There's a sort of historical subgenre that's coalesced in the last 20 years or so that a friend of mine calls White Guilt Porn. White guilt is itself a somewhat misunderstood phenomenon/problem, but White Guilt Porn's goal is to manipulate white people into feeling guilty about American slavery and racism so that they're emotionally moved by a movie. It also gives a false impression that we've overcome racism by making us feel less racist than the racists in the movie, who are always caricatures. The Help (a movie I liked in spite of itself) had this problem in a big way. Remember the Titans was one of the first I recall seeing. Even Amistad and Lincoln, pretty good movies about white people defending black people, had a few tablespoons of White Guilt Porn thrown in. 12 Years a Slave leaves these films in the dust because it lacks the main ingredient of the White Guilt Porn subgenre. Its intended audience doesn't exclude black people.
You see, the four movies I mentioned aren't about black characters. They have black characters in them, but those characters largely function to give the white characters an objective. The black characters tend not to accomplish much beyond walking through doors white people open for them. This is purposeful on the part of the producers.
Another purposeful tactic is that in these movies, you can immediately name who's a racist and who's not--good guys and bad guys. They consciously avoid confronting the reality that racists are people. They're us. Most of us are still racist (some more than others), even after seeing these movies. We don't change by watching them, because we never look at Bryce Dallas Howard eating poop and see ourselves. We're comforted by the clear message that we're more like Emma Stone.
My point is that 12 Years a Slave doesn't pander to white people. They're invited to the party, don't get me wrong, but this is a story about a black man overcoming something appalling and becoming a different person. The racists in it are incredibly human. They're played with immense subtlety and devotion by Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Garrett Dillahunt, and Paul Giamatti to name my favorites. I particularly appreciate the Benedict Cumberbatch character because he means well, and he saves Solomon's life, but in the end he just isn't willing to confront the fact that he's doing something wrong. He's us.
But no one overshadows Chiwetel Ejiofor, and that's good. The movie relies on him and it pays off. He's vulnerable but voracious, titanic but subtle. I just want to kiss him and Steve McQueen on the mouth for this movie. What they put us through is tough to swallow. There are very few things that can make me wince, but I found myself cringing over and over because I loved these people and almost couldn't believe what they were going through. And what we see in the movie isn't exaggerated or explicit. It's tamer than a lot of slavery horror stories out there. But the honesty is so palpable it hurts--more than if it had embellished.
Stepping back from the heart of the material, this is also a beautifully built film. It's stripped down. It's never haphazard, accidental, or overcompensating. It makes Lincoln look like a Disneyland commercial. Hanz Zimmer shows that he's still got it. His score does so much with so little that you almost forget the sound and fury that signified nothing in Inception. And the screenplay is, no disrespect to Tony Kushner, the best 19th century American dialogue I've ever heard. It's poetic, it's meaty, it's raw. All of that at the same time. Win, John Ridley. Win.
Go see 12 Years a Slave--especially if you're white, because this one wasn't served up just for you.
