12 Years a Slave Essay: To what extent can you learn about history through watching a movie?

October 18, 2017

After watching and researching 12 Years a Slave, I believe it is very possible to learn about history from watching a movie as I saw certain experiences of slaves in the movie which were also written about in the narratives. Specifically, I believe this as Solomon’s abduction into slavery is accurately represented in the movie as he describes in his narrative. This was something that I first saw in the movie and did not know would actually happen, where a free person was taken down south into slavery. After researching and analyzing Solomon’s narrative as well, I just have more words to put behind the pictures I saw in the film. It was very accurate down to the gruesome images of being whipped continually.

After reading reviews and interviews about the movie, it’s obvious that 12 Years a Slave was intended to accurately represent the life of a slave. Graham Fuller in Vanity Fair writes of the incredibly vivid portrayal of Solomon Northup by Chiwetel Ejiofor through Steve McQueen’s even more painful adoption of Northup’s story. Ejiofor brings Northup to life again as a tenacious remnant of one of America’s most horrifying eras. His mental state varies from states of indifference to pure anger while he is ultimately in pure disgrace. Fuller earlier speaks of the movie’s accurate account for Northup’s suffering as he experiences being a free, educated man and father kidnapped only to be introduced to a new, terrifying environment as a slave in Louisiana. In Northup’s narrative, he speaks of this time with such dismay while his life up to then was nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual, complicated hopes and dreams of a black man. Though his life has now changed forever, as a sharp turn into darkness. He thought he had arrived to his final resting place, to never see the light of freedom again in his life. This is illustrates the true disgust as seen in the movie where Solomon is kidnapped and changed forever. His life will no longer be about his family and has fallen into unutterable control: “With the paddle, Burch commenced beating me. Blow after blow was inflicted upon my naked body. When his unrelenting arm grew tired, he stopped and asked if I still insisted I was a free man. I did insist upon it, and then the blows were renewed, faster and more energetically, if possible, than before… My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!” (44-45). Such cruel measures were exposed to him through his many years there and it continues with every subtle mistake. Furthermore, he is later even forced by their owner to lash one of his own fellow slaves, Patsey, who was before raped by that owner. As Ejiofor is interviewed about portraying Northup in such a rough scene like this, he sheds light on being able to have been given the privilege of spreading knowledge about something so horrible that actually happened: “It happened, you know. It really happened to these people, and we’re right there in Louisiana, and you have that sense that you’re dancing with spirits, dancing with ghosts… And you’re sort of hoping that whatever happens is guided by these spirits, in a way — you just have to be open to that, and to feel the privilege of being able to tell their story.” These people associated with the film take on this responsibility of not only making a film people want to watch, but in a case as so, accurately illustrating what actually would happen to such people in this heartbreaking era of history.

The fact of this area is, some parts of history are worth making movies out of, and specific cases like Solomon’s, have happy ending to satisfy such an audience as well. It is an art being able to illustrate with such vivid details important events that have happened in the past for such a large and modern group of individuals. Every point discussed revolving around this historically accurate movie, 12 Years a Slave, whether it be Fuller’s impression of the accurate portrayals by the cast, Ejiofor’s privilege of being able to spread the truth behind stories of slaves like Northup, or Solomon Northup himself describing his many horrible experiences as a slave in his own narrative, each is imperative in exclaiming why history can in fact be learned through watching a movie.