BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
50th Anniversary
September 5th, 2007
I meant to celebrate my 50th post last week when I got to 50, but I was busy researching and posting on important topics, and I forgot. I’m just now getting to it after post 56.
To celebrate, I’m going to repost my first article (not counting the opening welcome post) that I logged back in February; which most of you were not around to see at the time.
Thank you all who have contributed to the growing success with your comments. We’ll do this again in 50 more post; well, 44.
Is Dream Girls This Generations Color Purple?
By: D. Yobachi Boswell
With contributions from Freelance Writer Tressie McMillian and
Black Literature Professor Stacie McCormick
The natural inclination is to compare Dreamgirls to Sparkle, the 1976 black film classic about a singing group of three sisters in Harlem. Both are about young girl groups struggling to make it. They even take place in the same time period since Dreamgirls is a retrospective back to the 60’s and 70’s Motown flavor and era. Certainly the two can legitimately be compared, and have many lines of similarity that can be delved into; but the question I ask here has to do more with cultural significance rather than surface plot traits.
The film The Color Purple, adapted from the Novel of the same name by distinguished African American author Alice Walker, explores the inner emotions and purview of a series of women, and their battles to capture their humanity foremost, and further to capture the love of their husbands, fathers; and also their trials in trying to do right by their children and reconcile their families. It demonstrates their strivings to become whole persons, to succeed as mothers, to succeed professionally in a world that professional work was scarcely a woman’s place, to succeed as women; and finally to find their place in the world and to be secure in themselves and their surroundings.
For the ladies of The Color Purple some of their dreams were largely simple; including some things we take for granted in modern society, but in other ways their dreams surround overcoming pathologies that are still pungent and that women must deal with still today. Dreamgirls starts off as a dream for glamour and glory, success and fame in the entertainment industry; but evolves into a story about girls growing into their woman-hood, and then as women fighting for empowerment, fighting relationship love-fallacies, and attempting to overcome abuse of the heart; albeit not the brutal physical abuse and all encompassing demeaning mental abuse Color Purple’s women endured. Yet, it all follows the same general area of exploration.
Of course the Dreamgirls haven’t had life quite as hard as did the ladies in The Color Purple. Though both films touch on some similar issues of black-female disempowerment; the dream girls don’t suffer the same level of indignity; nor was their climb to enfranchisement as steep, but again, the same basic elements are present.
These movies do though take place a couple of generations apart; and almost by default rural woman of the most maligned race in the south during the early 20th century had a more arduous life to confront than would city girls of the 60s. Yet certainly being a brown girl in the racially segregated 60s still posed great challenges. This is 50 years later - this is like the lives of the granddaughters of Celie, Nettie and Shug.
Don’t misunderstand my position. I’m not even comparing the quality or veracity of the two films. I harbor no inclination that Dreamgirls is as good as The Color Purple which is practically a master piece. Dreamgirls is a confection, a confection with some good underlining substance, but a confection and a spectacle nonetheless; whereas The Color purple was deeper, with it’s story and characters more developed, and their feelings and psychologies more intensely explored. Again, here the thing is how similarly Dreamsgirls might effect the cultural landscape for this generation in like fashion as did The Color Purple the last.
How I come to begin to see this parallel cultural affect starts with the directors. The parralells of these two stories, based on black women and exploring their empowerment to their varying degrees, starts with them both being directed by previously successful white filmmakers: Color Purple director Steven Spielberg having been outrageously successful with Indiana Jones and ET; and Bill Condon being the Screenwriter and director of Dreamgirls, having been the Screenwriter for the very successful silver screen version of the musical Chicago.
From there we see an unusual situation for black film, especially black film that is anything other than silly (and often bamboozling) slapstick type comedy – the white media has given great attention to these movies. Not only pre-release attention, but prominent awards nominations as well. The Color Purple won 1 out of 5 Golden Glob nominations and garnished 11 Oscar awards nominations, though snubbed by the Academy; nonetheless, this level of recognition through even nominations is pretty much unparallel for a film about black people. Dreamgirls received 5 Goldend Glob Nominations and 3 wins, and with 8 nods, Dreamgirls leads the Oscar nominations just as The Color Purple did in ’86 – again other than The Color Purple, this is pretty well unprecedented for black film; which has me thinking that black stories only become even semi-relevant to white people if a white man plays a strong hand in creating the story for the screen, but I digress.
A national newspaper story I read the day after the Golden Globes were given out said something to the affect that Dreamgirls did not quite make a splash at the box office, but 67 million dollars after one week of full release for a non-cliché (ie black people bucking their eyes and flipping over couches) story about black people is a big number. All things are relative. The Color Purple performed similarly for its time.
It’s hard to determine yet, but the real test will be how do blacks in general, and young black women in specific relate to the Dreamgirl characters and to the movie overtime. We’ll have to wait awhile to see if it’s still holding strong at DVD release time, and then wait five years to see if catch-phrases, characters and parts from the movie become cultural reference. You can simply blurt out a phrase from The Color Purple in a room full of black folks, and with no explanation, almost everyone will know what you’re referring to.
I was at a Wendy’s here in Nashville about a week ago, at 28th and Jefferson by Tennessee State, and witness three black boys about the agae of 10 with a female teenager. The three boys were clowing around and one begins to blurt out “and you, and you and you”. I did not realize he was imitating a portion of the And I’m Telling You song from Dreamgirls, that is belted out by the Effie character, until he got to the “you’re going to love me” part. And though I had faintly heard some music playing over the resturant speakers, nor had I noticed that And I’m Telling You was playing at that moment, being his empitus for imitating it. He then said, “my momma watches that movie every day” (bootleg obviously being that it is stillin the theatres and is months from DVD/video release).
Hearing this young chocolate skinned black boy speak of his mother watching that film everday rememinded me of this black boy at that same age having a momma who watched The Color Purple literally EVERY – SINGLE –DAY; or at least almost thereabout. And no, we didn’t bootleg it, we taped it off of HBO.
This antidote further illuminates what I was already beginning to see with the cultural reaction to Dreamgirls.
In response to my ideal that The Color Purple and Dreamgirls follow linear themes, writer Tressie McMillian wrote in response “If viewed as a segmented epic, I can see these girls living out the dreams and fears of their grandmothers. I imagine them to be the children of that generation that migrated North, taking the country with them - as seen in the value assigned to “having a man”; because in the end that seems to be the black woman’s story in America - our wanting to be recognized. If it can’t be garnered from the world, we’ll transfer that desire to a man, ANY man when we don’t know better, and thus the reason we feel heartbreak so much deeper; and the reason Effie had a song to sing. Our hearts break more profoundly because we need to be loved most desperately.”
It’s interesting to note that Dreamgirls started as a Broadway play debuting in 1981 and was release as a movie in December 2006; while conversely The Color Purple was first seen as a movie in 1985 and then release on Broadway as a play a year to the month before the Theatrical release of Dreamgirls.
Though Dreamgirls is not new, it is new to the broader culture, as not nearly most people see Broadway plays. Further, it’s being brought back to life for a new generation. This cross convergence of these two stories along with others such as the aforementioned Sparkle, Lady Sings the Blues and others that depict the striving and dreams of black woman are an elevation from the long standing and still typical character pigeonholing of black women as the whore or the black mammies (see Eddie Murphy’s Norbit for the latter).
There are many more detailed theme and character comparisons between The Color Purple and Dreamgirls, not the least of: Effie to Sophia; with overlaps of Celie, Deena to Celie, Curtis to Albert/Mister, Lorrell to Squeaky, and so on; but keeping with the focus of the piece I’d like to draw to a conclusion with the focus of eyeing the social significance that Dreamgirls may or may not come to hold over the coming years. If I can walk into a room full of black people 10 years from now and say “Jimmy wanna rib, Jimmy wanna steak” and without explanation have everybody respond “Jimmy want some of yo chocolate cake”, I’ll take it that The Color Purple torch has been passed.
Edit: Note that this piece was written and originally published in the Nashville Pride before the Oscars aired.
Congratulations to Dreamgirls for winning for Sound Mixing and Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer Hudson). Not that I begin to think this shows that racial respect has fully arrived; but at least the mainstream culture has responded better 20 years late than it did to The Color Purple.
And Dreamgirls still got snubbed on the best song award – GET OUTTA HERE!!!
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7 Responses to “50th Anniversary”
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About The Blog
Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
I created this site to give new voice to socio-political issues that are in need of thoughtful consideration and redress.
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Here’s to another 50 posts bud! Keep up the good blog. I have personally classified u as my personal blog columnist.
Chief Exec BJ
Obakeng
‘Precaite man. I’m glad you enjoy my scribblings.
Happy Anniversary may you have many more. Awesome , movie.
Carry one and keep up the good work.
congratson your 50th post!! keep doing you!!
Thank you both, I appreciate your participation.
50 posts is that all. I just kid your post are far more insightful than mine. Congrats! I hope to see more!
On a side note: you write well about women issues. When most men try to delve into the psyche of women, they some how just miss the target. I think it takes great depth and observation to be able to write about women in such an objective manner.I almost can’t debate with you.
Mrs. Grapevine, what’s funny is I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a misogynist.
Even though I’m a Hip Hop fiend, and have been since at least 10, I was a soul music lover first; and I’ve never shied away from listening to music of women who express their inner emotion; and those like Lauryn Hill, for instance, who can articulately examine their own psyche. With 25 years of absorbing that, you pick up on some things. Then I’m an observant person so I listen to and hear women.
Plus, at least in part, I’ve seen The Color Purple about 40 times. We had gotten our first VCR machine not to long before that movie debuted on HBO, and damn if we didn’t tape it. My moms watched that joint damn near every day for a couple of years.
Anyway, thanks for the compliments on my writing. I’ve really worked at it over the years.