Netflix’s She’s Got­ta Have It is a time­ly ode to black womanhood

If many of the recent remakes of ​’80s and ​’90s movies and TV shows have felt unnec­es­sary, this re-envi­sion­ing of Spike Lee’s debut fea­ture for today’s gen­er­a­tion feels any­thing but. It may be the most impor­tant and time­ly project Net­flix has under­tak­en. She’s Got­ta Have It is a clear ode to Brook­lyn, its com­mu­ni­ty and the inim­itable vibe that puls­es through the New York bor­ough. It does not aim to recap­ture the spe­cif­ic time of the Lee’s orig­i­nal but rather accen­tu­ates the way the borough’s unique his­to­ry and cul­ture has shaped its present climate.

Filled with cul­tur­al ref­er­ences linked both to Brooklyn’s then and now, the series employs an unforced sense of long­ing that keeps its audi­ence very much in the present while offer­ing glimpses into a musi­cal past by ways of intro­duc­ing the sound­track of each scene with the respec­tive song’s album cov­er. The result­ing effect is as melan­cholic as it is soothing.

Nola Dar­ling (bril­liant­ly por­trayed by DeWan­da Wise) is an artist in the process of find­ing her own voice in her art. She’s a cinephile with an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge and a deep under­stand­ing of the works by the artists she takes inspi­ra­tion from. Her artis­tic vision is as strong as the armour she wears out into a world that shows lit­tle respect for black, inde­pen­dent women nav­i­gat­ing a cre­ative pro­fes­sion belit­tled by the cor­po­rate mass­es and the hypocrisies of ​“white hip­ster impe­ri­al­ism” gen­tri­fy­ing the neigh­bour­hood. We fol­low her quest to uncov­er the vul­ner­a­ble core of her work by chal­leng­ing her own con­cept of what it means to be free – in her art, her rela­tion­ships, with­in her­self and her cel­e­bra­tion of the black female form.

Nola address­es the cam­era direct­ly when she gives her audi­ence a low-down of who she is – an unapolo­getic, ambi­tious black woman who refus­es to be tied down by labels, espe­cial­ly if that label spells out ​“freak”. She detests the word itself as much as she does its dual impli­ca­tions – name­ly that men are applaud­ed for their sex­u­al expres­sion, regard­less of whether they do so in a monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship or through adul­ter­ous affairs, where­as women explor­ing their sex­u­al­i­ty are labelled as, well, you name it: sluts, bitch­es, even freaks.

This per­spec­tive high­lights just how lit­tle has changed since the film’s 1986 release. Nola takes pride in set­ting her own rules while oth­ers play by the stan­dards set out by the patri­archy. She wants to have it all and she won’t be shamed for it – not by soci­ety, and most def­i­nite­ly not by the three men she shares her ​“lov­ing bed” with on a rotat­ing basis. But after she is assault­ed and called a ​“black bitch” on her way home one night, she is forced to ques­tion whether even her lovers ooze the type of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty she – and mil­lions of oth­er women – has been fight­ing her entire life.

Each of her men fit a cer­tain arche­type, but besides their com­mon need to ​“pos­sess” her as their own, one wouldn’t think of them as anti-fem­i­nist. The great­est threat to them is not nec­es­sar­i­ly her inde­pen­dence, but the real­i­ty of hav­ing to share her with men who have the qual­i­ties they lack them­selves. While many a man has a dif­fer­ent girl in every area code, Nola has a dif­fer­ent man for every need: Jamie (Lyriq Bent) is smart, sophis­ti­cat­ed, mature and in many ways her intel­lec­tu­al equal. Greer (Cleo Antho­ny) ​“loves him­self more than Kanye loves Kanye,” and has more to offer in terms of the phys­i­cal rather than emotional.

Mars (Antho­ny Ramos) is the come­di­an of the lot – his flip­pant style and eccen­tric man­ner of expres­sions seem a bit out there for the likes of Nola, but he tends to her emo­tion­al needs the way a good friend might. When con­front­ed with the fact Nola was assault­ed, how­ev­er, they react in a man­ner that implies she may have brought the attack on her­self by dress­ing a cer­tain way. In oth­er words, ​“if you don’t want the atten­tion, you shouldn’t be wear­ing that lit­tle black dress.”

Fol­low­ing the ral­ly­ing cry brought on by the #MeToo move­ment, this par­tic­u­lar plot­line in She’s Got­ta Have It real­ly hits home, and the more we push our­selves to con­sid­er Mars, Greer and Jamie’s reac­tion to the trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence Nola has endured, the more evi­dent it becomes that even the best of men have been nur­tured by a sex­ist soci­ety. Even though they believe their inten­tions to be good, ulti­mate­ly they are only extin­guish­ing the con­fi­dence many women spend build­ing from the moment their lives are com­pli­cat­ed by ​“a quar­ter pound of flesh” (read: breasts).

Because, in this world, there seems to be no way of own­ing your own fem­i­nin­i­ty with­out affirm­ing the male gaze, and in doing so a woman runs the risk of being harassed, assault­ed or raped. Like mil­lions of oth­er women, Nola Dar­ling has had enough. She is not your sweet­ie, mamaci­ta, freak, dime piece, boo, baby gurl, psssst shaw­ty, ey yo ma or your sexy. And she def­i­nite­ly isn’t your moth­er­fuck­ing black bitch.