형태, 내용, 관객: 조지 울프의 『흑인 박물관』

Form, Content, and Audience: George C. Wolfe"s The Colored Museum

  George C. Wolfe"s The Colored Museum received contrasting responses from white and black audience/critics. While white audience/critics highly valued and even appreciated the play"s self reflexive tendency, black audience/critics criticized or shunned it, accusing that it made fun of African Americans’ struggles to survive in the white-oriented society.   This paper focuses on black critics" negative reception of The Colored Museum and attempts to locate forces that contributed to such a reception. It argues that the negative reception is the result of the conflict between the “double audience” problem and the content and form Wolfe used to realize his dramatic intention.   Wolfe insisted that, in order to foreground his view that African American identity can be found only in “contradictions,” he satirized various aspects of African American life and culture. But the various aspects Wolfe represented in the play come close to black stereotypes. Here lies, this paper argues, the reason for black critics" negative reception of the play. In satirizing black stereotypes, Wolfe violated what Sounders Redding termed “the limitation of the audience.” That is, in James Weldon Johnson"s terms, Wolfe aroused “bitter resentment” by satirizing (form) black stereotypes and some of what African Americans regard sacred (content).