You ARE well-rounded and I didn’t mean to imply you aren’t. But you do come on rather harsh whenever anyone has an opinion or idea about black people that differs from yours. From the moment you’ve been on the board, you have been vocal about “setting the record straight” on black folk. Most times we’re in total agreement and that’s why I love having you around. But when we don’t agree on a point, sometimes I feel slighted by your insinuations. Even if you aren’t talking about me, it feels like you are. I am a lot of things, but I am not a deluded sheeple. Not when it comes to race.
I’m sorry I am annoying you. And thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. We had fun last year when we went back and forth on Django. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t have a similar discussion about this movie.
Can there please be a movie about Robert Smalls, who escaped slavery by stealing a fucking CONFEDERATE GUNBOAT and then went on after the war to become a congressman for South Carolina?
sigh Y’all going to make me go and see this movie just so I can understand what the hell Nzinga is going on about I do suspect though that her issues with Solomon Northrup might be due to shortcomings of the actor, rather than the character. Chiwetel Ejiofor is British, born to Nigerian parents. He may very well be unknowingly perpetrating the very acting archetype that Nzinga hates so much.
I am guessing I may be a bit oversensitive to the sambo thing, maybe. I don’t know. I just know that I want anyone who watches it to not get what I’m saying confused with him breaking. I don’t criticize him breaking down. I don’t criticize him whipping Patsy. I don’t criticize stuff like that. I am talking about something very specific that is hard to for me to express accurately. If I figure out how to express myself clearly on the matter, I will start a thread about it.
Regardless of how accurate it may historically be, the performance is pretty accurate to my memory of what Northrup described about himself in his own book (from my admittedly fuzzy memory of reading it in college).
Returning to the movie, one of the most disturbing scenes was the master with the slave child who was his new favorite. I first expected it to be revealed that a few years had passed and this was a child he’d fathered by Patsy, but the implication was more disturbing.
Regarding Fassbender’s character being mentally ill, were such a person alive today they’d probably benefit from some anger management medication and alcoholism treatment, but probably wouldn’t have seen the inside of a mental hospital even in the most concerned of families. He was less crazy than Alpha-Dog asshole; we’ve all encountered his like and probably often, but were lucky enough not to exist at his mercy. A plantation master was almost a demigod on his own land, and you can only imagine what this empowerment must have done to people who were self righteous assholes to begin with.
I liked the portrayal of his wife. In ways she was as much his victim as his slaves, and you even feel sorry for her and understand her hatred/jealousy of Patsy. This doesn’t make you want to beat the shit out of her any less for the way she treats Patsy, who she knows perfectly well is a total victim, but it does add dimension. I’ve always thought the most horrifying depictions of white slave masters and WW2 Germans were not of monsters but regular people caught up as practitioners of the evil even when they knew it was evil; most of us know we aren’t sadistic monsters like Amon Goeth (who from what I’ve read, including by his daughter, was even crazier and more evil than Fiennes’ depiction), but it’s scarier to think how we’d react if we were in a position like Cumberbatch’s character or the plantation mistresses as this lucrative evil contaminated everyone and everything and yet could not be eradicated without the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Nzinga, I have to ask: do you think “shuckin’ and jivin’” never happened in real life? I have seen it myself, with all its stereotypical features, and not that many years ago.
And if you concede that “shuckin’ and jivin’” happened, why wouldn’t someone in Solomon’s position adopt that as a defensive mechanism?
Yes. Nearly everything that is possible to happen in real life has happened in real life. I don’t doubt that some slaves shuffled and shucked just like I don’t doubt some white folks have done so in their lives. My beef is with cinematic depictions of black people in film portraying a specific technique of actors using minstrel type mannerisms.
It has a long tradition in Hollywood, and though it has been toned down these days, it still exists and I don’t like the film when I detect it. That’s all. I personally don’t enjoy films like the Butler or The Green Mile or any other film if I see that specific technique of "yassa bowse’ in the acting or direction of the film. It doesn’t matter if Solomon Northup was really like that because I have no way of knowing what he was really like. I don’t know how a slave behaves when he is broken and beaten…I only know of the racist institution of minstrel type acting that was created by racists and exploitative Hollywood producers. I have no reason at all to believe that their depictions are accurate, and when I detect it in films that I watch, I am turned off; no matter how subtle they try to be in their application.
That is why I hated the film. I’m ok with anyone else liking the film. Practically everyone I know, outside of my tiny social circle, loved the film. I’m fine with that, as long as they are fine with me hating it. Don’t try to tell me I hate it because he wasn’t a magical negro, or he wasn’t a Nat Turner (He certainly did beat that slaver down, and he certainly did lots of stuff that one can perceive as standing up for himself; My beef is specifically with the minstrel type acting technique that I noted) or any of that stuff. Don’t reframe my argument. My opinion is quite simple…I think the lead and the director dropped the ball on the way to make Platt more realistic and human and should have gone a different way. I think they may have purposefully chose the direction they took to pander to an audience who enjoys such depictions. I would have loved to have seen how a director like Spielberg may have peeled back the layers to show Soloman turning to Platt in a way that didn’t utilize that hat clutching, nostril flaring, brow furrowing kind of facial mugging that I recognize from racist depictions of blacks in the past.
I don’t really recall any shuckin’ and jivin’ from Solomon in this movie, but maybe it was too subtle for me. Anyway, I thought it was a terrific performance.
I’m glad that you posted this. I just got back from the movie and thought it was very powerful. For some reason, though, it left me a bit empty. I’m glad that it seems that it did actually happen.
During the closing credits, where it gives info about him publishing the book, and so on, I kind of wondered if it really happened. As it appeared in the film, it would have been a near perfect “actually happened” [fictional] anti-slavery story to take on the road for abolition in 1853. I don’t doubt that free blacks were sold into slavery, so that is not my issue. And if it helped the abolition movement, I’d have no problem with it being fictional.
Good movie. It leaves me asking questions. I didn’t understand the lead character’s arc, as he seemed to only be about surviving in slavery. Not that I’d probably do anything differently, but I hoped for a little bit more.
Just saw the movie today. It followed the book almost exactly, with very little deviation. Parts were cut for the sake of flow and to keep the movie under five hours, and I thought it suffered just a bit for that. Even the spoken language was true to the original book. I disagree with the notion that there was any directorial effort to create a stereotypical “Negro” of that time, or to portray “shucking” in any fashion. The actions of the actors mirrored almost exactly the actions of the real people portrayed in the book. Solomon was in a dire position where his death could come at a moment’s lapse in judgement on his part. Any suspicion of literacy would have meant his execution.
Christopher: “You ever feel like nothing good was ever gonna happen to you?”
Paulie: “Yeah, and nothing did. So what? I’m alive. I’m surviving.”
Christopher: “That’s it. I don’t wanna just survive. It says in these movie writing books that every character has an arc. You understand? Everyone starts off somewhere, then they do something or something gets done to them, changes their life. That’s called their arc. Where’s my arc? Take Richard Kimble, all right? No, that’s no good. His arc is run, run, jump off a dam, run… Uh, Keanu Reeves, Devil’s Advocate. You see that?”
Paulie: “Al!”
Christopher: “Right. Keanu’s a lawyer, gets all turned on by power, money, the devil. Then his wife says to him, ‘You’re not the man I married.’ Leaves him. You see the arc? He starts down here, he ends up here. Where’s my arc, Paulie?”
Paulie: “Kid. Richard Kimble, the devil’s whatever, those are all make believe. Hey, I got no arc either. I was born, grew up, spent a few years in the army, a few more in the can, and here I am, half a wise guy. So what?”
I really thought it was a good movie and had some great acting. However, I’m not sure I enjoyed McQueen’s directing. The ‘long shots’ that he tends to be known for took me out of the story, and I don’t think that was the point of them.
Shucking and jiving doesn’t mean being illiterate. One can be illiterate and not shuck and jive, Chefguy. Also, those who are saying it mirrors the book…the minstrel type shucking I’m describing is a device directors and actors use in movies aimed at people who enjoy racist stereotypes. It isn’t the type of thing you would have picked up in his book. I doubt very seriously he would write a passage like, “And then I bowed my head low, and jerked it up with my nostrils flared and my eyes pleading like a beat dog and I pouted my lips in a very pronounced way when I told that man I’m a freeman and need him to carry a letter for me.”
Come on. I give you the credit that you read the book and I did not, but you are making ghost points…No one in the thread is disagreeing that Platt couldn’t just walk up to the mayor of the town and pull out War and Peace. We all know that he had to pretend he couldn’t read. That is different than what I think I saw. I know no one agrees with me, but can’t we just say that instead of keep saying things like, “Well he HAD to pretend he couldn’t read!!!” as if there is anyone here arguing with that?
And those mannerisms couldn’t just be the actor emoting? I seriously doubt that the director was intentionally inserting stereotypes to please all the rednecks and racists who would flock to see this film ( ). I would also think that an actor with any self respect would balk at such direction. You really are a prickly pear on this, and I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of black outrage, but it seemed to me that this film was an honest attempt by all concerned to represent the man’s trials. Actors emote; it’s what they’re trained to do. Unless you’re William Hurt, which means that you’re just boring and unwatchable.
I agree that many of them, including the lead, were guilty of chewing the scenery, but I doubt they were trying to appeal to racist sensibilities.
I’d be really interested to see a good movie made about Turner or Vesey or Gabriel. I’d be especially interested to see one about Vesey, partly because there have been some very interesting revelations about the Vesey conspiracy over the past decade or so.
Michael Johnson’s work makes a pretty convincing argument that Vesey never actually led a conspiracy for a slave revolt, and that the execution of Vesey and his “co-conspirators” was the result of white politicians in Charleston creating a fear of blacks and coercing confessions through violence, in order to advance their own social and political agendas. A well-made movie about this would be more than just a story of revolt; it would be a real look into race and southern politics, and also, if you credit Johnson’s research, a story of the heroism of many blacks who refused to save themselves by implicating others in a non-existent conspiracy.
I’ve read Northup’s tale a few times, and i teach segments of it (especially the section dealing with the New Orleans slave market, where the mother and children are separated) to the students in my college history classes. The dialog does ring very true to Northup’s narrative, although we should be careful not to assume that the narrative itself always gave a completely accurate picture of day-to-day oral communication.
Yes, we do know that not all black people responded this way. But i think that dumping 12 Years a Slave in a category with The Help or The Blindside is fundamentally misguided. It is not a complete representation of the slave experience, but it does a good job with Northup’s narrative (i’d be interested to know if you’ve actually read it), and it also does a very nice job of representing some very important aspects of the slave experience.
I thought, for example, that the depiction of the jealousies of the white woman over the “relationship” between Epps and Patsey did a good job of reflecting historical understandings of this issue, drawn not only from Northup’s tale, but from other narratives like that of Harriet Jacobs.
Also, despite your assertion that it’s all about black subjugation and a “shucky jivey kind of cooning ass” portrayal, i thought that the instances of resistance were well done, and did quite a good job of showing the balance that many slaves had to walk between resisting openly, and not going so far that they might end up dead. We see the more assertive efforts at resistance when Northup fights back against Tibeats (Paul Dano) and would have been lynched if not for the intervention of Ford (This scene actually reminded me a little bit of Frederick Douglass’s description of his decision to fight back against the slave-breaker Covey.) We also see, when Northup runs away from Epps’ efforts to beat him, the effort to avoid physical punishment while not engaging in direct violence against the slaver himself.
It’s interesting, also, that you bring up Amistad. I show the Middle Passage scene from Amistad to my history classes, and most historians agree that it’s the best representation of the slave journey ever put on film. In many important ways, though, Amistad is historically problematic. To take one aspect of the movie that is central to the question of how to portray historical black characters, many historians were critical of Spielberg’s incorporation of the fictional black abolitionist Theodore Joadson in the movie. Some argued that such a character would not have been as well-treated and well-respected by whites (even white abolitionists) in the 1840s as Spielberg suggests, and others also argued that there were real-life black abolitionists that Spielberg could have used rather than resorting to a historical caricature.
I agree that they are about your history, i understand that you feel connected to the history, and i make no claim to understand what it feel like to be a black man in modern America. You feel how you feel, and i’m not interested in telling you to feel otherwise. I also believe that the place of African Americans in the United States is traceable, in many important ways, to the legacies of slavery, and understand that this is important to you.
I would say though, from a historical perspective at least, that these movies really aren’t about you at all; or, at least, not just about you. History is about more than just a feeling of identification through skin color or even culture. To be honest, although i’m a white guy from Australia and you’re a black guy, and we’ve never met, chances are that you and i have far more in common than you and Solomon Northup, or than me and Northup. And in Northup’s narrative, and in the movie, i certainly feel much closer to, and much greater identification with, Northup than with the white characters, despite the fact that i’m white.
Historical figures like him are a long way from us, and all of us, whether black or white, get our understanding of those historical figures and their lives through limited sources that often require close reading and careful interpretation. I believe that understanding and analyzing and interpreting historical sources is, in many important ways, a universal skill that doesn’t depend on racial identification or some other feeling of similarity.
I guess what i’m saying here, in a nutshell, is that i concede to you completely and unequivocally the right to feel how you feel about the movie, and about the role that historical film plays in your own sense of yourself and your identity, and about representations of blacks in popular culture. I don’t, however, automatically concede to you a special authority to evaluate the historical accuracy of a movie because you happen to identify in a particular and personal way with black history.
I appreciate your post. A few things though. First, I don’t say that this movie is about my history, so therefore I am a special authority. The part you quoted in which I say that I feel connected to slave history is in direct response to someone saying, “It’s not about you…” Please let us clarify that. I didn’t claim this movie was all about me, so therefore, my opinion trumps others. I only resorted to saying, “OH, YES IT IS ABOUT ME…” When someone tried to tell me it wasn’t. I feel that it is, have a right to that feeling as much as a Jewish man has a right to feeling connected to stories like Schindler’s List and Greeks feel connected to Greek history, and so on. It is totally natural, especially in a country like America, which had Jim Crow laws on the books recently enough for my own mom to remember it enough to have it affect the way she chose to raise me and my siblings…it is totally natural for black people in America to feel connected to black people in the past in this country who were persecuted for the color of their skin.
Of course, though, my opinion on the movie is no stronger than anyone else’s. I have only responded on a personal note in this thread when someone came at me on a personal note. I criticized the movie for what I thought its flaws were in my first post. I felt that Sampiro took it to a personal level with his response to my post, and I responded to that personal comment. But that doesn’t affect my opinion on the film.
As for the scenes of him resisting in the film…that’s awesome. But that isn’t my criticism. I don’t complain that people didn’t resist in the film, I complain that the lead actor acted with minstrel type mannerisms. I understand that is not something that anyone else in this thread saw, but I am speaking from my own opinion…I saw it very clearly, and sometimes none too subtly. So it made me dislike the film, overall. I blame the director and lead actor for this.
Lastly, regarding Amistad, I am never convinced when historians say, “There would never had been such a person in this time, or this couldn’t have happened in that time…” truth is, human nature being what it is, there are anomalies in every situation. A historian could say, “It is very unlikely that a child would be brought from Africa, sold into slavery, taught to read by her masters and then turn into a famous poet who travels the world and is respected so highly that other famous poets write poems about her! In the 1700s?? Preposterous!”
If we didn’t have proof that it happened, then folks would say, “yeah, these historians are probably right.” The truth is, exceptional people exist, and they tend to be the exception to the rules of the times. If a story stands out in history, like the Amistad story, I am not surprised to see exceptional people being a part of it.
Thanks for your post, though. It did seem to address my posts honestly and I really appreciate that.
I do suspect though that her issues with Solomon Northrup might be due to shortcomings of the actor, rather than the character. Chiwetel Ejiofor is British, born to Nigerian parents. He may very well be unknowingly perpetrating the very acting archetype that Nzinga hates so much.
). I would also think that an actor with any self respect would balk at such direction. You really are a prickly pear on this, and I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of black outrage, but it seemed to me that this film was an honest attempt by all concerned to represent the man’s trials. Actors emote; it’s what they’re trained to do. Unless you’re William Hurt, which means that you’re just boring and unwatchable.