In search of Walker’s spirit: womanism, race, and queer desire in Blitz Bazawule’s <i>The Color Purple</i> (2023)

Abstract The article focuses on Blitz Bazawule’s 2023 film adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and analyses how it reconfigures the novel’s original political message. The musical, heavily influenced by the novel’s previous adaptations, erases and introduces scenes that alter the womanist, queer, and anti-racist spirit of Walker’s text. The paper examines how Bazawule’s film diminishes the role of women’s solidarity within the narrative by introducing the notion of internalized misogyny, and by reinforcing the patriarchal order. It also uses the concept of queer time and space to address the film’s staging of queer desire and questions Bazawule’s erasure of significant parts of the plot that deal with the issue of American racism.