I thought 12 years a slave rang kind of hollow...I wasn't moved by it; it was very disjointed...kind of all over the place.
Are you referring to his memory of his freedom? If so, these were interlaced throughout the film, and I thought they were effective reflections that were structurally useful and indicative of what a formerly free person would reflect on post-enslavement.
Most accounts of enslavement tend to neglect this narrative of memory. This film reflected the enslaved as thoughtful, introspective beings. That struck me as a significant departure from other films recounting enslavement.
As an institution, one of the pillars of enslavement was to deny acknowledgement of the enslaved person's personhood (we see that time and time again in the film when the institution forces the main character to stamp out references to his former life (his literacy, his numeracy, his family etc., and also through separation of children from their mothers, and through rape and sexual ascendancy ... ironically forced miscegenation with a "non-person" being preferred to a consensual relation with one's wife).
Ultimately, it's the collective memory of imported Africans that was "erased" as individual memories were suppressed. What would have become of Solomon had he been unable to "remember" on the day on which he returned to physical freedom? (Here I'm thinking about the questions he was asked by the law enforcement agent, to which a faulty memory would not have secured his removal from the plantation). As such, I didn't find it disjointed, but reflective of the battle for sanity that he experienced as he transitioned from being free to being owned and restrained.
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This film probably lent itself to revealing memory more prevalently than others ... could it be because of the protagonist's previous life as an established "free man" of means in the Western context of 19th century New York society (which viscerally we understand or perhaps with which in our contemporary Western mind we more readily empathize) rather than the less resonant status of a free man dragged inter-continentally on the assumption he bore no status other than that of as commercial product (with which we less readily identify ... it likely being difficult to appreciate human beings as auctioned currency ... other than we "know" it occurred historically and was a "bad" thing, we don't really understand the experience in a tactile way).
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One could contend that the ease of memory in the film stems from Northup's publication of his experiences in his 1853 book (Twelve Years a Slave; Narrative of Solomon Northup; a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River, in Louisiana) ... thereby documenting "memory" of his experience.
However, there have been myriad other memories of those dragged trans-Atlantically: Abu Bakr al-Siddiqi (The History of Abon Becr Sadiki, known in Jamaica by the name Edward Donlan), Omar ibn Said (Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina), and works by Ottobah Cuguano and of Abdul Rahaman, for instance ... that at the very least similarly facilitate or activate memory of the primary characteristic held in common by all enslaved persons (regardless of their pre-enslavement means and status). The primary characteristic: all enslaved people were once all free or bear a legacy of freedom from a once free ancestor with undeniable personhood, yet it has taken Hollywood some time to flesh this out.
These accounts provide a tapestry of not just the forced amnesia demanded by slave owners, but of the memory of personhood despite enslavement. We should be accountable to them more frequently.
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And, this takes me to the most dynamic element of the film for me ... whereas many films frame enslavement through a lens of retroactive condemnation rooted in moral valuations, this film underscored the transactional nature of enslavement: people as human cargo bearing economic valuations and consequences (debts, deeds and mortgages etc.) ... Only one character intoned on morality during the film, yet that character was somewhat willing to turn a blind eye.
Not only did this economic facet of enslavement cement an active thought that history tends to repeat itself (given greed and other aspects of human nature) unless vigilance is perpetual, I thought also of how transformative the experience must have been for Northup himself as a man of value: valued in the North for his personal wealth and valued in the South for the wealth he sustained for masters (particularly being an exceptional person bearing exceptional value).
The film references no notion of his conscience regarding the paradox of him living well in the North while those of his pigmentation suffered in the South (I'm not of the view that it needed to) ... highlighting its other dynamic element of relevance to modern viewers: the lack of protection afforded by the content of one's pocket (once deemed a marginalized person) versus the protection possibly afforded by the content of one's mind despite such marginalization. Arguably, Solomon never mentally acquiesced to the will of any of his masters, and he had that luxury because he had a view of the world off the plantation. Cue Bob Marley and Redemption Song here. Is there a message that the mind can triumph the pocket? A message that lingering economic disparities - a legacy of the regime of the imported African labor market - should be insufficient to quell ambition and personal destinations.
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I viewed the film in a movie theater in the American South. There were only 4 others in attendance (a middle-aged black couple and a white couple perhaps marginally younger) ... apparently Best Man Holiday was the pull. Not sure whether to attach much meaning to the empty seats, but there was something to suggest the film would be uncomfortable viewing for an integrated American audience when much of the dialogue on race relations in the US is reactionary rather than historically embracing.
It might be time to re-read Naipaul's A Turn in The South, re-view Borat, and do both for Haley's Roots. People will struggle to take collective ownership of this film. Glad I saw it, but perhaps it would be less exceptional if other accounts of enslaved narratives were more popularly known, and enslavement less a taboo topic of which most of us possess only a superficial understanding.