"The Color Purple" and Masculinity

If you’ve ever sat down and dedicated a solid two and a half hours to watching Steven Spielberg’s masterful 1985 film, The Color Purple, you have possibly experienced an emotional rollercoaster that made a lasting impression on you as a result.  I know that it did for me.  Over time, this film adaption of Alice Walker’s 1982 critically acclaimed novel has played a part in me examining the various facets of masculinity.  For anyone that is familiar with the film, such a statement may seem counterintuitive since it was notoriously mired in controversy for its depiction of toxic masculinity, particularly that of Black men.  When I was a child, I did see the portrayal of men in that film as a bit of a hindrance to me fully enjoying it, but it was not enough to prevent me from having a favorable view of the film overall.  By toxic masculinity, I am referring specifically to the Johnson men: the cowardice of Harpo, the draconian misogyny of Old Mister Johnson, and the outright cruel brutality of Albert.  However, after multiple viewings over time I began to have more nuanced views of the masculinity being shown in the film that were beyond the surface level of those characters, in particular.  It wasn’t just the negative on display.  There were subtle and not-so-subtle displays of other themes of masculinity that were shown throughout the film.  I thought it would be interesting to take a few minutes to very briefly explore some of these themes.

Old Mister Johnson

Old Mister Johnson was easily the least redeemable character of all three of these men.  Not much was examined about the his life in the film.  What we are exposed to about him, as the audience, is that he was definitely a product of his time, a misogynist who firmly believed in the subservience of women to their men as being the natural order of relationships.  It is easy to dismiss this character as simply a relic of masculinity from a bygone era.  Of course, there is a bit more to him than meets the eye.  Although he does display non-redeemable aspects of toxic masculinity steeped in the tradition of a patriarchal society, something that I came away with regarding this character was that his ideas of masculinity was greatly shaped from an environment that was designed to make him feel like less than a man, less than human. From sliver of a window into his life, it appears that he had learned many of the wrong lessons on what it meant to be a man: to be a strong dominant provider and leader for his family at the expense of showing respect and dignity to his wife.  Imagining what he must’ve gone through in his younger years could actually make him a sympathetic figure since it is not outside the realm of possibility that he developed such a sense of masculinity out of a necessity for survival.  Nonetheless, his views represent a stage of masculinity that ultimately was necessary in the progression in society’s understanding of what masculinity should be.

Harpo Johnson

It is easy to see how Harpo had the most redeeming arc of these three characters throughout the film.  At first glance, one can see how Harpo made his transition from being molded into a duplicate of his sadistic father, Albert, into a more loving man who valued his wife Sofia.  Upon viewing the film, it is clear that Harpo was never cut out to be the type of person that his father and grandfather were, but he felt that he had to emulate his predecessors viciousness in order to assert his masculinity to society and specifically to his wife.  He was motivated to do so both out fear of receiving scorn and disapproval from his predecessors and a deep desire to feel that he has some form of power as a Black man in the deep South during the Jim Crow period of American history.   Ironically, his misguided attempts at exerting his masculine dominance was often met with and defeated by Sofia’s assertiveness, a masculine quality.  

Beyond all of that is a lesser discussed theme of masculinity that was touched upon through the character, a quality that is commonly applicable to men and boys of all walks of life.  That quality is humility, specifically having the humility to realize and admit that one’s previous perception of masculinity was wrong then course correct oneself to become more of the man that you both want to be and need to be.   In Harpo’s case, the key turning point was a scene in which he saw his estranged wife enjoying her relationship with her male companion while they were visiting Harpo’s juke joint.  I believe that in that instance, through his jealousy Harpo was able to catch a glimpse of how his previous misconceptions of masculinity led to a diminishment not only of Sofia’s quality of life but also his own.  Eventually having the maturity and vulnerability to put his ego aside and course correct his life over time due to that realization was a very profound part in the growth of Harpo as a man.

Albert Johnson (Mister)

Albert (aka Mister) represents the epitome of toxic masculinity not only in The Color Purple but perhaps in all of modern film and literature.  His blatant scorn and disrespect of nearly every woman that he considers subservient throughout the film is on full display.  His behavior is appalling, jarring, and blunt in his execution of his idea of masculinity as apparently taught to him by his father.  Yet it is in sharp contrast to his cowering reaction to assertive women who have established their own means of independence, Shug Avery in particular.  Through the entirety of his torturous relationship with Celie, Albert repeatedly subjected her to his merciless brand of masculinity.  Much like I suspect his father did before him, he transferred the resentment he felt of being seeing as less than human by white society onto his wife and daughters.  It was not until towards the end of the film that the audiences sees that he has some modicum of humanity when it was revealed that had saved years worth of letters that Celie’s sister, Nettie, had mailed to her.  True, it was despicable that Albert had kept those letters away from Celie for all of that time, but he at least had the decency to not destroy those letters.  To me, his inability to bring himself to the point of destroying the letters represented an internal struggle that he had within himself for all of those years.  This was a struggle between what he thought masculinity should be (dominant, cold, decisive, brutish, etc.) and what it could be (understanding, protective, assertive, fair, etc.).  In the end, Albert becomes a shell of his former hyper masculine self while not really committing himself to a more evolved version of masculinity like his son did.  He is in a lonely no-man’s land, kept prisoner there by his own pride.

Whether or not you agree with these themes of masculinity presented in The Color Purple, it is undeniable that both the film and the book present multidimensional analysis of the causes and effects of various evolutions of masculinity between generations that can applicable to society at large.