oh Mary,

35:26

what what's her name or any And he's just like

35:28

throwing lines where he's like.

35:29

The chicken's all running the henhouse.

35:31

This place is crazy in here, and like

35:34

maybe she can sweep the kaboos of

35:36

the train. Dude, this woman has a knife

35:38

to your son's throat. Get a little serious, let's

35:40

get see history action.

35:42

He's just like, Wow, what an interesting Wednesday.

35:46

His final scene is so after this Celi's

35:48

left and he walks into his son's

35:50

house and there's animals everywhere. His son

35:53

is just laying on the floor looking and

35:56

he's not like my son might be dead.

35:58

Oh no.

35:58

He just like pokes him with his and

36:00

is like, I guess you've been drinking, right,

36:03

It's.

36:03

Like, oh no, Squeak. Yeah,

36:06

I agree that, like the performance she's giving feels

36:08

sort of like another movie, and I'm sure was

36:10

requested, which is frustrating.

36:12

And also she is far

36:14

more present in the book than

36:17

she is in the movie, and

36:20

clearly like the screenplay scales down

36:22

her presence in the story pretty

36:25

considerably. But also like

36:27

they leave in in that same dinner scene

36:30

that Squeak is like, I want to leave

36:32

with Sugar and Sealy and everyone's

36:34

like, oh, Okay, great, and then she doesn't.

36:37

Oh I thought she does go with them?

36:38

Is she in the car like she was?

36:41

She's in the car, there's no

36:43

like she does go sing, she does

36:45

leave.

36:46

She does leave because then.

36:47

Harpo and Sophia get back together.

36:50

Okay, so like it's implied she goes

36:52

and does have fame, but like doesn't

36:54

come back. But then it's all just kind

36:57

of thrown in their very last minute for her, right

37:00

feel like an afterthought Like, oh,

37:02

I guess she wanted to do that too,

37:04

Okay, whatever, who cares if she

37:06

goes or doesn't come back.

37:08

Yeah, and we're like who is she again?

37:10

Like why don't we know more about

37:12

her?

37:13

Yeah? Like why were we supposed to care about her? Okay?

37:16

Yeah.

37:17

And the books she also has like a

37:19

more prominent role in like negotiating

37:21

Sophia's prison sentence, Like here's other

37:24

things that she does that seem

37:26

more active and like really put her in the

37:28

story as an important character that it just felt

37:30

like at some point in the production

37:32

they were like, well, we don't really have space to

37:35

include squeaks full story.

37:38

And I also think when you get Oprah Winfrey in

37:40

a role, you know you gotta kind

37:43

of just focus on one of Harpo's

37:45

love stories.

37:45

I'm not going with Squeaky. Okay, yeah,

37:48

it's true. I mean yeah, given the choice,

37:50

I'm like, but why is it a choice?

37:53

Yeah?

37:54

Yeah?

37:54

And then why does Sophia get back together

37:56

with Harpo? He's not a

37:58

good partner anyway. Yeah.

38:01

So we're in this juke

38:03

joint and Squeaky

38:06

sees Harpo dancing with Sophia and

38:08

she gets jealous and she slaps

38:12

Sophia and then this big bar

38:15

brawl breaks out. Afterward,

38:18

Shug and Celia are like just kind

38:20

of hanging out one on one. They're bonding.

38:23

Shug has Steely try on her

38:25

dress. She encourages Cely

38:28

to smile because Celi

38:30

always hides her smile because her father had

38:32

told her that she had the ugliest smile

38:34

ever. And

38:37

then Shug says that she's planning to

38:40

head out of town and Ceely

38:42

doesn't want her to leave, and she says

38:44

that, you know, mister beats me when

38:46

you're not here because

38:49

I'm not you. He beats me for not

38:51

being you. And then

38:54

Steely and Shug share

38:56

a tender kiss.

38:58

Yeah on the limp.

39:00

And that's all. That's

39:02

it. Steven Spielberg was like, and

39:04

that's enough of that, and yeah.

39:06

This is not Lilith fair stop

39:09

it, ladies, is what he said

39:11

behind the camera, and they backed away.

39:14

The book is gay, Like the book is

39:16

so so gay, they're so gay, and

39:19

the movie You're just like, what is that? What

39:22

is this kiss? What is is this?

39:24

Just like, do they think this is what black ladies

39:26

do to each other? What is

39:28

this?

39:29

It's so barely there that I

39:31

completely forgot that that was a component

39:33

of the movie until I rewatched

39:35

it.

39:35

That's fine, I remember that scene very clearly

39:38

from what I saw in this going. But I was surprised

39:40

watching back. I was like, honestly, and I tell you

39:42

five, I'm surprised that much was done true,

39:45

Yeah, which is saying nothing. I

39:48

mean there's a lot of Again, I was like, pleasantly

39:50

surprised. I guess that at very

39:53

very least. Spielberg has come out

39:55

and said that he regrets

39:58

pulling back. I mean, which is easy to say retrospect,

40:00

but now.

40:01

That everybody loves gay people, I'm sure you would

40:03

have loved to make it gayer.

40:05

Yeah, he's he's a fan of the people

40:07

he's like, oh, this is cool. Now I

40:09

would have done that. I

40:12

should have done that, and.

40:13

I should have. I am sorry you could have should

40:16

have would a mister Steve.

40:18

Whoa god is a god got

40:20

him?

40:22

But it's just I feel like, if you haven't read

40:24

the book, that scene probably just feels

40:26

very out of place. And I

40:29

guess it does help to give you an idea

40:31

that Cely isn't

40:34

like addressing Showke with anger when

40:36

she could. She could be jealous or upset

40:38

that this woman is her husband's mistress.

40:41

And it just really shows you how little she cares about

40:43

mister, how much she just like feels that

40:45

she's forced to be in this house and stuff. But

40:48

you know what, it would be great as a scene where they

40:50

are gay.

40:51

So yeah,

40:53

which that is like one aspect of Cely's

40:55

character that I love so like

40:57

it makes total sense given her personal history.

41:00

Or she is never going

41:02

to be turned against a woman,

41:04

yeah, because she has no She's been given absolutely

41:07

sub zero reasons in her life to trust men,

41:09

So why would she allow You know,

41:11

even that attempt at manipulation will never

41:14

ever work on her and doesn't and doesn't

41:16

work on really any of the women in this story, they're

41:18

like, nice, try, Yeah, we're

41:20

gonna take Seli with us. I mean that happens with Sugar

41:22

number of times too, where Albert tries to turn

41:25

her, you know, tries to pit women against each other in

41:27

a way that sometimes in real life, more

41:30

often in popular movies, is always

41:32

successful. Yeah, and it

41:34

doesn't fly here.

41:36

Yeah, he thinks he can say like, oh, Nettie,

41:38

you're so much prettier, You're so much I love how you wear

41:40

that dress, Nattie, And instead, Nattie just goes to Cely

41:42

and is like, isn't he so stupid when he says

41:44

all that stuff, When he's.

41:45

Like saying, my teeth are pretty? What a

41:48

loser?

41:49

What a disgusting monster? And

41:51

even their father.

41:53

You know, he gets remarried and has

41:55

this opportunity to like leave everything to

41:57

his new wife, and it seems like she

42:00

could just run away with this house and all the land.

42:02

But she's like I got the money, like you guys

42:04

have the have your stuff back, like I need

42:06

to turn against other women, and Cely's like,

42:08

let's shake girl.

42:09

I love this. Yeah.

42:11

It's just yeah, she's so good

42:13

in that respect, and but

42:16

you know, maybe it's because she's a little gay, and maybe we should

42:18

explore that, Stephen.

42:20

Yeah, maybe there's some more context there.

42:22

Ever, think about that, mister Steves. I'm

42:26

just gonna call Steven Spielberg, mister

42:29

Okay. So Selly packs up her

42:31

things, hoping to go with Shug

42:33

to Memphis and escape mister, but

42:36

he catches Sely and she can't

42:39

escape. She remains trapped there.

42:42

We see a scene where Shug tries to

42:45

connect with her father, who

42:47

she had mentioned she has

42:50

a difficult, if not estranged relationship

42:53

with him. He is a pastor

42:55

who is very ashamed of her. He

42:58

thinks that she's a sinner, and

43:00

her attempt to reconnect does not work.

43:03

She did have nasty woman's disease, she.

43:05

Well again, that's why he doesn't want

43:08

anything to do with her.

43:09

Yeah.

43:11

Then we meet this white woman

43:14

named Miss Milly played

43:16

by Dana Ivy. She is

43:18

the mayor's wife and she

43:22

I'm excited to talk about her because there's

43:24

a lot of stuff going on with Miss Milly.

43:27

But she asks Sophia to be her

43:30

maid, and Sophia is like

43:33

hell no, and I quote

43:36

and then the mayor slaps

43:38

Sophia, so she punches him

43:41

and then all the white people around gang

43:44

up on her, and Sophia

43:47

is then brutalized by the police

43:50

and then arrested and put

43:52

in jail for many years.

43:54

We cut to nineteen thirty, Sofia

43:57

is released from jail and now

44:00

has no choice but to work for

44:02

Miss Milly, being her maid. She

44:05

is completely dejected

44:08

and broken, a shell

44:10

of the person she once was. She

44:13

hasn't seen her children in eight

44:15

years. There's a scene where

44:18

Seally helps her out at the market. It

44:20

seems like Sophia cannot

44:22

read or can't read well, so

44:25

Seely discreetly helps her with

44:27

a shopping list in what

44:30

I thought was a really wonderful

44:33

moment. Sometime

44:35

later, Sug and her

44:38

new husband come to visit

44:40

Cely and Albert, and while

44:43

the men are talking, Sug

44:46

goes to get the mail.

44:47

And if you want to know what they're talking about, it's how they

44:49

both slept with Sug. That's the whole

44:51

conversation is that you had your way and I

44:53

had on my way, but we both had a let's

44:55

have a.

44:56

Drink to having her And are they smashing

44:58

raw eggs on their.

45:00

Yes, it's it's Easter, so the

45:02

kids and then they're all painting Easter eggs and then

45:04

they just get so drunk they just start smashing

45:06

the eggs on their heads and

45:08

just being like wept with the same lady.

45:11

Life is great. So actually I

45:14

am going off of synopsis versus,

45:16

but it seems like to me in the book that

45:19

the movie pushes her getting

45:21

remarried ahead in the story,

45:24

so that like she comes back with a husband,

45:26

Like I think that she has a husband towards the end

45:28

of the book and all of

45:30

the queer subplot is removed from the

45:32

movie. Yeah, that Celi is devastated

45:35

that Shug has gotten remarried

45:37

and that's like a huge thing. But instead they

45:40

cut the love story between Sugar and

45:42

Cely and add the husband way earlier

45:44

for reasons I earlier understand, and it.

45:46

Doesn't make sense, and Cely doesn't

45:48

seem to really care mine that should got

45:50

married, and Mister more importantly

45:53

is like so great about it. He's like, I

45:55

love this guy.

45:56

This is so cool.

45:57

I lost my mistress, but I've gained a friend,

45:59

and no real reason for

46:01

why mister as we have seen him up until this point

46:03

within the movie would react that way. But

46:06

sure, sure, She's like, yeah, it

46:08

just kind of happens and they move on. That's the husband.

46:11

We don't also know anything about him, which.

46:13

Is like, you know, this is not a movie about

46:16

men. But yeah, that was like another character

46:19

that it was like he changes

46:21

kind of from scene to scene because he's like best

46:23

buds with mister, but then

46:26

when he's also like integral

46:29

and taking Celia away, there's

46:31

no acknowledgment that they were ever.

46:34

Like, it's just confusing, and it's also,

46:36

yeah, it's very like why this guy,

46:38

Like the most of it seems like so much

46:41

of shook stories about her freedom, wanting

46:43

to prove herself to her dad, and

46:45

so why marry this guy? And it does

46:48

seem like she just gets married to

46:50

make her father happy. Maybe there's a whole scene

46:52

where she is standing on the road

46:54

with her ring with another very famous

46:56

line from the movie, I was married

46:59

now, which

47:01

is what my sister said when she got married, and

47:05

like my mom says it all the time. Look, Paul,

47:08

I was married now, I's married now. And the

47:10

dad doesn't care. He's like, you're still a harlot and

47:12

a whore and just keeps going.

47:15

So talk about someone who did not earn

47:17

his amazing daughter back in his life.

47:20

No, no, but and it's just I

47:23

wish we had explored why Shug decides

47:25

to give up her freedom for this guy. But maybe

47:27

it's just because he has a nice, really cool yellow car

47:29

good enough for me.

47:30

Yeah, could be that. I was

47:33

also confounded by that, just like

47:35

I was confounded by why Sophia gets back

47:37

together with Harpo.

47:38

I mean. And also it's like that doesn't

47:41

necessarily mean that, Like I mean, I think

47:43

it's confusing because in a Spielberg movie, everything

47:45

seems like and all is as it

47:47

should be, and so yeah, undercurt

47:50

I feel like, very likely undercuts.

47:52

I would guess that Alice Walker portrayed that in a more

47:55

nuanced way of like, yeah, I don't love

47:57

that they got back together, but it's not inconceivable

47:59

that it point into history they would. Yeah,

48:01

fair, there's something like that. But the Spielberg

48:04

movies are not really, at least at this time,

48:07

not capable of that level of new

48:09

life.

48:10

Yeah, I would say Sophia's story definitely

48:12

has more complexity in the book and the movie.

48:15

By the time, there's a whole

48:17

thing with Miss Millie where she like barely ever gets

48:19

to really see her family because Miss Milly's

48:21

so horrible. And finally when she

48:23

is like having dinner with the family and

48:25

it's kind of clear she's like back around more. It's

48:28

because she has like dementia or

48:30

something. She just like rocks back and forth. She

48:32

says, she's like confused all the time, and

48:34

it's clear like they had no more use for her. So

48:36

she finally like can go home, and

48:39

then she just like ran

48:41

it, like just becomes herself again. When

48:44

Squeaky starts laughing at Harpo, and

48:46

Harpo says one of my favorite

48:48

lines from the movie, it's bad

48:51

luck to laugh at a man. You're

48:54

just like it's bad luck for a woman to laugh at

48:56

a man, and Sophia just busts

48:58

out laughing. She's like, I've had enough bad

49:00

luck to laugh at a man the rest of my life.

49:02

Then and then she.

49:04

And then she literally says, Sophia's back. Sophia's

49:06

back home, Like ah, Sophia

49:09

is back. And that's how Spielberg does it, is

49:11

like that one line magically makes her wake up

49:13

again. And in the book, it's more

49:15

like she sees Ceely

49:17

have her freedom. She sees like this forgiveness

49:20

that's able to happen. She realizes, you

49:22

know, Harpo is the product of

49:24

this long line of like horrible evil men,

49:27

but at the same time he is trying to change

49:29

that, and his character also has way

49:31

more that happens with like the juke joint and him

49:34

like stepping up and apologizing about like squeaky

49:36

and stuff. So it makes sense, but

49:38

for Spielberg it's just

49:41

but if they're holding each other in a field, that's

49:43

all you need.

49:44

That's all you need.

49:45

I thought that when Sophia was like I'm

49:47

back, I'm back, and she does seem to revert

49:50

back to her kind of old self

49:52

for like, you know, very outspoken, heavily,

49:55

and so I thought that was gonna lead

49:58

to her being like, and I'm going with you, you

50:00

too, shugs seally, I'm

50:02

hitching a ride and I'm getting the hell out of here

50:04

also, But instead she's like hmm,

50:06

hey, Harpo, and I'm like what, yeh, that

50:09

doesn't make any sense.

50:09

She's like, I'm back and I'm ready to get back to work at the

50:11

juke joint. Let me pick up a shift and.

50:15

Thank you for that context, because that arc was

50:17

very confusing to me and I

50:19

mean again, it's like I'm not necessarily

50:22

complaining that this movie doesn't give me like

50:24

more information about the men necessarily,

50:27

but also I feel like there's a at least

50:30

in the movie it dropped threads between

50:32

examining. I mean, you're given like

50:34

three generations of men under

50:36

the same roof in a way

50:38

that like it's implied that their behavior

50:41

is connected and learned, but like you don't

50:43

really quite get into

50:46

it. And honestly, like at first

50:48

it took me a while. I had to keep reminding myself

50:51

that Harpo was Albert's

50:53

son because they look

50:56

the same age.

50:57

Yeah, the whole second half of the movie they look the same age.

51:00

They just kind of like said, just put the same aging

51:02

makeup on everybody.

51:04

We'll figure it out.

51:04

Who even knows how old black people are anyway,

51:07

is what I think Steven Spielberg said behind the camera. I

51:09

would guess that he was just like, go for it,

51:11

Like, yeah, who knows, I don't know. Every black person could

51:13

be thirty years old. To me, who cares?

51:15

Yeah, He's like, I've heard the expression

51:17

black don't crack, so.

51:19

Yeah, so yeah, do your thing with the makeup.

51:21

I guess maybe, but at the end of the moon,

51:23

Like, I think the worst are Harpo,

51:26

who suddenly looks like he's the grandfather,

51:29

Neddie, who looks the exact same she did when

51:31

she left. Meddie comes back in. He're like, is she's still fifteen?

51:33

Like, I know, she looks incredible.

51:36

Yeah.

51:36

Oh I felt bad for I was like, I

51:38

mean, Celia's certainly had a very difficult life,

51:41

but like this feels aggressive.

51:42

Yeah, so it's like she's

51:45

just truly like a baby face looks

51:47

the same age as Celi's children.

51:50

I was like, what was their age gap at the beginning?

51:52

If she looks twenty two, Yeah,

51:55

it's confusing.

51:56

I did appreciate There is a small

51:59

role played by formative childhood

52:01

crush of mine, Carl Anderson

52:03

is in this movie. I love Carl

52:06

Anderson so much.

52:07

What character does he play?

52:09

He plays Reverend Samuel like

52:11

he plays the new adoptive

52:14

barely Oh oh yeah, yeah, he's barely

52:16

okay, and if for like zero seconds,

52:19

but I was immediately like, oh, because

52:21

he played judas a JC

52:23

Superstar and really changed

52:26

my life. And I

52:29

had this like experience with as a kid where I was

52:31

like, I loved JC Superstar and I loved him

52:33

so much and he had like he was just amazing.

52:36

And then I found out that it was like my

52:38

first time understanding that not all movies

52:40

were made this year, because my mom

52:43

was like, look, it's Carl Anderson. I was like, why

52:45

is he old? I'm furious.

52:49

Yeah.

52:50

Also a bigger character in the book, like he ends

52:52

up uh oh, okay, marrying Nettie,

52:55

which I guess is kind of implied

52:57

in the movie because there's like he's

52:59

there, he's there, so and

53:02

you're like, I guess that's okay, Sure

53:05

I can't.

53:05

I'm like, I'm not complaining about it. But as I

53:08

am complaining about or intend

53:10

to complain about, how much more you find

53:12

out? This was like one of the sections of the book that I did

53:14

read is Nettie's full story

53:18

that came in through those letters, which

53:20

is like really like, I

53:22

mean changed it also like alternatively

53:25

changed her glossed over as it's presented

53:27

in the movie. But it's like a far more nuanced,

53:30

like much longer story. Oh

53:32

yeah, the book.

53:33

In the book is it's like, oh, yes, this is a full

53:35

narrative. It just like goes over

53:37

the full course of Nettie's life.

53:40

How she ends up in this situation. She ends

53:42

up becoming when mister kicks

53:44

her out, she ends up becoming like a maid to

53:47

the pastor and his

53:49

wife who took Sealy's children,

53:52

and somehow Nettie just kind

53:54

of knows. She's like, I feel like these are my niece

53:56

and nephew. Like I feel it, I'm gonna join this family.

53:59

They go do mission work in Africa. She goes with

54:01

them, and we see

54:03

like the whole time, his wife

54:05

is starting to suspect, like did you cheat

54:07

on me with Neddie and have our kids. There's a whole

54:10

arc there of like potential, like

54:13

her not trusting her, and then like

54:15

slowly building a friendship when she reveals

54:17

like no, I'm not on I've known all I

54:19

think all this time. She ends up

54:21

like marrying the pastor Samuel. It's

54:24

a whole deep thing. Her kids, well, I

54:26

guess Celi's kids Adam, Marys.

54:29

And there's an in depth thing into this

54:31

woman he marries, who we see at the end.

54:33

But in the books they do the

54:35

facial scarring.

54:37

Yeah, they do the facial scarring

54:39

with their wedding, and there's also a genital

54:42

mutilation and it's supposed

54:44

to just be for the bride, but Adam does it

54:46

with her in order to like, you know, have solidarity.

54:49

He's like, I will also do the facial scarring.

54:51

In the movie.

54:52

Obviously, Steven Spielberg was like, I

54:54

cannot have a beautiful

54:58

He's.

54:58

Like, oh my goodness, no.

55:00

So instead we're gonna have it be done to

55:02

Cely's children, and instead

55:04

of it being a marriage general mutilation

55:06

thing, it's like a coming of age

55:09

facial scarring ceremony that we like

55:11

see played over drums while

55:13

Celia is possibly gonna cut mister's

55:16

throat while.

55:16

She's shaming him now, and like they

55:19

just change it.

55:19

Completely, and it's kind of like why even

55:22

keep it? Like why did we need this?

55:24

Right?

55:24

That editing choice too to like didn't

55:28

work for me.

55:29

This is one of the Spielberg moments where I'm

55:31

like, I think a black director would have been

55:34

like, hey, it feels a bit here

55:36

like we are suggesting

55:38

this African tribe is savage

55:41

evil for doing this, and we're

55:44

presenting Celia in a moment where she may do a

55:46

savage thing of killing someone and Shoog

55:48

stops her at the last minute, Like we're kind

55:50

of saying they're more, you know, less

55:52

savage or more human or emotional

55:54

than these people in Africa.

55:56

But this is Spielberg, so he.

55:57

Doesn't get it.

55:58

He's just like, yeah, but the drums

56:00

match up, right, Isn't that cool? And then and

56:03

when Mister's like, when she tells mister to put

56:05

her head back, the kids put their bag head back so

56:07

they can get cut.

56:08

Is that cool? Cut?

56:09

And it's just one of those things

56:12

tonally where it's a little

56:14

like, Stephen, why did you do Africa

56:16

this way? What are you white?

56:18

Truly? And then why when

56:21

Adam and Olivia

56:23

Seely's kids, who I

56:26

think for the first part of their lives

56:28

lived in the US. And then

56:30

also, we're living

56:32

in an English speaking home their

56:35

entire life, Why do they not speak

56:37

English?

56:37

Why do they not speak English?

56:39

Yes, this is and what I think it

56:41

kind of says is Netty is a horrible

56:44

teacher.

56:46

She taught she.

56:47

Taught Celia how to read and stuff, and then she

56:49

never teaches her own niece and nephew how to speak

56:51

English. Also, at one point, Seely says

56:54

like, my kids are in Africa learning different

56:56

languages, and I was like, they didn't pick up English?

56:58

Though, like what.

56:59

What was the even though they're parents

57:02

and they're like Nanny

57:05

would have been speaking English.

57:08

But it's one of those other moments, yeah,

57:11

where it's like Spielberg where you just like Africa,

57:14

so let's you know, they got to say Swahili or

57:16

something right, and it's like, that's not how that would

57:18

work. And that's the whole part of the

57:20

book is them navigating Africa as

57:22

African Americans and the differences they face

57:25

and how they're treated and some people treat them like they're

57:27

British or some people treat you know, and

57:29

he just you can tell he was like I can't handle this.

57:31

He was like, don't don't no, no, no, no, no.

57:34

No, no, thank you. I can't know.

57:36

How about we just have their African village get pillage,

57:39

they cut someone, We're done.

57:41

Yeah.

57:41

Right. In the book, there's

57:44

like a whole process of I mean again, I feel like it

57:46

also has to do with like how

57:48

missionary work is presented. We're in the Spielberg

57:51

movie, it's like, well, it was going

57:53

great and then something terrible happened,

57:56

where in the book it's more subtle

57:58

and Nettie becomes really discouraged

58:01

with how missionary work, like

58:03

how that has sort of manifested in Africa.

58:05

She's over it, which of course

58:08

is like not touched on. Yeah. And also

58:10

there's more background about Neddie and

58:13

Celia's paternity. Yes, that

58:15

is not touched on, yo, And.

58:17

It's a very important detail

58:19

and part of the story because you spend

58:22

most of the movie going, oh no, this poor girl

58:24

victim of incest her kids by products

58:26

of it. How horrible, but she still loves them and

58:28

wants them back. And then in the movie it's

58:31

just like a blip where Celi's

58:33

like, and then I found out actually Paul was my step

58:35

pa. Kids are good, right,

58:38

It's truly just like after the and

58:40

so my kids aren't my siblings and my kids

58:42

are just my kids.

58:43

That's great.

58:44

Anyway, moving on, zooms

58:46

through it zoomster, and it's like this is a

58:49

major thing. The person who she's at

58:51

the funeral, this person who changed the

58:53

course of her life. She finds out actually

58:56

it's a whole story of like their birth father

58:58

was a store owner who got lynched.

59:01

He you know, was like respected

59:03

in the black community and basically imply like a civil rights

59:05

leader. He gets killed. The mother like

59:07

loses her mind, and in that

59:09

moment of just depression and issue

59:12

she's going through, this guy swoops in

59:14

and realizes, oh, I can get control

59:16

of her house and her store and all this land because

59:18

she's so out of it, Like I can just marry her and

59:21

also get access to her young daughters. And

59:23

he takes advantage. Which that's a

59:25

compelling story. Steven Spielberg.

59:27

Why gloss over them?

59:28

Yeah, and like erases that

59:31

super super important plot

59:33

point about their mother because

59:35

it's like there is a lot I mean in this at

59:37

least does come through in the movie. Is

59:39

like there's a huge connection. Like the emphasis

59:41

is put on mothers and daughters over

59:44

mothers and sons over father's

59:46

and daughters. Like there's a strong I mean, even like

59:48

with the emphasis of Seally is thinking

59:51

of Olivia, talks about Olivia more then

59:53

she talks about Adam, poor.

59:54

Adam, which is like, okay, I

59:56

mean you also knew Adam longer,

59:59

like you kept okay, you don't even cared?

1:00:01

Okay, okay, sure are you

1:00:03

guys not cool? But yeah, Like

1:00:05

the emphasis is put on mothers and daughters, so why

1:00:07

not include more.

1:00:08

About their mother because

1:00:10

like the mother is Celi's

1:00:13

like old enough to understand when her mom dies,

1:00:15

Like they're teenagers by the time she dies, so

1:00:17

it's a little like what was their relationship? Like

1:00:20

it it's hinted at that she the

1:00:22

mom is aware that the dad is assaulting

1:00:24

her and was angry

1:00:27

and they've like broken hearted, but

1:00:30

he makes her feel like she's the reason your mom

1:00:32

was broken hearted and died because you tempted

1:00:34

me, evil child whatever sick

1:00:36

stuff. But in reality, it's

1:00:39

like she's never processed losing the

1:00:41

actual father of her children. And

1:00:43

it's like, wouldn't that have been something to

1:00:45

see or have cely talk about with Nettie

1:00:48

after they're at Mister's, like how do they miss

1:00:50

their mom?

1:00:51

What was their mom?

1:00:53

And we never get that.

1:00:54

Yeah. I feel like an absent mother

1:00:56

is so often like explained away by like, well,

1:00:58

she passed before you remembered her, and it's like,

1:01:01

no, she knows like high school aged.

1:01:03

Yeah, she's literally as a funeral, like pushing

1:01:05

the funeral because she's like, I'm gonna get married

1:01:07

and like two months like right.

1:01:10

Uh, yeah, I was. I was disappointed

1:01:12

that that was scaled back on and

1:01:14

it also felt like, I mean, in the many ways

1:01:16

that the movie sanitizes

1:01:19

the events of the book. That felt like a pretty significant

1:01:22

sanitizing, like erasing the fact that there fat

1:01:25

there was a civil rights leader who was lynched

1:01:27

by white people.

1:01:29

Yeah, and instead it feels like Steven

1:01:31

uses it as a way to go, ooh, you

1:01:33

know what incest is icky, let's backtrek

1:01:36

right.

1:01:37

That feels like the point.

1:01:38

Yeah, I guess what you're about to see a family reunion and you

1:01:40

don't have to worry that it's gross with incest.

1:01:42

We cleared that up. Yeah, yeah,

1:01:45

Yeah, it's a very like movie style

1:01:48

avoidance. Yeah, like unbeknownst

1:01:50

to me. I mean like when I went back

1:01:53

to read the passages, I was like, oh, he like sidestepped

1:01:56

five different issues by

1:01:58

making that choice.

1:01:59

Yeah, And just the choice to

1:02:01

make it like a rush sentence read in a

1:02:03

letter is so weird to me. And

1:02:06

just even the choice to not get into

1:02:09

Seely's ability to still love and want these

1:02:11

children and to care about them and to want to hear about

1:02:13

even knowing at that point like they're where

1:02:16

she believes they come from. All of

1:02:18

that is like an interesting aspect

1:02:20

of Seely's character that I

1:02:22

just he just didn't want to deal with and that's

1:02:25

the part where I'm like, what do you think this was gonna be on the

1:02:27

Disney Channel? Like make a real movie

1:02:30

seriously?

1:02:31

Yeah, all right, well there's a little bit

1:02:34

more of the recap lift then yeah.

1:02:36

Yeah, this is a long movie.

1:02:38

It's a lot.

1:02:39

It's yeah, it really is. It

1:02:41

is very long, and it's still left out so much.

1:02:43

Yeah, almost like it should have been a mini series.

1:02:45

Maybe I decay. Yeah, anyway,

1:02:48

Okay, so we've come to the part

1:02:50

where oh yeah,

1:02:52

the two men, Mister and

1:02:56

Shug's new husband are cracking

1:02:58

eggs over their heads and

1:03:01

goofing around. Sure, and while they're

1:03:03

distracted with that, Shug goes

1:03:05

to get the mail and she sees

1:03:08

a letter to Steely from

1:03:10

Nettie and Seely

1:03:13

reads it, and the letter says that

1:03:15

that Nettie has been writing to her all

1:03:17

of these years, and so Cely realizes

1:03:20

that Albert probably kept

1:03:22

those letters from her. So

1:03:24

Cely and Shug snoop around Albert's

1:03:27

stuff and they find all

1:03:29

the letters that Nettie had sent over

1:03:31

the years, and she

1:03:34

reads them all and she learns

1:03:36

about how what we were talking about,

1:03:38

Nettie had been living in Africa with

1:03:40

Ceely's two children, because Seely's

1:03:44

father sold the

1:03:46

babies, Adam and Olivia

1:03:48

to that woman who we saw

1:03:50

at the beginning. Her name is Corene, and

1:03:53

then Nettie found them. It kind of glosses

1:03:55

over this detail. I don't think it even mentions it, like she

1:03:57

became their maids,

1:04:00

just like I found them, and then I joined

1:04:02

them on this missionary trip to Africa.

1:04:05

But guess what, we're all coming back to the US

1:04:07

soon, or we're trying to or something.

1:04:09

And then one day, when

1:04:12

everyone has gathered for dinner,

1:04:14

we've got Cely, Albert Shug,

1:04:17

Shug's husband, Sophia Harpo,

1:04:21

Albert's father, Squeaky

1:04:23

is there, a bunch of kids,

1:04:25

and I don't know whose kids those are.

1:04:28

But Seally starts laying

1:04:30

in to Albert, saying

1:04:33

that she's leaving him. He's a

1:04:35

terrible person, his kids are rotten.

1:04:38

She's had enough, and she curses him,

1:04:41

saying that his mistreatment

1:04:43

of her will come back onto him,

1:04:45

and then Sealy, Shug and

1:04:49

Squeaky aka Mary Agnes leave.

1:04:52

We cut to a couple years

1:04:55

later. Sometime later, Albert

1:04:57

slash Mister is living in squad.

1:05:00

His life is in shambles. It seems like Seely's

1:05:03

curse is like coming true.

1:05:05

I thought that that was well done because

1:05:07

it's like she didn't need to curse

1:05:09

him. He was never fling.

1:05:11

It was never gonna be okay. He can't even feed

1:05:13

himself. But I do

1:05:15

love there's like those Spielberg comedy moments.

1:05:17

He goes to the mailbox which now has like gut

1:05:20

bullet holes in it, and as he's getting

1:05:22

the mail, like a screen on one of his windows

1:05:24

falls, like his whole house is.

1:05:26

Just falling apart.

1:05:27

Literally, there's pigs and stuff and

1:05:30

it's just it's great.

1:05:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we get that scene

1:05:34

that we were just talking about where Seely's

1:05:36

father dies, but it turns out that

1:05:38

he wasn't even her biological father.

1:05:41

Yep boop. Yeah, they just zip

1:05:44

through plot points he did.

1:05:45

Don't worry, no insid no, it's all

1:05:47

good.

1:05:49

And from this Celly inherits

1:05:52

her real father's house and

1:05:55

store. So she opens up a

1:05:58

clothing shop slash specifically

1:06:00

a pants store. She's

1:06:02

making pants.

1:06:03

With one size fits all, pants

1:06:05

that do seem to fit all.

1:06:08

I was like a sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

1:06:11

Yeah, I wrote dud Celey founded

1:06:13

the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants purely she like

1:06:15

Harbo, who is very small man, and

1:06:18

Sophia, they truth like wear the same

1:06:20

pants and they do fit.

1:06:21

They look nice on the nice.

1:06:24

Yeah. So one

1:06:27

day Cely and Sug are walking

1:06:29

through a field with purple flowers,

1:06:32

and Sug says something like, it

1:06:34

pisses God off when you

1:06:36

walk through a field and you see purple

1:06:38

and you don't notice the color purple,

1:06:41

because purple just wants to be

1:06:43

loved the way that everybody

1:06:45

wants to be loved. And we're like, oh, so that's

1:06:48

where Okay,

1:06:51

they said it.

1:06:54

And that's the color purple.

1:06:56

That's the name of the movie.

1:06:58

They have that conversation. Are like,

1:07:00

but where as straight friends,

1:07:02

I would like to have this discussion with you

1:07:05

in a field in.

1:07:06

A very straight way. And I don't

1:07:09

mean like those lavender lesbians. I just mean purple

1:07:11

is nice, Okay.

1:07:13

The straight color purple is

1:07:16

the straightest colors for sure.

1:07:17

Yeah, that's why the Purple Teletubby is

1:07:20

famously the straight just one.

1:07:22

Yeah, well you just pulled

1:07:25

that out like effortlessly, had

1:07:27

the Purple Teletubby it's

1:07:30

in my mind.

1:07:31

Well, so you think it when you think purple Barney.

1:07:33

Also yes, yeah, also so straight,

1:07:36

very straight.

1:07:39

Okay. So the movie ends

1:07:41

with a couple different scenes. One Shug

1:07:43

finally reconnects with her father.

1:07:46

One day at church, she comes like marching

1:07:49

in, singing gospel.

1:07:50

It's a choir battle. It's

1:07:53

everything that happens in this movie. And then

1:07:55

Steven Spielberg goes, you know what, be fun a choir

1:07:57

battle, Like they are at the juke joint.

1:07:59

She's singing for a performance and the church

1:08:02

is also going, and the church people are mad

1:08:04

that they can hear the juke joint music. So they're like

1:08:06

sing a song in the choir and shook hearing

1:08:08

it. Is like, you know what, let's bring it

1:08:10

to their doorsteps. And so they started playing

1:08:13

and singing and walk over and

1:08:15

then the church is like, okay, you guys win, you

1:08:17

win.

1:08:18

Yeah. The other soloist gracefully accepts.

1:08:20

Yeah, she's truly like for.

1:08:22

A moment, she like comes out of the cues and she's like, oh

1:08:24

my gosh, I'm gonna go sing my heart

1:08:26

out.

1:08:26

And then she's like, you know what, never mind,

1:08:28

never mind, never mind.

1:08:30

It is implied at this point that Shug must

1:08:32

be pretty famous because mister this

1:08:34

whole time has been listening to her record

1:08:36

and hearing her on the radio and just

1:08:38

constantly playing her famous song Sister. So

1:08:41

it's implied she like does blow up. So there's I

1:08:43

guess some probably level of that choir

1:08:45

girl being like, oh my goodness, the famous

1:08:48

sug Avery's here. Maybe

1:08:50

we don't know Steven didn't want to let us know.

1:08:51

That part unclear. Yeah, I was like, is

1:08:53

she charting? Can I have afmation?

1:08:56

She's selling tickets like she on the Billboard

1:08:58

top one hundred, How

1:09:01

big is she that?

1:09:02

Okay that she's on jukeboxes?

1:09:04

But okay, yeah, it's you know, very

1:09:06

Spielberg sentimental. But I really do let

1:09:08

the scene where Seally doesn't know

1:09:10

that Shug is about to sing a song that she wrote

1:09:13

for her and oh it's so it's

1:09:15

yeah, if only they had let them be gay,

1:09:18

like that would be gay, truly

1:09:20

let them be gay.

1:09:21

And yeah, I will say the church

1:09:23

battle choir scene also again feels

1:09:25

very Spielberg, just in terms of how

1:09:29

much the church people inquire, people

1:09:31

are smiling.

1:09:32

There's this.

1:09:34

To me, it felt there's just a minstrelly

1:09:36

aspect to some scenes where I

1:09:38

feel a white director being

1:09:40

like smile Moore, smile more like I

1:09:43

hear that note and I feel it

1:09:45

because like, even when they're playing the piano, they're

1:09:47

all just like smiling so big at Sugar and You're just

1:09:49

like, do they even know.

1:09:51

This and who she is? Like?

1:09:53

Why are they also invested in this situation?

1:09:56

Doesn't her dad hate her, probably never really talks about

1:09:58

her, And suddenly they're all just like, oh, yay,

1:10:01

and it's just yeah, it's so just

1:10:04

yeah.

1:10:05

They're just excited that number one

1:10:07

superstar Sugay

1:10:09

America suggavery has

1:10:12

graced them.

1:10:12

Has graced them, and is just hugging

1:10:15

their pastor very intimately.

1:10:16

For some reason.

1:10:18

They're like, Wow, our pastor knows a famous

1:10:20

person. Yeah.

1:10:23

I also, as someone who has

1:10:25

well a complicated relationship

1:10:29

with the concept of a

1:10:31

father, I was like, why

1:10:34

is she so obsessed with trying to like

1:10:36

when his affection He seems like

1:10:38

a not very good person, But maybe

1:10:41

that's just a me thing.

1:10:42

Well. It also feels like, because this movie is

1:10:46

overtly critical of many things,

1:10:48

religion is not really one of them, which

1:10:51

it seems like the book is more ready

1:10:53

to engage with. My feeling

1:10:55

and again, I don't know how Shug's relationship

1:10:58

with their father's presented in the book necessarily,

1:11:00

but it felt like he was this kind

1:11:02

of amalgamation of like, if she can

1:11:05

reconcile with her father, she can reconcile

1:11:07

with religion and like quote

1:11:10

unquote respectable society, or like

1:11:12

it felt like he was also like a symbol of other

1:11:15

stuff.

1:11:16

Yeah, in the book, it's a lot of

1:11:18

like he hates her because he feels

1:11:20

like God gave her this voice and she could

1:11:22

use it in church for the Lord, but

1:11:25

he, you know, she brings shame upon them in the

1:11:27

family. A lot of why

1:11:29

she is even sleeping with

1:11:31

mister like how she becomes a mistress

1:11:34

and she's like her relationships with married men.

1:11:37

They go more into that because it's sort of like

1:11:39

her trying to get her father's attention and

1:11:41

approval and love. So it's like this manifestation

1:11:44

of daddy issues. So it

1:11:47

again just makes more sense because Alice Walker

1:11:49

is a writer who knows.

1:11:50

What she's doing.

1:11:52

But yeah, in the movie, I don't

1:11:54

think you really get how

1:11:57

not having her father has impacted

1:12:00

Shug. You know, it feels good

1:12:02

to I guess see them come back together. But

1:12:04

again it's like, why did she care so much about getting

1:12:06

married to impress him? Why did she care so much

1:12:08

about like showing him right?

1:12:10

If we knew more about it, I would have an easier

1:12:12

time understanding her what is

1:12:14

compelling her to seek out this love

1:12:17

and affection from him, But we just don't know enough.

1:12:19

So I'm just like, right, I mean, in the SPIELBERGI

1:12:22

way that in the kind of eleventh hour

1:12:25

of this movie, there are two tacitly

1:12:28

implied redemption arcs

1:12:30

for men who are abusive

1:12:33

in different ways, where we I

1:12:35

mean, I think we're led to believe. I don't think that we're led

1:12:37

to believe that Sugar had been physically abused

1:12:39

by her father, but like neglected and abandoned

1:12:42

essentially emotionally. They have

1:12:44

no relationship, and then he sort

1:12:46

of like never has to say sorry.

1:12:49

He's just like, oh, today is the day I

1:12:51

decide I decide to forgive you, even

1:12:53

though you have done nothing wrong.

1:12:56

Yeah.

1:12:56

Yeah.

1:12:57

And then with Albert, I mean, I think, like

1:12:59

you're talking about earlier, Ashley, it would

1:13:01

make I can't really see a world

1:13:03

where it's like Albert's redemption

1:13:06

arc, you know, and it's not totally redemption.

1:13:08

It's close enough. I don't know the way it's presented

1:13:10

in the Spielberg movie. You're just like he

1:13:13

should have to move to a different city

1:13:15

at least, Like why

1:13:18

is he still should have.

1:13:19

To lose his property or

1:13:21

something? And yeah, it'll

1:13:24

be I guess we're going to do this part in the synopsis because it's

1:13:27

like the very end that they rush

1:13:29

Mister's whole arc of

1:13:31

like him just deciding, you know what, I

1:13:33

have been cursed, let me fix this.

1:13:35

And I almost didn't understand fully what

1:13:37

was happening because we see him get a

1:13:40

letter from like the

1:13:42

federal government.

1:13:43

Like it's the immigration and Naturalization

1:13:46

and in the book this is explained

1:13:48

that basically to come back to

1:13:50

America, Nettie and her kids need

1:13:53

like a sponsor, someone who's already in America.

1:13:55

So they've been asking Celi and they're trying

1:13:57

to petition and be like this is the only way, you

1:14:00

know, we don't know anyone else back

1:14:02

in the States, like we

1:14:04

need you to do this, and there's like a fee that they have

1:14:06

to pay, and obviously these letters are

1:14:08

never getting to Cely. And then finally

1:14:10

Mister's like, you know what, let

1:14:13

me do it.

1:14:13

I'll do it all, redeem myself

1:14:15

by paying the fee.

1:14:17

I'll pay the little fee.

1:14:18

Okay, that makes sense. I figured it must have been something

1:14:20

like that, but it's not.

1:14:24

Like, yeah,

1:14:26

like why and why would like they need

1:14:29

Celia or Mister to get involved in any

1:14:31

way?

1:14:31

Like what if they went over there?

1:14:33

Couldn't they just be like we were born in America,

1:14:36

we have passports and come back.

1:14:39

But yes, yeah, in any case, So

1:14:42

the movie ends with after

1:14:45

mister had paid the fee, Nettie

1:14:48

returning with Cely's children,

1:14:50

Adam and Olivia, as well

1:14:52

as Tashi, who I think is

1:14:55

Adam's wife, and

1:14:57

then there's just this beautiful tear

1:15:00

reunion and then the

1:15:03

movie ends. So that

1:15:05

is the color purple.

1:15:07

Wow.

1:15:08

I mean we also get Mister looking at them

1:15:10

and he walks his horse into the

1:15:12

sunset. He wist, well, I

1:15:14

did a good thing and I'm not cursed anymore.

1:15:17

And yeah, and then we know

1:15:19

you have to move.

1:15:21

You have to move, you gotta and

1:15:23

we get the iconic Also another

1:15:25

famous thing that me and my cousin used to you all the time,

1:15:27

handshake me and you us

1:15:30

never part.

1:15:31

Me and you us have one heart, you

1:15:34

know.

1:15:34

Yeah, so they're children again

1:15:37

who found each other, and.

1:15:39

I feel like they're among the color

1:15:42

purple. Yeah.

1:15:43

When this happens, Oh yeah, it.

1:15:45

Makes you think, all right, let's

1:15:47

take another quick break and we will come back

1:15:50

to discuss, and

1:16:03

we're back.

1:16:04

I knew we were gonna have half a discussion in

1:16:06

the middle of it. It's hard

1:16:08

not to. It's hard, but I do. I'm

1:16:10

glad that we I mean, maybe we should

1:16:12

start with the erasure of the

1:16:15

sug and Cely relationship,

1:16:17

because that seems like the biggest erasure.

1:16:19

Yeah, is that they have this

1:16:21

beautiful relationship. In the books, it

1:16:23

is super gay. You understand

1:16:26

the love they have for each other, and that beyond

1:16:29

just being into each other, it is a safety

1:16:31

that they find and each other as women, that they've

1:16:33

both been so disappointed by men and

1:16:36

hurt by men. And I

1:16:38

think it really is a disservice to Ceely's

1:16:40

character because in the movie, her ability

1:16:43

to be romantic, to be sexual is

1:16:45

just completely washed away. She's

1:16:47

basically played as though she has

1:16:49

the mentality of a child, like she never

1:16:52

really like steps into that adulthood of

1:16:55

I'm gonna speak up for myself. I know what I

1:16:57

want I have feelings for this person instead,

1:16:59

it kind of is suggested, and

1:17:02

then she has this big monologue at the dinner table

1:17:04

where she's like, I'm gonna speak up finally. But

1:17:06

it's so much more beautiful when you see that in

1:17:09

this relationship with Shoog, she's able

1:17:11

to find her voice and stand up for herself

1:17:13

and finally start to fight. So to

1:17:16

remove it, it's just again one

1:17:18

of those really disappointing acts arcs

1:17:20

of it. I think again

1:17:22

that's what made me kind of fall out of love with the movie

1:17:24

when I realized what I could have had reading

1:17:26

the book.

1:17:28

Yeah, there's been a ton written

1:17:31

about it. We'll link to a

1:17:33

friend of this show, Princess Weeks, wrote a

1:17:35

wonderful essay about it a couple of years

1:17:37

ago, I think possibly when it was first announced

1:17:40

that this new adaptation was

1:17:42

going to come out. I wanted to

1:17:44

share there's a quote that's been pretty widely circulated

1:17:47

that we've referenced before, because I think it's very

1:17:49

easy for directors to

1:17:52

be like, oh, I would have done this differently today. Sorry,

1:17:54

but you know, to hand him the bare

1:17:57

minimum. He didn't double down on the decision

1:17:59

and say and I do it again today. But

1:18:03

the quote that is widely circulated,

1:18:05

I think during every round of this necessary

1:18:08

discourse about how this relationship is completely

1:18:11

erased. So Spielberg says, quote, there

1:18:13

were certain things in the lesbian relationship

1:18:15

between sug Avery and Sely that were finally

1:18:17

detailed in Alice's book that I didn't feel

1:18:20

could get a PG. Thirteen rating, and I

1:18:22

was shy about it. In that sense, perhaps

1:18:24

I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more

1:18:26

sexually honest encounters between Sugar and

1:18:28

Sealy because I did soften those. I

1:18:31

basically took something that was extremely erotic

1:18:33

and very intentional, and I reduced it to a

1:18:35

simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism

1:18:37

for that ud quote. I wonder why,

1:18:39

Stephen, I wonder why weird

1:18:43

weird that that happened. And

1:18:45

I was curious because I have not seen

1:18:48

the musical, and I know

1:18:50

that that is that adaptation of

1:18:53

the so

1:18:55

in the original musical, and

1:18:57

I've heard I mean again, never trust

1:19:00

a movie. So it's like it's

1:19:02

it's hard. There has been a lot

1:19:04

of talk, and I think at least press

1:19:07

buzz that the new adaptation

1:19:10

will actually rise to the occasion

1:19:12

of the source material and include the queer relationship,

1:19:15

which I'm interested in seeing how it's

1:19:17

done because it seems like there was another round

1:19:19

of criticism in how the original Broadway

1:19:21

musical plays it down.

1:19:23

Yeah, oh, it's the musicals not gay

1:19:25

at all, and it's a musical, so it

1:19:27

would be gay. It's yeah,

1:19:30

it's not. I saw when Michelle Williams

1:19:33

was in it on Broadway, and I mean, I

1:19:35

loved it. I love the music, I do like the musical,

1:19:38

but I mean, if Spielberg's goal was to make

1:19:40

the movie Pg. Thirteen, they were

1:19:42

like, we got to make sure this musical has

1:19:44

like a g rating, Like people have to be able to bring

1:19:46

their six year olds to enjoy the bright colors.

1:19:49

So it's definitely even more

1:19:51

just like whitewashed and kind

1:19:53

of like those details are missing. It's

1:19:56

still really fun, though, But at the same

1:19:58

time, I've always kind of wondered, why this

1:20:00

story, Why is this the story about

1:20:03

black female struggle that is depicted

1:20:05

so raw, so honestly in the book. Why

1:20:07

is this what you've decided should be

1:20:10

turned into a PG. Thirteen general

1:20:12

audience affair? Like can we be honest

1:20:14

about it? Like can't we have our r rated

1:20:16

narratives because that's what this is.

1:20:18

And it feels so telling,

1:20:21

just like, and this discussion has been

1:20:23

had with a number of movies, but like, what can

1:20:25

you get away with in a PG thirteen

1:20:28

rating? And why is showing

1:20:30

a lesbian relationship not okay

1:20:32

when we see I mean, I think that's

1:20:35

like sort of my central issue

1:20:37

with the way that this movie's adapted. There's a million

1:20:40

ways to criticize it, but that like, on

1:20:42

its face, this movie is very, very comfortable with

1:20:44

showing the black women at its center

1:20:46

being tremendously abused and

1:20:49

are not comfortable or like

1:20:51

shy and pull away and fade to black when it

1:20:53

comes to showing these same characters

1:20:56

experiencing actual joy and

1:20:58

pleasure, Like the pleasure is erased

1:21:00

or just hinted at, but the abuse you see,

1:21:03

you know, for the most part pretty clearly

1:21:06

the thing that bugged me the most.

1:21:08

And I was like, oh, the scene where

1:21:10

Sophia punches the

1:21:12

white guy in the face. They don't

1:21:15

show it. They have a car pass like

1:21:18

it's like when SpongeBob is swearing and

1:21:20

it's like the dolphins sound yeah they

1:21:23

do that. I was just like, they're comfortable

1:21:25

showing black women the abuse the entire movie.

1:21:27

But they're like, but we don't want to show a white man

1:21:29

getting punched in the face.

1:21:30

Oh, they do cut back when when

1:21:33

Sophia is on the ground with her skirt up,

1:21:35

you see, and then they're like, you should see this,

1:21:37

you should see this woman in the must I'm real.

1:21:40

They show the sheriff like

1:21:43

pistol whipping her, yeah,

1:21:45

in the head, and then you show the yeah.

1:21:47

She collapses to the ground, her skirt

1:21:49

flies up, exposing her underwear, Like

1:21:52

why is that okay to show? But

1:21:55

not?

1:21:55

I mean, it just feels like an admission

1:21:57

of what the creative team was comfortable

1:22:00

showing and what they were like, well,

1:22:02

we cut it short of showing a relationship

1:22:05

between two black women that's sexual and

1:22:08

punching a white guy in the face any sort

1:22:10

of abuse or humiliation. Pg. Thirteen

1:22:13

No problem, which is just as

1:22:15

much an issue with the ratings system as

1:22:18

it is with the creative choices, because

1:22:20

theoretically, in a just world,

1:22:22

there would be some fucking pushback for that.

1:22:25

There's a documentary. I've referenced this on the show

1:22:27

before, but a documentary called This

1:22:29

film is not yet rated, and it explores

1:22:32

largely how sex

1:22:34

scenes or like romantic scenes between

1:22:37

or among queer people, even

1:22:40

though they will be framed and choreographed

1:22:43

like basically identically to like

1:22:45

hetero sex scenes, the

1:22:48

movies with queer sex

1:22:50

depicted in them will be given

1:22:52

like NC seventeen ratings, where

1:22:55

again basically identical

1:22:57

like choreography and like body

1:22:59

place and like the same level of nudity.

1:23:02

It's not as though like you're seeing like hardcore

1:23:05

porn like dicks getting sucked

1:23:08

or anything like that.

1:23:09

Well, and I think it also like

1:23:11

is inherently connected to just

1:23:14

like seeing women experiencing

1:23:17

pleasure in movies at all is

1:23:19

so deem. I always think about the like.

1:23:21

The but I'm a Cheerleader episode. I think

1:23:23

we talked about this a lot mm hmm, because

1:23:26

that movie there's like sex scenes

1:23:28

and that had to be largely

1:23:30

cut to be able to get an R rating or

1:23:32

I forget which, but there was scenes

1:23:35

that like the MPAA

1:23:38

was like, this is too scandalous,

1:23:40

so we're gonna give you like either an NC seventeen

1:23:43

or an R rating basically make it

1:23:45

inaccessible to people.

1:23:47

But even within like heterodynamics

1:23:50

too, where it's like a blow job can

1:23:52

be in a pg. Thirteen movie no problem.

1:23:54

But if someone's going down on

1:23:57

a maybe that's we gotta

1:23:59

keep that. We can't let them know. We coun't

1:24:01

lock it up.

1:24:03

Only release it in France. Don't even bring

1:24:05

it to my shores.

1:24:08

It's ridiculous.

1:24:09

And yeah, just again in this I

1:24:11

even the kiss between sug and Cely,

1:24:14

I feel like it's a little just

1:24:16

even further degraded because

1:24:18

when Seely finally does see Nettie again,

1:24:21

they also share this like long kiss obviously

1:24:24

not sexual, they are sisters, but it makes

1:24:26

it feel like, oh, this is just a form

1:24:28

of black female connection. True,

1:24:31

like Europeans they just deeply

1:24:33

kiss when they really care about each other.

1:24:36

We don't do that.

1:24:37

I think it makes sense for Nettie because

1:24:39

she is coming from Africa and like has these

1:24:42

customs and is saying her sister out for a long

1:24:44

time.

1:24:44

But between Sugar.

1:24:45

And Avery, no, that's not just like black girlfriends

1:24:48

like my lady girl.

1:24:49

No, it's gay. It's supposed to be gay.

1:24:52

He's not a sexy kiss. It's like they peck

1:24:54

each other on the lips a couple of times, and

1:24:56

then like when they finally do the deeper kiss,

1:24:59

it immediately like pans away

1:25:01

to like see their hands very

1:25:03

lightly, like their fingertips are like

1:25:05

kind of touching each other's shoulders

1:25:08

and like hip or something like that.

1:25:10

But I want an oral history of that day on

1:25:12

sets.

1:25:12

Yeah, it's not an

1:25:14

intimate kiss. It's just it's not hot

1:25:17

and heavy.

1:25:17

It's just like, Yeah, I think Stephen was

1:25:19

behind the camera going not the whole hand

1:25:21

on her shoulder, just just the fingertips,

1:25:25

just the tip tip, just just please, little

1:25:28

touching, not too much.

1:25:30

So that was disappointing, very

1:25:33

telling.

1:25:34

Yeah, and I think it's like one of the most famously

1:25:37

mishandled areas of this movie. But

1:25:39

there's just so much that is I want

1:25:41

to talk a little bit about Alice Walker

1:25:44

in general and specifically what her relationship

1:25:46

to this production was, but

1:25:49

I feel beholded to say

1:25:51

Alice Walker, very famous, writer, very

1:25:53

well respected, also has her

1:25:56

fair share of pretty tremendous

1:25:58

fuck ups in terms of expressing

1:26:01

anti Semitic stances, spreading

1:26:04

Holocaust denial, and most

1:26:06

recently siding with JK.

1:26:08

Rowling. So yeah,

1:26:11

we're not going to get into those issues in detail

1:26:13

today, but I do want to acknowledge them because they're all from

1:26:16

the last ten years.

1:26:18

Yeah, she's not Tony Morrison. Okay,

1:26:20

there's reasons we yeah, like some other

1:26:22

people a little more.

1:26:26

Yeah, I mean it particularly that I was

1:26:28

reading her history with anti Semitism and you're

1:26:30

like, Alice,

1:26:34

yeah, because she's also pro Palestinian

1:26:36

liberation, which is not anti semitic, but she's

1:26:38

also anti Semitic, and you're just like, you are

1:26:41

not helping. You're

1:26:45

not helping as it pertains

1:26:47

to this movie. Sorry, my blood

1:26:49

pressure just raised as Pertaises

1:26:52

movie because we hinted at this earlier

1:26:54

where we're like, how did we get to Steven

1:26:57

Spielberg and who was their

1:26:59

pushback?

1:26:59

You know what?

1:27:00

From what I can gather, Alice Walker, like

1:27:02

you're saying, Ashley, like, she didn't

1:27:05

really want the movie to be adapted,

1:27:07

especially a story that is so rooted

1:27:10

in black womanhood and there's a queer relationship,

1:27:13

Like how would you imagine in the eighties that someone

1:27:15

wouldn't fuck it up until it was unrecognizable.

1:27:18

What convinced her was

1:27:21

what we're talking about, where she was like, well,

1:27:23

let's see if we can produce a

1:27:25

decent adaptation of this From the inside.

1:27:28

I thought it was interesting that her contract

1:27:30

included that she would serve as a project

1:27:33

consultant, and that fifty percent

1:27:35

of the production team outside of the cast, which

1:27:37

is obviously vast majority black

1:27:39

actors, but that fifty percent of the production

1:27:42

team would be African

1:27:44

American women or quote, people

1:27:46

of the third world unquote. Pretty

1:27:48

vague, Yeah, a little vague, okay, but

1:27:51

that she, you know, was integral for her

1:27:53

to approving this project at all, to

1:27:56

bring in people who are massively

1:27:58

underrepresented in film into

1:28:01

this production, which I think is really fucking

1:28:03

cool. Like, that's great.

1:28:06

And one of the reasons,

1:28:08

if not the main reason she was reluctant

1:28:11

to have this be adapted to a

1:28:13

movie, is because she knew how

1:28:16

poorly black people and women and

1:28:18

black women in particular are treated

1:28:20

by Hollywood, and she's like, I

1:28:22

don't want that same thing. I don't

1:28:24

want it to get mishandled if

1:28:26

my movie gets adapted.

1:28:28

But like we.

1:28:29

Mentioned, she I read that she

1:28:32

convened with a group of five women

1:28:34

to discuss the merits of accepting

1:28:36

this offer to have her book adapted

1:28:39

to film, and they were like,

1:28:41

well, if this does get made,

1:28:43

it could help improve the

1:28:46

exploitation of black

1:28:49

people and black women in movies,

1:28:51

so let's just kind of yeah, it's

1:28:53

like an inside job, and.

1:28:55

We get to put a ton of black actors

1:28:58

who haven't had this chance to blow up in

1:29:00

a Steven Spielberg movie.

1:29:01

Let's do it, Let's go. And I

1:29:03

love that there's like equal emphasis behind the

1:29:05

camera too, like ye, it's

1:29:07

it's really cool. And what I found frustrating

1:29:10

was that she so she was not a screenwriter

1:29:12

by trade, but she was a Pulitzer Prize

1:29:14

winning fucking writer, and she does not get screenplay

1:29:17

credit. She wrote the first draft and

1:29:19

then they kicked it to a

1:29:21

white guy who had previously

1:29:24

or no, hadn't even written Indiana Jones

1:29:26

in the Last Crusade yet, but

1:29:28

they, I mean, the sole credited

1:29:31

writer is oh, I don't know how

1:29:33

to say his name, Meno may Mayeus

1:29:36

Mayeus. Yeah, and that

1:29:38

Alice Walker was sort of forced

1:29:41

to accept that, even though she still

1:29:43

insisted that she'd be given final script

1:29:46

approval. So she worked on the

1:29:48

script throughout, but she's obviously not credited,

1:29:51

and which is

1:29:54

ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

1:29:57

And she also, I mean, I listened to an interview

1:29:59

that she did more recently

1:30:02

about just like how she was learning

1:30:04

about movie production through working on this

1:30:06

where it sounds like Spielberg. You know, she

1:30:08

had things where she was like, all right, Spielberg,

1:30:11

these are the things I need you to shoot. I

1:30:13

will not compromise on these

1:30:15

scenes being shot. And he was like, all right, I'll

1:30:17

shoot him. And many

1:30:20

of them didn't end up in the movie. And that's

1:30:22

how I learned about how editing sucks.

1:30:27

And then I think the other really

1:30:29

influential black creative voice behind

1:30:31

the camera here is Quincy Jones, who

1:30:34

is one of the main producers. I guess he was. I

1:30:37

watched an interview from the eighties where

1:30:39

he was really integral

1:30:41

and pushing for Spielberg as a director,

1:30:44

and then he also curated this

1:30:47

iconic Quincy Jones score,

1:30:50

And I mean, the score of this movie is fucking ridiculous.

1:30:53

It's great, but yeah, I

1:30:55

don't know. I think

1:30:57

it's just it's so fucking telling and

1:31:00

frustrating that Alice Walker doesn't have at least

1:31:02

a shared credit, Like, Okay, yeah,

1:31:04

she doesn't know how to write a screenplay,

1:31:07

fair enough, but also, why do we have to

1:31:09

have Meno Mayes come

1:31:11

in to do it like some white

1:31:13

Dutch dude?

1:31:14

Yeah, and I think that for me, that was when I cause

1:31:16

I didn't realize, you know, when you're a kid, you don't know what all those

1:31:18

names and the credits mean. And as a high

1:31:20

school after reading the book, I realized like, wait

1:31:22

a second, Wait a second, she

1:31:25

didn't write she doesn't say she wrote

1:31:27

it.

1:31:27

Who is this?

1:31:28

And that yes, when I started to fall

1:31:30

out of love with the movie and start to question, you

1:31:33

know, why were certain things cut? Why are certain things

1:31:35

presented this way? I think then

1:31:37

you start to wonder like, okay, yeah, mister

1:31:40

is a more one dimensional character. And Alice Walker

1:31:42

had a ton of issues because she based the character

1:31:44

on like her grandfather, I think, and

1:31:47

she was hurt by that. And then you start to be like,

1:31:49

oh, yeah, well we're some white Dutch guy didn't

1:31:52

understand the complexity of like living

1:31:54

up to the patriarchal burdens your father

1:31:56

has given to you while also

1:31:59

like harming women and all of this. So

1:32:01

of course it just doesn't translate

1:32:03

into the script.

1:32:05

Yeah, I would say most,

1:32:07

if not all, of the male

1:32:10

characters in the movie feel extremely

1:32:13

caricatureish, slash

1:32:16

just like stereotypical.

1:32:19

Now do I appreciate

1:32:22

that at its core, this movie

1:32:26

is about like women sticking

1:32:28

together and forming bonds and friendships

1:32:30

to protect each other against

1:32:33

the abusive behavior of the

1:32:35

men in their life, and like eventually

1:32:37

being able to escape their abusers.

1:32:40

Yes, but like we've said,

1:32:42

it fails to portray

1:32:45

any of the nuance

1:32:47

and any of the contexts

1:32:50

that explains why these

1:32:52

men are like this.

1:32:54

Yeah right, it's just not It's

1:32:56

kind of the movie makes you wonder why to

1:32:59

Shug go to be with mister Why

1:33:01

does she engage in a relationship with

1:33:03

him if she sees how he treats Seely? And

1:33:06

the book does a better job of outlining

1:33:08

like how he can be this sweet,

1:33:11

romantic person and you know,

1:33:13

like he can be everything she wants

1:33:15

sometimes, But then there's

1:33:17

this darkness, and I think

1:33:19

that makes it a little more believable

1:33:22

because I think, you know, for us, by the

1:33:24

time Seely's decided like maybe I should slit his throat,

1:33:26

it's like, girl, you should do on this twenty minutes ago, Like what

1:33:29

yeah, girls kill him?

1:33:30

Get it? I'm over this good his

1:33:32

ass? Right, And even though it sounds like I mean

1:33:34

Spike Lee had a arguably outside's

1:33:37

reaction, I do understand why

1:33:39

he was concerned about

1:33:41

how black men are portrayed in movies that

1:33:44

are written and directed by white boy guy is a

1:33:46

very very valid concern. It

1:33:48

becomes complicated by like that big use

1:33:51

to undercut or like be implied

1:33:53

that that is undercutting both Alice

1:33:55

Walker and an all black cast in

1:33:58

an industry where at that time it rarely

1:34:00

have ever happened. But I also, like

1:34:02

I do think that I'm glad, I guess

1:34:04

not glad, I mean I'm interested to hear that Alice

1:34:07

Walker wrote Albert to be less

1:34:10

one dimensional. Not because I think

1:34:12

that like abusers should have more

1:34:14

lore, Yeah, but

1:34:18

I do think that, like it's We've talked about

1:34:20

this trope a million times on the show

1:34:22

where it's like patriarchy, the guy just the guy

1:34:24

that does all of the patriarchy things, and

1:34:26

he is the bad guy and we get rid of

1:34:29

him at the end and then misogyny

1:34:31

is solved, which it doesn't

1:34:33

actually do very much to move

1:34:35

the needle on how we talk about anything, and particularly

1:34:39

with like white writers and directors,

1:34:42

it feels like there are tropes on how

1:34:44

black men are portrayed in Hollywood, present in

1:34:46

these characters because

1:34:48

of what is taken out.

1:34:51

Yeah, so okay, yeah, it's just really

1:34:53

one of those like, yeah, I guess the people

1:34:55

who were mad.

1:34:56

I still like the movie. But everybody's

1:34:58

right. It's just truly right.

1:35:01

This Spike Lee is right.

1:35:03

At the same time, I wish that we could

1:35:05

have seen these other versions where maybe Spike

1:35:07

Lee did it, where Alice had more say in the

1:35:10

script.

1:35:10

But what we got, you know, is.

1:35:14

Passed generations to generations. I don't I

1:35:16

truly do watch this movie probably

1:35:19

every year.

1:35:19

With my family.

1:35:20

It is always being played on BD. You

1:35:23

know, the cast, I think is what ended

1:35:26

up making it what it became. So

1:35:29

you know, you get Oprah, It's gonna

1:35:31

stick.

1:35:31

I mean, right right,

1:35:34

there's I haven't read the full

1:35:36

book, but there is an interesting excerpt slash

1:35:39

discussion of it written in the New Republic

1:35:43

recently in the last couple

1:35:45

of years, let's say, but there is a book written

1:35:47

by writer Salamisha

1:35:50

Tillett called In Search of the Color Purple,

1:35:52

the Story of an American Masterpiece. Just a

1:35:54

series of essays and just reflections

1:35:57

on not just this, not

1:35:59

just the movie or the book, but how the culture

1:36:02

received it, I mean, which is a

1:36:04

lot. And I learned a little more about

1:36:06

how Alice Walker was treated in

1:36:09

not even just the fallout of the movie, but the fallout

1:36:11

of the book, which

1:36:13

I think again complicates that we were

1:36:15

just talking about, where it makes

1:36:17

a ton of sense that black directors

1:36:20

and black male directors in particular would have

1:36:22

an issue with Steven Spielberg portraying

1:36:25

Mister in the way that he does in this movie,

1:36:28

But the fact that that same energy was applied

1:36:30

to Alice Walker when the book first came out

1:36:33

reads very, very differently. I didn't

1:36:35

know that when The Color Purple the book

1:36:37

came out, an excerpt or a piece on it was

1:36:40

included in MSS magazine,

1:36:42

and it was on the cover of

1:36:44

the magazine, and Gloria

1:36:47

Steinem was essentially tasked with defending

1:36:49

Alice Walker for including her work

1:36:52

that had black male characters who were

1:36:54