Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
“For a film named after a groundbreaking blues icon, Ma Rainey frustratingly gets very little screen time.”
Title: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
Director: George C. Wolfe 👨🏾🇺🇸🌈
Writers: Screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson 👨🏾🇺🇸 based on the play by August Wilson 👨🏾🇺🇸
Reviewed by Laura Hindley 👩🏼🇬🇧🌈
—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 4/5
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a film adaptation of August Wilson’s 1984 play by the same name, explores the exploitation of Black musicians in America during the Great Migration. Set in a stuffy Chicago recording studio during the height of summer, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom gives us a snapshot of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (Viola Davis), otherwise known as the “Mother of the Blues”.
Ma arrives from Georgia to lay down some new tracks with her backing band, but the recording session goes from bad to worse as she clashes with her white bosses and volatile trumpet player Levee, played by the late Chadwick Boseman in what would be his final performance. As Ma, the band, and Levee continue to butt heads about the arrangement of a track, the film reaches a shocking and heartbreaking conclusion.
The production is simple, with the film primarily taking place in one room, but the stellar performances of Davis and Boseman fill the screen with energy so that the film never becomes dull or repetitive. Though Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom doesn’t manage to shake its theatrical roots, the dialogue is poignant and expertly written, with Boseman delivering two moving dialogues about racism that stay with the audience long after the credits have rolled. Wilson’s characterisation of life for the Black community in 1927, with its racial tensions, class inequality, and sexism, sadly feels as timely as ever.
Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
For a film that’s named after one of the first female blues icons to record her own music, Ma frustratingly gets very little screen time when compared to her male counterparts.
When we do see her, she’s portrayed in stereotypical ways. As Angelica Jade Bastien writes:
Davis plays Ma Rainey as a caricature; she’s never able to suggest interiority. She tosses her weight from side to side. She leers and licks her gold teeth … Is this how the filmmakers view fat Black women? Why make her largesse — in terms of personality — so strangely grotesque?
In contrast, we learn about the history of Ma’s male backing group at various points throughout the film. For example, Levee reveals that when he was eight years old a gang of white men came into his house and raped his mother. This gives the audience an insight into his trauma and also helps to contextualise his increasingly erratic behaviour, shedding light on his PTSD.
Ma’s character simply does not get this level of attention. Though powerful, strong, confident, and played with ferocity by Davis, the film misses a huge opportunity to portray its protagonist as a three-dimensional person.
Race: 4/5
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom immerses itself in the struggles of Black musicians, touching on topics from exploitation to physical violence.
In the 1920s, many white record labels began to realise they could profit off the music of Black artists. As noted by Lydia Wang for Refinery29, Ma’s label of Paramount Records played a big role in this. “Not only were Black artists paid less than their white counterparts,” Wang writes, “but they were bringing in more money, too, allowing labels to reach large markets of Black consumers.”
White America’s exploitation of Black culture is a common theme throughout the film. Midway through, Ma says, “White folks try to be put out with you all the time. They don’t care nothing about me. All they want is my voice.” Later, Levee pitches his music to one of the white producers present at Ma’s recording session, but the music executive says that he doesn’t think the songs will make money. Levee argues, but the producer refuses to budge and offers to pay Levee $5 for each song, framing it as a favour in which he’d take them off Levee’s hands. In the final scene of the film, we see an all-white band performing Levee’s song in a studio while the white music executive watches on, profiting off a Black man’s art he had originally insisted was useless.
Production decisions like the setting for most of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—a claustrophobic recording studio—reinforce the film’s thematic material. Throughout the session, the small brick-walled room seems to close in on the musicians, as Ma remains under constant scrutiny by the white recording studio owner who is easily angered by small things such as her demands for a cold Coca-Cola.
The film also reveals the depths of trauma stemming from violent racism when Levee, angered by rejection from one of the white music executives, dramatically stabs a fellow member of Ma’s backing group. Through this visceral scene, writers Wilson and Ruben Santiago-Hudson show how not only must Black people suffer systemic racism, but without a safe way to channel their frustrations towards the perpetrators in power, many wind up internalising their pain and lashing out at those closest to them.
In this way, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom hits the mark on many aspects of race. But at the end of the day, it fails in its portrayal of Black women. When writer Dream McClinton describes colorism for The Guardian, stating that, “Dark skin still not only comes with the expectation of lower class but lessened beauty, not to mention uncleanliness, lesser intelligence and a diminished attractiveness,” one can’t help but notice the way director George C. Wolfe’s film plays into exactly that trope. Ma, a dark-skinned Black woman, profusely sweats for an hour and 34 minutes, while no other character has the same physical reaction to the heat. Her light-skinned Black girlfriend Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige) is portrayed as more desirable with Levee expressing his affection for her from the get-go.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25
Ma Rainey was a bisexual pioneer who openly dated both women and men. As legend has it, she was arrested in Chicago for hosting an all-female orgy in her house and had to be bailed out of jail the next day. Even in her music, lyrics regularly reference same-sex romance. In the 1928 song “Prove It On Me Blues,” Ma boldly croons, “It’s true I wear a collar and a tie… Talk to the gals just like any old man.” It’s fair to say that she was ahead of her time.
While her bisexuality was a big part of who she was, however, the film largely ignores this aspect of her life. When her onscreen fictional girlfriend does appear, the film provides a cynical explanation for their relationship, portraying Dussie Mae as a shallow person who will accept overtures from anyone provided they come with benefits. With Ma, Dussie Mae gets to enjoy an all-expenses-paid trip to Chicago and extravagant new clothing. But as Levee’s flirtations persist, she drops allegiance and has sex with him in the same building where Ma is recording, seemingly unperturbed by the prospect of being caught.
For a film that’s supposed to celebrate a Black queer icon, how did they get it so wrong? On the one hand, the 1982 play it’s based on does contain these outdated stereotypes. This isn’t too surprising, given that homosexuality was still considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association well into the late '80s.
On the other hand, Wolfe and Santiago-Hudson took liberties with the source material in other ways. Dialogue was edited, and in fact, the entire final scene was fabricated. Therefore, the filmmakers could—and should—have fleshed out the narrative of Ma’s sexuality and onscreen relationship.
Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.75/5
Acting doesn’t come much braver or more candid than in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, with both Davis and Boseman strong contenders for Oscar wins this year. Ultimately, the film tries to cover a lot of bases and does do a good job of putting Black narratives front and centre, though its portrayal of Black queer women leaves a lot to be desired.
Like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom? Try these other stage-to-film adaptations about Blackness in white society.
Fences (2016)
One Night in Miami (2020)
The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021)