Film Slavery Slave Films Depictions of Black Suffering Implications of Filmic Reenactment
Abstract:
The central question -- Who Needs to Watch Black Violence? – frames an interrogation of the extent to which race-based violence needs to be reenacted for filmic purposes. Here, I focus particularly on movies that depict American enslavement, as violence is oftentimes central to their plot. Though race-based violence is inextricably linked to stories of chattel slavery, the question of whether or not we need hyper realistic visual reenactments of them has been brought up time and time again in both cinematic and Afro-American studies discourse. I explore three films that house graphic depictions of chattel slavery – Roots (1977), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Antebellum (2020) – and explore the extent to which they over-utilize race-based violence in ways that are exploitative.
