Hello everyone,
Today, I want to talk about Spike Lee's directorial debut: "She's Gotta Have It" (1986).
Instead of delaying sharing my score until the end, I'm going to come right out with it: I gave this movie a 5. I loved it.
Then, because of the abrupt shift near the film's end, I was curious to see what others had thought of it.
(Spoilers, probably obviously, ahoy.)
(And trigger warnings for sexual violence and intimate partner violence.)
"She's Gotta Have It" is structured as a fictional documentary following Nola Darling, played with fresh charm and frankness by Tracy Camilla Johns. Without stating it explicitly, the premise of this pretend documentary is to essentially cross-examine Nola's sexuality, with the title of the film ostensibly the answer to the questions it raises. Why does Nola love sex so much? Why doesn't she "settle down" with one partner? Why does she pursue relationships with such wildly different men? Everyone, apparently, is invited to weigh in with their conjectures and, sometimes, their judgments.
But the real answer? Shrug! She's just gotta have it.
This might make the movie sound flippant, flimsy, vapid, or objectifying, but at least as I experienced a film that is 90% a romcom (with discussion of the other 10% forthcoming), it didn't remotely land that way. "She's Gotta Have It" is playful and engaging, inviting you into the life of a woman firmly and confidently in control of her sexuality. It is sad to say that that conceit still feels exciting, affirming, liberating, and somewhat revolutionary in 2021, but it did all the same.
There is so much to enjoy in this movie, from its gorgeous cinematography and the loving, unglossy yet romantic views of New York City that we can count on from early Lee films, to its fun banter-y dialogue and its just-enough-staginess to instill a hushed sense of your attention being demanded akin to being in the audience of a live performance, to the whimsy and indulgence (especially in a small-budget film) to the brief foray into blazing technicolor for a song-and-dance performance, with real 1980s-era graffiti tags and handmade and dollar store party decorations as the backdrop.
The film is a reference, or perhaps even a response to Woody Allen's "Manhattan" (1979) and informs the funny, black-and-white tiny-budget directorial breakout with a vérité feel and breaking-the-fourth-wall-asides of Kevin Smith's "Clerks" (1994). It fits so clearly, so juicily and richly, in the arc of American cinema through the decades.
To that point about this movie's relationship to "Manhattan": I must shout from the rooftops how grateful I am to have a replacement in "She's Gotta Have It"--grateful, and also deeply annoyed it took me so long to watch a replacement that is in fact superior to the film it replaces. Both films celebrate their goofy and neurotic directors via their dual roles as directors and actors, but Lee has the humility to not make himself the star of his own movie. Lee is also delightfully funny and self-deprecating as Mars Blackmon, who compulsively and wheedlingly repeats the same questions at least three times in order to secure reassurance and playfully wear down Nola's will to resist warming to him.
Furthermore, Lee creates space for his sister, Joie Lee, and father to play parts. The inclusion of the brief behind-the-scenes moment in the closing credits in which Lee can be heard off-screen calling Bill Lee "Dad" is a sweet, fleeting moment of intimacy that melts my heart and invites the audience to consider how much of a family labor of love the movie was.
Perhaps as the most obvious and impactful counterpoint to "Manhattan," "She's Gotta Have It" stars a woman in unapologetic possession of her sexual agency, which only further emphasizes the ick factor of the child-girlfriend portrayed by Mariel Hemingway's Tracy.
Now, to that last 10%, and the messiness that is the last chapter of the movie:
After Tommy Redmond Hicks's Jamie angrily cuts Nola off for her refusal to commit to him exclusively, Nola entreats him to come over to her apartment, hoping to win him over and rekindle their romance. Once there, a switch is flipped: he becomes cruel and callous, he dominates and rapes her, and states he enjoyed it as he leaves.
Contemporary criticism of the movie immediately decried the scene (as well as the overall portrayal of sex, sexual orientation, and gender dynamics--you can read the full assessment here). In her analysis, Cora Harris wrote:
"Toward the end of the film, Jamie rapes Nola. This is a shocking, disturbing scene — and not just because rape is out of place in a comedy. Jamie is supposed to be mature and gentle, and is the only one Nola considers as a possible permanent lover. Prior to the rape, he and Nola have cooled their relationship because she has refused to choose among her lovers. She becomes despondent, invites Jamie to her apartment, and attempts to seduce him. Incensed at being “used” this way, he assaults her.
Jamie’s possessiveness is the reason for his anger and the real motivation behind the rape. But this is obscured, and the audience is left with the impression that Jamie is justified. Nola had “asked for it” — the old excuse for rape."
Recent analysis of the film describes the inclusion of the scene in which Jamie sexually assaults Nola "as a punishment Lee doles upon her", attributing the scene's inclusion to Lee's process of "still discovering his talents and autonomy, and mapping those insecurities upon a female form." In the years since the film's release, Lee has expressed his regret for his inclusion of the scene in the movie.
There are many valid points in Harris's evaluation of the movie, not the least of which being that it is a truly a shitty move for a director to throw a rape scene into the last 20 minutes of a romcom. For that alone, Lee's apologies are warranted. (On a related note, I am increasingly firmly of the position that male-identified creators should just not ever use sexual assault of non-male-identified characters as a plot device because I have yet to see an example of them doing that in a way that is worth the inevitable and unnecessary triggering and terror it inflicts on its audience. You have Game of Thrones to thank, repeatedly, for substantiating this take.)
I nevertheless have to contest the assertions referenced here that the film somehow treats Jamie's assault on Nola as "deserved" or as an expression of Lee's wish to "punish" Nola. Instead, the final scenes lend critical complexity to what is assuredly a shocking turn of plot and tone that ultimately vindicates and uplifts Nola. Those last moments are also admittedly so dense and brief that they don't lend enough time for the audience to recover from the violence they've just witnessed to process what is said.
The last two scenes of the movie are a conversation between Nola and Jamie, days or weeks after the assault, followed by a final scene with Nola alone. In their conversation, Nola addresses what Jamie did to her by calling it, albeit unsatisfyingly, a "near-rape" (rather than simply, and accurately, a rape). Jamie says he has never committed an act like that before, in an (again, unsatisfying) acknowledgement of the despicable and unforgivable nature of what he did. Nola states her ongoing wish to be with Jamie in what could be considered a muddying of the waters over Jamie's culpability for the violence he perpetrated. But to read Nola's seemingly perplexing wish that way is to completely ignore our understanding of rape trauma syndrome and women's tendency to respond to interpersonal trauma with a paradoxical affiliative response. Finally, Nola informs him that she will be taking a period of "celibacy" as a result of his act of violence. She thereby simultaneously makes at least some small accounting of the harm he has done to her, but also reinstates herself alone as the person in charge of her sexuality. As she walks away from him in slow motion, Jamie calls Nola back to him, only to growl a tacit threat to her over the possibility that she "messes up" one more time, again revealing himself as the wolf in sheep's clothing we know him to be.
Back in the safety and intimacy of her apartment, Nola concludes the film by telling the audience that her relationship with Jamie ended for good shortly after that bleak conversation. Unbowed, she asserts herself as simply and again unapologetically "not a one-man woman". As the film ends, she has retaken her power and dignity.
Through this dramatic and yes, imperfect denouement, "She's Gotta Have It" perhaps unwittingly but importantly centers the violence of patriarchy, misogyny, and the panicked need some men feel to control or obliterate women's sexual agency. It is a dark end to an otherwise buoyant movie, but it is nevertheless victorious: Nola regains her power and charts her course away from men who would harm her, deride her, or fail to embrace her for the autonomous, self-assured, and empowered human being that she is.
As I defend "She's Gotta Have It", I have to acknowledge that I'm strongly biased in favor of this movie. I'm a sucker for gorgeous black-and-white movies, and for movies that uplift the resilience and vibrancy that is New York even during its turbulence and struggle during the 1970s and 1980s, and for Spike Lee ever since "Do the Right Thing" (1989) knocked the goddamned breath out of me for its beauty and evergreen agony--another film that is bright and joyful until its abruptly eviscerating final moments.
I also acknowledge that as a white straight woman watching this movie 20+ years after the fact, I don't have much of a part to play in this discussion. My opinion is not needed. For whatever admittedly little that opinion might be worth: It is understandable, especially at the time it was released, that people wanted "She's Gotta Have It" to be all things to everybody. I see that it simply wasn't and still isn't. Perhaps that is simply too much pressure to put on one director's debut, but more importantly, perhaps this is why we needed and continue to need more art by more Black creators, as well as creators of color in general: so each entry into our conversations about the intersections of sex, gender, race, relationships, and sexual violence can be valued while not also being tasked with carrying a disproportionate part of the immense burden of answering all of the questions at once. One movie can't carry all that weight all on its own. "She's Gotta Have It" certainly couldn't, but I think it did a better job than perhaps it was given credit for.
So for all those reasons, hence my 5.
{Heart}
Resources and support for people who have experienced sexual violence are available through RAINN.
