What Is The Conflict Between Nola And Women In She's Charming Have It

In Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It stereotypical gender roles are systematically broken down through the obvious reversal of the classical Hollywood narration technique concerning the delineation between the man’s function and the woman’s usually less meaningful function within a film. Throughout this inverted spectacle, the point that Nola Darling is an independent woman is continually made. This point serves to propel the plot forward because Nola’s sexual independence goes against all conventions of typical womanhood much to the ire of three men. The film arranges for a battle between Nola and women in film aspiring to be independent on the one side, with men supported by classical Hollywood narration on the other seeking to undermine their

strides. The underlying message that Spike Lee hits home is that men and women cannot share the screen and they never will be able to. In other words, both “gotta have it,” but only one can have it.
The scene that best epitomizes this feud over the screen occurs in Nola’s apartment.

As Nola lay ill in bed, Opal and Jamie have a strange encounter. As Jamie comes home to see that Opal has taken his place caring for Nola, he immediately feels threatened as evidenced by his tense voice. In response to Opal’s claim that Nola and herself have a lot of fun together Jamie, with a mirthless smile asks, “What kind of fun?” With no clear response, Jamie decides to confront Opal. As he walks over to Opal in the kitchen, he faces her sternly and the two of them have a brief, uncomfortable confrontation. Opal backs down and takes a seat, and Jamie gains noticeable control of the kitchen, the screen with it, and moves forward into Opal’s exact previous position. Jamie having taken control of the kitchen, a space usually reserved for women, from an actual woman goes to show that through the mise-en-scene’s setting and onscreen actions there is a conflict brewing among the characters and that not everything is what it seems; role disparities based on gender in film have to be redefined. This conflict represents a historical, internal and reticent struggle among fictional characters in films. Spike Lee brings this struggle that has persisted since the realization of a classical Hollywood narration in 1920 to

light.
Jamie and Opal proceed to have a tense conversation.

Opal asks straightforwardly, “Do I threaten you?” Jamie ignores the question, but takes a seat for a more intimate confrontation with Opal. Jamie expresses his astonishment to Opal’s homosexuality considering she is “very beautiful” to which Opal responds, “How one looks has no bearing.” Males and females are often contrasted according to their physical form. Opal challenges this notion, and by challenging this notion, she is concurrently challenging the underlying ideology that makes it acceptable to contrast two individuals and those individuals’ roles in society according to their physical makeup. Opal then rises from the table and walks away, the sound of her footsteps isolated, suggesting her refusal to comply with Jamie’s perceived authority and society’s double

standards.
In the aforementioned scene, there is a struggle over the so-called male, or phallocentric, gaze. The phallocentric gaze in this sense is universal and refers to a position of power in a film, and not purely a point of view of the male sex. Opal’s function in the entire film could very well have been designed for this one scene. She serves as an obstacle to male domination of both screen and story. She embodies Nola’s independence outright and is thus an outlet or a means for Nola’s liberation. Although Jamie asserts his dominance by conquering the kitchen, Opal’s function has been successful; she has served as a voice against male domination, an action Nola follows up on by asserting herself throughout the bulk of the film and by proclaiming victory in the end.
In film theorist, Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, the point is argued that films created thus far have been produced for an intended audience of males. Other film theorists go further to say films have been produced for an even narrower audience of white males. She’s Gotta Have It does not necessarily defy traditional Hollywood film narration, but it does turn these types of notions upside down by placing a black female at the center of attention. In doing so, Spike Lee attacks Mulvey’s theory. However, She’s Gotta Have It simultaneously validates Laura Mulvey’s theory; the plain fact that the film was so jarring to many illustrates her theory. However, Lee goes further and reveals that “visual pleasure” can go both ways… just not at the same time. It just so happened that women tended to be the historical source of visual pleasure, but a woman can just as easily be put in the protagonist’s so-called “driver’s seat” of a film in control of the gaze. Thus, “the gaze” is not reserved exclusively for men, it is universal.