Hit Me With Your Best Shug

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Usually when I pick out a favorite shot from a movie for The Film Experience's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series I go with one that I can shoe-horn in some commentary, deserved or maybe perhaps slightly forced, about the film at large - I try to pick an individual picture that says something about the film as a whole. I don't know if I can do that with the above, my favorite shot in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple, I kind of just love it because good goddamn it's pretty as all get out... but let's try, eh?

So, Shug. Shug's always been my favorite character in the film (and probably the book too, although it's been a very long time since I read the book). Margaret Avery is wonderful. I knew going in to re-watching the movie last night - and this is a movie I watched dozens of times as a kid, my mother loves it, but it's been at least a decade since I last dove in - that it would be a shot of Shug that I'd choose, since she was what I pictured when I pictured the film in my head. Her first appearance on Mister's nightstand, smiling and beautiful as he "does his business" on top of Celie; her second appearance, wasted and mean, drug in from the rain; her triumphant reunion with her father at the end, as well as her presence, wet-eyed and resolute, on the porch as Celie gets her happy ending - I just love every single shot of her.

But as soon as I saw that shot up top I knew it was the one. Why? Because good goddamn it's pretty as all get out? Sure! But also (shoe-horn alert) it captures Shug's essence, vibrant and alive, bringing light to the darkness of Celie's life. A moment later, as Shug dedicates her next song to her new-found friend and soon-to-be lover - and as a side-note, the shot of wind-chimes clattering as Shug and Celie go at it that Spielberg uses to chicken out on the story's Sapphic concerns would also be an excellent pick for Best Shot, in a dubious way, wouldn't it...

... I bet you never noticed the folded shape of the bed-frame behind those chimes before, did you? That is one giant clanging vagina you're looking at. Anyway a moment later the camera will turn and show us that this is actually looking at Shug from Celie's perspective - the crowd, dark and Duchampian, split open as this beaming red force of life (And how often is Shug associated with red? Dresses and fingernails and lips, moist parting lips...) bursts forth. Now that is something any somebody would want to be. What's the first sign of an improved post-Mister life we see from Miss Celie after all?

Red. I might have known it would be red.

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