Does <i>She's Gotta Have It</i> Live Up to Its Promise?
In his 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It, Spike Lee imagined the life of a fictional young, independent, polyamorous, black woman living in Brooklyn and trying to navigate relationships, work, and adult life on her own terms. Now, more than 30 years later, Lee has rebooted the story as a 10-episode series for Netflix. The plot follows the original movie closely, centering on Nola Darling (DeWanda Wise) and her three male partners, Jamie Overstreet (Lyriq Bent); Greer Childs (Cleo Anthony); and Mars Blackmon (Anthony Ramos).
More than a reflection on a woman and her romantic conquests, the original She’s Gotta Have It helped to expand the way audiences saw black female autonomy and sexuality. The Atlantic’s Adrienne Green, Brentin Mock, Adam Serwer, and Gillian White discuss whether Nola Darling’s character still feels groundbreaking today, how the reboot tackles sexual harassment and abuse, and why the series might have been better off with no male characters.
Gillian B. White: I’ll start by saying that I was frustrated with how inconsistent Nola Darling’s character was from episode to episode—and sometimes from moment to moment. She’s at once depicted as a mature, self-confident artist, and also as a needy, childish, scattered young woman. It’s not that she can’t embody characteristics from both ends of this spectrum; it’s that she vacillates so wildly between the two. It’s jarring to watch and doesn’t make sense given the show is about her trying to live life on her own terms, and to encourage others to do the same.
Is this not your typical millennial? Seriously, though, I noticed her split personalities as well, but I didn’t think it worked against Darling in the
