On Sunday of last week I attended a showing of Tyler’s Perry’s new film “For Colored Girls”. Based on the Black Feminist play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow if Enuf by Ntozake Shange, Perry’s adaptation used original text and diologue as well as new diologue written by Perry himself. Check out the trailer of the star studded film.
While I give Perry credit for producing a stunning piece of film with gripping performances, I feel that Perry truly lost the heart of the piece. This play is incredibly empowering and shows some of the struggles that African-American women have and continue to deal with such as love, abandonment, sexual assault, and abortion. However, Perry’s Christian focused style of directing caused the powerful messages to become skewed. For instance, the young character of Nyla’s first scene is a retelling of her losing her virginity, a monologue originally written for the play character “Lady in Yellow”. However, her sexual awakening is portrayed negatively, as she ends up becoming pregnant and getting a backdoor abortion; a heartbreaking scene originally intended for the “Lady in Blue."
This melding of characters condemns unmarried sex. Furthermore, the addition of a character whose husband is “on the downlow”, as well as victim blaming in cases of sexual assault and murder results in the opposite message being sent by Perry from what Shange intended. While not a complete loss and still a beautiful movie with strong female characters, Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls” is sure to delight audiences…. unless they’ve read the play.
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