Within the first few sentences of her essay, Jacqueline Bobo makes clear her disdain for the "Steven Spielberg production". In her efforts to "scapegoat" Spielberg, she makes it clear Spielberg should not have been left to handle the translation of a classic novel so central to the experience of a black woman. I feel like the greatest evidence against Spielberg handling such an important text comes from his own admission that, "I am who I am today because with my past successes added up, the studio would say yes, do whatever you like. Do the telephone book if you'd like." To me, this translates to, "I know what sells, I know how to sell what the studio wants and they trust me to do it." With this in mind, it's a rather frightening admission for anyone who is looking for this specific director to translate such a specific experience. Further on, all of this proclaimed success would seem to distance Spielberg even more from the topic he has been assigned to transfer on to film. Bobo does a fine job of listing examples from the film, pointing out how Spielberg has ruined the emotional and linguistic delicacies which transformed Walker's novel into a classic. However, what she fails to address is the larger audience for the novel that is reached because of Spielberg's production. Those dissatisfied with the "mainstream" depiction of black women in Spielberg's "The Color Purple" may be driven to discover Alice Walker's version or those who enjoyed Spielberg's may want to consider Walker's. Often times when famous novels are made into famous movies, a fairly cliche statement heard is "the book is better than the film". It seems that is exactly what Bobo is doing, letting us know that Spielberg is to blame for the botched depiction of a black woman's experience. Which is okay, I would have never believed in him in the first place.