Film causes illuminating discomfort

I had wanted to watch the movie 12 Years a Slave for quite some. The movie has been hyped with its rave reviews and loaded cast. So this past Friday, I went to the Charles Theatre to watch the first showing in Baltimore. Upon arrival, I found out that the Charles is unlike any Los Angeles theatre; it doesn’t open at 10 a.m. My friends and I decided to stop by Sofi’s Crepes to satisfy our stomachs before the film.

This turned out to be a good idea because 12 Years a Slave was a journey of a movie. Directed by Steve McQueen (not the actor), the film traces the life of Solomon Northup, a free man, kidnapped and sold into slavery. Steve McQueen is known for dealing with real and provocative ideas. His last movie, Shame, starring Michael Fassbender, gave insight on sex-addiction.

Presented in narrative form, we journey through the 12 years Solomon Northup spent as a man unable to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Through the film, a true understanding of slavery and the South can be drawn. McQueen, a black director, captures the essence and ideals of slavery better than any other movie prior.

Most movies about slavery depict the cruelty and disgusting nature of it through horrendous images of torn skin and abuse. While this method understands the physical torture of slavery, it does not capture slavery as a whole. It is too easy to see a mutilated body and call it wrong and feel sad. Slavery, however, as an institution, was much more than physical abuse. The psychological component of the slave master and the slaver are often lost in only showing brutal images.

12 Years a Slave does something different by representing this often-underrepresented component. Discomfort is not manifested through crude images of abuse. There are only six moments in the film that depict such physical cruelty. The discomfort forms from the captured mentality of slavery and the culture around it. This representation of culture extends past just the plantations to something greater, the antebellum South. Every component of the film synthesizes to understand the culture, the time, the place.

12 Years a Slave is a necessary movie. As more people claim that America is a “post-racial” society, it is necessary to understand where this country was once rooted. The film holds to magnitude and power to achieve such an understanding. It evokes plenty of emotions as I saw a theatre filled with tears in the final scene. As the names rolled by, signifying the credits, people stayed in their seats.

Yes, 12 Years a Slave causes discomfort, and many have and will choose not to put themselves in such a state. I really challenge everyone to see the naivety in such reason. By shying away for the something that will help develop deeper understandings of race, racism, and history on the basis of discomfort, society can not move past its previous wrongs. Discourse is necessary to achieve “post-racism.”