Courtney

media type="youtube" key="hsvK8WCPj1Y" height="340" width="560" This video clip is Shug Avery singing a song that she made for Celie at the juke joint.

Topic Summary: The Color Purple Movie

This movie was based on a book by Alice Walker. This movie is directed surprisingly by Steven Spielberg and it was, " turned into one of his most remarkable successes, a film that won the National Board of Review's Best Picture award, appeared on 10-Best lists everywhere, garnered 11 Academy Award nominations and earned Spielberg the Best Director citation from the Directors Guild of America." which is stated on the back cover of the movie. The more popular actors and actresses in this movie include Oprah Winfery, Danny Glover, Margaret Avery, and Whoopi Goldberg.

This movie takes place in the south where Celie, the main character is raped by her father and forced into an abusive marriage. She was pretty much enslaved under his rages and to care for the children that he and his deceased wife had together. With everything in her wife ripped away from her and no one left to turn to. She finds hope in her husbands’ dream girl, Shug Avery, who not only gave her hope but love and confidence she has never had before.

"What would Johnson say?"
 * Febuary 8, 2010 **

The article by Allan Johnson, called Who are We, is about his four core values of patriarchy. The values include Male Dominance, Male Identification, Control of Women, and Male Centeredness. In this movie there are several examples of all of these values.

The first core value is __Male Dominance__ and in the beginning of the movie we see Celie pregnant and we find out that the baby she is carrying is conceived against her own will with her father. In the movie she describes the first night that her father came to rape her he told her, “Your gonna do what your Mama wouldn’t.” Her father was ordering her to do something that was wrong in all ways! He raped her and she could not do anything about it, Male Dominance. Not only that but when Celie had her two children her father took them away from her right after they were born, Celie never knew what came of them. Later in the movie we find that her father sold both of the children. Also, throughout this movie there are many situations where Celie get physically abused by her husband. He beats her and verbally degrades her.

The next value is __Male Identification__ and in this movie the males identify themselves as powerful working men while the women stayed home and took care of the house, raised the children, did the laundry, cooked food, and took care of their husband’s desires. Another interesting supporting point in the movie is one of the boys that Celie raised marries a hard-headed, strong willed wife that thinks that their relationship should more of a joint responsibility marriage which is a big contrast from the norm.

The third value is __Control of Women__ and it is clear that this entire movie consists of men controlling women and the household. In the article the author talks a bit about how the women are chosen by the men and taken to the husbands’ side of the family. In the beginning of the movie a man comes to Celies father and wants to marry his beautiful daughter (Celie’s sister) Nettie. Nettie is a pretty, successful, educated girl that steals the eyes of a lot of men. Instead of that man getting to marry Nettie, he gets Celie. Once again Celie’s father orders that she is going to marry this man.

The last value is __Male Centeredness.__ When I think of Male Centeredness, I think of men being in the center of the universe. In the movie Nettie comes to visit Celie and her husband (the man that wanted to marry Nettie). As Nettie was walking to school, Celie’s husband came along and tried attacking and raping her. He was not thinking about what Celie would think about him raping her sister or how Nettie would feel after she was raped. It was all about him and what he wanted; He was all he was worrying about. He was the center of attention no matter who he hurt .  I see all of these situations that Celie, Nettie, and Sophia go through that relate to patriarchy, but there is a deeper value in the midst of all this suffering. All these women are fighting a battle to become more than just housewives, mothers, and the property of their husbands. The women in this movie are a big support system the build each other up and give them the love that they need to keep going. They help each other not only survive but fight. It is interesting that in the end of this movie all of the women are a lot more successful then the men thought they would ever be. Nettie ends up going to a different country to learn a whole new culture and teach her culture to others. Celie ends up leaving "Mister" and she finds out that her father was not her father after all, she is left a house, and she has her own clothing shop. Sophia and Harpo end up getting back together and both of them work at the bar Harpo runs. Shug was always successful this whole movie, but she married a very respectable man.

Works Cited Johnson, Allen. "Where Are We?" //The Gender Knot Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy//: 3-26. Print.

__**Febuary 10, 2010**__ "What would Johnson say?"

__**The second Chapter of Johnsons-Where Are We?**__ Relating it to the movie The Color Purple

In the second chapter of patriarchy, Allen Johnson describes the system. At many points in this chapter I found relates to what is going on in Celie’s life in the movie, The Color Purple. In the article Johnson states, “…feminine vulnerability and masculine protectiveness, of older men coupled with younger women, of elderly women alone.” (39) In this movie when Celies’ Mom dies her Daddy ends up marrying another girl, not much older than Celie herself. Also, when Celie was a young teenager she was married off to a man that has already been married and had children before. It seemed pretty normal for older African American men in the South to find extremely young brides.

The next section I thought was interesting is where Johnson said, “It’s about…the “naturalness” of male aggression, competition, and dominance and of female caring, cooperation, and subordination.” (39) The words that stuck out to me in that quote are male aggression and dominance. In this movie it seemed like all African American women were treated like subordinate. For example, in one scene we see the preachers wife holding a little baby girl, both very nicely dressed. She seemed like an upper class African American women. She was in a fabric store owned by a white man who talked to her like she is lower than dirt. This shows that during this time white was better than black and white is even better than black women regardless of status. As for aggression, if you were in the lower class as black women you were subordinate to everyone. It seemed like African American women were there to work and raise children not to be educated, have a career, or have a say in life.

The next quote from the reading I would like to analyze is, “It’s about the social acceptability in women but not in men.” (39) In the movie, Harpo’s wife treated him like an equal to her. Harpo never grew up that ways so he asks advice from his family about what to do to put Sophia in her place. All of the responses were, “Beat her” which confirms social acceptance to anger and rage that leads to those beatings. It was intresting in the movie, Harpo even asked Celie what he should do to make Sophia "mind" (meaning do follow what her husband wants to do, and if you will mind your manners.) Celie said, beat her as well. It is intresting that Celie would say that because Alice Walker is trying to portray these women as going against patriarchy and sticking up for eachother, in this situation Celie is doing quite the opposite. I think this is a good example of how women participate in patriarchy, like Johnson has refered to in this article. Celie was basically telling Harpo that beating was the way to go, and that is supporting the patriarical acceptance of making women do what men want them to do by beating them. When Celie started standing up to her husband she had an outburst of deadly rage and everyone was stunned because she has been a quiet woman all her life, taking her beatings without talking back. In this example the men are confirming that Johnsons quote is accurate. The example about Celie I gave refutes Johnsons claim.

Febuary 20, 2010
"What would Parsons say?"

This article does not really support my artifact. The movie is not really a fairy tale like they are talking about in this article. There are a few points that show that these two things do not relate to each other. At the beginning of the article Parson’s says, “Girls come to know that their value lies in men’s desire for them, and the characteristics and qualities that will assure their desirability are revealed in cultural storylines." (136) This quote is one that supports one of the characters in the Color Purple. Shug develops herself into an image for mans desire so she can be famous, even though she has the singing voice; she needs the flashy, revealing clothes too. This article also introduces the term femme fatal, which is directly broken down to fatal female. The discussion we had about a femme fatal was women in these stories that go against other women in hopes of talking over all power. There are quite a few femme fatal’s in fairy tale stories. In Cinderella the femme fatal is the evil step-mother, in Sleeping Beauty the femme fatal is Maleficent, and in The little Mermaid the femme fatal is Ursala. The color purple movie is not really centered around having a specific femme fatal that tries to take over Celie’s power, but Shug Avery is the closest thing to a femme fatal in my artifact. If you compare Shug to all the other women in the movie she is the only woman that flaunts herself. Very good evidence of this is when Shug comes to town the guys all build a juke joint for her to sing at, on opening night the juke joint was so packed with not only men, but women also. In the movie the men were hanging from the rafters and sweating over Shug as she sings. One man watching Shug said, “Girl, I would drink your bath water.” The men would also bring their wives or girlfriends to the juke joint to see Shug sing, and dream that they had enough courage to walk out of the house wearing something like that. Shug is not necessarily out there to get all the women, but she does have a very sexualized reputation to live up to. In the movie when Celie met Shug she said, “ You sure is ugly!” I wonder if that is because Shug wanted to cut Celie down because Albert married Celie. So in a way, at first Shug is portrayed as more of the femme fatal character. There is another quote, “Young girls appropriate the position and subjectivities of the heroine.” (136) In some ways I wonder if Nettie and Celie were not given enough time to be young girls to imagine being recued by a man. Or all the men in their lives were not heroes by any means. The next quote that she mentions that I found really does not relate to the movie is, “Fairy tales in the patriarchal tradition portray women as weak, submissive, dependent, and self-sacrificing, while men are powerful, active, and dominant.” (137) The movie portrays Celie and Nettie as weak and submissive in men’s’ eyes, but I do not think this is what Alice Walker is trying to portray in this story. I think Walker is trying to highlight that these women are getting out of these roles. They are being heroes of themselves and being each others heroes. The next quote that I analyzed is, “…beauty determines a women’s value.” (137) In the movie the color purple beauty determines how you are treated and what you are to men. If you are not beautiful you are a house wife and you look after the children. If you are beautiful you may actually be treated like a wife that gets to enjoy her life. Also, “beautiful females are rewarded.” (137) In this movie the females that are beautiful do get rewarded if they get a good husband that respects and loves them. There is a quote that does not coincide with the movie at all, “Rather than being empowered through sisterhood and community, the heroines in traditional tales are most often isolated…” (138) In this movie women are constantly empowering each other. Shug is always helping Celie with gaining back her sense of identity like when she dresses her up in beautiful clothes and helps her see that her smile is beautiful. Nettie is always trying to encourage Celie through letters, teaching her how to read, and simply being there as much as she can for Celie. The article says, “Furthermore, women suffer at the hands of other women.” (138) Like I mentioned before, in this movie that is not the case, it is the opposite these women make each other’s live better!

Works Cited code Parsons, Linda T. "Ella Evolving: Cinderella Stories and the Construction of Gender-Appropriate code code    Behavior." //Children's Literature in Education// 35.2 (2004): 135-148. Print. code

= = Febuary 28, 2010 "What would Do Rozario say?"

This movie is not a Disney movie; it is a Warner brother’s production. I do see Celie and really (in the end) all these women as princesses. I do not see them (obviously) as real princesses that do not come from a royal background at all, they come from a hard working town that is not run under a royal family, and it is run under a mayor. I also think that Alice Walker didn’t want to portray these women as princesses; she wanted to portray them as strong women who conquered a hard life handed to them, turned that life around and made it better for themselves and each other. She didn’t portray them as needing a prince in night and shining armor to get them out of these bad situations. If I was to put the color purple in the category of Walt’s Princesses or Team Disney’s Princesses, “…when team Disney began to draw the princess, things had changed and the princess herself absorbed some of the exuberance of the femme fatale, while the prince began to be drawn with more personality.” (44) I see this in the Color Purple, a little bit and maybe in a different way. First of all, the men all have their own personalities. Harpo loves Sophia but they get caught up in beating each other because that is what both “Mister” and surprisingly Celie told Harpo to do. I do not think that Celie was the femme fatale in this situation I just think that she knew no better advice to give Harpo, and she knew it was wrong after she said it. Sophia confronted Celie about what she told Harpo to do in the movie Celie replies, “This life is over soon. Heaven lasts forever.” So that is kind of the mindset Celie has been thinking in for her life, as for Sophia, she is totally different. When Shug came to town and Albert took her to stay at his house, he acted like a prince to her; cooked her meals, tried to make her comfortable, and had Celie wait on her. When Shug left to go “become famous” she came back with a husband that really loves her, her real prince. Also, when Sophia came around to see Harpo’s juke joint she came with a man that said, “…it’s my job to love her and take her where she wants to go.” So these princes are defined a bit differently from each other, so that you can tell which ones are the men that beat their women, or give them what they want. As for the women absorbing some of the femme fatale, I believe these women do a little bit when in the end Celie stands up to Albert, when Shug makes up with her father, and when Sophia goes back to Harpo and they have a better relationship with each other than before. In a way they all control their own destiny, their own ending, their own kingdom. (With a little of each other’s help) “Many Disney heroines at times wear the princess mask, for the appellation of princess is not exclusively tied to social status.” (46) Like I said before, Celie became her own individual as she did she started gaining status, having her own house and her own little shop, she never gained a status like Shug did being famous, but she did become more than a house wife that got beat because of no reason. It is hard to relate this article to the Color Purple because this article is taking about a life as a princess and the time that this movie was set around, is not a rich time with a royal family and princes. These women never become princesses; they just get out of the bad situation they are in. This reminds me of a part in the movie where Nettie says, “You gotta fight Celie, you got to!” Then Celie says, “I don’t know how to fight, I just know how to stay alive.” So these women are not looking to find their princes, they are looking to be free from their unfair lives.

Works Cited code Do Rozario, Rebecca-Anne C. "the Princess and the Magic Kingdom: Beyond Nostalgia, the Function of code code    the Disney Princess." //Women's Studies in Communication// 27.1 (2004): 34-57. Print. code

​ March 7, 2010 "What would Hassel Say?"

It is interesting, even though the movie Monsters vs. Aliens is an animated comedy, which is geared towards a younger crowd, and The Color Purple is mainly for adults; they both have characters that are bombarded by patriarchy, and yet they change their patriarchal lifestyle into their own. A monster vs. Aliens is a DreamWorks film that does not fall into the same category of other Dream Works films. As mentioned in the scholarly article, Monsters vs. Aliens, “Early PDI/Dream Works pictures have adhered very closely to the definition of patriarchy…” (2) Monsters vs. Aliens is a spin-off, just like The Color Purple. In Monsters vs. Aliens the main character Susan is getting married to the love of her life, a news reporter that loves his job more then he loves his soon-to-be wife. As Susan is awaiting her wedding to start she gets hit by a meteor that transforms her into a giant, and she is sent off to a jail, basically, where she meets other monsters. As she tries to regain her old life back she is living as a “monster” that fights off an alien invasion. Her size causes Derek to reject her, and she realizes that she does not need him anymore, and that she is “Amazing” as a monster, which she makes perfectly clear in the movie. The color Purple is obviously quite a bit different this story is meant to be a real life story, one that could be based on a true story. Celie is always unfortunate, she gets pregnant from her father, she is not allowed to be educated, and she gets told she is not pretty (By her father). Celie is married off to a man that thinks beating his wife is just what she needs. Susan was never put in that position in the movie, but they did portray Derek as uncaring about her feelings and only concerned about what is good for him, similar to Celies husband. Basically, these two women are fighting the same battle just with different circumstances. There is a concept that could be related to both movies, intra-filmic and extra-filmic anxiety. Intra-filmic anxiety is what the film is trying to tell the viewers, but at the same time the film has some things that contradict what the overall message is. An example of that in the movie The Color Purple, is when Shug is helping Celie gain her identity back, but when she leaves to go sing in New York, Celie does not want her to go she says, “He beat me when you ain’t here.” Shug asks why, Celie replies, “He beat me cause I ain’t you.” Shug leaves anyway. She knows that Celie is getting beat when she is gone, and yet she didn’t take Celie with her off the bat. Why? The whole time in this movie the women are portrayed as each others hero’s, but Shug was not the hero until it got to the point where Celie was about to kill Albert, to me that portrays somewhat of an intra-filmic anxiety. In the end I do think that Shug starts to understand what she is doing is wrong because when she comes back from her big show in the big cities, she is married and she started dressing more modest, not so flashy. She also tries very hard to reunite with her father, who is the minister at the church in the neighborhood. They never identify what really happened between Shug and her father in the movie, but it seems pretty obvious that her father does not support the lifestyle that Shug was living and in the end Shug and her father reunite. Also when Shug comes back she decides to take Celie with her, I wonder if her intention was to help Celie out because she had been sleeping with Celies husband and indirectly caused her beatings. I believe that in the end Shug turned her life around for the better in the context of this movie.  Extra-filmic anxiety is when something is happening outside the film that could affect how the film is acted out or the actors and actresses attitudes within the movie, and honestly I am not aware of any extra-filmic anxiety outside the movie.

Works Cited Hassel, Holly. "Susan Murphy, Ginormica, and Gloria Steinem: Feminist Consciousness-Raising as  Science Fiction in Monsters vs. Aliens." //Monsters vs. Aliens//: 1-21. Print.

 March 13, 2010 "What Would Schrum say?

This article is talking about the Seventeen magazines, what kind of magazine it was, when the magazine came out and why that is significant, and what it did for teen culture. This magazine came out during World War 2, and they say in the magazine this is when teenagers become consumers of culture. “Even during shortages, retail sales increased because employment opportunities and real wages rose and translated into consumer buying power for men, women, and children.” (135) This article goes into detail about how the presence of this magazine influenced American teen culture. Some of the very interesting things that the article talks about are things like how although it was during the war, “With rising incomes and limited durable goods, more money was available for amenities.” (136) This gave teenagers the money to go out and buy things, and become good consumers which helped the economy. This was one significant step in creating teenage culture. In addition to that, “Other factors include teenagers’ decreasing presence in the full-time work force and greater high school attendance.” There were a few things that caused kids to have a desire to get a higher education. Also one thing I noticed in this article was that, “Enrollment for girls roughly equaled that of boys.” That was a big thing! That means that both women and men were equally going to school. So not only did the teens desire more to go to school but it was more accepted to send women to school. Not only was this time period an emergence of teen culture, but of women culture and equality. The last factor that contributed to creating teenage culture high school, “…was the central meeting place for teenagers…” (137) So this meeting place allowed teenagers to bond with other teenagers that they related to, they developed their identity by associating with many different kinds of people. When I try to relate these sorts of things to the Color Purple, I have a hard time because of the fact that these are totally different time periods. In the movie, The Color Purple Nettie and Celie don’t even get a chance to be teenagers! In this time period and culture you were very lucky to go to school if you were women. Nettie was beautiful and smart so her father sent her to school and didn’t allow just any average joe marry her. The majority of teenage women did not fall into Nettie’s privileged category. I think that if this magazine was around during this time it would not be an additional gateway to teen culture. I could see it being forbidden in any household and most women would not even be able to read it especially as they are talking care of children, tending to their husbands, and taking care of the household. Also, I am not sure if Nettie and Celie would even be interested in that kind of magazine because in the article it says that, “The magazine’s readers were mostly white middle and upper-middle class.” (139) So these magazines may not spark an interest in the lives of Celie and Nettie, because they cannot relate to them. So this all comes down to the fact that all the teenagers other than white middle-upper class will not get the benefits from these magazines that this whole article is talking about, and in turn not become a part of the teenage consumer era that they are referring to.

Works Cited code Schrum, Kelly. "Teenage Girls' Culture and 'Seventeen' Magazine, 1944-1950." //"Teena Means Business"//: code code 134-160. Print. code

April 2, 2010 "What would Zipes say?"

In the article that Zipes writes titled, The Phenomenon of harry Potter, or Why All the Talk?, The author identifies the Harry Potter series as “…formulaic and sexist.” Not only does this author identify ways that this series is sexist but he also gives some strong evidence to why this series has become phenomenal. It would be very hard to directly relate Harry Potter to The Color Purple movie, but there are many terms I could take from this article and use that to reflect how that would relate to The Color Purple, and also I can analyze some of the strong claims this author makes. First of all Zipes uses the word occurrence in describing “…two common meanings for the word phenomenon.” He defines occurrence as, “…change…quite often the event is striking.” The second point he uses to describe a phenomenon is, “…the term is used to describe an extraordinary person…” I believe The Color Purple story and movie is very much a phenomenon in its own way. Of course, nothing like Harry Potter because they are two completely different situations, With two completely different messages. If we analyze some of the characters in The Color Purple, I see an extraordinary person in all of the women. There is not one super extraordinary person like Harry Potter, but there is something extraordinary about each of the main women in this story, and in the end they all rub off on each other, and they each become extraordinary in their own way. Celie deep down is a very caring, modest, reserved character. She is caring in the way that she raises children that are not even hers (although she may not have a choice), she puts up with an abusive husband for years, she tends to any visitors that come along in her household including Alfred’s mistress. She is modest throughout this story in the way that she does not use questionable works, gestures or dress. She is also reserved, maybe because of the circumstances she was put in, but overall she seemed very “go-with-the-flow” and listens to what she is told. Shug is a very different kind of occurrence; she is spunky, flashy, and very confident in herself. She has had spunk throughout the whole movie when she says that Celie is ugly as Albert and Harpo drag her intoxicated butt into the house. She throws Albert’s food tray out the door (I guess she didn’t like her eggs well done), and during her performances she sings a lot of upbeat songs that require attitude and spunk. She wears some flashy, more appealing to a man’s eye outfits, also the scene when Celie is uncomfortably trying on some of her clothes the closet was full of shiny clothes. She seems very confident in herself in every way, she knows that where she goes people will follow and when she sings people will listen, she will always have a place where she fits in. Nettie in the movie is the woman that is given more potential than she might want, and has such a passion for her sister. Nettie is always given better then Celie, not forced into marriage, educated, free from her father. She seems to enjoy learning, but she is portrayed enjoying teaching Celie more than anything. Sophia is a powerful character that will not let anyone walk all over her. As the movie progresses it seems like as these women are going through different situations, they are becoming more like each other. Sophia finds her modest side like Celie, Shug finds that she is really meant for marriage and finds her modest side like Celie, and Nettie enjoys helping raise Celie’s children in Africa just as Celie is doing back home. Celie finds confidence like Shug and a fire like Sophia to stand up to her husband and never back down, “to the death”. So I really think that these women all in one illustrate the change, and the extraordinary person this concept refers to. In a different perspective this movie is not an ordinary movie for in the time period that it was created at all! The Color Purple movie was filmed in the summer of 1985, but it was published in 1982. During the 70’s was when integration was happening and black people were starting to become actual people. This book came out shortly after those things were going on and the book was very much “in the raw.” Alice Walker didn’t sugar coat the experiences that her anesestors went through, she exposed every terrible thing that happened to them regardless of how exposed their lives were. In the movie Celie is portrayed as being raped numerous times by her father and bearing her father’s children. She is also hit many times and abused in every way by her husband. The movie showed her being sexually taken advantage of and she even described her feelings, “…it feels like he’s going’ to the toilet on me.” There is also a scene of attraction between Celie and Shug. So during this time period it is a very serious movie to watch and it shows all of the situations that are describe possibly in more detail then the book. The quote in this article that sticks out to me the most is, “Her books are phenomenal because, they, too, are ordinary and yet have become extraordinary.” That is an interesting quote to really think about. This can be taken two ways, although this might not be so in the context of this article. For The Color Purple I see it as, Walkers story is phenomenal because it is about ordinary women that when joined together become extraordinary. That’s just a thought.

Works Cited code Zipes. "The Phenomenon of Harry Potter, or Why All the Talk?" //Sticks and Stones//: n. pag. Print. code

April 3, 2010 "What would Heilman and Donaldson say?"

This article, similar to Zipes article digs deep into the Harry Potter series and presents the parts that they believe to be gender bias and sexist representations of the characters. Again, because these two stories have completely different stories, it is hard to directly relate any of the characters in The Color Purple to Harry Potter. Also, The Color Purple obviously shows a lot of sexism and gender discrimination because of the time period and the culture that we see in the movie that eventually changes. This story is based on a lot of true experiences that African American women when through during this time. There are some things in this article that I can relate to The Color Purple. The first one is, “Gender representations are personal ways to understand ourselves, others, and society but they are also impersonal reflections of macro-level power relations.” I do not think this is true when it comes to The Color Purple movie, in the movie the gender representations are about women transforming them and finding deeper meaning in their own lives. The Color Purple because it was a best seller, a musical, and a motion picture made this into a popular representation of macro-level power relations. These characters didn’t see themselves as what society saw them as. They saw themselves as better, and more than what was socially acceptable for them. In this way, The Color Purple refutes this quote.”Part of the pleasure comes from the “comfort” of the stereotypes and the recognizable character types and situations.” Nothing about the beginning of Color Purple is pleasurable and comfortable at all, the story of these women’s lives how hard it was too emotionally survive the raping, beatings, and all kinds of abuse. That is what this story is meant to do, we are meant to feel uncomfortable while watching it. That just shows that what is going on in The Color Purple is not to give us something that we can relate to if we live in a culture like Celie and Nettie but understand the shift in time periods and how women started to gain their identities. There are two words that this author uses to, “…describes two types of literary pleasure, plaisir and jouissance.” The author describes plaisir as, “A reader feels plaisir when familiar cultural and ideological situations are mirrored in literature.” It is possible for a reader/watcher to feel great pleasure in The Color Purple although the characters go through some rough and unimaginable things. I felt a sense of plaisir as I watched the movie, and saw the women conquer, like Celie standing up to AlbIert and his children, also, for Shug to reunite with her father and Sophia with her family. The next type of pleasure the author describes, “The type of pleasure called jouissance, in contrast, “unsettles the reader, jarring him out of cultural assumptions, bringing her to the brink of abyss.” This is the main type of pleasure we find when we watch or read The Color Purple, when Celie is hit, all the young marriages, and raping going on as if it was a sport. One of the first scenes in The Color Purple is when Celie is giving birth to a baby and her father comes in and snatches her newborn right out of her arms. In the movie they didn’t show the baby physically coming out of her body but they did show Celie in the birthing position and Nettie wringing out bloody cloths. I would think that any young adult and for sure any male would be uncomfortable seeing that and any young mother would feel uncomfortable watching Celies child get taken out of her arms. There is also a scene when Celie was married away to Albert where they are in the bed having sex and it seems like Celie is just there while Albert seems to be pretending like she is not there at all. She looks like she is having a terribly uncomfortable time almost scared that whole scene. That would make several people uncomfortable to see a sex scene especially because Celie was still very young, and people are not used to thinking about younger people having sex. There is also a scene that makes you think that there is an intimate relationship between Celie and Shug, in that time period, and even now that would make people feel uncomfortable and wonder.

Works Cited code Heilmand, Elizabeth E, and Trevor Donaldson. "From Sexist to (sort -of) Feminist Representations of code code    Gender in the Harry Potter Series." //From Sexist to (sort -of) Feminist Representations of// code code //Gender in the Harry Potter Series//: 139-159. Print. code

media type="youtube" key="uALf_v0zxgE" height="385" width="480" This video is an interveiw with Alice Walker the author of The Color Purple

April 21, 2010 "What would Inness say?" This article talks about Female action figures in the stores. When I think about the time period, The Color Purple was made in the kids didn’t get to be kids for very long and they sure couldn’t afford things like GI Joes and dolls like that. There is one scene in the movie where there is a young girl that can barely talk and she is playing with a raggedy homemade doll. “Action girl, [who] more [resemble] G.I. Joe than Barbie – have the licensing power today.” “They appear every bit as tough as their mal comrades and every bit as ready to go to battle.” I have a strong feeling that those dolls will not be acceptable toys to play with because they do not teach you how to cook, clean, or be submissive because I am guessing that the G. I. Joe girls they are talking about in this article are buff and have a very strong dominate appearance that God forbid would influence these girls to think they can be equal to men at all. There is another quote in the article that says, “The world of superhero play is recognized as an important part for maturing for boys and girls.” This somewhat makes sense but then how are the men in The Color Purple learning to be aggressive and the women learning to be housewives? For this generation it seems like dolls and action figures could be an influence on children, but I think that it is just an addition to what we have learned from everyday life for so long. “When women do appear, they are frequently secondary to men; they are generally helpmeets to more important males or play clearly subordinate roles.” This reminds me of in The Color purple when Celie calls her husband “Mister” and when her husband wants her attention he screams “Celie.” Albert is not addressing Celie as “Ma’am” or “Mrs” he calls her by her first name establishing her role as subordinate. Also, Celie is always coming to him, waiting on his call showing that she is secondary to him. There is also a few cases where Celie is always standing behind Albert or behind a screen door, as if she was cowering behind him as secondary. Some of the quotes in this article that if find to support The Color Purple characters are, “Girls also learn about the importance of social relationships between men and women and the significance of males.” Throughout the movie the women knew that overall males were the primary when it came to everything. I think as the movie progressed the women understood that it is the relationships that they have with each other that can really lift their spirits. For example, when Sophia was forced to be a nanny to the mayor and his wife she was having a hard time finding all the groceries for the mayor’s wife and Celie was there and took the list and picked out all the things listed on the paper. In addition, if it was not for Shug I don’t believe Celie would have a way out of the terrible life she was living with Albert. I think that in the end of the movie Celie understands that Albert really did need her to survive and she understood how important her social relationship to him was, that doesn’t make him beating her right it just shows that Celie did understand the importance of social relationships when she couldn’t see it before because Albert was so cruel to her.

Works Cited code Inness, Sherrie A. "'It's a girl Thing': Though Female Action Figures in the Toy Store." //Chapter 3//: code code 75-91. Print. code

April 25, 2010 "What would Inness say"

Relating The Color Purple to “Anti-barbies”

First of all I am completely surprised! Who in their right mind would spend this much on dolls, clothing, and miniature furniture?! For characters in the color purple they could not spend that kind of money on dolls and accessories. This article is about the American Girl doll collection and the intending influence it has on girls. They are described as, “anti-barbies..dolls that could teach American history, family values, and self reliance.” Obviously as stated, they are meant to be dolls that are not like barbies. To me, just the fact that there is a company trying to offer children and their parents a different alternative to big-boobed adult dolls for girls to play with is great! The problem is the price, in the article it mentioned the price of a doll being close to $100! The price for clothes and any type of accessories racked up a very expensive bill. It is hard because a lot of mothers want their children to dream and have fun playing, but they don’t want their children playing with barbies that are very sexualized compared to the American Girl dolls. For the little girls in the color purple I figured that if they could have a doll like this that they could maybe aspire to, like other girls aspire to barbies, they could still play and dream without making it seem like they are dreaming too far or dreaming out of their social norms. What I mean by this is that if a little black girl in the color purple movie was looking at a Barbie doll, trying to relate to it. They would have a lot of trouble and I don’t think they would be allowed to play with dolls like barbies. But American girls dolls have a different sort of dress that does not make them flashy and questionable for the type of black girls shown in The Color Purple. There is another quote in the reading that says, “…high cost of its goods, which are marketed towards upper-middle-class families, presumably because only they would be able to afford items…” That just shows that yet again these types of opportunities are not available to the poor class even though as I was saying before the poor class would be the ones who could relate to these dolls more than barbies. There was also another interesting quote that caught my eye, “We’re in the little girl business, not the doll business. We want to have a positive impact on their lives.” This may be true in the sense that they want to portray real girls in doll form to give to other girls instead of the ideally perfect adult women in doll form, but they are also wanting to make a positive impact on girls lives and yet their products are so expensive they cannot reach other of the girls…just the upper-middle class girls. Now that’s unfortunate. If they really want to touch girls lives they should somehow make this product affordable to everyone like maybe making mini American Girl Dolls that are really tinny and half the price, I am not sure but in order to make an impact you must reach everyone, and if they think that the upper-middle class is everyone, well that is just unfortunate.

Works Cited code Inness, Sherrie A. "The American Girls Collection and Political Ideologies." //"Anti-Barbies"//: code code 164-180. Print. code

May 2, 2010

Relating The Color Purple to Games Black Girls Play

With relating the Color Purple to the article Games Black Girls Play I see to things within the movie that I will touch on that relates to African American music portrayed in this film. Many scenes in this movie Celie and Nettie were playing a hand jive game, which I think is more than a game for these two girls, I think it is more like a bond that keeps them together and expresses how much they mean to each other. The second very powerful part of the movie that I would like to talk about is Shugs song that she wrote for Celie. I believe that this is a very empowering point for both of the women, for Shug to express what she feels for Celie, and for Celie to feel valued. These two very important parts of the movie are expressed through music and that just shows that music is such a big part of the African American culture. Within this article the author sites another source that she interprets and relates to her case, “Gilroy is pointing to the fact that a whole world of communication exists beyond the analysis and interpretation of song lyrics or people’s words, a world that resists verbal language, a world signified instead through the interpretive and dramatic realms of rhythm, gesture, and movement.” I do believe that this is portrayed in the movie The Color Purple, possibly in many cases, but one that really sticks out for me is when Celie went to the Juke Joint on Shug’s opening night and Shug sings a song that is dedicated to Celie. (movie is on the top of the page) There is a whole world that Shug is trying to communicate with that song out loud and in front of everyone. There is such a strong relationship that those two women have expecially for Shug to write a song and sing it in front of everyone. It probably would have been a lot easier and a lot less risky to just tell Celie what she meant to Shug but instead she shares her feelings through rhythm. During that song Shug was really showing love to Celie by making eye contact with her and moving her hand away from her smile and telling her to “shake your shimmy” which I believe was to bestow some sort of confidence in Celie. That is how Shug is communicating the world that she thinks that both her and Celie and all the “sista’s” should be exsiting in through that kind of movement and those kinds of gestures. The key word in that song is “Sista” which could have a very deep meaning also, the fact that that song could be sung to any women that was in the juke joint could be another world of communication that is showing that all of us “sista’s” need to stick together and bring each other up Shug could not communicate that out loud to Celie, and example of this is when Shug left for the big cities, she could barely say, “Good bye.” To Celie because if she did she was afraid that Albert would not trust Shug anymore. “…offering a way to explore the musical and social relations between females and their male counterparts, as well as examining the ways girls encode masculinity and femininity in their embodied and linguistic play.” This quote is from Olly Wilson, a man that analyzed black music. If you pick apart this quote pretty deeply, I see that the hand jive and Shugs song could be related to this. As for the hand jive I am not sure it really shows the social relations between males and females, but only within the movie only Celie and Nettie do any sort of hand jive while all the men are working or probably talking at the pub. The hand jive more signifies the relationship between the females and what they have and cherish with one another. Also hand jive is a very feminine thing to do, even within the movie. Females hand jive, clean and be submissive (most of the time) and males work and beat on their wives (most of the time). As for Shugs song, she talks about the social relationships between men and women, “No low life’s gonna run me around.” Also between women and women, “Sista, were two of the same” and, “Sista, I’m keepin’ my eye on you.” It also supports the second point in that Shug identifies that us women should stick together through song and encouraging words (feminine) while the advice that men give to each other in a very tough way is, “beat her.”(masculine)

Works Cited

"Let Women Jump." //Games Black Girls Play//: n. pag. Print.