P-VALLEY IS A DRAMA about employees of a fictional strip club in Mississippi called The Pynk. Watching the show, which Starz has renewed for a third season, gives me déjà vu. In the opening minutes of the first episode, we see a neighborhood overtaken by a flood, the camera eventually focusing on a floating suitcase — which a woman who looks like she just survived a hurricane grabs. I’m reminded of Toni Morrison’s titular character Beloved, who “walked out of the water”; it’s all instantly reminiscent of the Southern, sin-filled aura of stories by Flannery O’Connor. A few minutes later, I’m hit with production design as colorful as that of the TV show Pose — unabashed theatricality.
This description should feel as dizzying as twirling around a stripper pole — that’s the inevitable impact of the artistic and spiritual heft P-Valley wields. The show, which is an adaptation of a play by Pulitzer Prize winner and Tony Award nominee Katori Hall, is about nothing less than free will. Hall explores complex topics such as sex work, abuse by men, abortion, and homophobia. Here in the Mississippi Delta, viewers get to know a mostly Black community trying to live as freely as the Constitution of their nation built by slaves declares white men should.
Patrice Woodbine (Harriett D. Foy), the mother of a stripper named Mercedes (Brandee Evans), embodies prosperity gospel in a Sunday service as she sings, “We need your 10 percent! God needs your 10 percent!” Later, Patrice cons her daughter out of the money she’d just earned, saying that Mercedes owed it to God, who disapproves of her line of work. The hypocrisy of this claim soon becomes clear when we learn that Patrice, before she became born-again, forced Mercedes to have sex for money.
The plot is overly dramatic, but the emotions ring true. As a gay Black man, I know how it feels to be accosted with religion, chained by the word sin, alienated from my Creator by a relative who made my own earthly arrival possible. P-Valley explores how the bound bind, how the wounded wound, and what healing looks like in a place that’s always bleeding.
“Honey, I’m trying to get you blent for the gods,” Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan), the nonbinary owner of The Pynk, lovingly tells a beaten stripper named Keyshawn whose makeup they are doing. “But I don’t think a ton of this durn blend gon’ cover up all this ugly.” Seconds later, Uncle Clifford speaks with the same spirit of empowerment as Baby Suggs in Beloved. Uncle Clifford holds Keyshawn’s face, a bit of her imago dei.
“Right here,” they remind her. “This is your strength.”
Da’Shawn Mosley (dashawn-mosley.com) is a former Sojourners associate editor and lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
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