Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: How Oppression Creates Violence

An essay about Netflix’s adaptation of August Wilson’s famed play and its messages on how systemic oppression informs violence.

George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is, if nothing else, educational. An adaptation of famed playwright August Wilson’s original 1982 play, Wolfe’s film is a dense but swift dance through a story colored by as much fiction as…