<p>[12</a> YEARS A SLAVE: Official HD Trailer | Video | Fox Searchlight](<a href=“Disney.com | The official home for all things Disney”>Disney.com | The official home for all things Disney)</p>
<p>Based on a true story “of one man’s fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.” Anybody seen it?</p>
<p>Looks quite unlike “Django Unchained”.</p>
<p>^I heard Professor Henry Lewis Gates interviewed yesterday and he talked about both movies and how much he liked both of them, even though they are quite different. (The interview was mostly about his new documentary on PBS.)</p>
<p>[The</a> Brian Lehrer Show: An Hour With Henry Louis Gates Jr. - WNYC](<a href=“http://www.wnyc.org/story/henry-louis-gates-jr/]The”>An Hour With Henry Louis Gates Jr. | The Brian Lehrer Show | WNYC)</p>
<p>Django is a Western while 12YAS isn’t. Simple.</p>
<p>^Django is the best “Post modern spaghetti western slave narrative”! Ha!</p>
<p>Basically. QT was the one who called it a Western and he would know better than any of us.</p>
<p>It’s somewhat like Django. This movie seems to be advertised as a more serious movie than Django was. </p>
<p>I’ll watch it.</p>
<p>The star, Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a Shakespearean-trained actor of African descent who grew up in England. He’s one of the best actors in the world today.</p>
<p>I can’t wait to see this movie.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen it but the Wall Street Journal has a great review of it. The review is also recommended for SAT vocab.</p>
<p>“Twelve Years a Slave” is based on the book by Solomon Northrup, a free black man who was kidnapped into slavery. He wrote the book in 1853 based on his experiences. So, 12YAS isn’t fiction. I can’t wait to see it.</p>
<p>Northrup’s book is also quoted in a really good fiction book, “Seven for a Secret” by Lindsay Faye, a mystery with similar historical elements.</p>
<p>“12 Years a Slave” is a film adaptation of the 1853 book by the same name, a non-fiction memoir by Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was drugged, abducted, beaten, and sold into slavery in Washington, DC and New Orleans and held involuntarily in slavery on Louisiana plantations for twelve years before the governor of New York interceded on his behalf and had him freed. The book was a blockbuster best-seller in its day, selling 30,000 copies in the 1850s. It came out shortly after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and by reinforcing Stowe’s fictional account of the cruelties of slavery it had a major impact on the national political debate. Then it was forgotten for about 100 years.</p>
<p>The film, by the critically acclaimed British director Steve McQueen (no, not the late actor), has gotten rave reviews at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. It won the top prize at the Toronto film festival, making it an early front-runner for the Oscar for best picture as a number of other films winning the Toronto prize (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “The King’s Speech”) have gone on to win the Oscar.</p>
<p>So yes, it’s a more “serious” movie than Django.</p>
<p>Thank you, bclintonk, for the explanation. :)</p>
<p>I used to teach 12 Years a Slave, and it’s a really good book.</p>
<p>[This</a> NYT blog](<a href=“http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/text-to-text-twelve-years-a-slave-and-an-escape-that-has-long-intrigued-historians/]This”>Text to Text | 'Twelve Years a Slave,' and 'An Escape That Has Long Intrigued Historians' - The New York Times) has an excerpt from the book. Well worth reading.</p>
<p>People dramatically underestimate the cruelty of slavery, particularly white people in the South who, naturally, prefer to think better of their past.</p>
<p>I can give you a sense of the issue. One of my reference books examines in detail the numbers of slaves brought into each place, meaning each island in the Caribbean, each country - and sometimes each port. Transshipment information is less reliable; but one can make allowances for the number of slaves who may have been taken one place and sold into another island or country. We have very good information about the slave trade within the US, but that’s a different story. </p>
<p>The simplest and to me starkest picture is in the rough numbers: pick an island and count the number of slaves brought in and track the island’s population over time. It shows a holocaust - and being Jewish I know what the word means. The British colonies were the worst: people brought in, population lowering over time and in many cases nowhere near even today the number of slaves brought in. You know what that means: these places were charnel houses, abattoirs, in which slaves were worked to death as raw labor to be replaced by more slaves who were then worked to death.</p>
<p>The same pattern holds in even bigger numbers in the Spanish possessions, particularly Mexico. Spanish records aren’t exactly complete but the numbers and stories speak of massive depopulations that probably exceed the numbers killed by the Belgians in the Congo - estimated 10-12 million - and which likely exceed the number killed in WWI and then beyond that. It may be the single largest loss of life inflicted by other people. </p>
<p>This said, American slavery was astonishingly cruel but it had one completely unintentional virtue: the Atlantic slave trade was ended by the British (after all the profits were taken) - except, btw, by the Portuguese into Brazil, which continued into the 20thC. The end of Atlantic slave importation meant they couldn’t work slaves to death and it meant that increasing their numbers - breeding people - became profitable. As America expanded west, the opening of new slave markets - Mississippi, Texas, etc. - meant the value of slaves sky-rocketed. Slaves were beaten but rarely killed because they were so valuable. It is not an exaggeration to say the increase in the value of slaves killed the Founders’ notion that slavery would die off and that increase in value directly led to the border wars over slave/free and into the Civil War.</p>
<p>Sorry for the long post but this subject needs to be better known.</p>
<p>I hope I have the courage to see it. It reminds me that none of us are REALLY “free”, until we all are “free”. Not exactly sure what I mean by free.</p>
<p>Many of adults are modern day slaves. Just to a different kind of master.</p>
<p>That’s true too. But in this case, I am sort of trying to imagine what it might be like to call yourself “free”, and know people who look like you are slaves just because they look like you. By the same token, many middle class or well off African Americans might seem “different” from those who have not “made it”, but maybe not really.</p>
<p>I think I’m pretty clear on the notion of what it means to be free. Certainly within the context of this film discussion, free means you are not the legal equivalent of material property, real estate or chattel. It means you have the same rights to individual free agency as those guaranteed under The Constitution to every citizen. Plain and simple.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap-my husband is trying to decide whether to see it. He says he doesn’t like to come out of movies angry and ready to punch someone. But the book it’s based on is in his extensive library of African American history and we will probably go. The fact that in those times someone like ME could have traveled unquestioned because I look like I do and H could have been killed for even talking to me is not lost on me. I don’t take movies like this lightly.</p>
<p>Having to pay taxes or fees you don’t agree with is not equivalent to slavery, not unless you can equate a paper cut to a gun shot wound to the lung with a straight face. People are still being sold into bondage here in the US, and sex slavery also has a very real presence here.</p>
<p>He didn’t just grow up in England, he is English. Great actor.</p>