49 pages • 1 hour read
George C. WolfeThe Colored Museum
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Dance
The motif of dance is used in the play as both a method of expression and a representation of the commodification of the Black body. Miss Pat says dancing is allowed, but only when the “Fasten Shackles” sign is not illuminated. This is a reference to the fact that the crew of slave ships would allow some stretching and dancing periodically so that the slaves would avoid sickness onboard. Female slaves were kept separate from the male slaves on the main deck with the crew, and dancing was also permitted, in fact sometimes enforced, upon the female slaves. These dances were often a precursor to rape, and refusal to participate meant harsh punishments. Miss Pat’s assuring the passengers that these dances will go one to create the Funky Chicken is bitterly ironic.
When Miss Roj then describes New York as “doing a slow dance with death” (15), we know that dancing is a complex interplay of the hunter and the hunted as the AIDS virus circles its partner. Miss Roj eerily beckons the audience to “dance your last dance with Miss Roj […] ’cause by the time a match is struck on 125th Street and you run to mid-town, the flame has been blown away” (17). Here the “flame” is a wordplay on a term associated with gay people and suggests the ease with which their lives were being extinguished.
In “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play,” the entire cast bursts into a song-and-dance act at the conclusion of their melodramatic play. Here again, the commodification of the Black entertainer trumps issues that are of critical importance in the community, such as police violence and domestic violence. Finally, dance becomes a unifying force in the final exhibit, “The Party.” Dance is used as a unifying force, one that transcends time and space and unifies the community timelessly to the beat of the drum.
Absurdity
Throughout The Colored Museum, various characters use the term “mad” or “madness” to describe both inner and outer turmoil. Scenes of absurdity also include language suggesting demonic and/or otherworldly reactions to everyday existence. Wolfe uses the concept of “madness,” or absurdity, to underscore both individual and collective trauma. Absurdity is also a motif presented as a way to keep oneself sane. Characters such as Miss Roj, Lala, and Topsy use frenzied actions and speech as a method to deal with their contradictions. For Lala, the absurdity of life finally pushes her to come face-to-face with her past.
From Miss Pat’s frenzied screaming during the time warp to Junie’s concept of healing through murder and the Woman being fearful of her two bickering wigs, in The Colored Museum, absurdity is depicted as central to the Black experience. Absurdity is, in a sense, a rejection of mimicry or of an attempt to control one’s behavior to fit within what one might call acceptable. It is also a reaction to negative forces outside one’s control. Collective frenzy/absurdity, with an accompanying series of diverse images, closes the play.
Black Celebrity
The motif of the Black celebrity recurs throughout the exhibits. Miss Pat lauds the celebrities who will emerge from the generational pain of her passengers: “Why the songs you sing in the cotton fields, under the burning heat and stinging lash will […] give birth to James Brown and the Fabulous Flames” (3). In “The Photo Session,” we then see supposed celebrities posing in the magazine, seeming bereft of any real life. In “Symbiosis,” the Man’s personality seems wholly created by the celebrities of his youth; musical celebrities and civil rights leaders are emotionally intertwined into what has created his sense of identity.
Lala is consumed by the idea of celebrity, willing to try to smother her own identity to create a more glamourous one. In fact, her subconscious desire seems to be to tame, control, or alter Sammy Davis Jr.’s hair to fit her idea of beauty, “making everything nice and white and smooth and shiny, like my black/white/black/white/black behiney” (45). This again all comes together in “The Party,” when Black celebrities, civil rights leaders, and fictional characters all dance to the same beat.
