Sifting Through the Controversy: Reading The Color Purple

Abstract

The Color Purple, the novel and the film, have both been the subject of intense opposition since the arrival of Alice Walker's book in 1982 and the release of Steven Spielberg's film in December 1985. On the surface, the dissension has centered on the image of black people in media. Both works present a negative portrait, proclaim some critics, of black men in particular and the black family in general. These kinds of protests are not new, for black people have fought against negative depictions in film in many instances; notable among them were protests against The Birth of a Nation (1915), The Green Pastures (1936), Gone With the Wind (1939), and Porgy and Bess (1959). The primary difference in the criticism of the contemporary film is that the outrage over the works is not unanimous. Black women and black men, for the most part, are split, and at times, at odds over the effect of the works on the condition of black people in this country. The nature of the debate over The Color Purple and the way it affected how the public received the film and produced a reading of it are the subjects of this investigation. There is, of course, a significant difference between the novel and the film, one being the work of a black woman, the other a mainstream media product constructed by a white male. There is also a critical difference in the way a novel and film are experienced. The reading experience is more personal and private, whereas watching a film, until it is released on videotape, involves sitting in a theater with many other people and being affected by their reactions. Although these are important differences between the Alice Walker book and the Spielberg film, the two works have become almost interchangeable in many people's minds. The novel won the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 and was on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list for a number of weeks, but its impact was not as widespread as the film's. Although there were criticisms of the novel when it was published and there have long been attacks against Alice Walker, the protests accelerated in the wake of the film's release. The film reached an audience in several stages and each time induced a strong reaction. It was released during the holiday season in 1985, withdrawn from circulation in the fall of 1986, re-released theatrically at the beginning of 1987, and released on videotape July 1987. By October 1986 the film version of The Color Purple had made almost $100 million, and the rental of the videotape has been in the top twenty since its arrival in the video stores.1 It is therefore safe to assume that more people have seen the film than have read the book. It is also a sure bet that many people's perception of the novel is based upon what they have seen or heard about the film.