Oprah Winfrey’s “The Color Purple” remake will aggravate the mental health crisis of American youth, especially Black minors.

 Oprah Winfrey’s “The Color Purple” remake will aggravate the mental health crisis of American youth, especially Black minors.     By Dr. Randy Short 

According to entertainment public relations sources, Bilionairess Oprah Winfrey, widely considered “the Queen of All Media”,  in partnership with Warner Brothers Picture Group will release in theaters a new film version of “The Color Purple” on December 25, 2023. In 1985, Stephen Spielberg’s screen adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple earned nearly $98,500,000 (roughly $280,000,000 in 2023 dollars), won critical acclaim, garnered eleven Oscar nominations, and received four Golden Globe nominations. Due to Spielburg’s deliberately air-brushed and carefully nuanced lesbian subtext between the film’s main characters Shug and Celie, “The Color Purple” received a G-rating. In hindsight, Spielberg (along with LGBTQ groups and allies) his decision to dilute and downplay “The Color Purple’s” central theme of the splendor of lesbian love, which stripped the film of its authenticity and artistic integrity. Given the fact that there exists a desire to recreate a sexed-up and “woke” “Color Purple” that genuinely extols the homosexual love of two women, we, of The Black American Constitutional Political Action Committee (BACPAC is an organization of Black American scholars, ministers, activists, journalists, and clergy), believe that Winfrey’s forthcoming film will be more explicit and, therefore, more detrimental to impressionable youth—especially young Black boys and girls. Furthermore, Oprah Winfrey has vigilantly been an opponent to core beliefs and values cherished by Black Americans struggling to maintain their dignity, self-respect, and integrity as a pariahized ethnic group, and her media output ( i.e. “The Women of Brewster Place”, “Beloved” and “Greenleaf”) is demonstrative of a toxic internalized auto-Negrophobia (i.e. vituperative attacks on other Black celebrities), gross misandry (“all Black men are monsters or sexual predators”), acute moral-ethical laxity that is undermining struggling Black parents. As major cities struggle with the mental health holocaust aggravated by the COVID-19 shutdowns and a sagging economy,  surges in homicides, opioid deaths, rapes, suicides, and crime waves fueled juvenile by flash mobs and smash-and-grab gangs, we believe that persons with the heft and public platforms—like Oprah Winfrey—need to realize their entertainment output should be in service to humanity as much as their bottom line. Oprah has an empathy deficit, in her relationship with Black American youth, demonstrating for decades a penchant for promoting well-produced albeit amoral smut with confusing messages, and her having been a troubled teen should have prompted her to be a light instead of a gutter to others. Therefore, BACPAC urges Oprah Winfrey and her corporate sponsors to shelve the “Color Purple” film, because it will be emotionally and psychologically harmful to vulnerable youth coping with the trauma caused by the post-COVID-19 shutdown that has witnessed young Americans experiencing social alienation, depression,  increased rates of substance abuse, rising rates of suicide ( in particular among Black males), and gender dysphoria. Succinctly stated, “The Color Purple” is rife with themes and images that are triggers that might cause youth to self-harm, self-medicate, or harm others.
We of BACPAC know that Oprah Winfrey is devoted to promoting confusion in American life for a fee. Naturally, Oprah’s choice of radical lesbian author Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is ideologically driven, because she has deep unresolved issues of hatred for her own mother and extended family in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Tennessee, and evidence of this contempt is the lack of her giving back to struggling Black communities—especially in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Generous wealthy celebrities and entertainers keep a tradition of showering their roots by giving back to the places they grew up. Oprah has built a school staffed by pedophile lesbians in South Africa but has not done the same in any Black community where she has had roots—including the struggling cities of Baltimore and Chicago. She is not motivated by compassion and has an empathy deficit. Curiously, Oprah’s indifference to human suffering isn’t limited to Black Americans. We cannot and must not forget that Oprah gave her imprimatur to the infamous Brazilian, “quack shrink”, sociopath, and serial rapist Joao Teixeira de Faria ( aka Joao de Deus or John of God) who violated over 600 victims, nor should we forget her intimate friendship with convicted serial rapist disgraced Hollywood Mogul and Marimax founder Harvey Weinstein. Rumors and accusations abound that Oprah deliberately steered and lure young actresses into Weinstein’s orbit in spite of her knowing his notorious and scandalous behavior. Despite Oprah’s posturing herself to be a champion of voiceless women, she was not a part of the #MeToo movement nor has she used her formidable public relations skills to bring attention to human trafficking, pedophilia, missing women, maternal death, eugenics, organ harvesting, targeting of minors for sexual reassignment surgeries, lesbian on lesbian murder, sexual abuse and harassment of women and girls in foster care, sexualization of children in public education, educational institutions, religious organizations, the military,  or prison system.  In South Africa, Oprah hired women both Black and White that raped and molested girls at the school she created, and this was quickly covered up. Had the rapist been Black men Oprah would have probably made screenplays and documentaries about the situation. Curiously, Oprah blames marginalized Black American men and boys for every problem in the world and seems oblivious to powerful plutocrat men and women that she hobnobs with control society.

 Furthermore, Oprah, instead of repenting of her association with convicted criminal rapists, has waged a crusade of vitriol and hostility against a legion of Black American male figures including Bill Cosby, Russell Simmons, Ice Cube, and Michael Jackson, and has created a career advancement model for other Black women in media to be lynch mob barkers who aggressively echo biased and racist accusations against only Black American men. There is no irony that Oprah’s media output is replete with mostly negative, flawed, self-destructive, and unlovable Black male characters. 
Oprah Winfrey’s ascent in the world of entertainment has been as controversial as it has been lucrative for the Mississippi-born billionairess, and a large part of her career success has been based on her ability to cross over the racial-commercial divide. Therein Winfrey has a more beloved image among white American women than among any demographic group of Black Americans. Oprah’s great success has come at the cost of being the equivalent of the neighborhood snitch—gaslighting and victim-blaming Blacks, particularly Black men. Oprah’s popularity with Black Americans has been in decline for several years. Her 1996 film “Beloved” is based on Toni Morrison’s novel of the same name bombed. It cost $80,000,000 to make and recouped only $23,000,000 at the box office. Oprah has long since lost the respect of most Black Americans, and she will never attain the popularity of other iconic celebrities. In 2014, Oprah co-produced the film “Selma” which starred David Oyelowo a Nigerian who played Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and it was a critical success but only marginally profitable. Nobody wanted to see a Nigerian actor portray a Black American hero.  Oprah’s name is associated with content that castrates men and accentuates the pathology of Black Americans. Many feel Oprah delights in being a “Mammyfied Quisling” who trashes her “kinfolk for the other skin folk”. Even in her film “Selma” Oprah had a foreign Black unconvincingly portray the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which many were appalled and the film suffered as a result of the casting decision. Oprah’s media content carries a repetitive theme of the Black man being bereft of human worth. Regardless of whether or not Hollywood Moguls support HARPO’s projects, there is a strong aversion to what many view as Oprah’s antipathy towards Black men. Given Oprah’s nearly 40 years of digs and agitprop against Black men, grassroots and scholastic circles alike believe “The Color Purple” will be another cinematographic castration of the Black male image. Moreover, another generation heavy-laden with the horrors of COVID-19 and the typical coming-of-age issues doesn’t need another film wherein Oprah channels as an aberrant sexuality combination of Alfred Kinsey and  D.W. Griffith ad nauseam. 
There is a crisis in the land our youth are in tatters and adults like Oprah only see dollars. “The Color Purple” is an LGBTQ soft-porn income-generating machine for Oprah Winfrey who is fixed on aberrant sexuality, abortion, incest, and sexual violence. Nothing that Oprah Winfrey has ever brought before the public has been wholesome, Black American, or family-friendly, and BACPAC trembles in fear of the depths of depravity HARPO wishes to take our youth. A film that will be even more sex-charged than the original in an era where pedophilia, drag kids, gender dysphoria, teen suicide ( especially Black boys), human trafficking, and the school-to-gender-reassignment-abattoir-pipeline is funded by unaware parents promises to be lots of red meat for the reprobate minded Hollywood types crafting this cinematographic atrocity disguise as neutral entertainment. Sadly, the vast majority of the youth in our schools identifying as transgenders are girls, and “The Color Purple” will surely encourage many to mutilate themselves so they can be like Shug Avery.
BACPAC believes that if Oprah Winfrey genuinely wants to make a contribution to Black America her time and money would be better spent and appreciated on funding projects to fight human trafficking, funding prenatal care clinics in her native Mississippi, funding fatherhood support and training centers in disadvantaged areas, and using her vast influence to improve the chances of familial success versus making films lamenting the banality of the struggle Black family. Oprah’s uncompleted legacy reflects a gross underperformance in helping persons whose shoes she once walked in. We earnestly advise Ms. Winfrey to repent of her traditional media content creation and cease and desist unleashing this film that will hurt more than it will heal. Finally, in an age where our youth seldom see hope, we need happy and inspiring entertainment. Why hasn’t she made films about Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells, Daisy Bates, and countless other women versus a veiled homoerotic love story punctuated by an unlovable brute sadist? BACPAC urges Ms. Winfrey and Warner Brothers to suspend releasing “The Color Purple” as a courtesy. Ignoring the will of millions of Black Americans will hurt your corporate bottom line when picket lines boycotts and sit-ins occur in major theater chains. Please remember BACPAC asked you nicel

Dr. Randy Short, President  

BAC PAC (Black American Constitutional Political Action Committee). Support Us.