Nearly thirty plus years after his debut film, “She’s Gotta Have It,” Spike Lee has premiered a Netflix series that is a spunky reboot of the very film that helped launch his career. At first, I was kind of hesitant to start this Netflix series, but after hearing people rave on about how addicting the show was, I decided to join the bandwagon. Now that I have finished the series, I have come to terms with the love/hate relationship that I have with the show’s main character, Nola Darling.
Nola Darling is a Brooklyn artist, who to some extent depicts the “free black woman.” I can honestly say that I admire Darling’s characteristics of being an unapologetically woke black woman. In the show, she was never afraid to express her feelings on societal or personal issues through her artwork. Nola was also always doing things that were out of the norm, especially with her everyday life decisions. However, I became annoyed with the constant struggle that she encounters when it comes to balancing her love life with three very different lovers.
Each one of Nola’s lovers brought different things to the table in Nola’s very open love life. Whether it was their personalities, their looks or their pleasures. We are shown that Nola absorbed and admired traits that each lover did or did not have from one another.
As the show progressed and the more she confined in each man in her life, I felt as though Nola began to lose who she was as a person. Although each lover cared and adored Nola in their own light, she was constantly becoming distracted when it came to the drive she had to mold her art career. I was disappointed in how Nola lost focus of her goals and aspirations as she had each lover involved in her life. She had a great level of ambition in the beginning of the show, but it became clear that it was fading as the storyline of her love life became more in depth.
Today, it is typical for a man to have the image of unapologetically confining in females and due to this I adore Lee’s spin on this stigma with Nola’s character. His series has shown that females can also treat men the very way that they tend to treat females. I believe that this twist was needed for females who do not know how to become more daring with their life decisions.
Overall Nola Darling is a character that is way ahead of our time. Although she did lose a sense of herself when it came to finding satisfaction from each of her lovers, she has challenged the typical stigma that society has placed on women and their love lives.