Watch this one pivotal scene closer to understand why this film was so significant and powerful, and why it continues to resonate to this day. If you have seen this movie as many times as I have, you can probably recite it by heart, but have probably only focused on the line where Miss Sophia threatens to "kill him dead" if her husband continues to beat her.
Normally, I would dispatch a quick mini-blog to the Facebook page to make my point, but the moment dictates that I make the following long-form argument to be preserved for posterity: BLACK WOMEN HAVE BEEN SPEAKING UP AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE FOR YEARS. But some of y'all are just starting to listen.
When Alice Walker wrote the novel that later became the book that eventually became the play, she was telling the story of a woman who had endured decades of sexual violence. It began with her impregnation by the man she thought was her father and continued with the man she was married off to as a child bride. The book was released in 1982; the film was released in 1985. I was a child during that time period, but I remember very well the controversy that was stirred up by both. I recall that the book was denounced as illicit and was banned, but I was in elementary school at the time, so I had no first-hand knowledge of the particulars until years later. When the film was released, the backlash honed in on Steven Spielberg as the director, and the portrayal of 'Mister' by Danny Glover as an unrelentingly cruel avatar of Black manhood.
Unfortunately whenever a work of art is overtly and unapologetically feminist, folks get really uncomfortable and defensive. The pro-family fundamentalists are offended by challenges to patriarchal norms while some Black men regard negative depictions as destructive to the community. Then because some of the detractors are also anti-Semitic and conspiratorial, the seminal value of the work gets derailed by the whining of a petulant, but vocal minority. The Color Purple becomes perennially maligned as a work with a perverse, immoral, and disparaging agenda instead of an empowering story of resilience and fortitude.
Despite those protestations, the movie endures and has become a staple of lazy Sunday afternoon viewings. I remain baffled that the most vociferous ire was expressed over the depiction of Mister than in sympathy for the horrific atrocities that were committed against Celie: no outrage that she was raped and impregnated twice by her step-father, no uproar over her being married off as a child bride, and no umbrage over the physical abuse and humiliation she endured for years.
Sadly, I learned from some of the ridiculous responses and reactions to that documentary about the abuses and excesses of a certain R&B singer that some of you would rather defend a Mister than to stand up for a Celie, Nettie, Sophia, Shug Avery, or any other woman. Some of you are just like Celie in accepting (and sometimes recommending) abuse because you don't recognize your worth. Or maybe you are lucky like Nettie to escape it, or clever like Shug Avery to avoid it, but they both accepted sexual violence as normal. That's why Sophia stands out--she talks back, she fights back, and when she has had enough, she leaves. Sophia declares to the world that it can be unsafe for women within their own families, yet we missed that message for 30 odd years or more.
Hopefully by now you've had an Oprah aha moment where you get mad that it took you this long to realize what you already knew. Or you will get angry that you needed to see/hear it to believe. Perhaps some of you will finally open your eyes to how abuse gets perpetuated and passed down to subsequent generations. The rest of you might wonder why I sometimes take two seemingly unrelated topics and try to connect them like this (I like to challenge myself).
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