What Makes a Good Slave Movie???
12 Years a Slave is the perfect slave tale for a White American Audience:
1. Why Solomon is the perfect conduit for a white audience:
Ugh I honestly struggled to write this because I literally remember NOTHING about Solomon as a character and I truly don’t want to subject myself to this film. And then I started to wonder… why? Why can’t I remember the major plot points of this Oscar winning tale? From the beginning, Solomon’s character was unrelatable to me and ultimately turned me off. Not a good start for your protagonist… And this has nothing to do with Ejiofor’s performance. It’s the basis of the story itself. Solomon was a free man. Like he was literally chillin in his blackness while his people were suffering. Like, nah bro. Cannot relate to complacency. But guess who can… WHITE PPL!!! Solomon is relatable to a White audience in that he begins his story, like the audience, pretty comfortable with what they know. Ultimately, Solomon serves as a conduit for White America audience goers to experience a brutal refresher. Him being stripped at the beginning is symbolic of a White audience being stripped of their privilege so they can step into Solomon’s shoes and understand slavery to the best of their ability. He even speaks in a proper white vernacular so that he’s always intelligible and relatable for an elitist audience. And, like the audience, while Solomon witnesses and experiences slavery up close, he leaves the plantation relatively unscathed in comparison to his… peers? Colleagues? Wtf do you call fellow slaves? Anyhow, in the end, Solomon is *free*. He can go back to his life as he knew it before, or he can make a change based on what he experienced. Similarly, the audience can either walk out of the theater, say “thank god that’s over”, throw out their popcorn that they definitely could not eat during the RAPING AND WHIPPING and quickly forget about the film. Orrrr they can take that knowledge with them and use it to inform their lives. Solomon is not really a character, but rather a first-person perspective like a video game hero. He gives the audience the cut-scene info, goes through a few missions without losing any lives, and then turns to the player like “now what?”. What more, we see the other White characters making the same decisions that an audience member would be faced with, so they can see the consequences play out in real time. And while this is not AT ALL enjoyable for Black Americans, this is kind of the ideal type of narrative structure for those who are either ignorant to or need a refresher on why slavery is a shitty shitty thing that we still talk about today.
2. The violence tho…
The slavery in this film is… too real? It’s more like a documentary/found footage horror film as opposed to a cinematic feature. Now for White Americans, this may be really effective. It may be the first time they directly witness violence of this sort. It may bring about a sense of empathy and a desire to make change. But for Black Americans, it's just torture porn. Black ppl don’t need to be preached to about the terrors of slavery. We fckn know what slavery is and how horrible it is, and we literally experience daily trauma as a result of it. SO STOP PREACHING TO ME MCQUEEN.
3. Patsey is the character we need and, more importantly, the character we want:
Ok so, this isn’t really about why this movie is good for White ppl but more about why it’s super-duper shitty for Black women in particular. It's Patsey. It's the violence we watch her endure as the most developed character. Nyong'o steals EVERY SINGLE SCENE she is in. Her struggle is heartbreaking, and there is so much attention paid to her every plight. McQueen needed us to see her explicitly raped for ABSOLUTELY no narrative reason. And then the movie ends, and we watch as a wagon pulls away leaving her behind to face even more abuse. It’s honestly traumatizing. If there was any sort of resolution to her character’s struggles, I would be much more willing to re-watch the film. But alas, McQueen has failed me. He should have either left her out of the film entirely or made her role significantly smaller because, as she stands, she is the most compelling character in the film. She is the character whose story deserves to be told, and not as a side note but as a full-fledged exploration of how slavery ravaged the Black female psyche and how this parallels modern day traumas.
*** A side note: Why is Brad Pitt here? Why did he feel the need to make this move? We don’t need a goddamn white savior in the rest of this mess.
General critique:
· Pacing is so uneven. There is so much boring scenery interject with bursts of extreme violence, it’s not jarring as much as unpleasant.
· Every actor is kinda one-note and most are just… there… And there are a lot of amazing (white) actors but not that many Black ones… again, it is a film for Whites.
· The movie has an overall beige-y style that mutes the shocking nature of the context, a real missed opportunity to add any interesting visual contrast to enhance the narrative and make ANY of the scenes stand out
Django Unchained is the best slave tale for a Black American audience:
1. Knowing your audience and their desires/expectations
Tarantino fans show up for a few different reasons: extreme and glorified violence, great costume design, soliloquies by Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson yelling obscenities… the list goes on. And those fans are NOT disappointed in Django. But Black audiences tuned into Django desiring another trademark: revenge. This is, at its core, a Black revenge story, masquerading as a modified Western. And that is *exactly* what Tarantino’s Black fans deserved. It’s honestly the closest thing to reparations for me at this point lmao. Like everything about Django’s journey is so satisfying. The scene wherein Django whips the Brittle Brother is like pure ecstasy. Now, before you go off on me, realize that I am not a sadist. I do not believe in evil begetting evil and an eye for an eye in the real world. But in my slave western… it fckn kicks ass. It’s a fantasy that is so well put together that it’s hard not to feel like it’s well deserved after centuries of persecution.
2. Depicting race dynamics
The most impressive aspect of the film is the nuanced relationship between Django and Schultz. Schultz is NOT a white savior. In fact, he is technically, like, Django’s owner? He is absolutely horrified at the reality of slavery, and yet he needs Django’s help, and the way he navigates this moral conundrum is kind of beautiful. He acts as a mentor and, sometimes, even as a subordinate to Django. He listens to what Django has to say with a deep empathy and lets him take the lead in terms of creating a plan and playing a character, looking on in admiration. Django and Schultz are equals. They are two men who are reeling against society in their own ways, and their partnership feels so real. There are two scenes which, in parallel, perfectly distinguish Django and Schultz’s relationship from that of other the Black and White bonds of the time:
When Candie is killed by Schultz, we see Stephen cradling him in his arms like and infant and wailing in an incredibly dramatic fashion. Candie was not just like a child to Stephen, he was his security. He was as free as a slave could be under Candie’s arm. Theirs was a relationship of total dependence on one another.
When Django comes upon Schultz’s body later in the film, he looks on with a mix of respect and almost disappointment that his old pal “couldn’t help it”. We don’t see Schultz’s face or even give him a proper burial. At some point, we see a short compilation of their times together, but the emphasis is always on Django. He never stops to grieve because he has no reason to. Ultimately, Schultz didn’t earn him his freedom, Django had to take it. And while Schultz was integral to setting the plan into motion, the last few scenes of the movie show that Django not only no longer needs help, he may have never needed it in the first place. Schultz and Django were two men with a similar goal and a mutual respect, but their relationship was never one of necessity. Django it undoubtedly the hero, and Tarantino reminds us of that in allowing Schultz’s death to work simply as another plot point rather than an emotional pull-string.
Outside of Schultz, all the White people are all either the devil, dumb, or both. They are caricatures, not characters. Even Tarantino himself is satirized as an ignorant White man. It’s sooooo nice to finally see a film where White slavers are depicted from the point of view of the slaves rather, than trying to appease White audiences. I have to applaud how despicable DiCaprio’s Candie is. The man pulls no punches and carries on with his over the top illiteracy until his very last breath. While I do wish that Broomhilda was given a little more agency, Washington plays a great damsel in distress, and it is a Western. Lastly, Jackson’s depiction of an Uncle Tom is actually fantastic. Like, I laughed, and cringed at the same time. It feels like an accurate depiction of a Black man trying to make the most of his position in bondage and move with authority between the two worlds.
3. Style
The film is artsy in ways that I couldn’t have predicted. From the scene of a White man’s blood splattering the cotton field to Django riding in in that damn Austin Powers looking suit, Tarantino creates a slave tale that, visually, defies stereotypes. It’s almost always brightly lit, the score is rather upbeat, and the overall tone is alternatively tense and hilarious. As a White guy, Tarantino didn’t do anything stylistically that pissed me off. AND THAT’S A FEAT BECAUSE I AM EASILY PISSED. Most slave movies can easily become visually unpleasant or just boring *cough McQueen cough* as they sacrifice style for substance. I appreciate that this film refuses to do that, retaining the red motif and quirky dialogue throughout while still maintaining to tell a story. I am super happy that Tarantino cut down the dog/slave scene. It is the one scene that is hardest to watch, and I think it would have truly changed the feel of the film had it been longer/more graphic.
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