AugustWilson.net
CHAPTER TWO:
Mythological Conversions in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
By Michael Downing
November 1, 2003
"For Wilson, the blues are a supportive force that allows listeners to transcend
their hardships; the blues reawaken cultural consciousness and provide a new
understanding of life."
---Jay Plum
"[Wilson] reveals through his writing the beauty and nobility in the struggle to
survive. By doing so, Wilson transforms drama from a spectacle observed to a
ritual, a ritual that affirms a common vision, thereby elevating the story of
local history to the mythical."
---Pamela Jean Monaco
Several of the most compelling mythological conversions occurring in Ma Rainey's
Black Bottom involve the relationship between Wilson's reconstruction of an
emerging African mythological system and how that emerging mythology is
juxtaposed with the existing--and dominant--white mythology. For example, in his
plays, Wilson constructs the emerging African American mythology as one marked
largely by storytelling and blues music. His representation of the existing
white mythology, on the other hand, is marked predominantly by a dedication to
capitalism, with all of the predatory elements contained therein, and
Christianity, whose symbols and rituals are decidedly different than those of
Wilson's emerging African American mythology.
Despite this clash of cultural mythologies, however, the impact of the
archetypes is not diminished. The stereotypes continue to be converted to
archetypes (and a few archetypes are even converted to stereotypes). In
addition, once the stereotypes are converted to archetypes, the problem at hand
involves the question of how the stereotypes within each mythology relate to one
another and how each is positioned within the competing cultural mythologies.
For example, Wilson's white characters inhabit a mythological system which they
should be accustomed to--at least as far as Wilson's thinking goes. As they
experience any mythological conversions, they remain in a realm that is familiar
to them. If they wish to change their situation, they can--by simply making
different decisions within their mythology--wake from their current dream and
dream anew. Change, for Sturdyvant, for example, is as easy as making a
decision. He contemplates taking a vacation, or he considers going into a
different business, such as textiles. Flexibility within his mythological system
is available to him because he is economically able to be flexible.
As Joseph Campbell argues in Myths to Live By, flexibility or adaptability is
one important function of living mythology, and Wilson's white characters have
this opportunity because their mythology belongs to them. However, the problem
faced by Wilson's African American characters is that as they awake from their
collective dream of moving from Africa to America, they find themselves in a
chaotic nightmare . . . caught between an African mythology, which had
traditionally provided meaning to their lives, and a Christian mythology, which
is occupied by gods, rituals, and archetypes with which they are not intuitively
familiar and which prove to be--at the very least--confusing or indifferent
and--at worst--brutal and deadly.
A major feature of Wilson's emerging African American mythology is the genre of
blues music, and although much has been written about Wilson's use of the blues
in his plays, this chapter will specifically consider Wilson's use of the blues
as a "philosophical system" which underlies his construction of an emerging
mythology. In a 1989 interview with Bill Moyers, Wilson said,
Contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. You get the ideas and
attitudes of the people as part of the oral tradition. This is a way of passing
along information . . . The music provides you an emotional reference for the
information, and it is sanctioned by the community in the sense that if someone
sings the song, other people sing the song. They keep it alive because they
sanction the information that it contains. (168)
Wilson incorporates blues motifs into such plays as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom as a means of providing a dramatic "song" which can then be communally "sanctioned" and "sung" by those who inhabit Wilson's ideal African American mythology.
To cite this page:
Downing, Michael. "Chapter Two: Mythological Conversions in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." AugustWilson.net. Date of Publication. Today's Date. URL.
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