get free or die tryin'.

"Perry’s film distorts Shange’s work of self-determination in ways that reinforce the crooked room imposed on black women by male-centered religion and resorts to tools of shaming that so often derive from the crooked room. Although the women in Shange’s original work rely on spirituality and divine support, they are not beholden to any specific definition of God. In Perry’s film the women are subjected to more dominating, moralistic, and constrained notions of morality. Perry creates a new character, played by Whoopi Goldberg, who is a religious fanatic. She serves as a tool of shaming surveillance in the film, interjecting her judgmental, mocking, dogmatic Christian ethics over Shange’s original poetry. Perry also generates a homophobic story line that does not exist in Shange’s play. In this subplot, one of the women learns she is infected with HIV by her closeted gay husband, whose philandering is caused by the woman’s neglect of the relationship in favor of pursuing success in her career. And in a particularly egregious revision of the original text, Perry conflates the Lady in Yellow monologue about sexual freedom and exploration with the Lady in Blue narrative about seeking an unsafe, illegal abortion."