Solomon Northup's "Twelve Years a Slave" and Steve McQueen's Imagery

I finally, after months of putting it to the side, watched Steve McQueen's adaptation of Twelve Year's A Slave. It took me so long to watch it because I kept telling myself that I had to be in the right mindset to sit through two hours of visual representations of brutality and prejudice. The movie is not something to view for pleasure. It's a visceral experience, much like Schindler's List. It's a film that you see, take in, and reflect upon long after the credits roll. Many people have written about the film version of Solomon Northup's narrative, and I do not wish to necessarily enter in to any of the debates surrounding the relevance or importance of the film. I do think that the film, and Northup's Twelve Years a Slave (1853) are important today because of what they tell and show us about history and because the continuing effects of that history remain with us one hundred and fifty years later.

As I watched Northup's narrative unfold, I could not help but notice the haunting beauty of the landscape that I inhabit here in South Louisiana. Throughout the film, shots of the landscape and of trees--oak, willow, cypress, etc.--covered in Spanish moss appeared. The trees, covered with the flowing Spanish moss, join beauty and horror together in one image. Blowing with the wind, the moss takes on a sort of ghost like quality, and ultimately, the continual shots of oak trees covered in Spanish moss made me think of lynching and the fears facing slaves and African Americans in the South: lynching and rape. The beauty and horror of the trees collide in one of the pivotal scenes in Northup's narrative.

After Solomon fights with Master Tibeats and whips him profusely, Chapin, the overseer, intervenes and removes Tibeats. Tibeats, infuriated at being beaten by a slave, leaves, and Chapin warns Solomon to remain put or he cannot help to protect Solomon from Tibeats when he returns. Upon returning with two horsemen, Tibeats and the men approach Northup with a noose. Northup submits to the men humbly, as he says, and they proceed to bound him tightly and slip the noose over his neck. The men do not hang Northup from a tree in the narrative; Chapin intervenes before they get the chance. Chapin scares Tibeats and the other men off, then he sends Lawson to get Mr. Ford, Solomon's master. While waiting for Mr. Ford to return, no one removes the bindings or the noose from Solomon's body: "All day Chapin walked back and forth upon the stoop, but not once approached me" (68). Solomon goes on to contemplate, "Why [Chapin] did not relieve me--why he suffered me to remain in agony the whole weary day, I never knew" (68). Chapin, and no one else relieves Solomon of his suffering. Mr. Ford, who arrives later, cuts the ropes that bind Solomon and helps him.  

In the film, Tibeats and the men hang Solomon from a large oak tree in front of Mr. Ford's house. The scene, which is above, starts after Tibeats and Chapin have left Solomon alone. What captured me about this scene is the long shot of Solomon hanging from the tree, struggling to maintain his breath and strength. For about thirty seconds, the scene only contains Solomon, the tree, slave quarters on the right, and a partially constructed building on the left. At the thirty second mark, movement occurs as slaves come out of the houses on the right and resume their daily activities. None of the people even approach Solomon for another minute. At that time, a woman comes up to him and offers him a drink of water then moves on. At one minute and forty seconds, the perspective changes and we see Chapin standing on the gallery of the big house staring out at Solomon hanging from the tree. This shot remains for twenty seconds before it returns to an image of the quarters. Over Solomon's left shoulder, a trio of kids chase one another in circles, playing and laughing. At the end of the scene, dusk has settled in and the slaves have returned to their quarters. Mr. Ford rides up on his horse and cuts Solomon down.

The scene juxtaposes a lot of images in the span of three minutes. It shows, for one, the cruelty of the "peculiar institution" which classified Solomon as property, not as a human. It also shows the control that lynching, and abuse, had psychologically on the slave population. When people start to emerge again, no one helps Solomon. Instead, they go on about their business and perform their day-to-day activities. Women carry laundry, men carry hoes, and children play. A similar scene occurs when Solomon confronts Epps over Patsy. When they begin to argue and chase one another, the slaves in the background can be seen dispersing and going inside their quarters. One slave can even be heard telling his child to get inside. The slaves go on with their lives, not ignorant of the punishment Solomon is enduring, but helpless to do anything about it. Solomon's hangings, the whippings, and the sexual overtures all exist as part of the plantation life, and the slaves can only, as one suggests to Solomon earlier, strive to survive.

Along with these images, we also see the big house, not more that twenty feet or so beyond Solomon's hanging body. He looks at the house, and as he gazes upon it, he sees Chapin pacing back and forth on the gallery. Even Chapin, the overseer, does not help Solomon down. Why, because Solomon is Mr. Ford's property? Because he wants Mr. Ford to see what Tibeats did? Solomon even asks these types of questions in his narrative. Countered with Solomon's hanging, limp body, we see the opulent house of his master.  We also see, when the shot returns to the quarters, the unfinished structure that Solomon has been building. These images both show that the things that Mr. Ford, Chapin, and Tibeats have exists because of the slaves they subject to oppression.

There is more that could be said, as usual. If you have seen the movie or read Solomon's narrative, what do you think? What other scenes stick out to you?

For more about the cinematography of this scene, see "Steve McQueen and the Long Take" at Visual Culture Blog. For more about the history of lynching, see "The Specter of Lynching" on this blog. For a good article on this scene, and the things I have been discussing in this post, see John Stauffer's "12 Years Between Life and Death" in American Literary History (26.2).

Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, A Citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853. Ed. Randy DeCuir. Marksville: Avoyelles Publications, 2013. Print.