Saturday, October 19, 2013

A Few Were Even Laughing: Help Me Understand Why Some Black Folks Were Crying at and Shocked by the Violence in the Movie "12 Years a Slave"

I have just watched 12 Years a Slave. I will develop more thoughts in detail next week. But, I would like to share the following preliminary response.

I went to 12 Years a Slave expecting to feel like its depiction of the graphic violence of black chattel slavery in the United States would leave me feeling as though I had been slapped me in the face or punched in the stomach.

Instead, I felt a very reassuring and familiar hand on my shoulder, as well as a whisper in my ear that said "yes, this is accurate", or "okay, Steve McQueen has done a good job attending to the important details (such as the use of 'slave tags') and this is a very capable work of film-making, with excellent performances that will win several Oscars".

As I watched the gasps, shocks, tears, and listened to audible moments of surprise on the part of the mostly African-American audience at the AMC River East theater here in Chicago, I kept wondering if perhaps I am just a cold person, or that something is wrong with me because I found the violence in 12 Years a Slave rather subdued as compared to the book, and also the institutional barbarism of slavery in the New World, more generally.

As I looked at the brother next to me who had to walk out of the movie during a moment when a slave is "schooled" via the whip, and how his female companion kept shaking her head and hiding her eyes during several of the movie's more harrowing scenes, I realized that I owed some public thanks to the history teachers I was blessed to have in college (and graduate school).

I would like to extend my gratitude for putting the Transatlantic slave trade in historical and global context. I would like to thank my history professors for explaining that black chattel slavery was a cruel business where profit was legitimated by the debasement of human beings.

I would like to thank my history teachers for not allowing or indulging silly notions of "The White Man's" existential evil, but rather making it clear that Europeans were pretty wicked to one another and that Colonialism and Imperialism were natural outgrowths of said fact.

I would like to thank my history professors for giving me primary source materials to read when I started to expound some Afrocentric-Afrotopia influenced misunderstandings about the Transatlantic slave trade, i.e. believing in nonsense like the Willie Lynch Letter, or that at least 100 million black people were killed during the Middle Passage. As one of my favorite, and most difficult taskmasters explained, "why do you need to make things up and exaggerate about one of the worst crimes in human history? The facts as they are stand as a testament to human wickedness on their own."

I would like to thank my history professors for teaching me that black chattel slavery varied by region and country in the West and around the world. And ultimately, I want to thank my history professors for emphasizing how the Southern Slaveocracy was a de facto military state that involved personal tyranny of white on black, as well as daily acts of resistance to our domination and subordination. Tyrannical power over other human beings creates a formula for, and legitimizes gross violence, both interpersonal and societal. This is a fact common across human history and the various divides of race, nation, ethnicity, gender, class, and tribe.

Moreover, African-Americans were never silent nor did we ever surrender to our enslavement; despite a monopoly on State violence and arms, whites lived in terror of slave uprisings and that they would one day be brought to justice for their crimes.

I am not suggesting that I am better, superior, or stronger than the other black folks I watched 12 Years a Slave with several hours ago. However, I do think that much of the shock and surprise is a function of how little so many Americans know about the brutality of black human bondage across the Black Atlantic.

When an older black woman in front of me muttered to herself "I can't believe this is happening", I almost wanted to ask her "how did you think that millions of black people were kept as property for centuries in the United States? With treats and praise?"

12 Years a Slave is one story from one small part of complex system of human servitude in the United States and the Americas. There are so many stories yet to be told in mass popular culture about slaves working in mines, on the plantations of the Caribbean and across Latin and South America, the hell of the Middle Passage, maroon colonies and slave insurrections, semi-free people who hired out their own labor and lived in a liminal space as "independent" craftsmen and artisans in cities, the black slaves who built the railroads, locks, and highways that facilitated American empire, the true life horror stories of black slaves sold to medical schools and kidnapped for live vivisection and other experiments, and the personal psychological warfare that went on between slave and slave owner, those little daily battles through which slaves negotiated their own freedoms and rights in order to carve out a space to be human.

I am interested in how those of you who have seen 12 Years a Slave feel about the film more generally. I do have two specific questions.

Help me understand why some black folks were crying, shocked, and aghast at what they saw on the screen? In my screening, several young people were laughing during the movie. Yes, black youth in their teens and twenties, laughing at human suffering.

Is this a function of anxiety and fear on their part? A sense of shame that comes out as an effort to distance themselves from their own people's suffering? Or is this a reflection of a general culture of cruelty, where so many of our young people across the color line are nihilistic, but simultaneously so immersed in violence and consumerism, that they have been trained to find humor in the mistreatment of others?

12 Years a Slave is a fine movie. It is also a relatively restrained depiction of the various cruelties unleashed by the White Slaveocracy on black people. Americans need to grow up and come to terms with the crime against humanity that was African-American enslavement in the New World, and then decades of Jim and Jane Crow in our own country. For some, American Exceptionalism will make such an act very difficult if not impossible. However, those in denial can still find solace in the fact that in many ways American slavery was unique, peculiar, and special among nations.

44 comments:

Shady Grady said...

We might have to wait until the national release to see it in Michigan.

MaryK said...

As you point out, this is not news to anyone who has studied history in any depth (beyond the required jr. college credits). However, the mainstream view of teaching many subjects "a mile wide and an inch deep" doesn't give time for children to discuss and understand. They grow up not really knowing that history is real stuff that happened to real people. So when the young people you describe react so emotionally to this, it's probably their first taste of what slavery was actually like.

evening said...

Re: the laughing - I was on a plane with TERRIBLE turbulence. The plane was silent except for a couple of us who laughed. My husband looked at me like I transformed into another creature because he couldn't imagine why I'd be laughing. To me the turbulence was so absurd and I guess I didn't know how else to react.

Perhaps those that laughed were doing so at the absurdity of the whole thing. I guess it depends on the kind of laugh you heard - they could have just been jackasses :)



Also, as for covering eyes and such - just because you know the horror is coming, it is another thing to see a portrayal of it. The shackles in the Smithsonian always haunted me, but just because I knew they were used I couldn't stand to see them being used.

chauncey devega said...

Great analogy. But this wan't nervous laughter. It was laughing at specific instances of brutality. I was also disturbed by how people clapped and laughed while one of the characters explained how she had to submit to her white slave owner's sexual advances and then become his "wife" to have any protection. Women and men clapping at such a thing. Amazing.

chauncey devega said...

There were so many immensely talented black comedic actors who had to play those roles. Painful really. Have you seen the documentary on African-American comedy which was just released that explores many of those issues?

chauncey devega said...

It is all "fake" in a book. They then have to process another "fake" representation i.e. a movie and then can't handle it. We need to have more properly trained public teachers who actually use primary source materials.

chauncey devega said...

I am eager to hear your thoughts on it.

sam enderby said...

No. I wasn't even aware that one was made. Whats the title?

chauncey devega said...

It is called Why We Laugh. A bit uneven in places but worth the 5 bucks you can get it for now.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1124061/

kokanee said...

vivisection definition:
the practice of performing operations on live animals for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research (used only by people who are opposed to such work).


Omg. Beyond disgusting.

---------------

Slavery is alive and well in 21st century America. More African-Americans are incarcerated today than there were African-Americans when slavery was abolished. Most for minor drug offenses. Prisoners are then forced to work for pennies an hour. Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/151732/21st-century_slaves%3A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

chauncey devega said...

I will have some actual examples next week.

edwardchamberlain said...

"As I looked at the brother next to me who had to walk out of the movie
during a moment when a slave is "schooled" via the whip, and how his
female companion kept shaking her head and hiding her eyes during
several of the movie's more harrowing scenes"


His 'female companion was shaking her head and hiding her eyes' because she was a white woman. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

chicano2nd said...

"For some, American Exceptionalism will make such an act very difficult if not impossible."
Considerer how, "them white-white folks," have even turned the meaning of exceptionalism on its head. They see it as being in the "best" general culture in the world but the rest of the world sees exceptional as applied to the "American" mentality much differently, some say "ugly" Americans or worse.
We, as individuals immersed in such a system are unindated with the varying experiences designed to hide the truth as a control mechanism. Myself, I had to throw off the "shackles" of the Catholic Church that our conquerors employed to dumb us down. I had to self acknowlege the cracks in the system after figuring out that all institutions (behaviours, really) are varying degrees of behavioral control mechanisms of the class system of white privilege. That came as a result of being in he military. I had learn to think critically, to emphathize and sypthathize with the inhumanity that subhumans can wreak!
We as POC, who only know this hemisphere are now dealing with the same sytem. It will exploit ways to keep us separated in our common struggles.
The impossiblility of the "white-white" folks and their indoctrinated/socialized POC enablers ever seeing the truth is a fact and cannot be denied lest we truly succumb.
They are masters at taking the meaning of words away. They told us so!

Stephen Kearse said...

The laughter is pretty bizarre, but it might have something to do with my generation's perceived "distance" from slavery. When I was in high school (it was all black, by the way), anytime the teachers would highlight some kind of continuity between slavery and the present, one half of the class would do the black church nod and collectively shake their heads and the other half would sneer and say something to the tune of, "Get over it. That was so long ago." I think for a lot of people there's an active separation between slavery as a historical event and slavery as an ontological property of black people. 12 Years a Slave probably collapses that separation, so for people who know it's a false separation, it's alarming to remember it and for people who don't know and want to maintain that separation, it seems ridiculous, hence the laughter.

Also, my generation has a bad historical consciousness in general. I talk to people about hip-hop a lot and despite all the time, money and thought they invest in it, there's a lot of pure ignorance on the side of fans and artists. Case in point: Drake once said that he is the first person to pioneer singing and rapping.

chauncey devega said...

Allen West. The former congressmen? I hope not. Run away from that self-hating clown. But otherwise, I think you are correct.

gn carter said...

I saw the film with a mostly white audience at the Mill Valley Film Festival. There times in the theatre that you could have heard a pin drop. Other times you heard people crying. I had tears flowing down my face. I, and others, empathized with the suffering of the characters on the screen, especially when Solomon was portrayed as compelled to whip his friend Patsy in earnest. You did not see the blows land directly. The director showed it indirectly by showing the blood spray up from her back from the other side of the whipping post. The acting throughout was very good.


I knew of the brutality of slavery, from such as Frederick Douglass' autobiography and other writings, so that was not surprising. It was, nevertheless, shocking to see it portrayed so graphically on screen.

As for the young people, they see so much graphic violence in so many movies and on television, and have lived in the time of two wars since the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions that I think that they are inured to graphic violence. It does not seem 'real' to them nor something that affects them closely. Not so for those of us who are older and remember the reaction to Emmett Till's murder and the other murders of the Civil Rights era People rioted when MLK Jr. was assassinated. They rioted when Rodney King's torturers were virtually acquitted. Young people living in a time when there are two wars going on may not be as moved by the violence that they see.

SabrinaBee said...

I did not get to see the movie tis weekend. It was not showing showing in my area. I'm not sure when it will be.

To some people, I believe it is shocking to see what happened, however tame it was portrayed. It's surprising how many people would sooner forget that this even happened. Blacks included.

As to the laughing teens, what can you say?I think among the young, the events are so far removed that they could not imagine anything like that happening in the future. It's ignorance.

Glad you were able to see it.

Stone Riley said...

Hi. White male youth grew up in Jim Crow Land admiring Civil Rights Struggle (esp. Dr. King & Malcolm both, their thoughts and works together) in the paperbacks & magazines of that era, then a white young Vietnam War resister, then a misc. justice activist in various decades, now old man doing public education at a history museum in Boston region often (of course) addressing slavery & abolition movement, saying hi.

Have not seen 12 Years A Slave yet but your blog post contains a supremely important point which should be spoken much more often than it is:

Slavery is war. War is slavery.

kokanee said...

Uhh...thanks.

Tim said...

At the very least, this movie should be mandatory viewing for all Civil War reenactors. I'm not kidding.

John said...

You mention the historical context you were given in various forms. We have to remember that not every black viewer of this film has had that. Not all have watched the documentaries (or even Roots and other mainstream films) to have a visual representation of the history that gets glossed over every February. We could say "How do you not know this?" but when people aren't taught how to use the tools that would even lead to asking the right questions it's easy to see how many don't know this.

DanF said...

The NPR review quote that stuck with me: "It's also a powerful corrective, because it so skillfully links that brutality to the sort of tranquil antebellum South that Hollywood has often peddled — the broad porches, the hoop skirts, the fields fluffy with cotton. It will be hard for audiences to see those images ever again without thinking about the savagery and injustice that propped them up."

Tim said...

I'll have to read the NPR review. Anything that takes the hot air out of the Gone With the Wind fantasy is long, long overdue IMHO.

mls oregonhills said...

I reread Northup's account Sat. night, and have thinking about how very understated it is. Partly, of course, is the language of the times, literature being more 'flowery' if you will.
What I am left with is the impression of despite how barbaric and vile his circumstances were, Northup was never broken - he remained a solid, sane and virtuous man, staying above it all. One tough warrior.

OldPolarBear said...

It is not in Des Moines yet, sadly that is not much of a surprise. We are pretty much homebodies anyway and don't go out to things much and usually wait until movies are on Netflix but I might make the effort for 12 Years a Slave. If it ever comes here.

Some thoughts about the laughter. Sometimes people, especially young people and I think especially young women, will laugh as a cover for nervousness or fear or discomfort. Also, for many modern, post-everything people, especially teenagers, it is not "cool" to feel too much or care about anything, to show commitment or emotion. I think it's especially true, perhaps has been for a long time, for teenage and college-age young men, especially with their peers. So they will overreact and laugh to cover that.

The film even sounds kind of terrifying -- might not young, black men actually even be identifying with the title character? Fear is not something that young men of any race even want to acknowledge they experience, let alone in a crowded movie theater. I'm not trying to excuse the laughter, just maybe think of reasons for it.

I don't think that most of them are necessarily that cruel as a basic matter, just that it might be considered to act that way in public. Finally, no matter how worthwhile a film or other performance as historical depiction, for some people it is always going to just be entertainment.

chauncey devega said...

I think you are right about some type of cool pose mess going on. Must more frightening to realize that the events happening on screen would also have happened to you as well. I do hope it gets a wide enough release so that you and others can see it. What do we do with a culture where young people are taught not to care or show emotion? How did such a crisis in empathy come about?

chauncey devega said...

Absolutely. And that is what I wish the movie showed more of. I want to learn more about this man, his internal dialogue, how he negotiated the unimaginable. Excellent movie; lacking in that regard though.

chauncey devega said...

Cultivated ignorance. One would think that folks would want to learn about their own people and our shared history as a country. I guess the silliness of reality TV is more compelling.

chauncey devega said...

Now that is a sharp, smart, and efficient comment. Spot on!

chauncey devega said...

The worship of that movie stupifies me. Southern white confederate lost cause race and reunion nonsense.

chauncey devega said...

Thanks for chiming in. You must have some great stories too tell. What is your work like at the museum?

chauncey devega said...

Was the audience stunned? Surprised? I do think you are right about this culture of cruelty. The culture of narcissism for our young people is also part of this too.

chauncey devega said...

Drake is the greatest...insert finger into mouth to induce vomiting.


When such matters would come up on class was their anxiety, shame, embarrassment? Get over it, from black folks about their/our own history. Sad. Talk about internalized white supremacy.

Walter Mack said...

Having recently read "Twelve Years A Slave" while being unaware of the pending release of a film by that title,I am reluctant to ruin the vivid impressions that linger with me still.Depictions of the violence are what I expect.How the film conveys Northrup's tremendous inner strength amid his devastating losses is what I am most eager to see.If you haven't read the book do it as I now must see the film.

Miles_Ellison said...

In an intelligent and thoughtful society, they would. But there's no audience for that kind of intellectual heavy lifting in the society in which we currently reside. However, there is an audience for shows about hookers who have been impregnated by talentless rappers and washed-up, long-since-retired basketball players. There's an even bigger audience for Tyler Perry's corked-up soap operas and gangsta mammy trash.

Bryan Ortez said...

You know what I thought of that is also interesting...
We express frustration with people today who do not take violence seriously, either modern violence in the news and in some people's reality or the violence in books and movies of the past.
We express frustration at others today for laughing about this sort of violence, but back then when this type of thing was normal. When someone's job was to commit acts of torture and abuse in the name of discipline.

What kind of personalities were Americans fostering?

This is a scary and frustrating thought to me. That this type of violence could be so normal and in a society that didn't have the kind of glorifying violent films and novels we have today.

Gable1111 said...

I have yet to see this movie. I'll probably end up watching it alone as my wife doesn't want to see it, as she's afraid it will make her angry to the extent she won't be responsible for her actions. She says I'll be making a mistake seeing it for the same reasons. She's probably right.

Roots made me angry, and it is almost idyllic compared to what I have heard about "12 Years a Slave." What made me angry about Roots was that, it was at the time, a "network television event," which meant that damn near every one saw it. Going to work after Roots was painful because people I worked with knew I had seen it, and were embarrassed or patronizing about the fact of what it showed, because up until then, the gist of education about slavery was, "Lincoln freed the slaves," and after that, we all wuz "free," just like de white mon." Roots opened some eyes. Too bad this movie won't get the same widespread viewing, because people do need to understand that slavery, the old south, etc. was not a fairy tale, and was an event that put the lie to the entire concept of America at the time, and still does. BY virtue of the fact that we are supposed to pretend it didn't happen, and that it "was a long time ago" and therefore is not to be talked about.

I'm glad this movie was made because of all the revisionism being bandied about today from the political, cultural and ideological, as well as genealogical descendants of those who pretend that slavery was some walk in the park, and some who even go so far as to say it was somehow a positive for African Americans.

Having grown up during the tail end of Jim Crow, I have some personal experience with the residual aftermath of slavery's evils, but its still hard, even for me, to conceptualize what its like to be owned by someone else; to essentially be the functional equivalent of livestock on a farmstead. But to be treated even worse than that. So I can forgive young people for not being able to take in the horrors of "12 Years A Slave." And I suspect some laugh because they really can't process the concept of something like this happen to them and theirs.

Gable1111 said...

I've seen that too. But the problem with that is, we never understand who we are as a people in "America" if we cannot digest the fact and reality of slavery.

Tim said...

FYI, here's a discussion thread about 12 Years a Slave on the Gone With the Wind IMDB site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/board/thread/221095792. Some of the responses are quite ... disturbing, to say the least.

Jay said...

Like "Gone With The Wind"!

Stone Riley said...

I just sent you a longish reply by e-mail.

chauncey devega said...

I love this real talk:

"Roots made me angry, and it is almost idyllic compared to what I have heard about "12 Years a Slave." What made me angry about Roots was that, it was at the time, a "network television event," which meant that damn near every one saw it. Going to work after Roots was painful because people I worked with knew I had seen it, and were embarrassed or patronizing about the fact of what it showed, because up until then, the gist of education about slavery was, "Lincoln freed the slaves," and after that, we all wuz "free," just like de white mon.""



Please share that story. Alternatively, write up the recollections as a piece here on WARN. I would love feature it. Damn.

Gable1111 said...

Will be glad to. Been busy with work but I will.

garig said...

The thing is if you're trying to school these young persons about how they ought to take what's on screen seriously and make sure they understand that it's still very much about them.. Then it may feel to them as if you're the one trying to put them down.

They're living in a different reality (or "fantasy" who knows ?), and the rest of the society (black and non black) doesn't tell them (overtly) that there's no place for them or that there's anything special about them that would make them second citizens. But you come to them and do that.

Anyway, a lot of people become either desensitized to violence (or to simulated violence as I'm sure even a horror movie fan would find real gore very disturbing), and young people (especially young males) of any race will react a certain way in public due to peer pressure/perceived shame and one of these way is hiding some emotion or be too much aware of it to feel it genuinely.