Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is pure art, just as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.
Ma Rainey is also the only play in the series set in Chicago. In 1927, Chicago was just eight years removed from the Chicago race riot of 1919, and the Great Migration of Black people moving to northern cities like Chicago had been happening for about a decade. Although the structures of white supremacy in Chicago looked different from those in the south, they were still very much prevalent, and that tension is what the film’s characters walk into when they arrive in the city for a recording session.
As a bona fide star, Ma is having her own struggles, although initially, she seems to transcend limitations placed on her at the time as a Black queer woman. She has her own car, and when her nephew Sylvester (Dusan Brown) gets into a car accident pulling up to the studio, Sturdyvant is able to pay the policeman to make it go away. She is openly affectionate with her young girlfriend, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige). And, even though she was over an hour late for her recording session, she still stops recording until she can get the Coke she was promised and also forces her nephew’s way into a song.
Dir. George C. Wolfe, 94 min. Netflix
