“The Color Purple” (2023) film focuses on the life of Celie Harris-Johnson and how she faces many hardships in her life, along with having an abusive husband, but the film also focuses on the story of Celie Harris and her struggles of living in the South in the 1900s and the theme of racial discrimination and racial violence occurs in this film. The film is in Georgia. Out of our class discussions, I believe this film relates to Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine because of how she speaks on scenarios and with the theme of racial violence and racial discrimination. Rankine speaks about Serena Williams as well and what she went through.
An example of racial discrimination and being treated poorly is when in 1930, Sofia is called out by the mayor’s wife to be her maid, but she refuses and gets involved in a physical fight, resulting in Sofia being arrested. This took place in Georgia as did the entire film “The Color Purple.” She is sent to jail for 6 years and as soon as she is released, she ends up working for the mayor’s wife anyway. Sofia sinks into deep depression that takes away all the fierceness she used to have before the fight occurred. This goes with the theme of racial violence/ racial discrimination because the mayor’s wife is white.
The themes of racial discrimination and racial violence occurred in Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine as well. Serena Williams, one of the greatest tennis players of all time or the greatest player of all time was treated so poorly on and off the court and Rankine speaks on how she was treated in her book Citizen. In Part II she speaks on Serena Williams and what she went through. Rankine brings it up in Part II, stating “The most notorious of Serena’s detractors takes the form of Mariana Alves, the distinguished chair umpire. In 2004 Alves was excused from officiating any more matches of the final day of the US Open after she made five bad calls against Serena in her quarterfinal matchup against fellow American Jennifer Capriati. The serves and returns Alves called out were landing, stunningly unreturned by Capriati, inside the lines, no discerning eyesight needed.” (Rankine 26-27). It was clear to many that Alves was leaning one way during the match because the description of inside the lines, no discerning eyesight needed is just proving that Alves had something against Serena Williams for some odd reason and was umpiring in a cheating way. Another example Rankine speaks on is “Though no one was saying anything explicitly about Serena’s black body, you are not the only viewer who thought it was getting in the way of Alves’s sight line.” (Rankine 27). Serena had her response to the unfairness stating, “I am very angry and bitter right now. I feel cheated. Shall I go on? I feel cheated.” (27). Serena has the right to be angry and bitter because she is in the right and was cheated and the match was totally unfair.
Overall, The Color Purple (2023) and Citizen: An American Lyric are similar in some type of way because they have times of describing the same theme of racial violence and discrimination.
