"Folks Don't Like Nobody Being Too Proud, Or Too Free": The Black Community's Denial of Queerness By Tamara Leigh

“Folks Don't Like Nobody Being Too Proud, Or Too Free": The Black Community's Denial of Queerness

Over the Christmas weekend it seemed as though everyone and their mama, literally, went to the movies to see the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s classic, The Color Purple. Much like Black Panther, but at the same time very different, The Color Purple was a Black cultural phenomenon that led to the 2nd biggest box office opening Christmas weekend of all time. Unlike Black Panther, which was new and different for many, The Color Purple took many of us back in time to when we saw the movie for the first time in the 80s and early 2000s to a different time when the movie and Broadway show were set and endless memories of watching it over and over again over the last 40 years.

The Color Purple was something of a phenomenon, both then and now, because it peeled back the thinly veiled ills that happen in the Black community and American society every day. At the time, it touched on subjects that were barely whispered about within families and the general community either in the early 1900s when Cellie’s story begins or the mid-1980’s when the movie version was released. The conversations of rape, racism, incest, intimate partner violence, misogyny and the tyranny of the Jim Crow South were up on the big screen for the world to see.

With the remake and re-release of a cultural statement piece like The Color Purple, Beyonce’s internet was abuzz with conversation about the confusion of the new movie being an adaptation of the musical more so than the book or movie, to whether Fantasia and Taraji lived up to the standards of the original 1984 film. Maybe because it's tied to my own identity or maybe because somehow rhetoric tinged with homophobia still surprises me to some degree, the most interesting posts centered around a sense of shock/surprise/disgust in “discovering” Miss Cellie and Sug Avery weren’t just each others’ saviors but were lovers. Both seasoned folk who had seen the movie the first time around and now adults who were children or maybe not even thought-of then, were all of a sudden exposed to the idea of lesbianism also being a central theme of the book. It is commonplace in the Black community to say that hip-hop, music, social media, reality tv and gay characters in television commercials are indoctrinating children into a same-sex relationship agenda plot. But imagine your favorite character in a book that your grandmother read in the 80s, that your church going auntie watched in your living room, and the pastor had on DVD on his bookcase had a gay character! {insert clutched pearls}

My first thought when hearing those questions was, “You ain’t read the book, Sis?” This didn’t start when Taraji P. Henson and Fantasia kissed in this screen adaptation. Cellie and Sug been in love since 1939 and it was clearly evidenced in the Alice Walker novel where The Color Purple all began. Miss Cellie says in no uncertain terms:

"She say, I love you, Miss Celie. And then she haul off and kiss me on the mouth. Um, she say, like she surprise. I kiss her back, say, um, too. Us kiss and kiss till us can’t hardly kiss no more. Then us touch each other ”

The character then describes getting intimately acquainted with her partner’s nipples and they wake up in bed together. This scene is distinctly more subtle in the movie version but between what they do show and Sug’s serenade of Miss Cellie- you get the point. Or at least you should, and if you didn’t, you need to ask yourself- why?

While you toss through that existential question, hear this: Not everything has to be a soapbox, but I’ll die on this one like Custer’s last stand. People tripping on "discovering" Cellie and Sug Avery were having an affair is yet another symptom of the wider Black community's lack of acceptance of the Queer Black community. It was EXPLICIT in the book- if you read it. And it was subtle in the original movie but it was in there, if you didn't choose not to see it. You chose to not see it. In the song, in their behavior, in the physicality between them in the book, the movie, the musical, and in the musical adaptation. The story is about a woman doomed by poverty, colorism, a cruel fate, a sadistic father and abusive husband to be tortured by every man she came in contact with. Cellie’s story is about getting free. Now whether the injection of sapphic love is but a metaphor for the freedom from men or an actual representation of what happens when

people are forced to hide all of themselves, including the desire for another woman or another man, is up for debate I suppose. I like to think that both are equally true. But what is not debatable is that The Color Purple has become a Black cultural classic and one that AGAIN affirms that Blackness is innately Queer. It's not a new cultural phenomenon caused by music videos and TikTok. Just like the Black community notoriously ignores the other issues brought up in The Color Purple: molestation, church hurt & alienation, domestic violence, slut shaming etc etc. And the world as a whole ignores racism and justice system issues- it addresses sexuality.

It wasn't NOT there, you just didn't WANT to see it.

There is a famous quote from the movie where Cellie comes to the conclusion after listening to Mister and his father discussing Sug Avery that says, “Folks don’t like nobody being too proud or too free.” ‘Folks' in that context refers to Black Folks… and to men, but as the story moves forward, it describes what happens to Sophia at the hands of white folks as well. But it's clear to me, it very much applies to this conversation as well… in 1935, in 1982, in 1984 and 2024.

…..And while we’re here, somebody give Danielle Brooks an Oscar!