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The
Color Purple
(1985)
- Information at Internet
Movie Database
- Themes
- Clean/Unclean
- Traveling blues singer Shug Avery comes home and
becomes a sensation in a local "juke joint." She is
staying with a couple, and it is known throughout the community that
she is the man's lover. She enters a church building in order to
speak to her father, the pastor. Upon seeing her enter the otherwise
empty sanctuary, he sits in one of the pews with his back to her.
She reminisces about how things were when learned to sing in church
as a young girl. Her father gets up and walks away from her. She
says that she understands that he won't answer her, considering the
way things had turned out. He goes through a door on the other side
of the sanctuary and closes it behind him. (David K.
Miller)
- Cleansing/Destroying
the Temple
- "All my life I
had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I
had to fight my brothers. A girl child ain't safe in a family of
men, but I ain't 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."
- Endurance,
Determination, Courage
- Celie's survival and
endurance despite the cruelty around her
- Father Figure
- Friendship
- The developing
friendship between Celie and Shug
- Reconciliation
- Traveling blues singer Shug Avery has been
estranged from her pastor father for decades, because of her
decision to sing secular music. One morning, while she's visiting
her hometown, she decides that she feels like singing. She opens the
local "juke joint" and begins singing her signature song.
As a crowd gathers around the singer, the scene cuts to her father's
church. As he is preaching, sounds from the juke joint drift in
through the open windows. Someone in the congregation prompts the
choir to begin singing "God Might Be Trying to Tell You
Something." As the choir gets louder, Shug hears and begins
singing along. As the song progresses, she leads everyone from the
juke joint (band and all) to the church. She walks up to her father
and puts her arms around him. She whispers, "See, daddy, even
sinners have soul." He returns her embrace as tears fill her
eyes. (David K. Miller)
- There is a wonderful scene in
"The Color Purple" where a prodigal jazz singer returns to
her estranged father in an act of repentence and reconciliation. (Bruce
T. Jones)
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Just before the choir begins singing, Shug's daddy
is preaching on the prodigal "son" text. Also,
Shug walks across a bridge that goes over a creek which
separates the juke joint side of the creek from the church side.
Might be stretching it a bit, but the juke joint was a hell of
sorts and the church is heaven in comparison! (Sandy Chace)
- Sisters/Sisterhood
- Celie discovers that
her sister has been writing to her all along.
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