![]() His faith in writing, persuasion, and the law moves him to hold fast to his educated upbringing as the ultimate remedy to his plight. Your decision.Solomon believes that injustice can be undone, not with sword, but with pen. Parker, Northup’s old friend, sarcastically invites Epps to take the matter of Northup’s freedom to trial: “As it will be my pleasure to bankrupt you in the courts. When Northup’s friends arrive to rescue him to the North, they mock Epps’s social station. In 12 Years a Slave, an inferiority complex seems to be the crux of Epps’s abusive behavior toward his wife and slaves. You wanna know something, Virgil? I don’t think that you could let an opportunity like that pass by.” You’ve got such a big head that you could never live with yourself unless you could put us all to shame. You’re just gonna stay here and show us all. Tibbs never apologizes for his intellectuality despite Sheriff Gillespie’s race-laced taunts: “No, because you’re so damn smart. At a low moment, Northup destroys his violin, perhaps to avoid accusations of intellectual insurrection. ![]() ![]() Second, Northup’s violin is a symbol of his pride and identity, just as Tibbs’s detective skills are his proudest asset. And I mean fast…I didn’t know you’d slap any white man! Least of all Endicott!” Outside Endicott’s house, Sheriff Gillespie warns Tibbs, “You better clear out. This moment resembles Tibbs’s slapping of plantation owner Eric Endicott in In the Heat of the Night, which incurs retaliation from the local vigilantes. Two scenes in 12 Years a Slave recall an aspect of Sidney Poitier’s role in In the Heat of the Night as black Philadelphia policeman Virgil Tibbs-its emphasis on pride as a spark for racial violence. First, Northup aggravates his state of slavery by allowing Tibeats, a plantation overseer, to bait him into an argument about carpentry that can only lead to a whipping and worse. The shopkeeper likewise ignores this inhumanity. The shopkeeper ignores color lines, talking business with Northup and then inviting another walk-in black to look around until his master finds and scolds his wayward slave. As a free man before his capture, Northup enters an urban shop in the North. Interracial social etiquette is one shared motif. Given its intellectual subtlety on issues of race, 12 Years a Slave favorably resembles Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (1967). Flushed and soiled, Epps resembles the swine. Yet, the film’s unexpected, quieter scenarios likewise stain memory: plantation owner Epps forcing his slaves to dance at night, after a long day’s work in the cotton fields slave trader Freeman asking a black boy to run in place to exhibit his athleticism for a potential buyer and Epps, at his most manic aggressive, chasing Northup all over the farm until the former falls into the pig pen. Northup’s torture at the noose, composed in a long take over the course of a balmy Southern afternoon, ignites the conscience. One is reminded of Robert Frost’s adage: “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” Most critical buzz concerns the film’s most violent scenes: whipping, rape, and hanging. Where 12 Years a Slave plays traditional dramatic chords without amendment, it is weakest. The character is given soul by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance. The script provides outlines for Northup: talent and modesty. The film also succeeds in establishing, in the guise of Northup, a new archetype for the antebellum free black-a rare character in Hollywood history. Everyone associated with the plantation way of life is diminished by it. ![]() The institution of slavery breaks Northup and his principal antagonist Edwin Epps. The film explores the slaveholder’s machinations and the slave’s rebellion with equal vigor. It smartly conveys fresh permutations of evil in the antebellum American South, telling the story of free black New York State resident Solomon Northup’s capture and sale into slavery in 1841. Approbation is in order for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013). ![]()
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