The queer icon spoke out about how the 2023 adaptation of the classic novel doesn’t honour the queer relationship at its core
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY WARNER BROS
Alice Walker’s canonical classic The Color Purple has been revered for decades due to its central queer storyline. One of the pivotal parts of the plot is the relationship between Celie and Shug Avery. Throughout adaptations of the book such as Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film, this queerness has often been watered down.
When it was announced that The Color Purple would be getting a film adaptation of the Broadway musical, LGBTQIA audiences held their breath in anticipation that the sapphic storyline was finally going to get the justice it deserved.
LGBTQIA icon Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who famously came out by wearing a dress that said “Queer” on the sleeve at an Essence magazine launch, has recently spoken out about the new film’s depiction of queerness in an interview with Buzzfeed. Aunjanue plays the role of Mama in the 2023 adaptation by Blitz Bazawule.
“The Color Purple is a book about Black lesbians,” Aunjanue explained. “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.”
She continued: “People can try to say the story is about sisterhood, but it’s a story about Black lesbians. Period. What is hard for me is that when we have those spaces where we can honour the truth of that, we walk away from it. We suppress it. We hide it. We sanitise it.”
The star continued saying that she didn’t think that the new film had done enough to honour the queerness in Alice Walker’s novel.
“Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple with intention because she was writing about herself,” Aunjanue said. “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.”
Aunjanue also revealed that watching Margaret Avery kiss Whoopi Goldberg in Spielberg’s 1985 film felt “astonishing, exciting, and affirming”.
“It showed me the possibility of myself and the possibility to love a woman who loves me in return,” she added. “I’ll never get over that. It lives with me.”
Talking further about the literary classic, Aunjanue concluded that it was imperative “to have Black women and Black queer women in the making of it” in order to do justice to the queer storyline.
The Color Purple is out now.
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