Experiencing the 2023 musical The Color Purple, a Blitz Bazawule production that builds upon several texts, was a rich experience. The musical is a musical adaptation of Gary Griffin’s 2004 Broadway musical, which was adapted into a film in 1985 by director Steven Spielberg based on Alice Walker’s 1982 novel. Additionally, going to the movies was a social event, particularly for Black women, for whom this story could be our founding melodrama.

Every time one of the well-known lines was spoken, such as Sofia’s (Danielle Brooks) vehemently indignant “All my life I had to fight!” or Mister’s father’s sour comment, “You let a ho in yo house,” the audience erupted in applause or enthusiastic cheers of “Yes!” and “Mmmhmm… That’s right!” There were tender whispers across the theater as Nettie (Halle Bailey) and young Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) said the words, “Us have one heart,” together. Though there was a wide range of people in the crowd, the majority of them were Black women who were obviously aware of the lines—and, more crucially, felt them.

The narrative of Celie, a Black child with dark complexion who lived in Georgia in the early 1900s, is told in The Color Purple. Celie endures in a violent relationship with her husband, Mister, after being raped by her father and forced to have two children. She also had to endure being separated from her younger sister, Nettie, whom she adored. She learns how to empower herself from Black women along the road, and by the time the novel ends, she has transformed and is free.

This most recent iteration of The Color Purple is not like the Broadway production, movie, or book that came before it because each adaptation is a distinct work of art that serves a different purpose and frequently even appeals to a different community. The Color Purple is a powerful cultural icon in the Black community, especially among Black women. As a result, the musical’s impact was evident, as we could all relate to its enduring themes and cherished characters from our childhood. Associate professor of cinema at Columbia University Racquel Gates tells Vox that The Color Purple is our founding book of popular culture for Black women. It’s possible to begin learning the rhythms and lines from the Spielberg movie by memory as early as infancy. The most clear recollection she could recall was talking about it with her classmates at school. “I saw it when I was about 6 years old — I was probably too young to be seeing it,” she recalled. The musical pays tribute to one of the most influential films of our lifetimes and celebrates the happiness and camaraderie we had in it, all while feeling like a gift to Black women like Gates.

My usual casual hairdo of two pigtails was on when I signed onto Zoom to talk with Samantha N. Sheppard, Cornell University associate professor of film and media studies, about The Color Purple and why Black people love to laugh along with it. You have your adorable little Celie braids on, Sheppard replied with a gentle grin. I responded with a chuckle that brought back fond memories of my early years, when my mother’s African American family was more likely to use quotations from The Color Purple than the Bible.

The original Color Purple came out in 1985, ten years before I was born, but for me, as for many Black women, it was one of my first memories. Every time they saw their sister, cousin, or closest friend again, the grownups would yell, “Celie! Nettie!” and recite the movie. When a guy eventually proposed, they would shout out Sofia’s exclamation, “I’m married now!” Or maybe when someone who wasn’t part of our in-group appeared and looked strange, they strained to look at each other and said Squeak’s “Harpo, who dis woman?” We would also occasionally declare, “I had to fight my entire life.” It was merely meant to be humorous on good days. On worst days, it served as a cover for real suffering, a means of grinning despite the harm that either a Black man or a White man—even one from our own family—had inflicted upon us.

For some, it may seem odd that a film including incest, rape, family dissolution, domestic abuse, and white nationalist terrorism could make Black people so happy. However, according to Sheppard, this trend isn’t a coincidence. We find it to be rather logical for a very good reason.

According to Gates, the secret is to know the genre of the literature in question. She claims that “The Color Purple is a melodrama, and it’s operating within the realm of a melodrama.” “I believe that audiences are finding it more and more difficult to sort of read and understand,” Consequently, all you can conclude from a really basic and unsophisticated representational analysis of The Color Purple is that “The characters aren’t positive.” But if you read it [through the lens of] melodrama, you’ll see that the drama and interpersonal conflicts are where the film’s core is resolved. This is the interpretation that Black women have always held of the movie, and it offers you a very different and accurate perspective.

In other words, this explains why, when we went to watch the show, all the Black ladies laughed while the other people looked a little confused, not understanding why we were laughing at a lady who threatened to murder her husband rather than allow him to abuse her. But the reason for that is that we don’t care about the pounding. What matters is the fortitude displayed by Sofia, the connection she formed with Celie that day, and the subsequent redemptive journey that Harpo takes. “I don’t believe the film is about suffering,” Sheppard asserts. “People find it difficult to watch a movie about traumatic events that is ultimately about love, sisterhood, family, and connection,” the author speculates.

She went on, “And we can see it in the way we laugh playfully throughout the film, like I mentioned to you regarding your braids. It’s a method to ask, “Oh, are you similar to me?” These moments, in which Black women and girls join together to ask each other that question and receive a resounding yes, are abundant in both the musical and the viewing experience. Sofia finds empathy and common ground with Celie, even in the famous scene where she confronts her for asking Harpo (Corey Hawkins) to beat her into obedience. Engaging and energizing the whole audience, the famous lyrics “All my life I had to fight” and “I love Harpo — God knows I do — but I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me” become a Black feminist hymn about speaking out and screaming “Hell naw” to abusive males in our lives.

It was nearly like being in church. We had all heard this song before, but even so, we were all familiar with its message. We were aware of its might. Sofia chanted, “Sick and tired of being a woman still treated like a slave,” and that was an exhale because Black women are all too acquainted with the conjoined tyranny. of gender and race. And that’s the central idea of The Color Purple in all of its guises. Not only is Alice Walker a prolific novelist, but she is also a titan of scholarship who studied feminist and womanist philosophy (sadly, she recently defended J.K. Rowling in the face of backlash to the author of the Harry Potter series’ anti-trans remarks). Walker expressed her belief that black women are our fundamental mothers, saying that “the blacker she is, the more us she is,” and that “to see the hatred that is turned on her suffices to make me despair, almost entirely, about our future as a people” in In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.

The political theory that guides both the film and the musical is evident in just one phrase. Celie is a woman with dark complexion who has been led to feel unworthy. And as long as they cling to this hate, the people in her life who accept this vicious fiction—most especially her husband, Mister—come to ruin. The famous hoodoo curse that Whoopi Goldberg placed on Mister in the first film, “Until you do right by me, everything you think about is gonna crumble,” encapsulates the concept that a meaningful reunion with family and culture can only occur when they undergo a profound transformation. Everything you even consider doing is going to fail until you treat me fairly. Following Mister’s contrition, Nettie’s return to Africa is represented by her journeys and her arrival back home with Celie’s long-lost children, who are now Africans as a result of their adoption by missionary parents who employed Nettie. African children are crossing the Atlantic to be reunited with their Black Southern mother, not to be separated. This is a great reversal of the anguish of the transatlantic trade of enslaved people, by the way. However, the only reason this conclusion is feasible is because those who are close to Celie have begun to break free from the slavery of detesting Black women. Through the musical’s songs, Walker makes her obvious message: Until we accept, love, and empower Black women, we will not be free.

The novel has a great deal of nuanced debate, but the musical, which uses song to express friendship, grief, desire, and awakening, nearly acts as a clarifying companion to the language of the 1985 film and the book. Usually, musicals seem to obscure rather than to reveal, with metaphor-filled lyrics taking the place of direct speech, but this one, for some reason, accomplishes the exact opposite. It confirms what Black women have understood all along: this story’s actual significance.

Some people intended to boycott the 1985 release of the original movie due to objections to how Black males were portrayed in it. In addition to her husband, who was a cheater who battered Celie frequently, her father was raping her and getting her pregnant, her kid Harpo was clumsy and naive, drawing comparisons to minstrel shows, and her grandpa was a very sexist prick. Spielberg is a white guy, and there was legitimate concern about his ability to make a movie that avoids clichés and depicts the whole spectrum of Blackness. The moment when Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) is shaving Mister (Danny Glover) after he beats her and contemplates cutting his neck, for example, is paired with her children obtaining their tribal tattoos in Africa. In the 2023 version, Black filmmaker Bazawule noticeably alters this to just a scene in which Celie muses of killing Mister, removing any suggestion of violence against revered African customs. Gates also notes that while sexism was at the core of the movie’s detractors’ claims that it was an unfair picture of Black males, there are legitimate concerns regarding the details Spielberg decided to include or omit.

“In the book, it is discussed how Mister enjoyed sewing as a child and how his father corrected him for it,” according to Gates. “I believe the novel does a better job of fleshing out his character than the movie does.” Colman Domingo’s depiction of Mister almost lends the musical the whole humanity that Spielberg’s film lacks, even though it still doesn’t. Domingo is a very gifted actor who can take on nearly any role and give a look or a body language meaning. Although his portrayal of Mister pays respect to Danny Glover, it also has more room for interpretation.

We had all laughed and wept till our stomachs hurt by the time the film ended. Because all I’ve ever known about The Color Purple is a Black reading of the book, the movie, and now this movie musical, I can’t explain what it means to non-Black people. However, I will say this: if you’re wondering why Black women find a movie that appears to be so somber so funny, just think back to the scene where Sofia gets freed from prison. After years of torment in jail, Sofia is silent and refuses to eat or speak. This portrayal of Sofia was once expertly performed by Oprah Winfrey and expertly portrayed by Danielle Brooks. She’s shattered the fierce energy that once encouraged Celie to fight back, told Mister off, and dragged Harpo around by the ear. However, as she fills her plate and eats wildly, shouting, “Sofia’s back now,” she slowly begins to laugh at Celie for the first time and taking back her life. Her laughter rises and crashes onto everyone like a tsunami.

I can still clearly recall this experience from my early years, and it perfectly captures the reason we laugh so much at The Color Purple. Laughter is a healing tool for Black people, particularly Black women. We come home, we come home to one other, and we come home to ourselves via laughter.