March
1, 1996
Alice through the looking glass
Caption: Alice Walker
By Deb
Price / The Detroit News
Shortly
before the release of the much-anticipated film adaptation of her Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple, Alice
Walker
offered a simple hope:
"We
may miss our favorite part," she told Ms. magazine about what the movie
she'd yet to view might not capture of her
powerful
tale. "But what is there will be its own gift, and I hope people will be
able to accept that in the spirit that it's given."
Many
did find the story of Celie -- a defenseless black girl who ultimately
overcomes the vicious abuse she's subjected to by
the
black men around her -- to be an amazing gift. But the 1985 blockbuster
movie directed by Steven Spielberg also
unleashed
a torrent of criticism from within the African-American community:
Walker
was accused of hating black men, of conspiring with white Hollywood to
degrade the black family by portraying
physical
violence, incest, rape and lesbianism. Forums were held throughout the
country at which the film's themes were hotly
debated,
often by people so angry about what they'd heard about The Color Purple
that they refused even to see it. Some
demanded
to know why a black man, such as Sidney Poitier, hadn't directed it. Protesters
picketed outside the Academy
Award
ceremonies after the film received 11 Oscar nominations, including for
best picture.
"While
I know that some black men have raped their daughters, I know that the
vast majority have not," Tony Brown wrote in
Carolina
Peacemaker. Echoing the sentiments of many black men, he vowed never to
see the film.
"...
I offer no excuses for the kinds of men that Walker wrote about; they are,
for whatever reason, sad examples. But I know
that
many of us who are male and black are too healthy to pay to be abused by
a white man's movie focusing only on our
failures,"
Brown declared.
At the
same time the normally reclusive Walker was thrown into a national debate
about Hollywood's depiction of African
Americans
and the problems confronting black families, she faced three of the most
painful experiences of her life: Her mother
suffered
a series of debilitating strokes, which finally ended her life in 1993;
Walker's partner, Robert, admitted cheating on her,
a confession
that ultimately led to their breakup; and, after being bitten by three
ticks, she developed Lyme's disease, which
seriously
weakened her.
Drawing
on 10 years of reflection about this tumultuous time, Walker shares her
pains, joys and insights in her latest book, The
Same
River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (Scribner, $24).
"What
happens with most of us is, that if it's hard, we'd just rather not deal
with it," Walker explained in a recent interview.
"We'd
rather push it away, forget about it. But actually we could learn a lot
that would help us go on with greater courage and
fortitude
if we did honor the difficult by acknowledging that it was difficult.
"And
there is a lot of celebration in it, too. Because you are saying that,
'Yes, this was difficult, but look what I learned. I
learned
this. I learned that I am whole, I am fine.' So the difficulty had its
own gift."
She
captures this difficult yet rewarding time through a work that reads much
like a scrapbook: We read her
never-before-published
screenplay, whose more in-depth portrayal of the lesbian relationship between
Celie and the lusty blues
singer
Shug was not the one chosen for the film. Alongside it are her letters
to director Spielberg; songwriter and producer
Quincy
Jones, and actor Danny Glover, who played Celie's abusive husband, the
controversial Mister. Here, too, are her
thought-provoking
journal entries and other mullings about fame, racism, sexism, homophobia
and the actual making of the film.
"It's
really about being able to reflect and contemplate and gather all the pieces
of an experience that had felt, at least part of the
time,
rather shattering," says the prolific author, whose five novels, five collections
of poetry and other writings have sold nearly
10
million copies and have been translated into more than two dozen languages.
"I wanted to explore what I had learned."
She reacted to the backlash against the film first with pain, then numbness and finally "letting go."
"(It)
was a rare critic who showed any compassion for, or even noted, the suffering
of the women and children explored in the
book,
while I was called a liar for showing that black men sometimes perpetuate
domestic violence.
"...
It was painful to realize that many men rarely consider reading what women
write, or bother to listen to what women are
saying
about how we feel. How we perceive life. How we think things should be.
That they cannot honor our struggles or our
pain.
That they see our stories as meaningless to them, or assume they are absent
from them, or distorted. Or think they must
own
or control our expressions. And us."
Deciding to collaborate on a film about her work, she explains, was "an agonizingly complex gamble."
"Though
The Color Purple is not what many wished, it is more than many hoped, or
had seen on a movie screen before. It still
moves
me after all these years, as I relive the feeling of love that was palpable
on the set."
But
in her first viewing of the film, she recalls only seeing its flaws. In
a letter to a friend, she explained, "It was a bit like seeing a
deformed
child and seeing it as deformed, rather than as interestingly, if curiously,
different from what had been envisioned.
"... Some changes I dislike very much; some seem hokey, Hollywoodish, juvenile and silly. A lot of points were missed."
For
example, Walker, who is bisexual, lamented that Celie's lesbianism was
toned down. And Sofia, played by Oprah Winfrey,
looked
"too aged" after her jail term.
"But,
irregardless," her letter continued, "there's that bouncy, happy kid sweeping
across the land, putting out healing and love
as
well as craziness -- at some point you think: Why don't more babies have
two heads or 12 toes? Or no hair. It's kind of
endearing."
Some
of her favorite scenes were the parting of the young Celie and her beloved
sister, Nettie; the struggle of Nettie to defend
herself
against Mister's sexual advances; the tender kiss between Celie and Shug;
Celie's discovery of letters from Nettie that
Mister
had hidden; and Shug's first song in the roadhouse.
Although
The Same River Twice chronicles many disappointments, it also reveals many
joyful moments that Walker
experienced
because of the movie, especially during its making.
From
the start, Walker played an active role as consultant on the movie set.
In a floppy straw gardener's hat, she pitched her
chair
and offered the actors tarot card readings and lessons in black folk English.
"I sort of tossed in tarot readings as an
incentive
to come and learn how to speak like my mother," she says. "And they did!"
She helped fine-tune the script, offered
advice
about costumes, and even explained which flowers and vegetables Celie should
have in her garden.
In the
contract, Walker had demanded and secured an agreement that at least half
of the off-screen staff be women and people
of
color.
"It
was something I needed for my own comfort, and for my own piece of mind,"
Walker says. It meant we were all much more
comfortable.
And especially the actors. You know, black actors really suffer in these
movies that they make where they're the
only
black person."
Willard
Pugh, who played Harpo, especially appreciated Walker's influence. "It's
good to look up at the end of a scene and not
be
the only black man on the set," he said during the filming.
Walker felt the casting was superb.
She
calls Whoopi Goldberg's performance as Celie "incredible." Ironically,
Goldberg landed the leading female part despite
having
written Walker a fan letter much earlier in which she begged "to play a
venetian blind, if necessary," just to be a part of
the
movie.
Oprah Winfrey was "wonderful" as Sofia, who refused to surrender her self-respect to either her husband or white oppressors.
Superstar
Tina Turner was originally offered the part of blues singer Shug. She turned
it down, saying it would bring back too
many
painful memories for her. Getting the part was Margaret Avery, whom Walker
praised for her "immense sweetness,"
"innate,
frustrated dignity" and "the vulnerability that's in her eyes."
Danny
Glover was not only a "great actor" but "a healer." His performance as
Mister "completely reconciled" Walker to her
love
for her misogynistic grandfather, on whom the character was based.
"He
was very undertanding of the part," Walker says. "... He's struggling and
he's imperfect and he's a mess, but he's human
and
he's growing. Danny was able to do that. And I think for people who are
interested in male growth, this was a very great
gift."
"There was an extraordinary level of love and affection and caring on that set," she concludes.
Two
key men -- Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones -- persuaded a dubious Walker
to agree to the film. Early on, Walker
knew
little about Spielberg, except his hit film E.T. She wisecracked, "Well,
maybe if he can do Martians, he can do us."
She
especially treasured Jones, who helped write "Sister" and other songs for
the film. His deep appreciation of her artistry, she
says,
"was to help some of the pain I felt when other black men attacked me."
For
herself, one of the film's greatest gifts came when her mother saw it their
hometown theater in Eatonton, Ga. When Walker
was
a girl, her sharecropper family had been forced to sit in the balcony in
the then-segregated theater.
"It
was a terrible thing that she had spent her entire life looking at films
and never seeing anything that really resembled her life,"
Walker
says of her mother.
In The
Color Purple, the ailing woman finally saw her own reflection. And like
one of her daughter's determined, self-respecting
characters,
she arrived at the theater in an ambulance but wearing high heels.
Excerpt from 'The Same River Twice':
Alice
Walker on how she felt about The Color Purple being snubbed at the Academy
Awards, despite the movie's 11
nominations
(Out of Africa won the Best Picture Oscar that year):
"Because
I knew that some of our people wanted awards, for whatever reason, I said
nothing about how relieved I was that
The
Color Purple did not receive any. It isn't just that I did not know a single
soul making decisions on behalf of the Academy,
it
was that I was aware of the kind of black characters who had been anointed
before. Maids and other white family retainers.
...
My instinct was that (the decision-makers) were seriously out-of-balance
white men of a certain age, material ease and
social
mobility, who would not care for what The Color Purple was about, or even,
after a lifetime in Hollywood, know.
"...
Out of Africa is reactionary and racist. It glamorizes the rape of Africa
and attempts to make the colonists look like saviors.
To
say nothing of how it glamorizes Isak Dinesen's life with the 'big game'
hunter who gave her syphilis. It patronizes black
people
shockingly, and its sly, gratuitous denigration of the black woman is insufferable."
Copyright 1996, The Detroit News
Walker shares personal moments
JULIE
MILLS
Daily
Beacon Student Life Editor
Alice
Walker reflected on abuse, racism, criticism, the Academy Awards and revealed
personal connections toThe Color
Purple
in a speech Wednesday night at Alumni Memorial Gym.
Walker
began the evening by reading a letter that she had sent to actor Danny
Glover in which she recalled how her grandfather
had
abused her grandmother for many years.
"He
was ... never violent, never raised his voice the whole time I lived with
them and yet, the effects of this violence I could see
plainly
in Rachel and in her slavish behavior," she said. "It was years later before
I realized that she was so beaten down that
none
of us ever knew her true personality and she had probably forgotten it."
Walker
explained that by bringing to life a character that was similar to her
grandfather, Glover had allowed her to come to
terms
with her feelings for her grandfather.
"There
is such a resistance to feeling anymore pain, to thinking about anything
that is harmful, hurtful," she said. "Until we look at
who
we actually are as opposed to the constructed image, we never have any
way of getting out of whatever bind we are in."
Walker
explained how there was an enormous controversy over whether such occurrences
as rape and incest, which were
depicted
in The Color Purple, reflect real life.
Since The Color Purple was filmed 10 years ago, Walker said she is often asked about her opinion of the final result.
"I found it one of the most difficult questions I've ever tried to answer," she said.
Walker
recalled how she got a headache the first time she watched the film because
she felt everything about it was wrong. She
said
her opinion changed when she attended the premiere.
While
the film received 10 Academy Award nominations and much praise, Walker
said it was also attacked by people who
loathed
it and accused her of hating black men and being a lesbian.
"I often
felt isolated, deliberately misunderstood and alone," she said. "I accepted
it with all the grace and humor I possessed
still
there is no denying the pain of being not simply challenged but condemned."
Walker
said she was dealing with a hidden trauma in addition to the attacks. During
the filming of her book, she said she was
suffering
from Lyme disease while her mother recovered from a stroke.
Walker
said a trip to see the trial of Dennis Banks, a Native American who was
involved in the American Indian Movement
and
extradited from Canada because he was accused of killing an FBI agent,
allowed her to recover. She said she felt it was
important
to go because of the constant genocide against Native Americans.
"When
I got there, I started getting better," she said, "If we go beyond ourselves
to witness with someone who is in danger and
if
we go beyond ourselves to stand by Mother Earth, this is our hailing, this
is when we begin to get our strength back."
Walker
said the film was a gift for her mother. She said she had mirrored one
of the characters, Nettie, after her mother with
the
exception that she had given her all the adventure and no children.
"For
me, the filming of my book was a journey to the imagined and vastly rearranged
lives of my mother, father and
grandparents,"
she said. "It was a recreated world I hoped desperately my mother would
live long enough to enter again
through
film."
Walker
admitted she was unprepared for the criticism that she received for choosing
Steven Spielberg as the director. She said
she
was worried when Spielberg shared his favorite movie with her.
"Steven's
feeling of Gone With the Wind was so different from mine that when he said
he considered it the greatest movie ever
made
I felt the only appropriate response would be to faint," she said.
Walker,
who first saw Gone With the Wind in a segregated theater, said she feels
as though the film trivializes the suffering of
millions
of black people to the point of laughter.
"It
is a film in which one spoiled, white woman's summer of picking cotton
is deemed more important than the work under the
lash
of 20 generations of my ancestors," she said.
For
this reason, Walker described how happy she was when The Color Purple was
not recognized along with such films like
Gone
With the Wind at the Academy Awards.
"Because
I know that some of our people wanted awards for whatever reason, I said
nothing about how relieved I was that
The
Color Purple didn't receive any," she said. "I was aware of the kind of
black characters who had been anointed before,
maids
and other white family retainers."
The Academy chose Out of Africa as the Picture of the Year instead of The Color Purple.
Walker
emphasized that Out of Africa is "reactionary and racist" because it glamorizes
the rape of Africa, making the colonists
look
like saviors.
"This
world view is one the academy understood and upheld and some black people,
outraged that one black woman in The
Color
Purple might physically express her love for another, let this go by without
a murmur as they let go by film after film,
decade
after decade, white directors and black, in which women and people of color
are insulted, randomly trashed, raped,
battered,
brutalized and murdered or their lives are depicted as empty, comical or
devoid of meaning," she said.
Walker said she feels society's illiteracy is increasing.
"Even
though I write books and believe very much in books, the truth is, as you
all know, we have become a fairly illiterate
culture,"
she said. "In order to communicate real things that you need to say to
people, you also need to think of something
visual
and I do this with films."
Although
her book was made into a film, Walker said she feels that movies often
destroy a person's ability to dream from deep
within
them. She said there is a connection between a person's dreams and the
path they take.
"It
destroys your ability to dream dreams that are truly connected to your
life," she said. "We have laid ourselves open to all the
ugliness
that anybody could possibly imagine. We have very little hope until we
can reclaim our dreams."
Copyright © 1996, The Daily Beacon. All rights reserved.
Año académico 1999/2000
Asignatura: 4595 - Narrativa en Lengua
Inglesa I
© a. r. e. a./ Dr. Vicente Forés
López
© Francisco Olmedo Fernández
Universitat de València