From the historical accuracy perspective, Steven McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave movie hews quite closely to Solomon’s Northup’s book on which the film is based. However there are a number of scenes in the film which intentionally falsify details of Solomon Northup’s autobiography for the purpose of portraying the horrors of slavery in a more intense manner.
12 Years A Slave film opens with a scene where the kidnapped black freeman Solomon Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) experiences a rather painful sexual encounter with an unidentified female slave who uses his hand to bring herself to organism, after which she turns away in tears. The movie depicts the unnamed female’s desperation, Northup’s reserve, and the great sense of sadness of both parties with a persistent still camera that presents a scene of human contact and sour comfort in the face of slavery’s systematic dehumanization. The scene tempts a viewer to feel like they are witnessing the appalling horror of American slavery for the first time (Northup et al. 65).
However, the scene is not documented anywhere in Solomon Northup’s 12 Years A Slave narration of 1854. For the man that he was, Northup himself would be baffled by the film’s depiction of him as unfaithful to his wife. The Director of the film, Steve McQueen justifies his inclusion of the fictional sexual encounter as a way of showing a bit of tenderness, which reverts back to hell after she climaxes (Northup et al. 45). He aimed to achieve nuance and psychological nuance with the sequence so as to make slavery appear more real in the film. However, the sequence only succeeds in creating psychological truth through its depiction of an event that is not factually true in the book that inspired the film.
Another scene that comprises the film’s faithfulness to Solomon’s narration is where, shortly after Solomon Northup is kidnapped, he is seen on a ship bound south. A male sailor enters the hold and he is just about to rape a slave woman when another male slave intervenes. The sailor turns on the male salve and stubs him to death. This would be unrealistic considering that slaves were regarded as valuable and the sailor himself is not the owner. The scene is not in Northup’s original narration. On the contrary, a slave succumbed during the south trip from smallpox as opposed to the film’s portrayal of stabbing as cause of death. As such, it is more probable that the film’s director abandoned the original text in this instance so that Eliofor’s handsome, expressive, haunting features would take precedence over the artificial Hollywood scar make-up for the rest of the film (Northup et al. 87). The movie thus overlooks faithfulness to the original text in favor of Eliofor’s face meant to remain unaltered through trickery.
The film’s false standard of authenticity is further evidenced in its omission of the Christmas scene which Northup describes:
“It was Christmas morning – the happiest day in the whole year for the slave. That morning he need not hurry to the field, with his gourd and cotton bag. Happiness sparkled in the eyes and overspread the countenances of all, the time of feasting and dancing had come. The cane and cotton fields were deserted. That day the clean dress was to be donned – the red ribbon displayed; there were to be re-unions, and joy and laughter, and hurrying to and fro. It was to be a day of liberty among the children of Slavery. Wherefore they were happy, and rejoiced” (Northup et al. 70).
The film intentionally avoids casting this romantic and one of the few sanguine moments in the book so as not to portray the American slavery period as anything less than contemptible. This distorts the historical accuracy.
Though seemingly unintentional, the McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave includes several other scenes that deviate from the original plot as presented by Solomon Northup in his book. Most striking, the scene in the movie involving Patsey (cast by Lupita Nyong’o), a black female slave repeatedly raped by her master, Mr. Epps, and consequently brutalized by jealous Mistress Epps. In a scene in the film version, Patsey walks up to Northup in the dead of the night and pleads with him, in rather vivid horrific detail, to set her free from her troubles by drowning her in the swamp (Northup et al. 95). However, this depiction deviates from the Northup’s original narration that indicated that it was Mistress Epps, and not Patsey, who wants to bribe Solomon Northup to drown the slave girl. In fact, Patsey wanted to escape from her enslavement as opposed to drowning herself. The scene at the end of Northup autobiography’s Chapter 13 reads:
“Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see [Patsey] suffer, and more than once, when Epps had refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp. Gladly would Patsey have appeased this unforgiving spirit, if it had been in her power, but not like Joseph, dared she escape from Master Epps, leaving her garment in his hand” (Northup et al. 72).
As earlier stated, however, McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave film accurately reflects Solomon Northup’s narration. For instance, just like in the book, a great deal of focus is given to the violent side of the American slavery. True to the original text, the film depicts a scene in which Edwin Epps, Northup’s sadistic master, hands Northup a whip and forces him to whip Epps’ concubine, Patsey. In both the book and movie, Epp’s jealous wife always looks forward for any chance to publicly brutalize the enslaved concubine. Northup whips Patsey 30 lashes and turns his eyes to his master “hoping he was satisfied.” Epps is not satisfied as evidenced by his threat to Northup that he would whip him harder unless he continues giving lashes to Patsey. Northup administers a dozen more lashes before he cannot take it no more. His master Epps casts him aside and takes over, giving Patsey lashes with “ten-fold greater force” to a point “the lash was wet with blood, which flowed down her sides and dropped upon the ground” (Northup et al. 78).
Also, McQueen’s film matches Northup’s surprising compassion towards slave owners regardless of their brutality. In the book, Northup describes one the three owners in Louisiana, William Ford, in favorable terms: “… and it is simple justice to him when I say, in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford” (Northup et al. 85). The author further perceives the brutality of white slave owners such Mr. Epps as not being their own fault: “It’s not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives.” Director McQueen succeeds in depicting Northup’s point of view in his 12 Years A Slave film.
References:
Northup, Solomon, Henry L. Gates, Ira Berlin, and Steve McQueen. Twelve Years a Slave. , 2013.
Northup, Solomon, Sue L. Eakin, and Joseph Logsdon. Twelve Years a Slave. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Print.
