The instance Robert’s murder on the steamboat to Louisiana in Steve McQueen’s film drastically departs from what Solomon Northup describes in his narrative. McQueen chooses to highlight the brutality of slavery over out the economic considerations surrounding the enslaved’s bodies in doing so.McQueen chooses to include visceral scenes in his film eschewing the less provocative economic considerations in Solomon’s narrative. The film 12 Years a Slave fails to fully interact with the economics of the slave economy. “Robert was taken ill. It was soon announced that he had the small-pox. He continued to grow worse, and four days previous to our arrival in New-Orleans he died.” The loss incurred is not insignificant to the slave trader nor to
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Upon learning of the small pox the captain “ordered lime to be scattered” and took “other prudent precautions.” He cannot let the enslaved stew in the disease and therefore lose his income from the sale of their bodies. Economic considerations must come before the necessity of performing mastery. Rather than dying from contracting small pox, in the film, Robert is murdered when he attempts to prevent the rape of Eliza. This seems unrealistic as Robert would have been too valuable to be wasted so easily. More likely would have been the device shown with the introduction of the hold on the ship, the mask. With commodification of black bodies, one could not see a person without evaluating their worth in the market. While McQueen may have made this directorial choice in order to keep the film a reasonable length, he allows for a viewing of the movie which sees enslaved bodies as completely disposable. While their bodies were exploited, they were also of great value. Solomon himself tells his reader Ford he “finally offered Freeman one thousand dollars for me.” If Robert had lived, he would have gone for a similar sum of money since he was in a similar position to Solomon, being born free and unaccustomed to slave labor. Leading up to his …show more content…
This is connected to the end of the movie which is very ambiguous as to how Solomon was saved, and places the full burden on Bass’s letters. However, this previous instance with the sailor is the one which set Solomon’s rescue in motion. The first letter he sends is to “Henry B. Northup, Esq., of Sandy Hill…a relative of the family in which my forefathers were thus held to service, and from which they took the name I bear.” This would be complicated to include in the movie. The man is not Mr. Northup in the film, it is Mr. Parker the owner of the shop seen in Solomon’s flashback in which he buys a new bag for his wife. By using Mr. Parker rather than Mr. Northup, there is a satisfactory element of closure. His patron is the one he once patronized. However, the narrative shows a more complex relationship between the residents. McQueen does not include this in his film, not only for reasons of brevity, but because of the complexity of this relationship. A member of the class of slaveholders comes to rescue a man that his family might have owned. It seems counterintuitive for a man with relations to slaveholding to rescue a man from slavery. In the setting of the film, this may have been too complex an idea to have to include along with all the other themes in the
Upon learning of the small pox the captain “ordered lime to be scattered” and took “other prudent precautions.” He cannot let the enslaved stew in the disease and therefore lose his income from the sale of their bodies. Economic considerations must come before the necessity of performing mastery. Rather than dying from contracting small pox, in the film, Robert is murdered when he attempts to prevent the rape of Eliza. This seems unrealistic as Robert would have been too valuable to be wasted so easily. More likely would have been the device shown with the introduction of the hold on the ship, the mask. With commodification of black bodies, one could not see a person without evaluating their worth in the market. While McQueen may have made this directorial choice in order to keep the film a reasonable length, he allows for a viewing of the movie which sees enslaved bodies as completely disposable. While their bodies were exploited, they were also of great value. Solomon himself tells his reader Ford he “finally offered Freeman one thousand dollars for me.” If Robert had lived, he would have gone for a similar sum of money since he was in a similar position to Solomon, being born free and unaccustomed to slave labor. Leading up to his …show more content…
This is connected to the end of the movie which is very ambiguous as to how Solomon was saved, and places the full burden on Bass’s letters. However, this previous instance with the sailor is the one which set Solomon’s rescue in motion. The first letter he sends is to “Henry B. Northup, Esq., of Sandy Hill…a relative of the family in which my forefathers were thus held to service, and from which they took the name I bear.” This would be complicated to include in the movie. The man is not Mr. Northup in the film, it is Mr. Parker the owner of the shop seen in Solomon’s flashback in which he buys a new bag for his wife. By using Mr. Parker rather than Mr. Northup, there is a satisfactory element of closure. His patron is the one he once patronized. However, the narrative shows a more complex relationship between the residents. McQueen does not include this in his film, not only for reasons of brevity, but because of the complexity of this relationship. A member of the class of slaveholders comes to rescue a man that his family might have owned. It seems counterintuitive for a man with relations to slaveholding to rescue a man from slavery. In the setting of the film, this may have been too complex an idea to have to include along with all the other themes in the