12 Year A Slave, Do We Need Such Films?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/03/steve-mcqueen-slavery-12-years-a-slave

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/04/steve-mcqueen-my-painful-childhood-shame

/// McQueen's film pitilessly documents the beatings, lynchings, rape and brutality of a slave-owning class half-demented by its own moral corruption, and routinely reduces audiences to tears. "I hadn't realised slavery was that bad," is the comment its director keeps hearing. ///

McQueen admits that he didn't realise slavery was so bad, so does it do any good for racial harmony to constantly remind people of man's inhumanity to others that which happened nearly 200 years ago?

/// "There's been a kind of amnesia," he says, "or not wanting to focus on this, because of it being so painful. It's kind of crazy. We can deal with the second world war and the Holocaust and so forth and what not, but this side of history, maybe because it was so hideous, people just do not want to see. People do not want to engage." ///

What is he saying that WW2 and the holocaust was also not as hideous also, what about the slaves that the Nazis used or those that the Japanese used to build their railways etc?

Just as we see less films made of these inhumane historic events these days in an attempt not to cause offence or ill feelings, to the present day Germans and Japanese, perhaps now we should do the same with other similar matters which happened further down in history?

[Zeuhl]

As an analogy:

Would it be strange if there had been very few dramas about how tough life was in 19th Britain for the lower classes?

No dramatisations of Dickens, no Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell or even Catherine Cookson and Ripper Street.

Would we know anyway that life was tough for people in that time? Perhaps.

Would that negate the value in filming one or two of those stories?

[jno]

Hypognosis, one reason for Roots not being shown again may be criticism of its authenticity: much of the original book appears to have been fiction, or at the very least fictionalised, which was not at all as it was first presented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family#Criticism

[Kromovaracun]

"Would it be strange if there had been very few dramas about how tough life was in 19th Britain for the lower classes?"

Of course. But I don't think that's the case for slavery in the United States anymore than it is for your example. Both of these are things for which there is widespread knowledge.

Note that I'm just really attacking the 'education' argument (which yes, LazyGun, the director has been quite eager to emphasise) - it may well be a great story etc.

[Zeuhl]

I take your point re 'educational purpose' Kromo

[Zeuhl]

My point was partly that in the above scenario, wouldn't many of us feel that our ancestors' stories had been neglected or even suppressed?

What then of today's African Americans?

[Khandro]

Sadly, the anti-slavery society is still needed, and is very active in the world of today; http://www.antislavery.org/english/
It would be good if at least the film were to bring their work to a larger audience, but I somehow doubt it.

[OILhead]

I went to American schools and my recall is that slavery is not on the curriculum as much as you might think and when it is not so much about the personal, more about the political, economic, etc. But from what I know what appears to make this film a bit different and covering a less known area is that it is about a free black man being abducted in NY and sold into slavery - I think most would assume that slaves were either shipped or born into slavery so in that sense it might be covering a new aspect to slavery.

[Kromovaracun]

"wouldn't many of us feel that our ancestors' stories had been neglected or even suppressed?"

Possibly, but I find it hard to imagine, personally. I've never thought that people in the UK identified as closely to their family's history as people do in the United States.

[jno]

I imagine the director made the film because he wanted to. His background is as an artist, making things that appeal to him personally, rather than in the more collaborative and money-driven field of films. When he says it's educational, he probably means for himself - he's British, remember, not American.

That doesn't mean he's hypocritical or wrong, though. The film plainly has become a matter of public discussion in a way that, say, Amistad was not. Having seen neither, I don't know why this is. Maybe it's a better film, maybe it's just come at the right time for a younger generation who know less about slavery than their parents. But from what I've read, it does appear to be educating people.

[jomifl]

My ancestors emigrated from Ireland during the Irish famine which changed Ireland forever and led to the Irish diaspora.
Precious few movies about it though.