She's Gotta Have It: A Narrative Case Study

By Christopher C. Odom

NARRATIVE CASE STUDY

She’s Gotta Have It

“Everybody’s character was reflected in how they perceived Nola.  That’s the whole film, how everybody perceives Nola.”

— (Spike Lee, “Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It.”)

Like Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON (1950), SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT (1986) is a singular story told through multiple points of view.  With each point of view showing us what the characters want us to see (See Appendixes A-1 - A-8).  Like Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE (1941), SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT is a story where each narrators’ description of the main character is the antithesis of who the narrator his or her self would like to be in a Utopian world (See Appendix B).  The narrator falls short of this vision and as a non sequitur blames the main character for the sins the narrator commits and the miracles the narrator cannot make.

Thus, from a narrative perspective, SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, is an exciting story when attempting to determine who the narrator actually is in the story.  After the opening montage, the story begins with Nola Darling waking up in bed and speaking to the camera.  At this point, Nola becomes the narrator.  However, we are immediately brought to Jamie Overstreet addressing the camera directly.  Are we now seeing Jamie through Nola’s eyes, or is Jamie now narrating to us directly?  Jamie is in fact narrating through his own eyes and not Nola’s.  However, throughout the movie there is an obvious heavy hand from an unknown narrator who speaks to Nola, Jamie, and all the other characters in the movie directly.  We never hear this unknown narrator speak to the characters, but the characters clearly speak to this unknown narrator.  It is this unknown narrator who has intentionally woven together all of the characters’ accounts of the story of Nola.  Although inside the world of the movie, the narrator is clearly “unknown,” it is clearly known that there is a narrator in the world of the movie.  On the surface we have a story about Nola Darling, but it is through the unknown narrator’s fabula that we really learn the story of each individual character (See Appendix D).

Page 1

Christopher C. Odom is an Award-Winning Writer, Director, Producer and Author who earned his Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from the University of California, Los Angeles. An Associate Member of the Writers Guild of America, west Independent Writer’s Caucus, Christopher has won numerous screenwriting and filmmaking awards. His work has been nationally televised and screened in cities worldwide, including Tel Aviv, Berlin and Cannes.

About The Author