Steven Spielberg is an acclaimed and multiple award-winning director in the movie industry. He made his theatrical debut in Hollywood with the 1974 movie, The Sugarland Express. But it took him just one more year to become a blockbuster director with his movie, Jaws. Since then, he has made numerous movies that have been critically as well as commercially successful. His movies have also earned him the title of the most commercially successful director in film history.
In the year 1985, Spielberg made a movie completely different from his usual blockbuster genre. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple starred Whoopi Goldberg in the lead, alongside the likes of Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. Coincidentally, this was Oprah’s movie debut, which also went on to secure her, her first Oscar nomination.
Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple Was a Complete 180 From His Usual Movies
According to Steven Spielberg, Alice Walker’s book made a heavy impression on him. The director even cried after he read it. But The Color Purple is very different from the movies he usually makes, and a complete departure from the kind of movies he had made till then. In a conversation with The Rolling Stone (via David Berskin), Spielberg said that he made an emotional bond with the story.
It’s really scary to make this movie at this time of my life, and I was happy that I’d been able to get myself to take this kind of a chance. This is a new genre for me.
![Oprah Winfrey with The Color Purple cast [Photo Iris Schneider via Wikimedia Commons]](https://fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/25094539/Oprah-Winfrey-with-The-Color-Purple-cast-Photo-Iris-Schneider-via-Wikimedia-Commons.jpeg)
It’s because people are not radically different. All of us are part of some minority… I never looked at Color Purple as just a black movie. I looked at it as a story for everybody.
Unfortunately, The Color Purple, although critically acclaimed, and secured 11 Oscar nominations that award season, was surrounded by many controversial comments. Many actors of color later came forward to express their dissatisfaction with the movie, and how Spielberg allegedly stereotyped the life of black people, instead of bringing an authentic version of The Color Purple to life.
Many People Were Unhappy With The Steven Spielberg Adaptation
While the 1985 movie was both critically and commercially acclaimed, it wasn’t devoid of controversies. The biggest problem people had with The Colour Purple was that it wasn’t made by a black filmmaker. They also had an issue with the fact that Steven Spielberg had allegedly stereotyped black males in the movie. According to an 1986 article by Chicago Tribune, many people of color were not satisfied with how Spielberg had made the movie.
Author James Baldwin accused the movie and its director, Steven Spielberg, of mangling the poetic vision of Alice Walker`s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Black feminist Michelle Wallace said the movie smothered Walker`s feminist message in syrupy Disney-like sentimentality. Black author Ishmael Reed, whose philosophical disputes with Walker are as sharp as those between Norman Mailer and Gloria Steinem, called the book a near-criminal assault on black family life and heterosexual relationships.
To all the controversies, Steven Spielberg did not just back and listen without giving people his own piece of mind. He told Entertainment Weekly:
Most of the criticism came from directors that felt that we had overlooked them, and that it should have been a black director telling a black story. That was the main criticism. The other criticism was that I had softened the book. I have always copped to that. I made the movie I wanted to make from Alice Walker’s book.
Alice was on the set a lot of the time and could have always stepped forward to say, ‘You know, this is too Disney. This is not the way I envisioned the scene going down.’ She was very supportive during filmmaking, and so I felt that we were doing a good job adapting her novel.
The Color Purple, although surrounded by the clouds of these controversial remarks, did wonderful amongs fans as well as critics for the most part. It was the #1 PG-13 movie in 1985, grossing $98.4 million on a budget of $2 million. The Color Purple is available for streaming on Tubi.
