Solomon Northup and the Chorus of Innocents
Depictions of slavery in Hollywood films are few and far between. Institutionalized racism aside, the bottom line is the bottom line, and you have to convince a whole lot of people that making a film about one of the worst crimes humanity ever committed will somehow be profitable. When we do get films about slavery, at best they don’t scratch the surface and at worst, they’re overly sentimental and don’t take the emotional weight of slavery seriously. But then hell froze over, and someone allowed 12 Years a Slave to be made. No film will ever entirely capture the full extent of the horror, but at least someone finally depicted slavery on screen with the respect and gravity it deserves.
However, it wasn't long before people started referring to 12 Years a Slave as a "white savior movie," because despite his treatment at the hands of every white person he’s met since his kidnapping, or the real life circumstances of Solomon’s eventual release from slavery which was in large part handled by white men in a bureaucracy, or the simple matter of Solomon living in a country where he's seen as an inferior being Samuel Bass played a role in securing Solomon Northup's freedom.
These articles contend that we shouldn’t be making movies about slavery that solely rely on white people randomly jumping in and saving the day, and in that sense, they're absolutely right. Movies about the nobility of powerful white men saving black slaves that let white people off the hook simply cannot be tolerated anymore. However, in the process, these articles also imply that Solomon should have saved himself, like any active protagonist could have done. Though 12 Years a Slave is an adaption, the filmmakers could've theoretically changed whatever they wanted, including how Solomon eventually earns his freedom. He could have escaped. He could have revolted. He could have, somehow, attained freedom without the assistance of any "white saviors."
But that would prove equally problematic. The fundamental problem with classifying 12 Years a Slave as a “white savior movie” is that it undermines the totality of slavery as a system and asserts that Solomon had any agency over his life. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, nor was it the case for any slave.
As the real Solomon Northup wrote at the end of his book, "If I have failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader too prominently the bright side of the picture.” Hollywood is guilty of the same crime, as its primary customers are those who choose to be in the dark about the true horrors of slavery, and remain naïve to the state of race relations in this country. James Baldwin called these people, "the chorus of innocents."
From James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time.
Slaves did run, and some were successful, but these stories are the exception. Most were hunted down and worked to death like dogs if they weren’t outright murdered on the spot. Revolts mostly ended the same way. Slavery was a system white men ran for hundreds of years, and those men did everything in their power to rob their victims of their identity and their ability to make decisions for themselves.
It's unreasonable, to say the least, to expect our depictions of slavery to revel in some fantasy where slaves weren't treated as mere property. Of course we want to be inspired, and we want our heroes to be worthy, but it shouldn't come at the expense of denying the reality of slavery and expecting Solomon to choose his own death just to placate the audience. 12 Years a Slave is not a sprawling epic of a man rising from the depths of humanity to take his freedom. It's a story about a man trying to survive in the most dire circumstances imaginable, helping others when he can, and hoping that one day he can see his family again. To me, he's as relatable and worthy a hero as anyone.
Though Solomon doesn't strive to be a rebel or a fighter, he still chases his freedom. Earlier in the film, Solomon gives a letter he wrote to a seemingly sympathetic white man named Armsby. Armsby turns the letter in, and Solomon nearly dies for it. Not long after that, Samuel Bass comes along and speaks loftily of abolition. There’s a glimmer of hope, but it’s soon dashed when Armsby forces Solomon to whip Patsey in the most brutal and heartbreaking scene in the whole movie. Solomon smashes his violin, his one link to his former freedom, knowing that, one way or another, his life is over. He then asks Bass to write his friends in the north, knowing that if Epps ever finds out, he would meet a punishment worse than the one forced on Patsey.
This wasn't an act of trust, nor was it Solomon making a stand. It was an act of resignation, and arguably, an act of suicide.
If Hollywood controls the perception in this country of the true horrors of slavery, it’s easy to see why one would ever think there could’ve been a happy ending to a story about American slaves. I’ll be the first to admit that producer Brad Pitt’s presence in the film doesn’t help that perception, nor does it help that he looks like some sort of white California Christ, or that his speech in the first of his two scenes is a little ham-fisted. (The speech Bass gives in Solomon's book, beginning on page 266, is a lot longer and worded differently for the most part. I would actually argue that Bass seems even more larger than life in Solomon's account, but either way, the movie could've done a better job.) That said, I suspect that Brad Pitt’s presence isn’t a result of a producer's white god complex, but more a result of how Hollywood finances films and sells them to the public. Brad Pitt’s face plants asses in seats, and while it’s easy to blame lazy racist film executives, don’t ever kid yourself: You're more likely to pay to see a movie if a famous name is on the poster, and executives know that.
(This doesn't excuse it, mind you. It's just a reality I've learned to live with. Someone had to play Samuel Bass, and if I had to choose between Brad Pitt being in the movie and ensuring it gets some more money, or no Brad Pitt and no money, I'm choosing money.)
Bass's letter reaches the north, and Solomon returns to the loving embrace of his family. What’s Solomon’s reward? He gets to continue his life in a place where most of its citizens want him and his family dead, and at any moment, he could be hunted down and sold right back into the hell he just left behind.
In real life, after a failed lawsuit on his captors and few lectures here and there, he vanished from all public records. The last sentence in Solomon’s book reads, “I hope henceforward to lead an upright though lowly life, and rest at last in the church yard where my father sleeps.” We know where his father is buried, and we know Solomon isn’t there.
Thank god for savior Brad Pitt, apparently.
I think we need a more concrete definition of the term “white savior movie.” A few symptoms I’ve noticed:
The film goes out of its way to specifically address race or racial themes. In any given story, a white man can help a black man for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It's another discussion entirely if the movie's goal is to make a condescending point about race relations.
The white savior drives the story. There’s a difference between a movie about a black man choosing to enlist the help of a white man, and a movie about a white man going out of his way to "save" a black man. If 12 Years a Slave was specifically about Samuel Bass and not Solomon Northup, I wouldn't be writing this article.
The white savior "converts" a person of color to a way of life they supposedly couldn't see before because they are not white. In other words, the white savior has to "save" in a sense beyond just changing someone's situation. The white savior also needs to transform the way that person lives their life.
Any movie that indulges in any level of white savior narrative deserves your wrath, but the broader we use the label, the less it ultimately means. We need to be specific. The Blind Side is a white savior movie. The Help is a white savior movie. Machine Gun Preacher is a white savior movie. These are movies specifically about white people entering a people of color's lives, making them realize that there's a "different way" or that they aren't "reaching their potential," and "helping" them "change their ways."
Solomon Northup didn't need a white person to teach him about freedom. He was already free once, and white people entered his life a long time ago. Once he was kidnapped, they did enough damage to last a lifetime. Calling 12 Years a Slave a “white savior movie,” because Solomon then had to beg a member of the race that enslaved him to help reattain his freedom is, at best, offensively reductive and stupid.
However, Solomon was a black man in America. It's easy to say he was never free to begin with. Though Bass’s actions were absolutely noble, all he did was return Solomon to a racist society where he was always in danger. We want to believe that a slave could have a happy ending, and that’s what Hollywood tries to sell you. Maybe, if a black person could escape the horrors of slavery and lead a happy American life, there’s hope for us as Americans yet. However, though the practice of slavery is over in America, its specter lives on in our prison system and our criminal code. There was no happy ending for slavery. Not ever.
I don’t think white consciousness will ever be able to fully cope with the enormity of the crime that is slavery, nor can white people ever make amends for it. We certainly try. We make hashtags and “check each other's privileges,” but if we were completely honest with ourselves, we know all this internet peacocking is just as empty as Hollywood's white savior films. I think Brad Pitt’s face in 12 Years a Slave serves as a reminder that all we’re really trying to do is make ourselves feel better. We can try all we want, but the guilt and the shame will never go away. The sin is too great, and we don't deserve to be absolved.
