The Messy Politics of Spike Lee's <em>She's Gotta Have It</em>
By the end of She’s Gotta Have It’s first season, back in 2017, the show’s effervescent protagonist chose to abandon the three men she’d been dating. Nola Darling, the fictional Brooklyn-based artist who animated Spike Lee’s 1986 film of the same name, had found a new love worth pursuing: the principle of honesty. “That’s why I painted The Three-Headed Monster,” she said in one of her many fourth-wall breaking monologues, referencing the collagelike painting she’d shown the men during a surprise group dinner. “It’s about the truth, and I understand, often, that is the hardest thing to get to—to land at a place where folks can find openness, candor, and frankness amongst each other.”
It might follow, then, that the show’s second season would find Nola (played by DeWanda Wise) attempting to carve out a life—or to make art—that exemplifies this commitment to vulnerability and critical thinking. Unfortunately, Nola’s development seems far less important to Lee, who diverges further from Lee’s romance-centric source material but offers its protagonist little imaginative recourse.
