Steve McQueen's depiction of Solomon Northrup's enslavement and dignity

¶ … YRS Slave

Steve McQueen's film 12 Years a Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Northrup was a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Therefore, the film points out the extensive and pervasive problem of racism in America. In the so-called "free states," African-Americans were still stripped of all rights and liberties. McQueen also holds back nothing in his visualization of Northrup's journal, which was the basis for the script. A film about slavery in America is inherently a film about racism. Therefore, 12 Years a Slave is about the social institutions and structures that perpetuate inequality and injustice.

When Solomon Northrup was alive, slavery was a state-sanctioned institution. It was a labor economics institution, allowing plantations to maximize profits. A free workforce was taken for granted and became entrenched in the business models of Southern plantations. Therefore, any perceived or actual threat to slavery was a direct threat against Southern businesses and their stakeholders. Northern or "free" stakeholders also had a tacit but vested interest in the success of the plantation economy. It is suggested in the film that corrupt northerners might have played a small part in the fate of Solomon Northrup.

Once Northrup was enslaved, the narrative unfolds to depict the peculiar institution in contradictory terms. Generations of economic gain and prosperity for the whole nation occur because of, not in spite of, institutionalized racism on an unfathomable level. The free workforce could have included disenfranchised and poor whites, but it did not. In the antebellum South and to a lesser degree in the North, blacks were not considered to be people. Women of all races were systematically excluded from economic, political, and social power, too. However, African women suffered a fate far worse.

The brutality of slavery was experienced differently for men and women, with women often the victims not just of physical but also sexual abuse. Racism permeated the public consciousness, which brimmed with hypocrisies. For example, many whites pretended to be religious but were morally corrupt. The fact that Northrup was born and bred a free man and lived an interesting and arty life in an urban center makes the institution of slavery seem even more contradictory than if the character had grown up in the South and only new Southern culture. Northrup only knew what urban life was like, and this showcases the deep cultural rifts brewing in America. While racism was still pervasive in cities like New York and Washington, black men were at least able to express themselves creatively and professionally. In the South, the situation is completely different. Northrup struggles to maintain the dignity that he knows is his birthright, and this dignity is what epitomizes the struggle for liberation. What is truly remarkable about Northrup's character is that he also fights for the dignity of others -- slaves who he does not know but cares for on a deep spiritual level.