15 The Color Purple (1985)
Oppression and Internalized Racism in The Color Purple
By Olivia Halbritter
One of Stephen Spielberg’s most underrated movies is The Color Purple, his eighth film, stars some of the most substantial people in African American pop culture today with the debut of Oprah Winfrey and changing the careers of Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover. The movie is based on the novel The Color Purple, written by best seller Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winner. The story of Ceile follows a southern woman in the 1930s who represents black women dealing with racial oppression from inside their communities. Black women like Ceile break boundaries through systematic patriarchy with the power of “sisterhood.” The movie battles ideas of how black women internalized oppression and how Black men like Albert use power to control women and keep women submissive. African American women especially dealt with their own severe level of racism and sexism in the Jim Crow Era. The oppression Ceile felt and the story of how she let go of her own internalization of racism through the help of other women, she was able to love herself again and end the cycle of abuse. Steven Spielberg shows audiences through cinematography, direction with editing, mise en scene, and how he shows period pieces accurately.
Power dynamics in this time are shown with the relationships of the characters and how they interact with each other. The white characters who talk to the black characters have a completely different relationship than black men who speak to black women versus black women who talk to black women. Many of these nuances are shown in the film with how the scenes are set up with the white characters. One that comes to mind is at 1:34:56, where the mayor’s wife after finally bringing Sophia to Christmas, starts to get extremely out of line, saying “Don’t touch me [n-word]s, don’t you know who I am? I am the mayor’s wife, I am Miss Millie. I have always been good to you people, always gone out of my way for coloreds.” The Mayor’s wife lashing out showing her true colors represents a lot of people who have pre-determined opinions of worth based off skin color; a lot of these people don’t even think they’re racist but they do subconsciously treat black people differently than white people.
To put some context to The Color Purple, you must understand that the book is a feminist work about the struggle to be empowered as a black woman. Ceile’s suffering and being torn away from her sister Nettie was specifically designed by Spielberg with a keen eye. Showing the gripping trauma felt by the women who rely on each other as support systems when their lives have been oppressed by men. At the time stamp 27:25, Nettie professes her love for her sister Ceile and tells her, “Nothing but death could keep me from it.” referring to writing to her sister. Albert does this because he has a predetermined idea of Ceile in his head that she is not beautiful and that her sister Nettie is what he really wants. Digging deeper into why Albert broke apart Celie and Nettie is because they were empowered to learn and become more empowered to use proper black English. Even with Albert’s attempts, she was able to find women and god to connect with divine femininity.
Albert’s son gets married to a strong black woman named Sophia, who is played by Oprah Winfrey. This is when another prevalent scene comes to fruition at 43:22. Ceilie tells Harpo to “Beat her.” (Sophia) while they are working in the field. A second later, Speilberg cuts to Sophia walking through a cornfield with a black eye and tells Celie, “All my life, I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight brothers and uncles. A girl ain’t safe in a family of men. But. I never thought. I’d have to fight in my own house. I loves Harpo. God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me. Now, if you want. a dead son-in-law, you keep on advising him like you are doing.” (The Color Purple) Ceilie’s Reaction to strong black women like Sophia represents the internalization of what black women can look like. This scene represents these fundamental power structures and how these power struggles come to fruition as these women have to look inwardly to liberate each other. Mae C. King found that the oppression of black women as being inferior to white women was established because of the slave structure in the American system. These ideas of oppression led black men to historically treat their women worse than White women were treated. This has to do with the economic condition led by slavery in America. Overall, I am against the idea of women turning on women, but I believe that this experience for Ceile was life-changing as she became liberated by hearing Sophia and feeling the same pain as she did. Ceilie became freer.
Power in this film is represented in many different ways through the color purple. Steven really dabbles in how the scenes are represented through mise-en-scene and editing with lighting techniques. The way the male characters are positioned to the camera angle at a knee level gives him more authority and power as he claims “his women.” This is at 12:55 in the movie. In another scene that primarily shows Ceilie’s freedom, we see a beautiful opening with just women in a purple flower field at 2:17:01. The color represents god’s love. Spielberg intended to use the wide frame shot to show the parallel of what life can be like with just women and no oppressive “men”.
The Budget for The Color Purple was around 15,000,000, and the Gross US Box off was around $98,467,863 in today’s inflation, which would be around $292,657,287 (IMDB). Pretty successful, but would this film have the ability to be done in the same tone as Steven Spielberg in 1985? Hell no, as Sophia said. The Color Purple (2023) is a musical rendition of the classic with a budget of $100,000,000 (in 1985 money would be $35,313,171), and the Gross US Box Office success of $60,619,191 (in 1985 would be $21,406,559). Turning a movie that is primarily dealing with Power Dynamics, Oppression and Women’s rights into something so gentrified is very untasteful and the audience agreed with their wallets.
When it comes to discrimination and oppression, the power and oppression between women and black men and how oppression is passed on through trauma is thoroughly shown by Spielberg with his choices as a director. Oppression is directly seen by the audience because of the context of the storyline being a feminist story. Themes of defying the parameters set by men and breaking boundaries with the guidance of sisterhood is a defining point for the movie.
The opposite of the color purple would be yellow. Diving into some of the backlash received by Steven Spielberg’s interpretation. “When the film was released, there were predictable complaints about why it had been directed by a white man, but the largest controversy centered on the film’s alleged “male bashing.” Reiterating the arguments made in earlier decades, some critics and audiences felt the film was demeaning because while it celebrated black women, it also depicted African American men as rapists and abusers. The film did diminish many of the novel’s more important points. For example, the novel makes it clearer than does the film that black men abuse black women as part of a “chain of oppression” that stems in the first place from white brutality. The novel also deals centrally with a lesbian relationship between characters Shug and Celie, an important aspect of the book’s feminist project that was reduced to several chaste kisses in the movie.” (96 Benshoff & Griffin). Benshoff & Griffin make a great point, as reducing their relationship made audiences wonder about them as they did. Shug and Celie did not have the quality romantic time as portrayed in the book.
The power of sisterhood is what kept these women grounded as they battled the racism that was brought by brainwashing white guys, telling them their worth with the ideas that are super racist and outdated. I would recommend this movie to any person who struggles with their own internalized racism; this period piece beautifully shows the cinematics of abuse and racism. Potentially, this film sugarcoats how brutal racist abuse was in the Jim Crow era. However, the one-two punch of gendered racism combined with how women dealt with their struggle is remarkable. For their confidence guided them to, and their power of sisterhood guided them into everything they ever wanted. Death is the only thing that could keep them apart, and Celie and Nettie are the proof of the love and strength that is required to defeat the injustice and racism they deal with every day.
References
Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. 3rd ed., Wiley Blackwell, 2017. Chapter 4.
Carr, Erika R., et al. “Understanding the link between multiple oppressions and depression among African American women: The role of internalization.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 38.2 (2014): 233-245.
King, Mae C. “Oppression and Power: The Unique Status of the Black Woman in the American Political System.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 1, 1975, pp. 116–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42859475. Accessed 2 June 2025.
Martin, Jennifer. “The Quilt Threads Together Sisterhood, Empowerment and Nature in Alice Walker’s the Color Purple and ‘Everyday Use.’” Journal of Intercultural Disciplines, vol. 14, Jan. 2014, pp. 27–44. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=7e752a38-2c20-3d7c-8a55-25714cea2b1c.
Spielberg, Steven, director. The Color Purple. Performances by Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Oprah Winfrey, Warner Bros., 1985. IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088939/.
