Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor addressed the discussion surrounding the erasure of queer romance in the new adaptation of The Color Purple, telling BuzzFeed News she feels the film "sanitized" the lesbian romance between characters Celie and Shug Avery.
The Oscar nominee, who is bisexual and also appears in the film, explained that the film took away from the focus of the lesbian relationship at the center of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel.
Ellis-Taylor said:
“'The Color Purple' is a book about Black lesbians."
“Whether the choice was made to focus on that or not in the cinematic iterations of 'The Color Purple,' it’s still a movie about Black lesbians. People can try to say the story is about sisterhood, but it’s a story about Black lesbians. Period.”
She continued:
“What is hard for me is that when we have those spaces where we can honor the truth of that, we walk away from it. We suppress it. We hide it. We sanitize it."
“In the sanitizing of it, someone like me — knowing that 'The Color Purple' is a book about Black lesbians — looks at that and thinks, ‘You’re sanitizing me and my friends, and other people who I love and adore. Why?’"
"[If] you don’t want to be offensive, then you’re saying to the world that I’m offensive.”
Ellis-Taylor also spoke on the effect Steven Spielberg's 1985 adaptation starring Whoopi Goldberg had on her.
“I knew that watching Margaret Avery kiss Whoopi Goldberg was astonishing, exciting, and affirming."
"It showed me the possibility of myself and the possibility to love a woman who loves me in return. I’ll never get over that. It lives with me.”
She shared her disappointment that the lesbian relationship in the new adaptation wasn't the primary focus of the film.
“Why are we talking about it almost in a sort of incidental way?”
“Alice Walker wrote 'The Color Purple' with intention because she was writing about herself. I just want that part of the book to be portrayed in the films with intention, instead of it being incidental."
"I want people to walk away from 'The Color Purple' thinking, ‘I just saw a movie about Black lesbians.’"
"I don’t think that has happened.”
Ellis-Taylor also expressed the impact of having people with personal connections involved with the creation of the film.
“You have to have Black women and Black queer women in the making of it."
“Neither one of the cinematic iterations of 'The Color Purple' [had Black or Black queer women creating it]."
"The first one was written and directed by a white man. The remake was written and directed by a Black man. I think the writer might be a queer man, but it ain’t the same.”
People on social media agreed with Ellis-Taylor's position on the prominence of the relationship in the film.
Ellis-Taylor finished the topic by expressing her desire for someone to "be brave" and accurately portray the story that Walker told in her novel.
“Somebody has to be brave."
“Alice Walker wrote a book about Black lesbians, and we’re still telling that story today."
"'The Color Purple' is one of the most important books in the canon of world literature. People are still buying the book. There is business in bravery.”
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