Presenting Oprah Winfrey, Her Films, and African American Literature

T. Green

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781349448593, 9781137282453
• eBook ISBN: 9781137282460
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Literature

Oprah Winfrey has long promoted black issues by being involved as a producer or actor in the adaptation of works by African American writers for film. This volume evaluates Winfrey's involvement in the visual interpretation of African American literary texts using film, music, black masculinity, black feminist, and cultural theory.

C H A P T E R F I V E

“Let the Music Play”: Music, Meaning, and Method in Oprah Winfrey Presents: Their Eyes Were Watching God

NEAL A. LESTER

All night now the jooks clanged and clamored. Pianos living three lifetimes in one Blues made and used right on the spot. Dancing, fighting, singing, crying laughing, winning and losing love every hour. Work all day for money, fight all night for love. The rich black earth clinging to bodies and biting the skin like ants.¹

Musically Speaking

Many people had taken notice of the steamy trailer for Oprah Winfrey Presents Their Eyes Were Watching God, featuring Halle Berry as Janie and Michael Ealy as Tea Cake, frolicking as Alicia Keys’s sensual blues tune “Fallin’”² flirts with and caresses this Hollywood-handsome, light-skinned couple. And while it is significant that 24.6 million viewers tuned in for the Sunday night ABC (American Broadcasting Company) primetime event, making it the third most watched program of that evening, by most critical accounts, Oprah’s efforts were disappointing. Even with the star-studded cast, breathtaking cinematography, actor award nominations, and other nominations for costuming, directing, and hairstyling,³ those familiar with Hurston and this novel wanted more substance, especially those who knew the novel’s narrative and performative richness. Indeed, as is most often the case with television and movie adaptations of novels, this telefilm version is abbreviated, with character development and plot aborted—or otherwise altered—to suit decision-makers’ aesthetic awareness of television and movie constraints. However, as with any television and movie adaptation, interpretative liberties are taken, and in the absence of definitive answers from the production’s screenwriters, producers, directors, and actors, we as critics, scholars, and critical audiences construct narratives to explain and to question why and how certain decisions are made critically and aesthetically.

What created some unifying buzz of curiosity, at least among very vocal bloggers, about Oprah’s televised production of Their Eyes Were Watching God—beyond the polarization of those who loved it and those who hated it—was the music that punctuates the adaptation. Online viewers initiated a conversation about the music: What song and artist accompanied the film trailer? Was there a soundtrack for the production? Who were the artists? Were these new tunes? How were the tunes selected? Who selected the tunes? How were tune sequences determined? How were song renditions determined? What was the award-winning film composer Terence Blanchard’s relationship with Hurston’s novel before this project? What creative dimensions does his music bring to the project? One reviewer offers this positive nod toward the music in the film: “I watched this movie four times before returning it. The music and the scenery were captivating . . . . The love affair between [Janie] and Tea Cake will absolutely transport you, and soon you will find yourself dancing about to the electric soundtrack.” Since there are no clues to individual tracks and artists in the final film credits, one viewer known as “akaiJ” on the IMDB.com website identified music in the production and posted the closest thing to a production compilation, concluding after sharing the list: “No matter what you think of the film, it’s great to know that millions of people got to hear these wonderful artists last night.”⁴ Indeed, in the spirit of reflecting and supporting the rhetorical lyricism of the novel’s plot and language, the music selected for and presented with this production adds a rich texture to the artistic integrity of this creative project. Deborah L. Wilchek, high school teacher and coauthor of Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom: “With a Harp and a Sword in My Hands,” acknowledges the importance of putting this music under a microscope:

One final addition to the film that I think deserves discussion is the use of music. An early clip of the film that I viewed online used a song from contemporary singer/songwriter Alicia Keys. While the music in the clip underscored a love scene between Tea Cake and Janie, I was somewhat dismayed at the use of contemporary music to bring to life a period novel. I was relieved when I viewed the film, however, to see that the musical choices were much different and quite fascinating. The film uses music not only to reinforce the dramatic and narrative elements on the screen but also to provide a historical overview of the idiom of African American music. . . . Every student I know slips on earphones and turns up the iPod or radio or CD every chance he or she can get. A discussion of the music in Their Eyes Were Watching God, an obvious addition to the novel as it is on the page, invites students to share their expertise and expand their appreciation of the ways that music underscores narrative elements and character development.⁵

Some viewers really paid attention to the music, as indicated in this blogger’s comments on the value of the multigenre music in the piece:

The music may have been one of the best things about the movie. A lot of different styles of real, honest music that stayed close to its roots. Also some more polished contemporary styles such as New Orleans jazz and even R & B that sounded close to Motown. One song would have been described as traditional blues, and even though I’m not a fan of the blues, I enjoyed it. I really liked the New Orleans style jazz. And there was early church music, similar in style to what slaves might have sung. Another good musical performance came from the people in the Everglades (vchimpanzee from North Carolina).⁶

While there is no single compilation or soundtrack of the tunes and renditions, the blues and the bluesy folk music assembled by trumpeter, recording artist, actor, and composer Terence Blanchard “contributes a first-rate musical score to the endeavor”—music that moves beyond mere aesthetic background to reinforce the power, the timeliness, and the accessibility of Hurston’s acclaimed novel.⁷

Melodies to Reveal the Soul

Since I am neither a musician nor a film studies scholar, I shall refrain from making this investigation too technical; actually, I can’t write that technical essay. Hence, I will not address, for instance, the kinds of details composer and film expert Fred Karlin addresses in terms of instrumental scores rather than songs with lyrics in Listening to Movies: The Film Lovers Guide to Film Music (1994): “Ambient sounds that leak into the sound recording done during filming”; music that signifies the beginning or end of a segment of a program; music that hits the action or accents a specific movement in a film; music that serves as “motifs, short melodies often used to identify different characters or situations”; music used as psychological subtext to tell us what’s going on inside a character’s head; or even “source music on or off screen that comes from a specific concrete object in the scene.”⁸ While this aspect of the telefilm is present and surely enhances the viewing experience by punctuating the narrative action and enhancing character development—guitar strumming, piano tinkling, harmonica whining, African drumming, and banjo playing, for instance—my training as a literary and cultural studies scholar directs my critical attention to investigating and elaborating on how songs and lyrics interplay with the telefilm narratively and thematically. Thus, I explore here how the song lyrics support and frame the telefilm and interface with Hurston’s original text. And rather than consider songs in the precise order as they occur in the production, I look at the music pieces as they strategically develop the overarching theme of romance, especially Janie’s relationships as she seeks and finds romance. Such an exploration reveals a clear relationship between the original narrative and this creative exercise.⁹

Importantly and strategically for the primetime mass audience viewers, Oprah Winfrey and her telefilm production team situate—some critics would say “reduce”—Hurston’s complex novel to a lusty love story complete with erotic images: focusing on feet, licking a naked female’s back, sucking on hands and fingers, nibbling on a male’s earlobe, slowly rubbing a lemon across full lips, and another’s tongue teasing at a partner’s. Proclaims Winfrey in her telefilm introductory comments about this lusty love story focus:

[Their Eyes Were Watching God] was one of the most beautiful, poignant love stories I’d ever read. . . . The first time Janie and Tea Cake kiss reinvents the whole idea and notion of kissing. I would have to say that if you get a kiss like that, you can die a happy woman.

Indeed, the intensely sensual and erotic image from the novel of a young and sexually curious Janie stretched beneath a blooming pear tree in the early moments of the novel frames Oprah’s message of the novel and for the telefilm audience. Hurston’s writes of Janie’s awakening:

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.¹⁰

With Janie’s lessons on love and romance coming directly from nature, it is therefore not altogether surprising that much of the music most easily connected with Hurston’s story—no matter the format—relates to blues narratives associated with love relationships and romance, in this case Janie and Tea Cake’s tumultuous romance. The slow and seductive tune “Simply Beautiful,” originally recorded by the Reverend Al Green and performed in the telefilm by juke joint songster Ricky Frante, then serves as a centerpiece for the telefilm. It begins simply, “If I gave you my love, I tell you what I’d do,” and moves forward to “I’d expect a whole lotta love outta you. . . Simply beautiful simply beautiful simply beautiful.”¹¹

The song’s narrative involves a conditional request from one lover to another. With the pseudo proposal come clear expectations of what such a union between these two lovers committed and connected can and should be. The song’s uncomplicated lyrics and lack of figurative language contrast the complexity of emotions and physicality between any two lovers. Within the space of this uncomplicated language are the textures that define spiritual transcendence and emotional vulnerability. And although the lyrics suggest that this proposal is quite rational and reasoned, the truth is that matters of the heart are quit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One   The Black Matriarch’s Quest for Love: Oprah Winfrey as Sofia in The Color Purple
• Two   Oprah Winfrey and the Trauma Drama: “What’s So Good About Feeling Bad?”
• Three   Creating a Legacy of Disconnection: Colorism and Classism in Oprah Winfrey Presents: The Wedding
• Four   Wanderlust, Hysteria, and Insurrection: (Re)presenting the “Beloved” Sweet Home Men
• Five   “Let the Music Play”: Music, Meaning, and Method in Oprah Winfrey Presents: Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Six   Blues, Hope, and Disturbing Images: A Comparison of Sapphire’s Push and the Film Precious
• Additional References
• Index