The Multiplicity of Drama Genres

Genre theory is used in the study of films in order to facilitate the categorization of films. Genre are dependent on various factors such as story line, whom the director is, what are the audience expectations et cetera. In using genre theory, we create a short cut in how we are to describe films. Genre theory through its use is a method of shortening academic works. In order to understand Genre, we may look at several examples.

When we speak of the western we know that within this collection of films we may expect to find gun fights, horses and Indians, the solitary cowboy and to some degree the actors and directors of such films. Another example would be when looking at the horror film where we know everyone will die except one. The audience whom go to those films expect to see zombie, werewolves and more. They also expect certain content and a certain style of film making.

The multiplicity of the guidelines by which this race of people seeks to identify itself becomes an almost confusing jumble of multiple threads attempting to form one unified strand. Men and women within the race struggle with their identities, seeking to understand how to be men, women, American, Black, and a variety of other things at once while remaining true to their true “selves”. Through the examination of and battle with these continuously warring elements, the African-American race has defined and redefined the standards of “being Black”. Among the greater debates and long-lasting identity struggles lies the issue of religion. Alice Walker believes that The Color Purple remains for her “the theological work explaining the journey from the religious back to the spiritual”. In the “Preface” to The Color Purple, Walker reveals her religious development as the motivation for her novel and believes that religion and spirituality are the major themes of this novel.

The author in this article tries to focus on both identity and religion and believes that the issue of identity must be taken into consideration Mr. Spielberg has looked on the sunny side of Miss Walker’s novel, fashioning a grand, multi-hanky entertainment that is as pretty and lavish as the book is plain. However, If the book is set in the harsh, impoverished atmosphere of rural Georgia, the movie unfolds in a cozy, comfortable, flower-filled wonderland. Some parts of it are rapturous and stirring, others hugely improbable, and the film moves unpredictably from one mode to another. From another director, this might be fatally confusing, but Mr. Spielberg’s showmanship is still with him. Although the combination of his sensibilities and Miss Walker’s amounts to a colossal mismatch, Mr. Spielberg’s Color Purple manages to have momentum, warmth and staying power all the same.

The world of Celie and the others is created so forcibly in this movie that their corner of the South becomes one of those movie places — like Oz, like Tara, like Casablanca — that lay claim to their own geography in our imaginations. The affirmation at the end of the film is so joyous that this is one of the few movies in a long time that inspires tears of happiness, and earns them. The black rural South community in which Walker sets the novel is extremely patriarchal. Most of the black male characters dominate women and do so in a violent and oppressive manner. They are not only physically violent but sexually and emotionally abusive, making the women with whom they live feel fearful, worthless and inferior.

This is particularly obvious in the life of the central character Celie, whose experiences of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, followed by a loveless marriage in which Celie istreated no better than a slave, embody the most brutal aspects of the dominant African-American male. Celie is expected to look after Mr.’s children, work in the fields and submit to joyless sexual encounters with a man who treats her like an unpaid prostitute. It is clear that Celie and many other female characters in The Color Purple live in a male dominated society, where a woman’s role resembles that of a slave or a sex objects. This reflects African-American women in black communities in the rural South of America in the 1930s, when some of the films events occur. Celie’s letters to God are not only a cry for help but stand as the voices of all the African-American women who faced this situation.

Walker also draws parallels with the white master/black slave relationship that existed in the United States for centuries beforehand (in which women were also regarded as property fit for sex and work). In the first part of the narrative most of the female characters are terrified of men. Like a slave, Celie dare not even look at men because she is so afraid, preferring to look at women instead. The theme of females achieving freedom is present throughout the film. Celie and Nettie move from a state of near slavery at the beginning to independence at the end. Both find the power of self-expression. Nettie as a wife and teacher and Celie as a successful businesswoman who does not need a husband and also escapes from a life of depression and mistreatment. Sofia is finally given freedom to live as she chooses. While Mary Agnes developsher own career rather being tied to domesticity and male requirements.

While Shug Avery finds love and finally mends the relationship with her father. The film emphasizes Walker’s idea that every African-American woman, with the help of other women, can become a “womanist” and learn to love herself. If this is possible, then mutual understanding and reconciliation between the sexes (male and female) is also possible, leading to a restoration of equality and harmony and an end to misunderstanding, oppression and violence.