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The Slave Narrative and Filmic Aesthetics: Steve McQueen, Solomon Northup, and Colonial Violence

2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/melus/mlx032

1946-3170

Philip Kaisary,

Race, History, and American Society

In recent years, the cultural and political memory of slavery has occupied an unusual prominence in public comment and debate. Various explanations for this can be found in the reemergence of calls for reparations, renewed scholarly attention to the relationship between slavery and capitalism, and several anniversaries commemorating the abolition of slavery in the Atlantic world.1 Concomitant with this heightened awareness, there has been a dramatic upsurge in popular cinematic works of widely varying quality and ideological intent focused on black history and the legacies of slavery. In some cases, slavery has merely served as a backdrop to Hollywood action-drama—for example, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), a stylized revenge thriller that revives the archetype of the "black cowboy"—while in others black experience is subordinate to the further mythologization of a small number of "white anti-slavery heroes," such as Abraham Lincoln and William Wilberforce; Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) and Michael Apted's Amazing Grace (2006) exemplify this approach.2