I Am a Colored Girl

I am a Colored Girl

I am a colored girl.  I am a colored girl who has considered suicide when my life seemed cloudy and gray.  I am a colored girl who has been raped more times than any woman should, given her body and her love to undeserving men, and who has been a mother to an unborn baby whose life I chose to terminate.  I am a colored girl who has had to suppress, deny, and internalize my pain because I’ve been told that I don’t have a right to express my angst, that to be a good colored gal is not to be uppity but rather to be a sassy, one-dimensional caricature.  I am a brown woman who has been blue in a white world that is responsible for spilling the red blood of my black ancestors. 

Ultimately, however, this little missive isn’t about me, it’s about Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls and its impact and impression on the Black community.  The fact that the movie speaks to me, to my artistic spirit, to my personal struggles and survival as a Black woman beyond the offensive and incessant deluge of Basketball/Rapper/Housewives gold-digging, materialistic, shallow depictions that flood the media is almost irrelevant.  I get that most Black women are entertained by their own objectification, that the more degrading the image, the higher the ratings.  What shocks me most is that I am almost singular in my praise of the movie among my peers.  Of all of my feminist, womanist, academic, like-minded friends, I stand essentially alone as a fan of the movie, its message, and its execution. 

I went to the movie on its opening night with a sweet gentleman who had more baby momma’s than can literally be counted on two hands.  The theater was packed to capacity with loyal Madea fans who really don’t give a damn if their entertainment is buffoonery or comes at the cost of their degradation.  They laughed at inappropriate places and yelled homophobic taunts at the screen as if the actors could actually hear them.  When I cried, my companion held my head to his shoulder to comfort me and whispered to me that everything was going to be okay.  As we all filed out of the packed auditorium, I heard the same sentiment echoed throughout the halls, “Yo, that movie was deep.”  

It wasn’t until I sought solace and comfort among my contemporaries that I found this, what I can only call bizarre critique of the film.  I fully anticipated that Black men would hate the film, that was no shock.  Any discussion of Black men that doesn’t proclaim them flawless and unfairly maligned is going to be met with a unanimous proclamation of, “Male Basher!”  I never once thought white people would get it, the cadence and rhythm, the subject matter is truly beyond the scope of what they deem to be acceptable Black entertainment.  Hollywood only loves Black movies when we are criminal, degenerate, or ghetto so I knew not to expect praise from The Academy.  It was only when I turned to the women who I thought would see the beauty and innovation of the project that I felt alone.  It seemed to me that almost every woman I thought would love it, said she hated it or wasn’t moved by it.  It was from my inner circle that I heard the critiques that it was nothing more than of unwarranted male bashing, that it was simply another typical Tyler Perry flick with no substance, that it was . . . too poetic.  The very same women who lament almost daily that there are no stories that tell our tales are the women who said that they couldn’t stand the movie.  I heard everything from contrived critiques that Perry only made the movie to hide his sexuality to he didn’t stay true to the original author’s vision.  One has to ask themselves exactly how hypercritical one must be not to take note of the fact that there were good black men in the movie, that the poetry remained essentially in tact, and that there was a beautiful story woven around Ntozake Shange’s words that had absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Perry’s personal life but the original play. 

I am not a Tyler Perry Fan.  My critiques of his movies falls more along the lines of Spike Lee’s assessment than those who have a collection of bootleg Madea DVDs they’ve purchased before the movies even come out.  That didn’t prevent me however, from going to the movie with an open mind and seeing the beauty, artistry, and genius of this film.  From the way it was directed, filmed, the exquisite way the stories were interwoven and interpreted, to the fact that it wasn’t watered down but that Perry maintained the integrity of the poetry, For Colored Girls was nothing less than brilliant.  Young and old, rich and not so rich, the movie gave voice to the myriad of women who have been socialized in a society that was not created for them. 

It’s almost as if the movie’s harshest critics were the same women who have dedicated their lives to fighting for our stories to be told, but when they actually saw their stories, with all their blemishes, they didn’t like what saw; they saw something ugly and it looked a little too close to what was reflected in their mirror.  In a day and age when what passes for artistry in the African American community are rap songs with the rhyming skill of a third grader, unscripted “reality” shows that have nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of reality, and plays with the exact same you-don’t-need-a-man-you-need-Jesus storyline rehashed time and time again, this jewel, this rare gem was cerebral, earthy, and genuine.  It’s a very sad commentary that the people who appreciated the movie the most probably have no clue what Sister Shange was attempting to do with her seminal choreopoem. She, like Perry, wasn’t trying to bash men or put out a work that was too sophisticated for the average Black person to grasp, she was telling the tales of colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf . . . like me. 

Scottie Lowe copyright 2011