SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Lessons From Nola Darling
CONTENT WARNING / Mentions of Rape + Sexual Assault
universal
Among mainstream African American filmmakers, Spike Lee’s cinematic vision is as widely known as much as it is defined by his non-conformist stance on contemporary race relations in the United States. If Do the Right Thing (1989) and BlacKkKlansman (2018) weren’t frequently cited as examples of it, the director’s Cannes 2018 roasting of the sitting POTUS would be a good introduction to the frontal denouncement of racist oppression that has characterised his best work. When watched from the twilight of the 2010s – especially with fresh eyes – this is the same reason his debut feature, 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It, comes regrettably close to progressiveness before making a jarring turn that nullifies its discourse.
Like the majority of Spike Lee Joint protagonists, Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) is African American. Unlike many of them, at least the better-known ones, she is a woman. A woman amongst the kind who are not often represented in mainstream cinema even two decades into the 21st century. The independent-minded and artistic Nola leads a sexually liberated lifestyle and maintains simultaneous relationships with three men, all aware of each other’s existence: the polite but possessive Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks), self-centred model Greer Childs (John Canada) and comical man-child Mars Blackmon (Lee). Such an arrangement predictably leads to conflict between her and her three suitors, There is everything from humorous bickering to an awkward Thanksgiving dinner. More importantly, though, it makes Nola a trailblazer for polyamory on screen before it was even a concept as we know it today.
She’s Gotta Have It is often referred to as a ‘romantic comedy’, a limiting categorisation when considering the screenwriter-director’s narrative choices, formal approach and references to African American culture throughout the film. The opening text is a passage from Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) which alludes to the gendered differences and varying experiences of being black in 19th-century America. The book’s protagonist is, coincidentally, a woman who is partnered with three men throughout her life-long journey towards her own liberation. Then, after a still photography montage of everyday Brooklyn set to jazz music, Nola sits on her bed to greet the dollying camera, looking straight into it with disarming confidence. ‘I want you to know the only reason I’m consenting to this is because I want to clear my name’, she states defiantly, ‘not that I care what people think, but enough is enough.’
Lee frames the story as a pseudo-documentary and, from the get-go, Nola makes a statement about taking control of the narrative around her, even as the film picks up the ‘testimonies’ of her friends, family and lovers. These testimonies provide a diverse plate of opinions on the film’s protagonist that has frequently been compared to Akira Kurosawa’s storytelling in Rashōmon (1950).
Either directly to the camera or during their interactions with Nola or each other, the three men continuously express their frustration about her refusal to devote herself to only one of them. Despite their jealous remarks and even flagrant misogyny, Nola carries on. She is also in control of the terms of her relationships, witch-hunt nightmares notwithstanding. Up until this point, it would feel almost instinctive to applaud the screenwriter-director for his progressive take on female sexuality, until it becomes everything except so.
universal
Much has been said and written about She’s Gotta Have It’s most controversial sequence: Nola Darling’s rape by Jamie. If one was to play devil’s advocate, it could be argued that it is framed, edited and coded in a way that has been mostly misread. Tossed onto the bed by Jamie, Nola occupies the foreground of the shot, low-angled and in deep focus, as he forces himself on her from behind. The background for the act is Nola’s recently finished mural-collage which, as suggested from clues left throughout the film, references Malcolm X, Eleanor Bumpurs, Bob Marley and other icons of black activism, including martyrdom. The mural is a reminder of the history of brutality towards African Americans, some of its events still recent by the time of the film’s release.
After Jamie has raped Nola and left, the camera lingers on the faces painted on the wall, expressionistic in style, some even Edvard-Munch-like. It’s almost as if, despite his advancement of diverse portrayals of race and sex on screen, Lee is reminding us that there are still oppressors within the oppressed; in this case, the male sexist violence towards women. Despite being an independent, sexually liberated African American woman, Nola is still subjected to and victimised by the socially established expectations that the men around her have of women’s romantic lives, and is punished for defying them. In an avant-garde manner not so dissimilar to the film’s protagonist, the director also trailblazes intersectionality – a term that law professor, Kimberlé Crenshaw only introduced in 1989to describe how race, gender, class and other individual categorisations intersect and overlap into different systems of discrimination.
Lee would be deserving of such credit if his script had taken a different turn. Instead, after the assault, Nola submits to Jamie’s demands, dumps Mars and Greer, and tells him she’s ready for a monogamous relationship. Believing her own sex drive to be the cause of her inability to commit, she declares temporary celibacy, much to his dismay. ‘I love you’, she says into Jamie’s ear before walking away after he initially rejects her. ‘Mess it up one more time…’ he threatens, seemingly taking her back. The film then abruptly cuts to Nola’s final monologue, where she confirms their getting back together was a product of momentary weakness that didn’t last long.
‘He wanted a wife, that mythic, old-fashioned girl next door. But it’s more than that’, she says into the camera, ‘It’s about control. My body, my mind, who’s gonna own it, them, or me?’ Having set the record straight, Nola looks away and gets into bed, alone but reassured before the screen fades to black. Or is she?
The scene in question has been criticised for its uncalled brutality, overall gratuitousness and mainly because of what its aftermath means for the protagonist’s character arc. Clearing her name is Nola’s intent at the beginning of the film, and she states ownership of her mind and body by its conclusion. But the script has bafflingly robbed her of her agency by contradicting her not once, but twice. The first time, by objectifying her with the rape scene itself, which doesn’t advance the plot of the character’s involved in any way as Nola and Jamie are still broken up after the act. At best, she has been humiliated and Jamie has shown his true, violent colours.
The second time only aggravates the first as Lee seems to hurriedly wrap up the story while making sexual assault look like an occupational hazard of sexual liberty. More shocking still is that Nola willingly accepts Jamie’s treatment of her, attempts to get him back and even states that she loves him. The final insult to injury is the fact it is brushed off as a moment of weakness mere seconds later. The film ends up with the aftertaste of a pseudo-documentary on casual slut-shaming, and not the female empowerment it apparently intended to represent.
Contemporary critics lauded the film for its ‘psychological authenticity’, calling it ‘a cool place to be’ or ‘the funniest comedy of summer ‘86. Hicks earned praise for providing Jamie with ‘a depth and passion’ that, by the moment the character’s ‘patience’ has worn out and turned him ‘shockingly brutal to Nola’, still kept him sympathetic and made ‘his violence (seem) natural.’ Looking back on the film brings into question not only its status as progressive, but also the fact that Nola was written as having a need to ‘clear her name’ for experiencing her sexuality as freely as the very men in her life, and then be assaulted for it. Spike Lee seems to share this sentiment.
‘You know what my biggest regret is? The rape scene in She’s Gotta Have It. If I was able to have any do-overs, that would be it.’ he stated in a 2014 interview on the occasion of Do the Right Thing’s 25th anniversary. ‘It was just totally… stupid. I was immature. It made light of rape, and that’s the one thing I would take back. I was immature and I hate that I did not view rape as the vile act that it is.
The filmmaker’s public acknowledgement of a decidedly glaring mistake speaks of a rare willingness to listen, grow and learn from it as an artist. More unusual still is that, him being an active and prominent director during the #MeToo era, he hasn’t been called out more because of it (not that he should be, now). It’s difficult to scrub away such a stain, especially when it’s on a career-launching and otherwise progressive debut feature, and Lee’s disposition to make amends through retconning could be taken as opportunely riding the wave or as genuine concern for the representation of African American women on screen.
netflix
Either way, he rebooted She’s Gotta Have It in serialised form for Netflix in 2017 and, despite being credited as creator and director for all of its episodes, his male gaze has been filtered through the eyes of female screenwriters that include his sister and actress, Joie Lee, two-times Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Lynn Nottage, filmmaker, Radha Blank, playwright, Antoinette Nwandu (Lee’s collaborator on 2018’s Pass Over) and actress, Eisa Davis.
The result is a more constructive treatment of sexual harassment and violence as an overall theme that’s manifested through Nola’s (now played by DeWanda Wise) artwork, provided for the series by street artist, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, better known for her Stop Telling Women to Smile campaign.
She’s Gotta Have It and Nola Darling, however, in both their current and former incarnations, speak of a need for deeper understanding and representation of race and gender in mainstream culture, less as simplifying abstractions and more as unique components of personal and collective identity. They also speak of another possibility to the blind censorship of the ‘cancel culture’ that threatens to reflect the way of Gone with the Wind (1939). That is to find the willingness to look back, push through the discomfort and acknowledge mistakes. Own up to them and improve as artists, audiences, critics and overall as the individuals that make up society.