I generally wonder two
things before sitting down to watch any movie that will cover, or allude to, the Enslavement Process—better
known as "Slavery:" 1) How true
will the depiction be to what actually occurred, and 2) How many rape scenes
will there be? Having extensively studied the Enslavement Process—hence my
reference to it most of the time as a “process” and not just an event—I know
that it was horrific beyond what anyone who did not experience it first-hand
can imagine, and that most depictions of it do not do it any justice. So, when
I sat down to watch “12 Years,” in the year 2013 when many Whites—and
Blacks—would like to believe that race is no longer an issue in this country,
and when these same ostrich-imitators would like to believe that Slavery was
not as bad as it really was, I was expecting to see a watered-down version of
the Enslavement Process with few allusions to the amount of rape that occurred,
and the quintessential White hero characters.
I was expecting to see
mildly-mannered White slave-owners teaching slaves to read and write, and the
typical depiction of at least one White slave owner who grapples so much with
his involvement in Slavery that you end up feeling sorry for him, and
consequently—and subliminally—thinking Slavery was not that bad after all.
Surprisingly, and refreshingly,
“12 Years” offers a rather balanced view of some of the events surrounding the
Enslavement Process. The courage of the director, and anyone else
who had anything to do with this story being shared on the mainstream silver
screen in such an honest way is to be commended.
Very seldom do depictions
of the Enslavement Process show the actual tools that were used to physically
subdue slaves, other than chains and shackles. I’ve only seen one other movie
that showed the
masks slaves were forced to wear during transport. Research reveals that
these masks were used to prevent slaves from committing suicide.
Twelve Years is a winner
because, despite its rawness, nothing is overdone, and besides telling the
story it sets out to tell, it accurately describes what I think are the three
R’s that made the Enslavement Process so impactful, and what any epic about
Slavery has to address in order to achieve any level of accuracy—rape,
religion, and relationships.
The slave masters did a
job on Africans where sex was concerned. They raped girls and boys, women and men. In
fact, I’m convinced that the prevalence of sexual abuse in Black communities is
a direct result of behaviors we learned during Slavery. I hypothesize that we
learned to treat each other the way the slave masters treated us. After
generations of conditioning, events like rape and other forms of sexual abuse
became commonplace—hence the silence when singer R.Kelly interacted
inappropriately with an under-aged girl. Not only were Blacks silent as a
community, but some adults spoke out
against the little girl.
Director McQueen seems to
emphasize the role that religion played in subduing the slaves, a lesson to
which I hope Black movie-goers were paying particular attention. This is not to
suggest that Blacks should forgo their Judeo-Christian practice, but it is to
caution that we tend to practice Christianity in a way that hurts us more than
it helps. Most Blacks still abide by the superficial, abstract form of
Christianity we were introduced to during colonization, without any analysis.
The ambiguity with which we were left continues to confound many of us,
subsequently making it useless.
I wonder too, if
McQueen’s intention was to expose the psychological impact of the Enslavement
Process on the enslaved. For instance, there is a scene where the main
character is left hanging on a tree for many, many hours. The audience
experiences the length of time that passes with what seems to be an extension
of the scene. While he is left hanging, slaves are seen walking past going
about their business. Slaves were conditioned to believe that assisting each
other could result in their own death. Slaves were forbidden from showing
affection to one another. For instance, a mother showing affection to her child
could result in that child being sold. Why? Because love is powerful. People
tend to fight for the people they love. A whole lot of slaves fighting for the
people they loved would have resulted in more uprisings than a little bit. How
else, other than psychological submission, could a few White slave owners man a
whole plantation full of people?
This conditioning
occurred over many generations, so that after a while, slave owners could
expect that slaves would interact with each other the way they had been taught
to, without command. This pattern of relationships was so embedded that it
continued after the Enslavement Process, and still continues today. Can you
think of some examples?
One of the most powerful
scenes occurs when the main character, now named “Platt,” is forced to beat
another slave—a commonplace occurrence during the Enslavement Process, and one
intended to weaken the slaves’ relationships with one another. I couldn’t help
but think about how today, we, Blacks hurt each other. The scene is powerful
because it, like many of the other scenes that demand particular attention,
seem to be extended, and because the viewer eventually sees blood splashing off
of the slave’s back as she is being beaten. I thought about how we hurt each other
with gossip and other forms of deceit—and I hoped that Black females in
particular will get that image in their head every time they open their lips to
gossip about another female.
To appease those that
might be embarrassed by the truth, who will counter-argue that Blacks owned
slaves too, we do see Alfre Woodard’s character, a Black slave owner, and a
couple of Black overseers. But “12
Years” courageously reveals that these circumstances did not come about as the
result of desire, as much as it did as the result of survival. Twelve Years
brilliantly and concisely interweaves the backstory of pertinent characters.
Nothing is overdone, even the hero White character (Brad Pitt)—who was played
so well that I even feel guilty calling him that.
The only thing I ended up
being able to predict was that the person that helped free the main slave
character, Solomon Northup, would be a White person. And it makes sense that
the hero would have to be a White person because of the time period and events.
But, as is usual with White hero characters, you don’t end up feeling sorry for
this person, because he makes it clear that his act is out of “duty,” and he is
not shown fawning over Platt, so the movie-goer does not get caught up in a
“Kumbaya-Ebony and Ivory” fantasy.
To be sure, Blacks did
help create the Enslavement of their own people—and not just as over-seers
recruited here in the Americas. I mean, at some point, we HELPED—like showed the colonists where they could find Africans,
and helped lead Africans to slave ships. This is probably what keeps me from
dodging at White people after I’ve watched a slave epic.
If you’re expecting to
see smiling slaves, and slaves dancing the “do-si-do” on their down-time, this
is not the slave epic you want to see. But if you’re ready to view a rare, raw
depiction of a part of history that most would like to forget, and you feel
like critically thinking—go see this movie. You will be sad, but enlightened.
