12 Years A Slave (the movie) (Spoiler!!!)

I’m just going to start this post with a simple statement; I don’t like slave movies. But, I took one for the team when my fiancé expressed his desire to see the film. I’m not under any circumstance under a false reality about African American history, especially when it pertains to slavery. I am well aware how gruesome and inhumane my ancestors where treated. To be real, it was not long ago that slavery was abolished in the United States (148 years).

While it is not exactly fresh – it certainly is not forgotten. I appreciate Hollywood films, as they often, gently, remind us of how horrible slavery IS; however, I don’t want to see it. It’s sad and disturbing and I’d rather not look. Although, I often dislike the public being fed soft versions of just how bad it really was for African Americans, still for my own viewing purposes, I would rather see a different film.

12 Years A Slave is based on the experience of Solomon Northrop of NY. A free man who was captured in a smuggling scheme. He spent 12 years as a slave on 3 different plantations. He remained hopeful that one day he would again be free. I couldn’t help but feel that all that he had gone through could have been avoided.

Solomon Northrop, as he was portrayed in the movie, was obviously a man of wealth and prominence in his section of New York. He and his wife Anne and two children Margaret and Lorenzo were not poor people. He seemed to be well liked and well known amongst Blacks and Whites in his community. They never touched on his profession; but it was heavily noted that he was a proficient violin player but it wasn’t enough to assume it was his source of income. With that, he was proposition by two White men (this is important) to travel with their performing arts group. It was at this point in the film that you feel Northrop got a little too comfortable, too trusting.

He agrees to perform in Washington DC with the traveling art group and it is in Washington that he is taken and enslaved. The two artists – were practicing the art of trickery when they drugged Northrop and forced him into slavery. I’m not going to tell too much more on his specific encounters on the different plantations.

I do want to give the movie credit for not softening the blows of slavery. There is one whipping scene that will keep you up at night; as it should. But when the movie ended, I felt sorry for Northrop – not because he was a free man forced to be a slave, but because he didn’t appear that he thought about what would happen if he traveled south of the Mason-Dixon Line with 2 White men, that he'd literally just met. It brings me back to my original thought of “too trusting”. I guess I’d have to read the book to gain clarification but going off what the movie portrayed, it was not evident that he even considered the consequences of his endeavor nor was there any indication that he told his family or friends of his whereabouts. This didn't have to happen! But it did, he went through determined to survive and I respect that.

I had a lot to think about when it was said and done and I still don’t care for slave films. I don’t feel uplifted or inspired – maybe I should but I don’t. I feel sad…sober? This film was an awesome depiction but I’d rather had seen something else.