On two distinct
and equally powerful ways to read one of the film’s first images of slavery.
12 Years a Slave opens (before the title card comes on screen) with a striking short
prelude, a series of moments/vignettes set during (what we will later realize
is) a random period of Solomon Northrup’s time
in slavery. The accumulated moments highlight many sides to the daily
realities and details (as well as brutalities and oppressions) of slavery, but
culminate in a particularly surprising one: the female slave sleeping next to
Solomon on a crowded floor wordlessly implores him to touch her and give her
pleasure, and he does so, after which they silently roll apart and turn away
from each other. And this moment is immediately juxtaposed with an even more
striking shift, to a wordless scene of a younger Solomon and his wife lying in
bed together, holding and looking at each other with tenderness and love; after
this idyllic image is held for a few seconds the title card comes up and the
film’s more chronological narrative begins.
The most overt,
and certainly an accurate and salient, way to read these juxtaposed images is
through their stunning contrasts, not only in tone and theme, but in every sensory
detail: Solomon and his wife are dressed in fine, comfortable clothes, lying on
a large and pillowy mattress, bathed in light, silent because no words need be
spoken in a moment like this; Solomon and the slave woman are dressed in rags,
lying on a dirty floor in the darkness, trying to stay silent for safety and
survival. The fact that it is Solomon in both moments and images only heightens
the sense of contrast, and foreshadows very succinctly and perfectly the
thorough and horrific shift that he will undergo when he is kidnapped from his
comfortable and happy free life into the depths of the slave South. What makes
Solomon’s unique narrative and story so potent is precisely these contrasts,
the way in which his prior life and identity could so full reveal the absolute
horrors and inhumanities of the slave system. And as with so many choices in
McQueen’s economical film, these two juxtaposed images present those contrasts
more evocatively than any extended exposition ever could.
But on the other
hand, if we see Solomon as somehow more human or more tragic than any and every
other slave, we miss another crucial theme of the film, one likewise introduced
through this opening image: that every slave was a human being, with all the
complex needs and desires and emotions and thoughts and soul that all humans
possess. It’s easy to say that, but (I would argue) very hard to really wrap
our heads around it, around the recognition that all the millions and millions
of American slaves were complex individuals (so were the slaveowners, of
course, but that’s a topic for another day). By introducing, as the first individual fellow
slave of Solomon’s, this woman desperate for any kind of human contact, as well
as for a moment of selfish (in an entirely understandable sense) pleasure,
McQueen immediately and irrevocably establishes this shared humanity. Which is
to say, this unnamed fellow slave is not all contrasted to Solomon and his wife
in that other image—her situation may be the exact opposite of theirs, but she
is far more similar to than different from them (and me, and you). Another
vital theme of Solomon’s story and McQueen’s film, and one likewise highlighted
from these opening moments on.
Guest post on the
film and its director this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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