An unremarkable Oscar stereotype

Darrion 2021-10-19 09:52:03

At the end of January, all major wind vane awards revealed their trump cards. The Producers Guild Award, which has been consistent with the Oscars for six consecutive years, has rarely been "double yolk eggs", and "Gravity" and "Twelve Years as a Slave" are listed as annuals. The best film greatly increases the difficulty of prediction. I have been talking about "Gravity" with outstanding special effects for a long time. It is neither scientific nor fantasy. However, I have read Steve McQueen’s neat and hypnotic Oscar stereotype, Alfonso Karona Pot of Soul Chicken Soup It's not so boring anymore.
It can be said that this time McQuay was favored by the conservative academy awards, put away the vanguard style, and filmed the historical drama of mainstream values ​​in a disciplined manner. However, through this shell, he is still him. From his debut "Hunger Strike" (2008) to "Twelve Years of a Slave", the core part of each movie is an extreme visual presentation of violence, and the purpose is also Consistent: inspire sympathy.

In the real version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
, the protagonist of the film Solomon North is a free black man who plays the violin for a living. He has a wife and a pair of children. The family lives in Saratoga, New York. In the spring of 1841, two white men claiming to be from the circus deceived him to Washington for inviting him to play. Unlike New York, the capital of the United States allowed slavery at that time. Upon waking up, Solomon had become an unreasonable slave and was resold to a cotton plantation in southern Louisiana. It was not until twelve years later that a kind Canadian Beth wrote to his old friends in the north and was rescued. .
This story is true. In 1853, Solomon published his memoir "Twelve Years as a Slave". Earlier in the same year, Mrs. Stowe published a book "Uncle Tom's Cabin Solution", explaining the material and clues that inspired her to create a novel, including Solomon's experience. Solomon also pointed out in his book that Stowe misspelled the names of his friends when quoting the letter that set him free.
Indeed, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin", the kind master is in financial trouble and has to sell his slaves, the protagonist falls into the hands of the brutal new master, does not want to flog his compatriots but is disgusted by the master, etc., just like from Solomon's plot. It's like coming out of the memoir. However, Stowe's novel was published in March 1852, and Solomon's friends received the letter only in September of that year. She could not really draw material from it.
Later researchers pointed out that many of the written materials in "The Solution" hadn't been read when Stowe wrote her novels. She lived in Cincinnati not far from the slave state, and a large amount of the material of the novel came from the dictation of slaves who fled to this place. At that time, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" angered some defenders of the slavery system. They accused the Stowe cotton plantation had never been to, and the description of the south was untrue.
When the novel began to be serialized in National Time magazine in June 1851, Solomon was still using another name-Platt worked in the cotton fields. For ten years, he had no pen and paper, carefully hiding his educated mind. At that time, no one knew that he had gone through a life trajectory that seemed familiar with this novel, and in the future can be described as creative material by the novel author. The historical truth reflected by this inadvertent coincidence is: the plot of reselling, humiliating slaves, and forcing them to whip their compatriots is not a reference, because in reality, they are as common as eating and sleeping.
All of this property is a blanket, and people who use gourds to serve food and water had little chance of telling themselves in those days. Solomon's voice is already very valuable, and a heart that was once a free man, observing slavery in the context of slavery, is really rare. Today, on the screen, this is also a good cut to bring modern people into history, and the film stops at showing cruelty and suffering, but it is a good blueprint with rich layers.

It is not the best policy to just use violence to induce sympathy.
“They try to work on sympathy, the most basic human emotion, as a means of creating pressure and igniting the flames of pain and hatred.” This is the voice-over of Mrs. Thatcher in "The Great Hunger Strike", which can almost be used to explain McQueen's usual expression: using violence to create suffering, and then using suffering to reap sympathy.
The "them" in Thatcher's words refers to the Irish Republican Army who was on hunger strike in prison. Historically, the Republican Army has produced massive explosions and assassinations, and even attacked civilians of different religious sects, but demanded the treatment of political prisoners. Although the film also quoted Thatcher: "There is no political murder, political bombing, and political violence at all, only murder, bombing, and violent crimes", but this is just a light cover in narrative, and the film's position is completely reversed. The prisoners are gone, and a lot of straightforward images are used to show the tyranny they have encountered, and the Republican Army only made one shot, and it was a cruel jailer who killed it. How about thousands of civilians who died at the hands of the Republican Army?
The extreme violence of this film is not the beating of prisoners, nor the headshot of the jailer, but the body of Bobby Sands, the hunger strike promoter played by Michael Fassbender, that gradually ceased to function before his death. For viewers who have not forgotten history, the sympathy smashed by bloody violence and the destruction of the human body is like being forced to drink water from a river. Not only did it fail to quench their thirst, but they also choked.
In 2011's "Sorrow", Fassbender became a closed New Yorker who could only use indulgence to decompress. What does the little thing that modern urbanites hunt for and violence do? The climax of the story is the same as "The Great Hunger Strike", which is the physical destruction of the protagonist's brother and sister. My younger sister saw blood after cutting his wrist at home. My brother seemed to have just wandered in the sensual field all night, but got a few punches from the gangster, but the self-destructive energy was the same as the blood on the floor in his bathroom. Terrible sadness.
The climax of "Twelve Years as a Slave" is also violent, a long whipping on the female slave Pasie. The master Epps felt that Solomon was not hitting hard enough, so he grabbed the whip and struck it himself. The scar on the girl's back seemed to have been deeply plowed by an iron plow, and a fleet of blood mist was lifted up every time the whip fell. This scene is visually aggressive just written in words.
The political correctness is unconcerned, and the issue of scale is not discussed. It is not the best policy to just use violence to attract sympathy. In response to the accusation of "some scenes are too violent," McQueen explained, "I believe that the audience loves this film not because of its cruelty. Those have been proven wrong." There is a subconscious level of saying this, that is, let alone the abolition of slavery, apartheid has been lifted for half a century, and black people have become presidents. That period of history has been publicized, and there is no need to make efforts to prove what is right and what is wrong.
The problem lies here: McQueen is a visual artist who came out of the gallery. In terms of aesthetic pursuit, he tends to have a lasting, micro grasp of a state, and lacks control of the macro. It doesn't matter whether the scene of the movie is magnificent, but the realization that it is not in place. If you don't ask a few more why, only the body itself destroyed by violence can be exchanged for sympathy for the individual. The cotton fields and the mansion in "Twelve Years as a Slave" look like moving oil paintings, but the handling of the main characters is rather rough, which is regrettable.

Moral stories weaken the power of criticism.
"Let me ask you, in God's eyes, what is the difference between blacks and whites?"
"Why don't you ask me the difference between whites and baboons. I have seen one in Orleans, and mine? The niggers are almost the same." In the
movie, Beth and Epps have such a dialogue from the original. Epps also told Beth that the slaves are not here to help, they are just "property." This shows the foundation of modern slavery: black slaves are not treated as human beings, no different from chickens in chicken farms. Depriving them of all their rights as humans is naturally not a crime. But just a few lines are not enough.
Epps, played by Fassbender, is the most important character besides the protagonist and the first spokesperson for the evil of slavery in the film. In the second half of the film, his fascination with Parcy, his wife’s jealousy and their husband and wife The two used a lot of pen and ink in their insult to Parsie. Solomon sighed in his memoirs, "In the eyes of the owner, she is just a more expensive and more beautiful animal"; and "My wife liked Parcy very much when she was young", "Teasing her like a kitten" .
Epps has a clip of a little black girl gently hugging. But most of the time, he became a frequent visitor in the Oscar seed movies-a neurotic who couldn't control himself, and his wife was a jealous woman who didn't have anything to watch. It seems that their personality is mutilated, rather than the sinful system that makes Pasie suffer. Bullying her again and again can only tell people that there are some white people in the south who are cruel and surly. But, where is there no evil person? Isn’t there a good host like William Ford in the movie? In such a comparison, it is more like an old-fashioned crime story with kidnapping, rape, and personal injury cases linked together. Moderation is plain and full of moral judgments.
Compared with the original book, Pasie also has a big change. Even though her husband and wife took turns to humiliate her, she kept her cheerful personality carelessly, and did not change her temperament until after that flogging, "If the hearts of the world really die, a heart will be ruthlessly beaten by bad luck. A few times of collapse and withering, then Pasie's heart is dead." If it was the same as in the movie, she would not have wanted to live long ago, and the power of the whip in the plot was much weaker.
Seeing that some commentators compare this film with the classic documentary film "Havoc" (1985) on the subject of the Holocaust, it can be seen that modern slavery is a serious matter. It can be said that they dare not take a wrong step. One of the reasons why the stereotype movie was born. Modern people are always very careful about the mistakes of the past, but looking back at history, respect and sympathy are far from enough.

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Written on January 28.

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Extended Reading
  • Monty 2022-03-24 09:01:15

    It was long and tormented. A few silent long shots were extremely uncomfortable. The twelve years of every minute and every second, in the chaos without a specific time boundary, seemed to have experienced a yin and yang gap; Steve McQueen He is really a careerist who spares no effort to face the blood dripping; the crazy character is tailor-made for Uncle Fa.

  • Alanis 2022-03-23 09:01:14

    This is not a simple movie, but a biography. The film calmly tells the history of black slavery in a light narrative style, without sympathy, as long as you understand it.

12 Years a Slave quotes

  • Tibeats: My name is John Tibeats, William Ford's chief carpenter. You will refer to me as Master. Mister Chapin is the overseer on this plantation. He is responsible for all of Ford's property. You too will refer to him as Master. This plantation covers many hundreds of acres, and you will traverse the Texas road between the forest site and the sawmill in double time. Any clever nigger on that path that gets a little light-footed, I will remind him that on one side men and bloodhounds patrol the border and on the other the bayou provides a hard living, with alligators and little to eat or drink that won't kill you. No slave has escaped here with his life. You're here to work niggers, so let's commence.

  • Tibeats: [singing] Nigger run, nigger flew/Nigger tore his shirt in two/Run, run, the pattyroller git you/Run nigger run, well ya better get away. That's right, like you mean it. Nigger run, run so fast/Stove his head in a hornet's nest/Run, run, the pattyroller git you/Run nigger, run, well ya bette git away/Run, nigger, run, the pattyroller git you/Run nigger run, well ya better git away/Some folks say a nigger don't steal/well I caught three in my cornfield/One had a bushel and one had a peck/and one had a rope being hung around his neck/Run nigger run/ the pattyroller git you/Run nigger run, well ya better get away/Hey, Mr. Pattyroller, don't catch me/Catch that nigger behind that tree!/Run nigger run, the pattyroller get you/Run nigger run, well ya better get away.