Reply to 12 Years A Slave = Did not think this was impressive

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "12 Years A Slave = Did not think this was impressive"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well as an AA it didn't give me that gut-wrenching "I hate white people" feel like Roots, but it still touched my wife and I. We saw Best Man Holiday the very next day and that was more so a tearjerker to me. [/quote]

I think this is an interesting point, though.  Although I know it's based on the book, I haven't read the book, so it's hard to say.  But I kind of feel like the Fassbender character (was it Epps?) was so clearly crazy that it negated the horror of it.  What I mean is, it was easy to dismiss him as nuts, rather than see his actions as typical of slaveowners at the time. So you could kind of mentally downplay it.

I thought the Cumberbatch character was far more chilling -- he knew what he was doing and was just as complicit, even though he realized it was wrong.  And he recognized Solomon as being educated and was able to compartmentalize/separate him from the other slaves so he didn't have to think about what he was doing to them as a group.

I think Roots was much more compelling and it was harder to dismiss the slaveowners as just crazy people, so you would be more inclined to think "I hate white people" rather than "oh that guy is crazy."[/quote]

Yes, Epps was clearly crazy, so he was a specific type of villain. But how terrifying is it that a total madman could own and abuse other humans legally, with no recourse whatsoever, just because he was white? His character was scary but the institution of slavery, the fact that it was allowed to exist, is the real evil (obviously).[/quote]

OP here.  Yes, I totally agree -- how terrifying is it that a madman can abuse slaves legally.  But Epps did not do it for me.  This was just Grand Guignol.  I felt like I was watching Mandingo.

I experienced terror -- and still have nightmares -- from reading about how Thomas Thistlewood treated his slaves last year in a book by Trevor Burnard.  But this did nothing.  It did not seem real.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics