Movies have made me cry, weep, and hide my head in angst. Before watching this film, none had made me want to vomit at the level of disgust at humanity 12 Years a Slave evokes.
Many cultures in the past have enslaved, imprisoned, and suppressed and oppressed others. (Many still do. Human trafficking, alas, is still an issue.) But the American history of slavery—whether because it is more recent, because it is geographically closer, because the effects are so far-reaching on our pages, or because of the utter brutality involved and depicted—this history literally wrenches my gut. I want to believe this is fiction, but I know better. I know better than to let myself pretty-up the events. I know better than to diminish the evil that lurks in mankind. And I know better than to think “Christianity” is never used as a razor-sharp sword to disguise that evil.
I know better, but it still nauseates me. And this is not simply about the “free” person being kidnapped and sold. After all, that is just a snippet of the horrors that happened to Solomon. And it should not diminish the vile behavior of a mankind who viewed any person as subject to ownership.
The depiction of this scar in our nation’s past is not necessarily new. But it hasn’t been told with this clear a voice in some time on such a broad scale. The actors, director, story adaptor, and all involved do a phenomenal job to bring forth this tale using an art form that I hope will remind us of the evil that is in “humanity.” Maybe with such a reminder, we can turn our head back from hiding to face the ugly signs of mistreatment, the denial of basic human rights, and an embarrassing belief that some are due those rights while others are not.