{"id":2395,"date":"2013-12-01T10:59:15","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T18:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=2395"},"modified":"2013-12-02T14:01:54","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T22:01:54","slug":"12-years-slave-feel-good-movie-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/12-years-slave-feel-good-movie-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Is &#8217;12 Years a Slave&#8217; the Feel-Good Movie of 2013?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Watching director Steve McQueen\u2019s <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>, it was impossible to keep my mind from wandering to Lelia Moore. Lelia was born a slave some time in the mid-1830s, and by 1850 she was the property of John Douglas Hancock. In 1855, while she was still in her late teens, Lelia gave birth to a son, James Nelson Hancock. Known as Nelson, Lelia\u2019s son was also the son of her owner, making her baby both the child and the property of John Douglas Hancock. Before Nelson was five-years-old, his mother was sold off to another plantation. He never saw her again, never knew what happened to her, but my great great grandfather always remembered his mother, and he told his children and grandchildren the stories of his childhood as a slave, of losing his mother, the pain he endured, and the horrible loss he carried with him his entire life. I heard that story growing up, and that is all I could think of while watching <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>At this point, much has been written about <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>, the critically anointed cinematic masterpiece inspired by the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery. My delay in writing any sort of criticism comes from the fact that I had to wait until I was ready to see the film. And to be sure, it\u2019s not that I was worried about any of the elements that seem to have bothered some critics and audiences. Yes, there is violence. And there is rape. And of the many adjectives that have been bandied about in regard to <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>, \u201cbrutal\u201d and \u201cunrelenting\u201d seem to be among the favorites that are used. Perhaps that I found the film to be neither brutal nor unrelenting says something about me, or perhaps it merely says that I am more comfortable than some when it comes to watching a rather tame reenactment of the truth. Because, when all is said and done\u2014after all the violence that makes some people squirm, or want to vomit, or storm out of a theater because their fragile sensibilities have been assaulted\u2014<em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> is only 134 minutes, which compared to the centuries of forced enslavement of Africans in this country is less than the blink of an eye. No, the reason I hesitated to see <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> was because I knew it would not affect me the way it has affected so many others, and the reason for that is because I already know what the movie is about. It is about my family.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014I\u2019m not related to Solomon Northup. Nor am I related to any of the other characters portrayed in the film. At the same time, I am the descendent of slaves. I know who they were, and I know bits and pieces of their lives, and all <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> did for me was provide a brief glimpse of the history of my own family, while at the same time doing very little to propel the narrative of the slave in America in a way that this country needs to have it propelled. This is where I will, no doubt, get into trouble, because for all the acts of violence and dehumanization found in <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>, it is a feel-good movie. The horrors faced by Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are indeed gut-wrenching, but in following the grand traditions of the hero\u2019s journey and mainstream cinema, the film ends on a note of happiness. Northup is freed, reunited with his family, and as such is granted the happy ending that mainstream audiences demand in exchange for watching the horrors that Northup is made to endure. But what of Patsey (Lupita Nyong\u2019o), or Eliza (Adepero Oduye) and her children, or Clemens (Chris Chalk), or even Jasper (Marcus Lyle Brown)? For these characters\u2014and the real life people who inspired them\u2014there likely was no happy ending. Life on the plantation of Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) never got better for Patsey, because in real life women like her more often than not gave birth to the slave child of their owner. These children were then separated from their mothers. We see a glimpse of that reality in <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> with the character Eliza, who in all likelihood never saw her children again. My family is the byproduct of that reality.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/12_years_a_slave-e1385924020673.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[2395]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2398\" alt=\"12_years_a_slave\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/12_years_a_slave-e1385924020673.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"194\" \/><\/a>It is easy to see the cinematic brilliance of <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>, though it is a problematic film, and not for the same reasons other critics may have noted. It has nothing to do with the violence, nor does it even have anything to do with the victimization of blacks that has raised the ire of some critics. No, the problem with <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> is that it isn\u2019t about slavery as much as most people seem to think. It is about a free man who is enslaved, and is then set free, and as such, it is, as I have pointed out, a film with a happy ending. And whether or not people want to admit it, a film about slavery with a happy ending teeters on the brink of being disingenuous. I submit that as difficult as <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> may have been for some people to sit through, no one could sit through a film about Patsey. And that is the film that needs to be made, because the story of Patsey and Eliza and the nameless slave who dropped dead while picking cotton on the Epps\u2019s plantation are the slave narratives that have yet to be truly examined and addressed. I mean think about it\u2014people are freaking out about this film, and Solomon Northup only spent a small portion of his life as a slave, and managed to regain his freedom. What would happen if people tried to watch a film about slavery that revealed <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> to be the upbeat, feel-good film it actually is?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I\u2019m not really saying <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> is a feel-good film in the grandest tradition of cinema. Although I am saying that if a film ever were to tackle slavery in a way that it has never been portrayed in cinema\u2014with a true sense of unrelenting, brutal honesty\u2014<em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> would come up looking like so much sunshine and roses. Under these circumstances, people might notice that with the exception of Chiwetel Ejiofor, there really are no well-developed black characters in <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>. Yes, there are some supporting characters who have moments to shine, but they exist in the already established slave archetypes of cinema past. The fact of the matter is that for a film about slaves and slavery, the only black character that exists with any sense of true dimension\u2014at least as much dimension as film will allow\u2014is Solomon Northup. All of the black women in the film are reduced to little more than concubines for their masters, while the black men exist as that ever-elusive abstract entity known as the slave. The most interesting of the supporting male slaves is played by Michael Kenneth Williams, and that character has already been played twice, by Ji-Tu Cumbuka, in <em>Roots<\/em> and <em>Mandingo<\/em>. By comparison, several white characters in the film are given a sense of depth and dimension that is not afforded to most of the black characters. Ultimately, <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> does a better job of giving its white supporting characters a semblance humanity\u2014depraved though it may be\u2014than it does its supporting black characters. In that regard, the film is just like history, which has reduced the slave to something less than human. And if there is any one thing that I don\u2019t like about <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em>, it is the fact that none of the supporting black characters have the same complexity as Fassbender, or Brad Pitt, or even Sarah Paulson.<\/p>\n<p>Taken for what it is, <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> is a good film\u2014though it is too problematic for me to go along with those that have proclaimed it a masterpiece. At the same time, despite the problems that are evident, <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> is an important film in that it opens the door to the conversation that this country still refuses to have. It is this refusal that leaves people traumatized by a film that is only the tip of the tip of the tip of an iceberg that we know as slavery. If <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> leads to some people taking a closer look at the horrific reality of slavery and the enduring legacy of racism that endures in its wake, then I\u2019m all for this film and all those like it. Personally, I want all Americans to see as many films about slavery as possible\u2014to sit in discomfort and disgust, emotionally ravaged by the centuries of dehumanization that provided the foundation upon which this nation was built\u2014until we as a nation have reconciled our true history. We owe that much to Lelia Moore, my third great grandmother, and the millions of others like her, who were never granted a happy ending, but whose story must nonetheless be told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watching director Steve McQueen\u2019s 12 Years a Slave, it was impossible to keep my mind from wandering to Lelia Moore. Lelia was born a slave some time in the mid-1830s, and by 1850 she was the property of John Douglas Hancock. In 1855, while she was still in her late teens, Lelia gave birth to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,99],"tags":[632,635,633,634],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is &#039;12 Years a Slave&#039; the Feel-Good Movie of 2013?  - Cinephiled<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/12-years-slave-feel-good-movie-2013\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is &#039;12 Years a Slave&#039; the Feel-Good Movie of 2013?  - Cinephiled\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Watching director Steve McQueen\u2019s 12 Years a Slave, it was impossible to keep my mind from wandering to Lelia Moore. 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Walker is a writer, filmmaker, and critic. He is the creator of the pop culture 'zine BadAzz MoFo. 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