The Color Purple

Ever see White Chicks? It worked for the Wayans brothers.

The Color Purple

Going in, you're going to see a lot of instances of incorrect spelling. Color is used here instead of it's more correct counterpart because the source material is American, and is therefore inherently wrong anyway. Let's not make an issue of it.

Well, to celebrate Black History Month, I decided to watch and review a black movie. At first I sat down to think about what I should watch. I figured Next Friday probably wouldn't count, and Boyz N The Hood was way out, so I decided pretty much anything with Morgan Freeman was fair game. Then I decided to take my self-imposed job seriously for once and watch The Color Purple.

Now, as a white, cis, middle class male I am the most unqualified person to talk about some of the topics covered in this movie, and that's just too fucking bad, because I'm going to anyway. Don't like it? Close your Macbook, faggot, and order another half-skin, half-soy, guilt free, gluten free, lactose free mocha latte and go back to penning your great American novel about how you stuck it to the man for being such a dick, or whatever the unimportant shit is you're writing. How about you use less cardboard cups and save a fucking rain forest, mate? I tell it like it is, or sometimes lie blatantly about how it is.

I mean usually. I usually lie.

Anyway, as you may notice, it's a fairly odd name for a movie about black poverty in the south. There isn't anything really purple about it, unless you count Whoopee Goldberg's gums.

Damn it. I'm sorry. I promised myself I wouldn't be racist. Let's try that again.

I did once write a letter to Alice Walker asking if she had misspelled "The Colored People", but strangely I never heard back. Maybe she was too embarrassed?

Actually, the title comes from a line in the book and film about appreciating the little things God does every day that you may not notice. "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it". And they are pretty wise words, at the root. Appreciate the small stuff, the little things we ignore day in, day out, that are still miraculous or wonderful, like babies, multi-core GPUs, or being white.

Fuck. Shit. I walked right into that one. I'm sorry. Really. It won't happen again.

This movie is bad. The kind of bad that makes you regret caring about Black History Month. It's like a poop that you find on the street - so it's not even your poop, just plain old found poop - and then eat, then digest and poop again. The kind of thin, slightly runny poop that you just know you're going to spend eight and a half minutes vainly attempting to clean before you just give up and go to look for a hose. But that's not because I dislike black people, like some kind of racist. No, this movie would still be shitty (as well as culturally insensitive and more than a little historically inaccurate) or possibly even shittier with white people, because you just know that fucking Meryl Streep would be in it, and I'd rather watch Whoopee Goldberg's latest sex tape than watch Meryl Streep feign humility in some self-serving Oscar wank performance, the bitch.

It's not an easy movie watch. It brings a lot of dirty laundry out to air. And it's long too, really long - so I guess it's true what they say about black people. In all seriousness it's over two and a half hours of awful, horrible things, like Danny Glover trying to act. That and a fuck load of white guilt. Watch it if you're going to appear on Oprah, or something... maybe.

That's only sort of racist. I don't think that needs an apology. However, my refusal to apologise for being racist probably deserves an apology. So, you know, sorry black people.

God, like one apology from Kevin Rudd wasn't enough? You and your reparations.

But all joking aside, I'm really not a racist. I have a black friend. Well, he's not white, so that counts, right? And I have an anecdote too: I like my women like I like my coffee - boiled, then filtered to a thin, even consistency that is then easily ingested.

Or was it black? I can never remember.