The foundational element of comparison between both might
be given by Shange, herself:
When I die, I will not be guilty,' Shange
proclaimed in an interview with Claudia Tate in Black Women Writers at
Work, 'of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can
tend to their emotional health other than
themselves.
Both works seek
to articulate the convergent conditions of gender, race, class, and psychology upon
one's identity. In this light, both the choreopoem and the film are similar. It is
important to note that the film had a fairly difficult task in transcribing what Shange
created onto film for a couple of reasons. The first would be that poetry contains a
level of the subjective experience and precision that is difficult to transfer over the
silver screen. One of the common critiques of the film was that it added melodrama to
what was in the poem. For example, when an abortion is described with "steel rods," how
can this be shown on screen and convey its emotional heat without an effect that
repulses? The choreopoem's ability to bring out emotional and intellectual themes that
resonated in both mind and heart is something that was going to challenge the film with
a star- studded cast, where one of the two elements could be addressed, while missing
the other. I think that the film is certainly quality in attempting to bring out the
condition that the poem brings out, but the poem carries with it a level of depth and
experience in its specific, yet anonymous setting that the film narrows down to the
specific character. For example, the poem identifies women through specific color and
while the reader/ audience does not know anything about them, Shange is able to bring
out everything about them. The film allows us to know specific characters with specific
names, not something in the poem, and this allows us to understand their predicaments,
but does not broaden it to others like the choreopoem does. This might be one specific
difference between both works.
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