Who Is Steve Mcqueen's Film 12 Years A Slave?

Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave (2013) is perhaps the one of a very few films that attempt to portray, with utmost fidelity, what scholars know as slavery. The film is based on a true story of Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir. And to bring Solomon to life, McQueen hired Professor Henry Louis Gates, an historical consultant from Harvard. The film received world recognition and won an Oscar Award in 2014. Unlike other slave narratives, this one is taken from a real enslaved person who experienced slavery after he was a freeman. He says openly in his memoir that: “I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation—only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person” (Northup 5). The film, therefore, starts with

They were looking for a bag for his wife. As soon as they enter the shop, the shopkeeper greets them with warm smile and made them felt comfortable. The shopkeeper was attentive to their needs. The wife immediately accepted the bag the shopkeeper offered without knowing the price which showed that the Northup family is financially secured. Few moments later, another African American man enters after seeing Northup’s family doing business with a white man who holds respect for their business. He was appalled by such scene when all of a sudden his owner walks in and apologized for the inconvenience as the slave owner looked in disgust to Northup’s family. Solomon is not aware of how brutal slave masters can be until he experienced it when he was kidnapped and sold as a slave from Georgia. This scene, as well other scenes in Saratoga, create false representation of what it was like for a black man to live in a white dominant society. This particular scene, the shopkeeper treats Solomon with outmost respect and kindness as an equal man, but “in the eyes of the law, only his word as a white man and the documents he carries possess the power to liberate Northup from his captor” later on in the story (Smith 372). In another scene, Solomon and his family walk on a street and greet people with respect and receive the same by mostly white people. This contradicts our belief of the way African-Americans were treated back then during the antebellum and Jim Crow eras. Although most of free people in the north enjoy life that is different from the south, still black people cannot mingle with the white or even live next door. This particular scene is a total departure from the historical of antebellum America. One would expect Solomon to avert his eyes from the gaze of white people. In addition, the segregation between white and black is still exist in out contemporary time.