Originally Posted by
BrazenMuse
In the hands of Perry, one of Hollywood's most conservative black evangelical voices, Shange's feminist message of gender equality, reproductive justice and sexual liberation has been seriously compromised.
Perry's brand of female empowerment has always been more about his ability to tell black women's stories (even, as in the case of Madea, when the women aren't real) than, as Courtney Young writes for the Nation, "revolutionizing the marginalized way that black womanhood has been portrayed in popular culture." By trafficking in old stereotypes of the asexual, black Mammy, as in Madea -- or newer stereotypes like the castrating yet professionally ambitious black woman, like the character Jo (played by Janet Jackson) that he adds to For Colored Girls -- Perry's vision primarily reproduces rather than reduces negative representations of black women on-screen.
By contrast, Shange literally sought to diversify the representations of black women -- thus the seven colored girls as narrator -- as well as provide her audience with a certain brand of black feminism: cosmopolitan, sexual, collaborative and freeing. But Perry's For Colored Girls rewrites many of Shange's most powerful scenes, replacing sexual autonomy with moral approbation, substituting female resistance with victim blaming.
This dichotomy is especially acute in the film's adaptation of the Lady in Yellow monologue. In the play, she delivers a lush monologue about her past experience of cruising, dancing and losing her virginity on graduation night. In the film, these same words are now recited by a teenage girl, Nyla (Tessa Thompson), whose bold act of sexual possession is eventually mocked by her mother, Alice (a new character introduced by Perry and played by Whoopi Goldberg).
But even more violently, under Perry's disapproving directorial eye, Nyla is punished for her sexual curiosity. Her beautiful story of sexual awakening becomes merged with the original Lady in Blue's tale of a pre-Roe v. Wade back-alley abortion. The end result is a moralizing sermon against black women's promiscuity and sexual agency, and more subtly against choice itself.
All the pain, without black feminist pleasure.
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:biglaugha
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