This first ran on Splice Today.
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Cultural critics and politicians have long worried that media violence would lead to real-life anti-social behavior. Earlier this month, Armond White, CityArts film critic, may have provided an unexpected confirmation of those fears. White was so incensed by the very violent 12 Years a Slave that, according to a number of witnesses, he allegedly shouted obscenities at its director Steve McQueen during the New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony.
White denies he was heckling, and I don’t want to go into the pros and cons of the expulsion, but I do want to discuss more about violence and its effects, an issue that’s at the heart of White’s loathing of 12 Years A Slave. In his review of the film, White says that 12 Years, about a Northern black man who is kidnapped and sold into slavery, confuses “[b]rutality, violence, and misery… with history.” He argues that director McQueen is interested in “sado-masochistic display,” and compares the results to The Exorcist and torture porn films like Hostel and Saw. For White, the film is detestable because it focuses unrelentingly on violence as violence; “This is less a drama than an inhumane analysis,” he thunders, and is especially angry that there’s no sign that the protagonist, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has “spiritual resource or political drive.” He concludes, “Patsey’s completely unfathomable longing for death is just art-world cynicism. McQueen’s “sympathy” lacks appropriate disgust and outrage but basks in repulsion and pity–including close-up wounds and oblivion.”
This discussion of Patsey (Lupita Nyong‘o) seems at first quite confusing. There is nothing “unfathomable” about her despair; in the narrative, she’s a slave who is constantly raped by her owner, causing the jealous mistress of the house to beat and torment her relentlessly. She is violated and abused over and over; it’s not at all difficult to imagine that she might long for death. For that matter, in Amistad, which White admires greatly (it was his best film of 1997) there is an almost exactly parallel situation, in which a woman faced with the horrors of the middle passage kills herself and her baby by falling over the side of the ship. Why is her decision fathomable, while Patsey’s is not?
I think that what White is reacting to is the way that violence is or is not framed as meaningful. Spielberg (who White adores) is a filmmaker of compulsive—one might even say facile—lucidity. He is careful to tell you again and again why something happened, and how it fits into the narrative.
Amistad shows numerous examples of violence, including whippings, drownings, stabbings, forced starvation, torture, and on and on—the body count, which includes dozens dead, is substantially higher than 12 Years. But all of these incidents of violence are carefully placed in a recognizable framework. The slave uprising and the murder of the white sailors that open the film, is a straightforward revenge story, nestled comfortably in Hollywood convention. The violence against the slaves is told in flashback in the course of the film’s extensive courtroom drama; it is evidence presented to sway the court and (presumably) the movie viewers. Any confusing bit (why did the slavers choose to drown so many of the slaves they planned to sell?) is carefully examined and explained in the course of cross-examinations. Even the suicide of the woman mentioned earlier is girded round with sense—she exchanges a glance with Cinque (Djimon Hounsou) before she goes over the edge, and he nods at her meaningfully, as if to validate and interpret her choice for the viewers. Similarly, Spielberg at first does not translate the Africans’ dialogue so that the violence done by and to them is (for most Western viewers at least) unspoken and uninterpretable. But as you go along the film interprets (directly and metaphorically) and contains the violence, until all of it is crystalline. By this alchemy, violence becomes empathy and triumph. The story of the injustice and violence done to the crew is told in order to win them the understanding of the court/movie audience, which in turn opens the gates to freedom—from slavery then and, by implication, from inequity now.
12 Years A Slave, as White says, does not make violence so fathomable. In one of the movie’s most striking scenes, Northup’s owner attempts to hang him. He’s interrupted and driven off by a man acting on behalf of Northup’s former owner, Ford, who has not been fully paid for Northup. The interrupter then goes off to fetch Ford. Even though the hanging has been stopped, no one bothers to cut Northup down. Instead he stands there for an indeterminate, endless time, his feet shuffling on the ground, choking, as McQueen’s camera watches mercilessly and the life on the plantation goes on around him, the only respite being when another slave scurries up furtively to give him a drink of water.
Eventually, Ford arrives and releases Northup, but there is never any explanation for the torture he underwent. It has no meaning except itself; the image of it, the length, the spectacle, overwhelms the narrative. Violence here is only violence. Similarly, Northup’s kidnapping and ordeal is not presented as leading to a politically hopeful or uplifting end. Northup does not gain by witnessing the violence, and it isn’t clear how the viewer gains either. Nothing, as White says, is presented “in order to verify and make bearable the otherwise dehumanizing tales.” White insists that “Art elates and edifies,” but violence in 12 Years A Slave does neither. It just sits there, an open wound, and when you it ends, you’re not enriched or educated. You’re depleted. Violence makes you less, not more.
One example of that torture-porn genre with which White dismissively groups 12 Years is a 2009 horror film called Martyrs. The plot centers on a quasi-religious conspiracy of torture. The brutalizers believe that inflicting pain on innocents will beatify those innocents, and transform them into saints, who will then, before death, offer a profound message to the world. White argues that 12 Years “accustoms moviegoers to violence and brutality” because it sadistically refuses to make its violence speak. Martyrs, though, suggests that people are accustomed to violence not through exposure, per se, but through narrative rationalization. Making violence speak—as evidence, as uplift, as spur to empathy—justifies it and excuses it. 12 Years refuses to make violence part of a bigger story. It doesn’t want you to see violence and feel elated or edified, like the torturers in Martyrs who whip their victims in the name of catharsis. Rather, 12 Years wants you to look at violence and say, with White, “I wish I never saw it.”
I had a similar reaction as White (though I’ve since struck the term “torture porn” from my vocab list after a friend’s memoir was dismissed as “victim porn;” the word “porn” is just too insultingly simplistic and dismissive to be of use in any sincere analysis). But your explication of the film’s use of violence makes me like it.
Any experience told through Hollywood tropes no longer bears much relation to the original experience. And if there’s any experience that should be told in viscerally disturbing images in an overarching narrative structure of meaninglessness, it’s slavery. Though I’d quibble on some specifics above, the film defies so many conventions (this sounds ridiculous, but it’s one of the few films I know that is primarily visual) that it is appropriately anti-Spielberg and so perhaps therefore closer to evoking the meaningless torture of slavery itself.
Maybe. Either way, the experience of watching it was still torturous for me. Lots of good and great art is disturbing, but 12 Years didn’t feel like that. I marveled at its shot by shot brilliance, while accepting that its repetition of familiar slave narrative tropes was justifiable when aimed at a culture that is largely in denial about its slave history, but I still felt I was watching something that relished (instead of merely viscerally presented) suffering.
That’s not a distinction I can entirely defend though. It’s something I felt rather than reasoned through. 12 Years felt like “torture porn.” The narrative meaning (or meaninglessness) of the violence wasn’t unfathomable. I understood it perfectly. The film instead focused me on its director’s choices, which I did at times feel were unfathomable.
Caveat: I haven’t seen the movie, because I wanted to avoid that torturous experience. Does anyone know how close the narrative is to the true story? Would a desire to represent history as it happened justify some of the director’s choices, or am I grasping at straws?
Well, as I say in the piece, I think the director’s choices are mostly justified on aesthetic and moral grounds.
I’ve read the book, and the movie takes some liberties, though not that many all things considered. I talk about some of the changes here.
Thanks, Noah! That answered all my questions.
Interesting bit about the pronoun trouble, by the way.
The idea of subjecting any Hollywood movie to anything remotely approaching critical thinking is so laughable and utterly inane that only a (successful) Hollywood script-writer would even contemplate it.
I’m not a successful Hollywood script writer!
Darn, Noah, I was going to pitch you my high-concept remake of Voltaire’s classic, American Candide … log line: rage against the rage, Voltaire dude!
Critically analyzing a contemporary film is like examining a dollar bill’s draftsmanship … it’s utterly beside the point. There is not one single element in such films (or almost any pop culture “work”) that is not ultimately a result of a financial consideration. None.
12 Years a Slave is hardly a hollywood blockbuster. And, in any case, I don’t see financial considerations as deligitimizing. Lots of great art made for money, starting with Shakespeare.
You can make sublime art while making money, but never for only making money. When a man whose sole talent is being rich stands over your shoulder, everything changes.
Nothing on earth devised by man is more corrosive to creativity, love, honor and the human condition than money.
Heh; I don’t really agree with that either. Capitalism has problems, but there are worse things. There are kind of always worse things; humans are inventive like that.
It’s not capitalism at all … it’s the very concept of money, the idea of fungible sadism. We’re a brilliant species, we’ve created a system to transmit and store dominance.
Noah, I am curious how you reconcile the violence in 12 Years with that of Schindler’s List. If I remember correctly, you aren’t much of a fan because of the emotional manipulation of the visuals in Schindler’s List. Amistad and Schindler’s are both by Spielberg…do you feel that Amistad and Schindler’s are closer to one another in terms of presenting their violence in a blow-by-blow, process of filmmaking as an argument, or do you feel that the violence in Schindler’s List is closer to the senselessness of violence for violence’s sake as you characterize 12 Years?
Hey Jordan. I think Schindler’s List is pretty much of a piece with Amistad in terms of insisting on the legibility of violence. The use of that red dress so that you can follow the one dead girl seems like a pretty clear case; cinematic techniques are deployed to give you a particular story with a particular moral about innocence destroyed, as opposed to 12 Years where violence speaks with less straightforward clarity.
“…as opposed to 12 Years where violence speaks with less straightforward clarity.”
Maybe in small side alleys here and there but the violence (and morality) in the main body of the film is as clear as in Spielberg’s movies. Though perhaps McQueen is less obsessed with displays of cinematic virtuosity and sentimentality. I think that may be what Jordan is getting at. I think what convinced Oscar voters in the case of 12 Years a Slave was the extremity and verisimilitude of the violence. It was also an easy way to assuage any remnants of white guilt (instead of doing things which actually matter). Not so different when compared with Schindler’s List.
Mahendra: “Noah, I was going to pitch you my high-concept remake of Voltaire’s classic, American Candide … log line: rage against the rage, Voltaire dude!”
Too late, they already made Tony award winning musical out of it.
Hmm…I don’t know that I agree that the morality is as clear, or that the violence is as linked to moral purpose. I think White is correct that the violence is unanchored from clear narrative purpose. As I say in the piece, you never learn why Nortup has to hang there like that, whereas in Amistad the seemingly meaningless violence is carefully explained in court.
The white guilt thing…I don’t know. I think it is at least somewhat meaningful that a film about slavery is acknowledged as an important thing. I think that what people see as central or meaningful does matter; otherwise art of every sort would be largely irrelevant, it seems like. Obviously it would be better if the US could manage reparations or to take concrete steps towards desegregation. But I don’t think that necessarily means that the films success is irrelevant…or that we should somehow feel guilty for white guilt, or what have you.
Oh, I don’t know about Amistad since I don’t think I’ve ever watched it or at most watched 10 minutes of it. On the other hand, I have no idea if Northup just hanging there is any more meaningless than Amon Goeth shooting some random Jew. They’re both “meaningless” acts but clearly *not* without meaning outwith the narrative context of the film. We’re clearly meant to be convinced that slavery was very very evil, inhumane, and without logic; and I got the message. Thank you.
The main difference in this instance is that McQueen lingers on the violence and Northup’s pain. So McQueen presumably wants to make his audience uncomfortable and he succeeds admirably. But Chris (see comments above) seems to feels that there’s an element of sadism (directed at the audience) in McQueen’s choices. In this sense, he is a counterpart of your other fave, Tarantino, in his cinematic choices. Just curious – does Northup linger as long and hard on the single acts of violence done to him in his book (or is this scene in the book)?
I don’t think 12 Years A Slave is irrelevant. Any film which can make the depiction of slavery utterly repulsive in a society saturated with depictions of violence has succeeded at something.
The scene is in the book, and is similar in a lot of ways — it’s never clear why it happens, for example. And it does go on for a long while,if I remember correctly. However, it certainly doesn’t have the same visceral charge in the book as it does on film.
There are some similarities between McQueen and Tarantino. Tarantino is a lot more wedded to pulp, though, while McQueen’s sympathies are more high art.
12 Years a Slave did have a kind logic to it, the same way that depression has a kind of logic to it. The air is heavy, nothing moves, people do horrible things to each other, nothing means anything and there’s no point trying to change anything, at least spectacular violence interrupts the monotony.
And you have to be rescued, by your very situation you can’t rescue yourself.