12 Years a Slave (Movie)

"12 Years a Slave was best picture at the Academy Awards in 2014 as well as at the BAFTAS. It’s got a British director, a British star, and a couple of British actors involved. What is essential about 12 Years a Slave is that it shows the torture and sexual violence of slavery. It’s a vital corrective to Gone with the Wind and all of the Lost Cause narratives. I first watched 12 Years a Slave at the Austin Film Festival in 2014, when screenwriter John Ridley was there. I watched it in a mostly white audience and at the end of the film, we could not get up from our seats. We had been so powerfully affected that we could not move. I felt so stricken that I thought I could never walk out of the theatre after what I had just seen. So, Solomon Northup, who is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a free Northern Black who is kidnapped and then transported to the worst place in America for slaves, which was Louisiana. Slavery was horrifying throughout the American South, but slaves in Louisiana were picking cotton and, as we see from the character Patsy, they had these targets for their daily cotton-picking that they were supposed to achieve. There was this very real sense that they were in a world where civilization did not apply. The masters of the plantations could do whatever they wanted. Throughout the movie Michael Fassbender’s character, Epps, rapes Lupita Nyong’o’s character Patsy. At one point he orders Solomon Northrup to whip her. If you compare that with Gone with the Wind where, early on, the sun is going down and one of the slaves says, ‘Well. I guess we’re done for the day.’ It’s like they’re going home to have a good time being slaves. There is so much historically wrong with that romantic depiction of slaves, their love for their masters, the idea that they had this benevolent force looking after and over them. Michael Fassbender’s character is a brilliant contemporary villain, because he embodies so much of the violence and oppression and privilege. He will do whatever he can get away with. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I told you when we picked these films that we were looking at mythologies: helpful and harmful. The one reservation that I have about 12 Years a Slave is there is a narrative mythology in it which I find problematic, which is the white saviour story. Brad Pitt, who was one of the producers of the film, plays a character who helps Solomon Northup get to freedom. This is very common, particularly with white actors—it’s almost always actors, although Sandra Bullock played a similar white saviour role in a movie called The Blind Side for which, of course, she won an Academy Award—but Brad Pitt’s character makes it possible for Solomon Northup to escape his bondage. One of the things that people find harmful and damaging about the white saviour narrative is the idea that people of colour are not able to advance themselves, that they require rescue. In the conversations that I’ve been having for the last four years about racial reconciliation and healing, the sense that I get from my friends who are people of colour is that they do not want to be rescued and, at the same, they do not want to do all the work themselves, because we created this system and need to be there on the frontlines with them. That’s the tension. How do we find a balance between the white saviour, ‘I’m going to come in and wave my magic wand and fix everything for you’ and ‘I’m going to leave you to your own deserts and good luck with that.’ I wrestle with this as well. One of the problems for the film is that it’s part of the historical record. 12 Years a Slave is based on a slave autobiography and if this particular person–the character Sam Bass in the film—had not gotten a letter away to the people who knew Solomon Northup back in New York, he would never have escaped bondage. But these are the stereotypes we wrestle with, even in contemporary Hollywood. Brad Pitt is a notably progressive Hollywood actor and producer, as is Matthew McConaughey. He also appeared in a film not too long ago in which he played a white saviour. It’s one of the things that we are trying to put to bed, but we can’t do that until we notice it and call it out for what it is. Yes, a less visible actor would have made the trope less visible. Brad Pitt is the highest-ranking Hollywood personality in the film, so it draws attention to what is going on. If he had cast a nobody, I don’t think we’d necessarily be talking about it, but it’s like, ‘I produced this movie and I’m going to take on this role and I do get to be the pivotal character who saves Solomon Northup.’ It’s a horrifying film. During much of its runtime, I just sat there reminding myself about the title, 12 years: this is going to end at some point. And the reason that I call it a necessary corrective to those films about the Lost Cause, those nostalgic films about slavery, is because it is so horrible. It is not generically a horror film, but it has that same effect on us, because it reminds us of the depths to which human beings can sink. It’s a really valuable film for people to watch and I wanted to recommend it just to say, ‘If you have ever had this notion of friendly slave owners and congenial slaves who loved each other so much that they just continued to live together, even after they were free, that whole faithful retainer thing, this film will show you what’s wrong with that idea.’ And what I love about what Jordan Peele does in Get Out is he actually gives a sort of supernatural explanation for the faithful retainer, because that idea is so messed up."