Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, which received all kinds of awards when it appeared in 1982, during a period when black female authors were all the rage — think Toni Morrison, think Maya Angelou — has been turned into a movie, a dramatic stage play, a stage musical, and now, it’s been adapted yet again, as a musical movie, produced by Steven Spielberg. Walker, who decades ago descended into antisemitic conspiracy theorizing, and whose antisemitism has deepened with time, is a bizarre and malignant figure. She deserves to be held up as an example of what the pathological condition known as antisemitism can do to someone. More on her mental trajectory can be found here: “A new ‘Color Purple’ adaptation hits theaters, returning author Alice Walker’s history of antisemitism to spotlight,” by Andrew Lapin, JTA, December 22, 2023:
The bright, colorful movie musical “The Color Purple,” which opens in theaters on Christmas, tells a story that has by now become a familiar part of the American canon — of a young black woman’s self-empowerment and discovery of her own sexuality amid the horrific, abusive conditions of her life in the early-1900s rural South.
It’s far from the first time Americans have heard the story of Celie, the protagonist of Alice Walker’s novel “The Color Purple.” Walker’s novel debuted in 1982 and received rave reviews, the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Three years later, it was adapted into a dramatic film directed by Steven Spielberg. This new version is an adaptation of a 2005 stage musical, which itself was reworked for a successful 2015 revival.
But even as the reputation of “The Color Purple” has soared over the decades, Walker’s own has become more muddled — specifically for her difficult relationship to Judaism and her outright flirtations with antisemitism. Married to a prominent Jewish civil rights lawyer when she was younger, Walker in the mid-2010s began promoting works by an antisemitic conspiracy theorist and authored an antisemitic poem of her own.
Could her obsessive antisemitism reflect her dissatisfaction with her Jewish ex-husband, civil rights lawyer Melvyn Leventhal? We know that they used to argue about Israel. Was this the beginning of her antipathy, not just to her husband, but to the Jewish state, an antipathy that led, finally, to her malignant obsession with the Jewish people?
This combined with her longtime outspoken criticism of Israel has led some in the Jewish community to question her continued stature as a well-regarded figure of American letters and led to her being disinvited from a major book festival just last year.
It’s not only members of “the Jewish community” who are offended by her obsessive antisemitism. She offends everyone of sense.
Despite the fact that Walker’s reputation among Jews has nosedived since their first film together in 1985, Spielberg remains involved in the new “Color Purple” as a producer and walked the red carpet at the premiere with fellow producers Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones (who both worked on the first film as well). Directing duties this time went to Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule….
Spielberg is known for his devotion to Jewish causes, including his financing of interviews with Holocaust survivors, and for his co-producing and directing of Schindler’s List. Surely he has long known of Walker’s antisemitism, yet this did not prevent him from directing the first movie version of The Color Purple, or from co-producing the latest movie version. It would have been better had he chosen not to work with her, and help her, yet again. Or does he care only about Nazi antisemitism? Does Walker get a pass from him because she is a black woman?
In 2010, she published a short essay book, “Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel,” that originated as an essay in the left-wing Jewish website Tikkun. In the book, she discusses visiting the Gaza Strip with the antiwar nonprofit CODEPINK in 2009, in the midst of an Israeli bombing campaign, and accuses world leaders of showing “indifference to the value of Palestinian life that has corrupted our children’s sense of right and wrong for generations.”
Did Walker not know about the long series of attacks launched by Hamas from Gaza into Israel in 2009, which led the IDF to bomb Hamas sites in Gaza? Or didn’t those Hamas attacks matter, because they were a justified “resistance” to the colonial-settler-apartheid-genocidal state of Israel?
Donald Breyer says
Spielberg is a close friend of Obama and has notably refused to speak out against Hamas. Add the morally vacant movie “Munich” to this list and it is clear that Spielberg’s sympathies are situational and have no real moral attachments to Jews or Israel. In fact he is more likely a member in good standing of Obama’s “Get a Jew to kill a Jew” team
James Lincoln says
Something doesn’t compute, Donald.
Steven Spielberg, a Jew, directed and produced Schindler’s List (1993).
What am I missing?
tgusa says
Spielberg appears to be a racist cuck but he directs good movies so who cares? Steve is only concerned about white European antisemitism, as to him, non white European antisemitism doesn’t rise to the level of a threat. There goes the racism of low expectations among leftists again. Without realizing it he is racist towards, all sides. It must be a lonely place at his house. but, it is more inclusive that way, so I will give him that. Leftist Jews in America should be labeled incurables.
SteveC says
Seems really sad that they have to keep remaking the same old crap over and over. I assume no one in hollywood is capable of reading newly released books, so they jusy keep watching junk over and over until they think they know how to fix it. Then they remake it. To date Zero Improvements but plenty of AGENDA additives
The Istanbulian says
Nothing about Kurds from her…
Neither did James Baldwin care about the minorities of Turkey when he was living it up in Istanbul