<p>“Many of adults are modern day slaves. Just to a different kind of master.”</p>
<p>Maybe in a sense. We are slaves to our jobs, our debt, always doing things for other people (especially if you’re a mom). But poetsheart is certainly right, off course. There is definitely no comparison. I think there are some women in the Middle East whose situation is very much akin to slavery, though.</p>
<p>I really want to see this movie, but I have a hard time watching things that are so sad. I get way too upset, especially for events that were true. Maybe it would be best to wait until it comes out on DVD. I also don’t know if I want to see Michael Fassbender as such an evil man.</p>
If “paying taxes or fees” is what you assume are the shackles I speak of then your view is limited in a sense. I never mentioned taxes and fees and I don’t consider them shackles. </p>
<p>There are varying types of slaves. Just because someone isn’t whipped on the back and driven to starvation doesn’t mean they aren’t a slave.</p>
<p>The latest estimate, which is politically freighted, is that 30 million people live in slavery today. This includes forms of indentured servitude, particularly when children are sold to businesses - think of rug making. Slavery also exists in various forms, particularly in Arab states, for domestic servants but some also include other workers. That generally works by the employer taking away passports and even other ID’s so the worker has no way to go anywhere - and if she/he does, the police will return the person to the “owner” (and in places like Dubai, may imprison workers who want to get paid). </p>
<p>Not the same as being enslaved by Spanish gangs to work in Mexican silver mines to your death. But horrifying nonetheless.</p>
I would be curious as to what you meant then, because I also interpreted this as another attempt by first world people to elevate moderately difficult or unpleasant conditions to being crimes against reason. </p>
<p>
There are indeed, but terms like “wage-slave” are hyperbole and refer to conditions far, far different than any of those “varying types” of actual slavery.</p>
<p>I sure hope I didn’t take this thread off topic by being deliberately obtuse. </p>
<p>I was just wondering whether the main character in the story thought he was different from the slaves he lived amongst, because he was a “free man”. I’m sure this is a theme in the story. I was wondering what the parallels among African Americans and other disenfranchised groups are today.</p>
<p>I have had the opportunity to see the movie. To call it powerful is an understatement, but there are indeed scenes that are so painful as to be almost unwatchable. I’m still glad I saw it.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, as a white woman I’m not going to wade into analogues in contemporary black culture, but after watching the movie I think that while Solomon does spend a good portion of the movie thinking that the fact that he doesn’t “belong” in slavery makes him different from the others, that opinion is repeatedly challenged and breaks down by the end. I’ll refrain from being any more specific until more people have had a chance to see the movie.</p>
<p>There are multiple definitions of the word slave. If we look at the most common definition (slave - a person who is considered property if another person), there are even different conditions and behaviors towards those slaves. When Americans hear the word slave, they jump right to the 19th century definition and they narrow in on that one definition and, generally, fail to acknowledge that there were many civilizations before them that had slaves. With those civilizations come different definitions. The word slave is contextual. Therefore, the phrase modern day slave is not the same as a slave in the 1800s. </p>
<p>To me, a modern day slave is a person who is “shackled” by society’s views. A modern day slave is a person who is unable to escape from such influence that they immobile. Whether that immobility be social, economically, mentally, etc. </p>
<p>I have made no claim (nor comparison) that the modern day slavery that I speak of is of the cruelty and inhumanity of the 18th and 19th century American slavery. A person can be a slave to their own mind, their own habits, and even their own culture. However, all of these slaveries have their effect in some way, shape, or form. Their ranking varies with each individual.</p>
<p>I have to apologize to you Nuqii77, in that I made reference to a train of thought that was never actually stated by anyone here, explicitly or otherwise. I had been pondering over the past number of weeks how false equivalency and hyperbole increasingly seemed to work overtime in the service of divers agenda. In order to posit such analogies with a straight face (something I’ve been witnessing with alarming Frequency of late), it is first necessary to indulge in wholesale revisionism, an operation which movies like “Twelve Years a Slave” perform nothing of service. Having said this, it makes no sense to post as if the denizens of CC have access to random bits of my own internal dialog. To all, I apologize.</p>
<p>The word slave is indeed contextual. The problem arises when, among other things, certain financial penalties are deemed directly analogous to America’s 200+ year history of institutionalized human bondage. that’s when I feel compelled to cry fowl. (Not, BTW, implying in any way that you draw such an analogies Niquii.)</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. *</p>
<p>You want to see it with me?
My H is the same way- he wouldn’t see Fruitvale Station because he was mad & upset just thinking about it.
He’s * still* worked up over Body of War, although he admits meeting Phil Donahue was fun. (But no Marlo):(</p>
<p>Shrinkrap-I’ll ask him, though he favors straight up history. He like a couple of mystery series though-the Easy Rawlins series by Walter Mosely and a less well-known one by Barbara Neely about Blanche White. Are you familiar with the Lion’s Blood and Zulu Heart books by Stephen Barnes? They’re alternate African American history in which the slaves are the Europeans and the people who explored and settled North America are the Africans. Fun reads.</p>
<p>Keepittoyourself, thank you; the lead actor in this film is AN ENGLISHMAN! Just as Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier and Will Smith are Americans.</p>
<p>As for the film itself, I haven’t seen it but as a history buff, I am looking forward to it. Heard Skip Gates say during the NPR interview that he was a consultant on the film. Would like to see more of this kind of material made into feature films. There’s so much drama in the true life stories of particular persons from the Antebellum days, for example;</p>
<p>–Henry ‘Box Car’ Brown, who shipped himself to freedom by train
–Ellen and William Craft, who escaped by passing as a traveling white woman and her manservant
–Tom Hemmings, craftsman who built a lot of the architectural jewels of Monticello. And he is Sally Hemmings’ brother, by the way
–Equiano, the sailor/explorer who came to the New World with the first Conquistadors.</p>
<p>Saw it this weekend. Magnificent. I am now reading the book. You will not walk away angry. You will walk away shaken. Solomon Northrop did not see himself as somehow “better” than the other slaves, only different in that he was born free.</p>
<p>Lergnom, that was very interesting. It is such a painful subject. I know that I truly cannot imagine. The cover of the book shows an older, very thin black man with horrific ropey scars on his back. It’s beyond my imagination how on earth human beings can do these things to other humans. Just like the Holocaust, I can’t fathom it.</p>