Uncle Tom's Cabin: An Analysis

Upon the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, attitudes towards slavery were almost exclusively that slaves were property and should be treated as such. This novel reinvented how Americans viewed slavery and stimulated abolition, opening a discussion about the status of African Americans in society. The ideals and underlying sentiments expressed in this novel are still relevant today; that slavery and racism are institutions that corrupt all participating in them (both unwillingly and willingly), that the abolitionist/liberal North still has racial bias they must face and eliminate, and that emancipation must not only free slaves, but integrate them into society as well. Since the senseless murder of Michael Brown
in 2014, a discussion regarding racialized police brutality in America today has been opened; the main point being that our work is far from over. A modern adaption of Uncle Toms’ Cabin profited from and created by by black people could potentially further open the conversation of the history behind how we reached the situation of institutionalized racism we face in America today. I don’t think that “offending modern audiences” should be our main concern, as it isn’t all modern audiences we should be worried about; we need to be mindful of the black Americans whose ancestors have experienced these tragedies and how they would perceive a staged production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The theatrical world is not unfamiliar with dancing around uneasy historical subjects. There are dozens of modern movies that include images of the Holocaust, including The Stranger directed by Orson Welles in 1946, which was the first feature film to contain footage of concentration camps (Crowder-Taraborrelli 11). The idea of turning tragedy into art makes its way into live theatre as well; plays about mass genocide such as the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims in Kitty Felde’s A Patch of Earth, and Rwandan Tutsis in Erik Ehn’s Maria Kizito (UW Press 1). I believe art to be a healing medium and something we can use to further process trauma and tragedy. However, with live theatre and movies written about historical events, which require thousands of dollars for pre-production, production, and post-production, it raises some questions for me. Who is financially benefiting from these productions? Who has written the script? Is it historically accurate and not “white-washed”? Where and from whom was the research taken? Are any of the profits being donated to benefit the people who suffered this tragedy or to conserving their history?
Fine arts such as writing, visual art, or photography mainly benefit the artists themselves, but performance arts such as film or live theatre have many actors and stage hands who need to be paid as well.
The creation of a play about Uncle Tom’s Cabin and violent slavery could very quickly turn into intense irony. According to D.C. playwright Gwydion Suilebhan who pulled information from 62 area theatres in 2013-14, 85% of 221 shows performed in that season were written by white playwrights, and only 5% by African American playwrights (Tran 8). White Americans spent hundreds of years profiting off of African-American’s hard work, and it makes me uneasy to consider that if a play were to be written based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there’s an 85% chance the writer of that play would be white. And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a director or playwright cashed in on the tragedy of a minority group they were not a part of; the aforementioned film The Stranger was about the Holocaust yet director Orson Welles was not Jewish (Brady 576). This is certainly not for a lack of availability of Jewish directors, as goes for every play or movie based on widespread trauma experienced by a minority group directed or written by someone not part of that minority group. There is something to be said for Welles giving Jewish people a voice when they were violently oppressed, just as Harriet Beecher Stowe gave African-American slaves a voice they previously were not allowed to use. But in
the current time, as African-American playwrights and directors are still struggling to create names for themselves, I believe they should be given a stage to express themselves artistically about historical events that resulted in institutionalized racism that still effect their daily lives.
Another issue arising from a staged version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin would be how to not ignore or gloss over the violent and inhumane acts inflicted upon black people as well as not being overly dramatic or graphic in the depictions.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was fairly graphic in her novel, for example, “…Henrique struck him across the face with his riding-whip, and, seizing one of his arms, forced him to his knees, and beat him till he was out of breath.” (Stowe 23). It’s important that the message of the overall show highlights the struggles African-Americans were able to overcome, and therefore necessary to show just how severe the abuse was. Being white, I truly do not have an answer as to how the director should go about this. It is not a question I am qualified to answer or comment on. I believe with research and interviews conducted by the director and playwright, a middle ground would be possible.
Current events have made it clear that the attitudes and actions depicted in Uncle Tom’s Cabin still profoundly affect our society today. A staged production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin would help modern audiences to understand just where these ideas came from, and how deeply internalized and institutionalized racism runs. The themes of slavery, violence, and religion in Uncle Tom’s Cabin are still highly relevant today, and the discussion that could presumably be opened through a dramatization of this historic novel could be very beneficial to the fight against racism that still exists
today.