Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Episode #26: FILM REVIEW: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and August Wilson's Black Life


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The brothers review the film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe, written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson based on August Wilson's 1982 play, starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman in his final (and arguably greatest) screen performance before his unfortunate death at the age of 43. The brothers meditate on August Wilson's body of work, which chronicles stories from working-class Black people and which the brothers definitely plan to come back to in future podcast episodes. They try to address the question Wilson once asked to one of his elders: How did you live to be 70 as a Black man in America? The brothers also relate some stories passed down from their own family histories, stories that some of the people in Wilson's stories might relate to, and consider how the isolation of young Black people from their elders is one way the antiblack structure works to sap the capacity of Black resistance.

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