12 Years a Slave and Who Can Get History Right
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If you have been following any movie news, you know that 12 Years a Slave, the new Steven McQueen film starring Chiwetel Ejiofer, Michael Fassbender and Lupita N’yongo, is tearing up the festival circuit, inspire all sorts of praise and talk of Oscars. It’s been interesting to see a film made by someone of a dark hue winning raves, but there’s another facet to the conversation surrounding the film that has been confounding me. It all started when Brad Pitt made a comment during a press conference about Americans not asking about why there aren’t more films about slavery and eventually saying that it took an outsider to be able to tell this tale.
Now before we get too far into this discussion, let me just say that I think it’s wonderful seeing someone of the African diaspora succeed, regardless of whether they are a Brit or American. Especially being able to tell a movie about a part of our history focusing on the Black characters. I mean you look at the filmscape and it’s pretty empty with stories about this period in history. According to wikipedia, there have been 23 films made featuring slavery, and that number gets even lower when you take out films like Gone with the Wind that only have tangential relationships with slavery. Contrast that with the countless and never ending list of WWII films and you start to wonder about what Brad was saying.
So why then do Americans not tell these stories, and maybe more specifically, why do Black directors not tell them? Well one, it’s a lot easier to tell a story surrounding say WWII because of the breadth of stories one can tell from the different cultures involved to the actual battles. Contrast that with slavery, and while there are fascinating stories still left to be told (how we haven’t gotten a Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth tale is absurd) but unless you rope in the other countries, it starts to become just an American problem. Not saying that’s true, but that’s how it’s viewed. More importantly, the reason I think we don’t have a lot of films about slavery is because the subject matter is so tough. I mean you HAVE to show people being treated as less than human, beaten, raped, killed in the most vile of ways and this is solely to have your film be accurate/taken seriously. I look at most other periods of history and there’s just a wider range of places to tell a story (i.e. you can tell a WWII story without even mentioning the Holocaust).
But perhaps most interesting in this discussion is this notion that Steve McQueen, he of the British nationality, who is getting some flack for making a film about American slavery. First off it wasn’t called the trans-Atlantic slave trade for nothing, so all of yall complaining about McQueen being British can go have a seat. It’s not up to one culture of people to tell a story. Though I completely disagree with the notion that McQueen can’t direct a film like this, I do understand that it is much easier for a non-American to tell a movie about slavery and other difficult American issues. For one, foreign directors aren’t beholden to the same standards American directors, especially Black ones. I think about someone like Spike Lee trying to do a film like this and it would never happen because it would get bogged down in so much flack and uneccessary conversation about what his intentions were with the film. Hell if he wanted to make Django Unchained, he’d be called every name in the book and some that aren’t. I don’t think making a good film depends on your skin color or what country you were born in. No one person or culture has a right to being the only ones to tell the stories of that culture, although it helps quite a lot.
John Singleton, Oscar nominated director of Boyz in the Hood and mindless garbage action films, added a new wrinkle to this discussion with asking if a white director can make a great Black film. On one of her latest podcasts, Sasha Stone goes into this discussion as well, framing the discussion around Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple. These are two interesting points because let’s be honest, most of the historical films being created are done by white filmmakers, as are most movies. So does their whiteness preclude them for telling history the correct way?
Ultimately, the conversation should be less about who can get history right and more about did they get it right. Powerful stories are powerful stories, regardless of the helmer. All that should matter is the execution.
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