Framing Blackness by Ed Guerrero;

Author:Ed Guerrero;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439904138
Publisher: Temple University Press

this film should be the antidote to how the black male is perceived in The Color Purple. See, nobody is saying that black men haven't done some terrible things, and what Jamie does to Nola at the end of the film is a horrible act. But Jamie is a full-bodied character, unlike Mister in The Color Purple and the rest of t hat film's black men, who are just one-dimensional animals.59

Nola's second lover, Greer Childs (John Canada Terrell), models for Gentleman's Quarterly and comes across as a materialistic, narcissistic, upwardly mobile black urban professional, that is to say, a “Buppie.” As such, the character is a comical, stinging criticism of the philosophy of “Buppie” assimilationism. Greer has completely internalized white mainstream values, as demonstrated by his abiding faith in psychoanalysis to solve any challenges to his manhood. Reacting to Nola's having more than one lover, he suggests that there is something pathological about her sexual behavior and leads her to see a psychologist. But when Nola, in a clever maneuver that turns the tables on Greer, admits that she might possibly be “having too much sex” and the first person she is going to cut off is him, Greer's panic reveals him as a complete hypocrite as he tells her not to be too hasty. Further, She's Gotta ridicules Greer's anal retentive narcissism and materialism in a hilarious scene when, before making love with Nola, he kills the spontaneous passion of the moment by compulsively folding every article of his clothing as he takes it off. Finally, Greer's assimilation and subliminal contempt for black culture and black women openly surfaces when Nola breaks up with him, and he yells bitterly after her that he is going to replace her with a white woman.

Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee) completes the triad of Nola's lovers. And as the name Blackmon signifies, with this character Lee means to represent in more complex human terms than the usual for Hollywood the perspective of the economically marginalized urban black youth. Mars makes his position clear, declaring at Nola's Thanksgiving dinner: “Fifty dollar sneakers and I gots no job!” Yet, of all Nola's lovers, Mars is the most sympathetically portrayed as she shares both sex and moments of humor with him and engages in the intimate cultural ritual of greasing his scalp with Sulphur 8 hair ointment. Moreover, Nola's parting with Mars is the most amiable of all her men. And Mars comes up with the final insight that Nola's three male lovers were but the components of one romantic sexual trajectory. As he puts it, “We let her create a three-headed, six-armed, six-legged, three-penis monster.” Of course, the upshot of the film is that Nola outgrows all three lovers, who, by contrast, at the end of the film remain static and caught up in their isolated, chauvinist perspectives. Alone and contemplative in her bed, Nola closes the narrative with the liberatory insight, “It's about control. My body. My mind. Whose gonna own it, them or me?”60

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