She's Gotta Have It (1986)
She's Gotta Have It (1986) is an American black-and-white comedy-drama movies written, produced, edited and directed by Spike Lee.[1]
Contents
Plot
Nola Darling is an independent-minded young woman who knows what she likes and what she wants out of life. She's attractive, likes sex and has no trouble attracting men but she knows what kind of man she wants. She also attracts women like Opal Gilstrap, who hope she'll 'come around'. The three men in her life - Jamie Overstreet, Mars Blackmon and Greer Childs - all provide their point of view on Nola and on their relationship with her.[2]
Empowerment
The world still isn’t ready for this movies. In 1986, Black cinema wasn’t in a renaissance. In fact, it had barely been uplifted, except for a few short spaces of time. But when Black creatives did hold some agency, even during early ‘70s, race movies were stymied when World War II began and Hollywood absorbed the Black actors who starred in them. In this period, white directors began to take over Blaxploitation films from its Black originators, the form losing its boldness under the guise of stereotypes.
Spike lee first movies upon graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, completely changed Black cinema, from its Black female protagonist to the African-American gaze the new filmmaker offered through his lens. When written, Nola Darling was light-years ahead of most Black female characters who’d come before her in the nearly forty years prior. Sexually confident and open—intelligent, artistic, and sophisticated[3]
Controversy
Being a Spike Lee film, it has a critical sense about the racial issue, implicit since the beginning, but being the first film by the American director, this criticism was not yet refined, as in his subsequent work. The movie is supposed to be told through Darling's perspective, but then the rest of the film is basically the guys take on Darling. Greer constantly puts her down racially, claiming that he could leave her for a white woman, Mars talking negatively about her behind her back every chance he got.[2]
The movie exists outside the confines of racial trauma and systemic racism. These are thriving Black men and women existing within the cultural milieu of Fort Greene Park almost unencumbered. There’s truthfulness to Lee’s vision, partly born from mashing both guerilla and documentary styles — seen through his use of his brother’s photography of a vibrant Brooklyn and his now-ubiquitous fourth-wall-breaking monologues. [3]
