More hype...one of the best films of 2013? Maybe. 'One of the best films ever made'? Maybe not. '
12 Years a Slave'; maybe it's racist to disagree but a white said "
Some will no doubt take comfort from McQueen’s inherently warped, dishonest, insensitive fiction"; "
This is less a drama than an inhumane analysis"; "[it]
belongs to the torture porn genre"; "
Because 12 Years of Slave is such a repugnant experience, a sensible viewer might be reasonably suspicious about many of the atrocities shown–or at least scoff at the one-sided masochism"...a white concludes "
Steve McQueen’s post-racial art games and taste for cruelty play into cultural chaos. The story in 12 Years a Slave didn't need to be filmed this way and I wish I never saw it." A white saying all that would probably be called racist by some lefty retards but
A. White said it and it's a scathing review; others were more technically critical, like Jeannine Marie DeLombard on
History News Network, herself an author on slavery who wonders why
Frederick Douglass wasn't the first choice the Hollywood treatment (or for counter-acting
Hollywood's dearth? In that link McQueen also contradicts White about the 'torture porn genre' by claiming that '
There were things in the book that we really couldn't translate on to screen', that I doubt). DeLombard highlights that the secret of 'the white man's power to enslave the black man' was the rigid control of black literacy,
"But what, in Douglass, is a canny rhetorical appeal to well-meaning Protestant reformers will almost certainly be taken by today’s movie audiences as ironclad historical truth. (If you doubt this, just try telling those who’ve seen Django Unchained that 'Mandingo fighting' was not a popular antebellum entertainment but is simply a product of Quentin Tarantino’s notorious imagination.)"
This was all after it's release in the USA last autumn. No doubt it will win Oscars but the hype seems senseless, tokenism (did I just say that?!) when it is IMHO - to quote another critic back in the autumn - a '
New Movie, Same Old Skin Game'.
Rambling on:
"A racial twist given to what is basically an economic phenomenon. Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery." (Eric Eustace Williams). Somewhat true although obviously racism has always existed; it is not a black and white issue...no, really, not literally or figuratively. Also, [edit] we must try to avoid thinking 'slavery' was just slavery in the USA or just the Atlantic slave trade; it has involved all colours and creeds, has existed since humans walked the Earth and certainly hasn't gone away.
Update: as matters of interest: 50% or more of the white immigrants to the American colonies in the century and a half before the American Revolution had gone under debt-bondage (indentured servitude) and although there were both black and white indentured servants sentenced to lifetime servitude
the first person of African descent to be classed as a slave in what became the USA was owned by...
a black man. Additionally indentured servants were often treated more harshly and forced to work more excessively so as to spare the slaves; the latter being 'perpetual property' the former temporary bonded labour.
Classic...and I can't stop laughing: Guido has published a montage of photographs of France's President François Hollande in various stages of trying to shake hands with various 'fellow leaders' (click image to enlarge); I'm giggling away as I write this especially at the Iranian dude and the last one where at least the other guys have seen the hand but don't look too keen to grasp and shake it...the point of course was that Hollande is so unpopular and now changing tack, away from 'Milibandism'. Guido goes on to write that Labour will have to change tack too as the "cost-of-living crisis" (Copyright Labour but BBC has a Licensing Agreement.) evaporates.
