Chapter 8 of the book Oscar Micheaux and his Circle is titled “To Redream the Dream of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul. Body and Soul was a film that puzzled scholars and was left often overlooked due to its complexity. This chapter, however, attempts to analyze it for the power it held.
Body and Soul is hard to analyze largely for its narrative structure, or lack thereof. It’s narrative seems to lack logic, which frustrates the scholars for its departure from some of Micheaux’s other films. To account for this, some scholars argued it must have been altered by censorship, but that argument is largely unfounded, as many of the signs of censorship are left missing. In comparing Body and Soul with Within Our Gates and The Symbol of the Unconquered, it is easier to see Micheaux’s style, particularly his use of flashbacks and dream sequences, which could account for the confusing narrative structure.
Its plot focuses on two twin brothers, both played by Paul Robeson, one being an inventor and the other a criminal turned pastor, who are both in love with the same woman and live in the same small town. Body and Soul serves as the reworking and critique of three plays, Roseanne, The Emperor Jones, and All God’s Chillun’. These plays were written by white playwrights about black life, and in Body and Soul, Oscar Micheaux takes these depictions of black life and works to show them as ridiculous. However, one would need to be familiar with these plays to understand Micheaux’s point.
Roseanne served as the key source for Body and Soul, in which Roseanne was “one of those fine types of negro still to be found in the South” whose world was turned upside down by a corrupt pastor, Cicero Brown, similarly to the actions of the pastor of Body and Soul. Because pastors serve as a focal point of the community, it is profound to have them depicted as being corrupt. In Emperor Jones, an escaped convict moves to a black town and creates a supernatural identity for himself, which has direct plot parallels with Body and Soul. Because the two plays that served as a basis for Body and Soul are so similar, their plots show us white America’s racial ideology.
O’Neill, the writer of Emperor Jones, liked to portray his characters in a negative light and took liberties with his depictions of black characters, including using the word “nigger” and having black actors say it in regards to other black characters. As a white man, O’Neill was taking liberties with his depiction of black characters, so when Micheaux reworked these stories, he wanted to highlight the characters’ ridiculousness and the way it made black people look primitive. He even cast Robeson, who was the lead in the three source plays, as the lead in his movie, which in a sense attacked Robeson along with the plots of the plays. Micheaux used superficial admiration to hide his serious critique.
Scholars are amiss in analyzing Body and Soul in the same realist framework as any other movie. The film itself is different from Micheaux’s other movies and it shows that Micheaux was willing to risk financial loss and offend popular taste to point out important issues.
Great summary! I read O’Neill’s super offensive play in my Master’s program and was chastised by the professor for calling out its racism (Oh, English Departments!). I think this approach is a really interesting departure from the way we talked about the role of respectability politics which guided so many of the interventions/ “corrective” images of black folks. Instead of using a politic that might be aligned with incorporation, its interesting to think about this a cinematic form of resistance to be understood in what presents itself as a coherent form of the citizen subject in the US.
This was a super interesting summary to read! Clearly the stage theater was a space with its own damaging depictions of black life, beyond its history of Vaudevillian and minstrel shows. Interesting how Micheaux’s critique with the use of incorporation of thematic and character elements is dismissed by critics as a lack of logic. His re-appropriation of these characters directly addresses the problem of misrepresentation.
This is a super fascinating read! I especially enjoyed what you said about how Micheaux was unabashedly committed to destigmatizing the African American culture and spurring the progressive movement forward, even at the potential cost of his career and reputation. It’s really interesting to see how powerfully one’s portrayal of a people group can affect socio-cultural perception– whether through a negative lens as in the case of O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones” or the more positive lens as with Micheaux’s “Body and Soul”. Thanks so much for sharing!
This is a great read! I especially enjoyed what you said about how Micheaux was unabashedly committed to destigmatizing the African American culture and spurring the progressive movement forward, even at the potential cost of his career and reputation. It’s really interesting to see how powerfully one’s portrayal of a people group can affect socio-cultural perception– whether through a negative lens as in the case of O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones” or the more positive lens as with Micheaux’s “Body and Soul”. Thanks so much for sharing!