How many works of art participate in the plot about a wager or competition for a person’s soul? The Devil and Daniel Webster; “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”; Faust ….much like The Muppet Christmas Carol, Cabin in the Sky tweaks a familiar story, adding music and changing details of the setting.
The African-American setting neither elevates nor changes the story, but it does provide an opportunity to preserve the performances of some of the great singers and musicians of the twentieth century. Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and Paul Robeson all have moments in this fairy-tale about a rakish gamble (Rochester) who dies but is granted one last chance in response to the intercessory prayers of his faithful wife (Ethel Waters).
It is not a coincidence that so many of our conceptions of a benign or pleasant after-life (heaven) contain, even revolve around, music. Ironically, the dance halls of earth are cast as places of temptation, set against the more pious and domesticated church music. But as anyone knows rock and roll has roots in gospel, and the music of the African-American church has never lacked for emotion.
Some modern viewers have downgraded the film for allegedly perpetuating racial stereotypes. It is a critique that should be neither dismissed out of hand nor embraced too quickly. Representation is an important step in (eventually) encouraging a more diverse range of characters. But these performers never lean into the stereotypes; they manage to find the human core that extends past caricature. Great arts doesn’t just show us what we know — or what we think we know — about those not like us. Sometimes it shows us the very ways in which those who are not like us are just like us.
— Kenneth R. Morefield (2022)