Shug Avery The Reconciliation: "The Color Purple" Movie

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Fri Jun 26, 2020, 03:54 PM - Edit history (2)

Beautiful scene. "God is trying to tell you something." Prodigal children and reconciliation, a film that tells a powerful human story by director Steven Spielberg and based on the Pulitzer Prize- Winning novel by Alice Walker.

Film clips & info., https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088939/

Novel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Color_Purple_(film)

‘The Color Purple’ Revisited: Why Spielberg’s Movie Is Still Problematic and Meaningful to Many Black Women
IndieWire gathered a panel of several black women scholars to assess the legacy of the Alice Walker adaptation for its 35th anniversary. By Tambay Obenson, IndieWire, Apr 3, 2020.
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/the-color-purple-debate-anniversary-1202217786/

Shug Avery role casting for "The Color Purple," with director Steven Spielberg.


- ‘Color Purple’ nominee Margaret Avery sees same Hollywood bias three decades later,' LA Times, 2016.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-conversation-margaret-avery-20160228-story.html

[cilla4progress]

1. Time for a re-watch, I think.

Thanks for the reminder!

[pnwest]

2. It sounds like such an uninspired, pat response when

someone asks me what’s my favorite movie, like I’m trying to show how “woke” I am - but since the day I saw this movie, it’s been my favorite. Every time I see it, I see a new detail, a new nuance in the story. Absolutely brilliant piece of art. Whoopie and Oprah both are just transformed. You completely forget that they are Whoopie and Oprah.

[appalachiablue]

3. Agree, a truly wonderful production and story with

so much depth, love and beauty. Superb characters and casting.

[Staph]

4. Fashion bloggers Tom and Lorenzo started a new series of iconic looks in film.

And one of their first is Shug Avery's red dress.

https://tomandlorenzo.com/2020/06/one-iconic-look-shug-averys-miss-celies-blues-dress-and-headpiece-in-the-color-purple-1985/

. . . .

Bear in mind that when we first see this dress, Shug is singing a raunchy blues song and every man in the juke joint is declaring her sexual attractiveness. “Girl, I’d drink your bathwater.” “You could catch a fish without a hook.” The dress IS sex (as red dresses so often are on film).

She is the only woman in the scene with bare arms and visible cleavage. The only one covered in sweat. To Celie, this dress represents a boldness and a freedom she desires with every part of herself, which is why it’s so powerful when she puts it on herself, at Shug’s insistence.

Celie wearing the dress is a poignant symbol of sisterhood and shared experiences, but it’s also a fulfillment of a wish on Celie’s part; a desire to live inside the skin of this amazingly free and powerful woman. Because the dress is all about sex, the conversation immediately turns toward that subject, with Shug realizing that Celie’s never had an orgasm, due in part to her inability to see herself as desirable or beautiful.

The dress itself serves as the tool by which Celie finally experiences joy, achieves sexual fulfillment and gains an understanding of her worth. It would take another decade and a half of story time before Celie could enact those lessons, but the seed of her independence was planted here, on this night, when she put on Shug Avery’s red sequined dress.

[pressbox69]

5. I thought it deserved

Best Picture that year, edging out "Prizzi's Honor"and far more deserving than the actual winner "Out Of Africa."

[appalachiablue]

6. Wonderful movie, but really shafted on many awards nominations.