Nola Darling (portrayed by Tracy Camilla Johns) is a young, attractive, sexually-independent Brooklynite who juggles three suitors: the polite and well-meaning Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks); the self-obsessed model Greer Childs (John Canada Terrell); and the immature, motor-mouthed bicycle messenger Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee). Nola is attracted to the best in each of them, but refuses to commit to any of them, cherishing her personal freedom instead, even though each man wants her for himself.
She’s Gotta Have It contributes to countless African American elements and popular film language. In addition, it represents the first movie of the 1980s to place the achievement of individual desire at the forefront of the black liberation movement, in the same manner the individual is at the center of the hip-hop revolution (i.e., the rapper). The movie also gave blackness a universal face, through the eyes of Mars (Spike Lee) and a universal home, Brooklyn. It is the story of Nola Darling, a young black woman, a source of conversation both in and out of the film. The film’s narrative style is taken from the challenges and pleasures of the competing views on who Nola truly is. This signifies the major source of controversy of the sexism in the movie as the viewer is reluctant to accept Nola’s voice as authoritative.
Nola idealizes having what men in the black community have—multiple sex partners—which symbolizes her as an individual struggling against the group. “A woman (or, at least Nola) can be a sexual being, doesn’t have to belong to a man, and perhaps shouldn’t even wish for such a thing.” Above all, Nola’s voice is the most revolutionary element in the film, a representation of the struggle of African American women in society at the time.
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