Bad Feminist: Essays

by Roxane Gay

  Certainly, the N-word is part of our history as much as it is part of our present. The first documented instance of the word dates back to the 1600s, and it has since appeared in nearly every aspect of American life, from legal documents to entertainment to our vernacular. American presidents and Supreme Court justices and average citizens have used the word with equal comfort. As Randall Kennedy notes in Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, “A complete list of prominent whites who have referred at some point or other to blacks demeaningly as niggers would be lengthy indeed. It would include such otherwise disparate figures as Richard Nixon and Flannery O’Connor.” The N-word is certainly not a word that has, as many suggest, been kept alive solely by hip-hop and rap artists. White people have been keeping the word alive and well too. Any movie about slavery or black history could reasonably include the word a few times just to remind us of how terrible we all used to be, to remind us of the work we have yet to do. And still, the televised version of Roots manages to depict the realities of slavery without the N-word and the miniseries is nearly ten hours long.

  I knew from the start I wasn’t this movie’s target audience. Racism and slavery aren’t terribly amusing to me unless Dave Chappelle is running the show. In truth, I am exhausted by slavery—thinking about it, talking about it, reading about it, and seeing movies about it. Each time I hear of a new book or movie that takes up slavery in some way, I feel, mostly, dread. What more could possibly be said on the topic?

  But Django Unchained isn’t even really a movie about slavery. Django Unchained is a spaghetti western set during the 1800s. Slavery is a convenient, easily exploited backdrop. As with Inglourious Basterds using World War II, Tarantino once again managed to find a traumatic cultural experience of a marginalized people that has little to do with his own history, and used that cultural experience to exercise his hubris for making farcically violent, vaguely funny movies that set to right historical wrongs from a very limited, privileged position.

  Like most westerns, like most movies for that matter, Django Unchained concerns the whims of men. The movie is at times brilliant but mostly infuriating. It is a good movie in that masturbatory way most Tarantino films are good. The man knows his craft and clearly loves movies and loves to make movies where he shows us all just how much he loves movies. Hollywood, for whatever reason, is more than happy to indulge Tarantino’s self-referential homage to those filmic genres with which he is so intensely enamored.

  Still, I found myself enjoying certain parts of the movie. Strange as it may seem, the movie’s sound design is impeccable. I needed something to focus on so I wouldn’t lose my temper, so I paid real close attention to those sound effects. Fine work is done there.

  The acting is solid, as is the direction and set design. The script is particularly strong, and certainly worthy of critical respect and the Oscar nomination it received. There are a few particularly intelligent bits of dialogue, like when Django and Dr. King Schultz go to a plantation owned by Big Daddy (Don Johnson), who has to instruct a slave, Betina, about how to treat Django as a free man. She says, “You want I should treat him like white folks?” That, of course, flusters Big Daddy, who says no, of course not, and Betina, rightly confused, says, “Well then I don’t know what you mean.”

  This is how Tarantino works—he tries to make you forget his many offenses by lulling you into complacency with his competence and flashes of brilliance. He tries to make the viewer believe that if the art is good enough, the message can be overlooked. I tried to overlook the message, but Tarantino never let me. Each time I tried to settle into the movie and enjoy myself, he made another indulgent, obnoxious choice that did little more than reveal what I can only assume is Tarantino’s serious problem with race.

  Christoph Waltz was, as he always is, a revelation. His character, as a European struggling to understand American culture, reveals the absurdity of slavery and gives the movie at least one white person who isn’t wholly hateful. But he is still complicit in slavery, using the system to his advantage in the early going. Schultz tells Django he will only free him after they successfully capture the Brittles. Schultz finds slavery abhorrent unless it suits his purposes, which is, I imagine, the dilemma many white people found themselves in during the slavery era. Django isn’t given the autonomy to decide for himself if he wants to help Schultz or not, and we’re still supposed to go along with this. We’re still supposed to root for Schultz not because he is the best person. Rather, he is the least evil.

  I suppose that’s the point Tarantino is trying to make, that in the 1800s, everyone was complicit in the institution of slavery, but he does a half-assed job of getting that point across. And then there is his hero, Django. Foxx does a fine job as Django, but his character is largely one-dimensional, which is a shame because his character provides a rich opportunity to explore what finding freedom might look like. Instead, Django mumbles a few moderately amusing lines about killing white people. When he gets to choose his own outfit (thanks, Massa), he picks a bright blue fop of a suit that makes the audience laugh at the simple negro rather than with him. Then, toward the end of the movie, he is somehow self-actualized and has regained his dignity, just like that.

  Django really has one goal in the movie: to find and free his beloved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was also sold at a slave auction. Some reviews have suggested that Django Unchained is a love story, but that is simplistic, wishful thinking. Broomhilda is, like most of the people of color in this movie, rather incidental. She has barely any screen time and speaks very few lines. At various points, we see Django imagining Broomhilda in the distance, smiling at him with her eyes. We learn she speaks German, which delights Schultz because, really, what are the odds?

  Tarantino spends an inordinate amount of time gleefully depicting the suffering of the movie’s rarely seen or heard heroine, Broomhilda, as she is branded, flogged, punished in a hot box, and humiliated during a dinner by being forced to reveal her scars to dinner guests. Mostly, she looks pretty or tormented or prettily tormented as the situation demands. We hardly get to see a loving moment between Django and Broomhilda, even though their story is supposed to be the movie’s centerpiece.

  One thing we know about slavery is that in order to survive, some black people did what they had to do and sometimes that meant becoming a part of the slavery system so that said system wouldn’t break them all the way down. Samuel L. Jackson, who frequently appears in Tarantino movies, makes a deeply disturbing turn as Stephen, an irascible right hand to Calvin Candie—one part butler, one part household overseer, one part world’s crankiest hype man to his master. We’re supposed to hate Stephen because he’s about as bad as the white people. Jackson plays the role so convincingly that we do, indeed, come to hate Stephen. There’s no acknowledgment, however, of why Stephen might have become so cruel. There’s no acknowledgment that surrender was his only choice or that we should feel as sympathetic toward Stephen as we do toward Django or Broomhilda, or any of the other enslaved people in the movie.

  What struck me most was how Django Unchained is a white man’s slavery revenge fantasy, one where white people figure heavily and where black people are, largely, incidental. Tarantino’s arrogance, as always, is impressive. Django is allowed to regain his dignity because he is freed by a white man. He reunites with his wife, again, with the help of a white man. Django Unchained isn’t about a black man reclaiming his freedom. It’s about a white man working through his own racial demons and white guilt.

  There is no collective slavery revenge fantasy among black people, but I am certain, if there were one, it would not be about white people, not at all. My slavery revenge fantasy would probably involve being able to read and write without fear of punishment or persecution coupled with a long vacation in Paris. It would involve the reclamation of dignity on my own terms and not with the “generous” assistance of benevolent white people who were equally complicit in the ills of slavery.

  I could also start
by saying that in Haiti, January 1 not only ushers in a new year; it is also the day Haitians recognize as Independence Day. On that same day in 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti a free nation, the first of its kind in Latin America, ending a thirteen-year slave rebellion. Since then, Haiti has been a troubled country but her people have been free, or as free as anyone can be while trying to overcome the complex legacy of slavery. As a first-generation American of Haitian descent, I was raised with stories of how my ancestors fought for freedom, and how no matter what burdens we may suffer as a Haitian people, we know we set ourselves free. I am Haitian, but I was raised here in the United States. You cannot know my heritage just by looking at me. I’m black in America. Like many people who share my skin color, slavery is this terrible, looming thing that is part of an inescapable distant past. Instead of offering me some new insights on this troubling reality, Django Unchained simply served as a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

  Beyond the Struggle Narrative

  Hattie McDaniel, the first black person to win an Oscar, did so for her role in Gone with the Wind as Mammy in 1939. McDaniel was a formidable actress, but for better or worse, her career was dominated by roles as maids because, in that time, domestic servitude was the only way popular culture could conceive of black women. In 2012, Octavia Spencer won an Oscar for playing a maid, Minny Jackson, in the popular but deeply problematic The Help, which received four Oscar nominations. While there’s a lot of shallow rhetoric about post-racial America, when it comes to the Oscars, Hollywood has very specific notions about how it wants to see black people on the silver screen. There are certainly exceptions, but all too often, critical acclaim for black films is built upon the altar of black suffering or subjugation.

  In 2013, we saw quite the cinematic parade of black suffering and subjugation. In the excellent Fruitvale Station, writer-director Ryan Coogler deftly tells the story of the last day of Oscar Grant’s life before Grant was murdered by a BART officer on New Year’s Day 2009. Lee Daniels’ The Butler chronicles the life of Cecil Gaines, a black butler in the White House for thirty-four years. Through the story of Gaines’s life, we also learn the story of black America, the challenges of desegregation, and how with dignity one man persevered. The pinnacle of black suffering, though, comes by way of 12 Years a Slave. Since the movie’s debut on the festival circuit, it has enjoyed massive critical acclaim. It’s the movie everyone must see, the definitive accounting of America’s brutal legacy of slavery.

  Such rhetoric is always curious because slavery has been well accounted since the early 1800s. What more could possibly be said about slavery? Who has labored under the impression that slavery is anything but an abject horror? 12 Years a Slave offers a relatively original conceit—the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery for twelve years. As Michelle Dean notes for Flavorwire, “If on no other grounds, 12 Years a Slave is remarkable because it is the only film to date that is based on a slave’s own account of his experience.” The movie is also the first major studio-backed slavery film helmed by a black director. These milestones are not insignificant. Despite the source material and the director, however, 12 Years a Slave does not offer new insight into the slave narrative. There is little to justify this movie’s existence beyond the filmmaker’s desire to tell this particular story.

  I chose not to read many reviews before seeing 12 Years a Slave. I wanted as unadulterated a viewing experience as possible. I confess: I was not impressed and I do not understand the effusive acclaim. The movie was brutal, almost mind-numbingly so. Nothing was spared in portraying the harsh realities of human enslavement—the loss of dignity, the physical, sexual, and emotional violence. The reality depicted is so harsh I cannot help but wonder if people find the movie excellent because of the sheer relentlessness. I cried, more than once, but I was not moved. I was simply broken, the way anyone would be broken by witnessing such atrocities.

  12 Years a Slave is a good enough movie—certainly worth seeing if you’re unclear about slavery and its legacy. The actors acquit themselves formidably. Director Steve McQueen makes some lovely artistic choices, but at times those artistic choices are jarring and out of place—extended, poetic shots of plantation beauty, overindulgent cinematic pauses that make no sense. The movie drags on at times, the boredom only interrupted by yet another unbearable violence.

  Black women’s suffering is used to tell a man’s story. Though Northup is, himself, the victim of senseless brutality, it is more often the women who suffer and Northup who becomes more miserable by being forced to bear witness. It is his suffering that is painted as more profound. Yes, this is his story, but great swaths of the movie focus on everyone but him.

  Early on Eliza, played by the immensely talented Adepero Oduye, has been separated from her children—an alarmingly regular occurrence during the slave era. Eliza is so overcome with grief she can hardly bear it. She spends most of her time sobbing, inconsolable. Solomon questions her grief sharply and offers some pabulum about wanting to survive. Before long, Eliza is sold off because no one wants to share in her pain or be forced to see it. Solomon is seemingly unmoved by this turn of events, which begs the question, which comes up often, of why the subplot has been included.

  In the second half of the movie, Solomon is sold to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), who is renowned for his ability to break slaves. Epps is insane and unrepentant. He has a predator’s fondness for Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), whom he reveres and abuses in equal measure. Ultimately, Patsey’s suffering is the most devastating in a movie where nearly everyone suffers. So profound is her misery that Patsey begs Solomon to kill her so that her suffering might end. He declines, which is as cruel as it is understandable.

  It should be noted that 12 Years a Slave does a remarkable job of revealing the ways in which white women were complicit in slavery. Sarah Paulson is absolutely chilling as Epps’s wife, Mistress Epps. Epps acts like a jealous lover whenever Patsey is not within his reach and does not bother hiding his feelings from his wife. Mistress Epps resents Patsey for the place the woman holds in her husband’s heart and misses no opportunity to direct cruelty toward Patsey.

  Most movies about slavery have a fetish for depicting the mortification of black flesh, and 12 Years a Slave is no different. There are a number of scenes where slaves are whipped for one infraction or another. When Solomon is first captured, he is “taught his place” with a beating. Slaves are punished for not picking enough cotton. The most harrowing scene is one where Patsey is punished for going to the neighboring plantation for a bar of soap with which to clean herself. Epps is so angry and sick with jealousy, he finally brings himself to whip Patsey, but then he can’t do it. He hands the whip to Solomon, who is reluctant to take part in this brutality but well aware he has no choice. Solomon does his best to mete out his master’s punishment, but in the end, Epps is not satisfied. He takes the whip from Solomon and uses it on Patsey himself. By the end of the scene, she is barely conscious, her back rent open and bloody. The scene is visceral, as it should be, but it also feels gratuitous because the scene is not designed to amplify Patsey’s plight. The scene is designed to amplify Solomon’s plight, as if he is the more tragic figure in this situation.

  I do not want to diminish the suffering of anyone during the slave era. Men and women were subjected to unspeakable atrocities. Solomon Northup’s story is particularly troubling because it shows how vulnerable all black people were, free or not. What I resent in 12 Years a Slave is how the suffering of women is used to further a man’s narrative. There is, for example, a rape scene that carries little narrative relevance. Patsey lies, inert, beneath Epps. It’s a repulsive scene, so in that regard, McQueen has done his job, but it doesn’t seem essential to the movie because the primary story is not Patsey’s. It’s a gratuitous, unnecessary reminder that yes, women were raped during the slave era.

  Ultimately, Solomon Northup is freed because he has f
inally gotten word to his family in New York that he is alive. The moment, like much of the movie, is strangely muted. We’re clearly supposed to feel something, but it’s hard to know quite what to do with that emotion. Before Solomon leaves the Epps plantation, Patsey runs into his arms, and they embrace. We know nothing of what happens to Patsey, beyond what we might imagine, because she has already done the necessary work of staying on the sidelines while Solomon is dispatched unto freedom once more.

  My reaction to 12 Years a Slave is born, largely, of exhaustion. I am worn out by slavery and struggle narratives. I am worn out by broken black bodies and the broken black spirit somehow persevering in the face of overwhelming and impossible circumstance. There seems to be so little room at the Hollywood table for black movies that to earn a seat, black movies have to fit a very specific narrative. Movies like Love & Basketball or The Best Man and The Best Man Holiday are perhaps not Oscar material, but they are certainly movies that also capture the black experience, and somehow, they are often overlooked in conversations about serious movies. Filmmakers take note and keep giving Hollywood exactly what it wants. Hollywood showers these struggle narratives with the highly coveted critical acclaim. It’s a vicious cycle.

  There is no one way to tell the story of slavery or to chronicle the black experience. It is not that slavery and struggle narratives shouldn’t be shared but that but these narratives are not enough anymore. Audiences are ready for more from black film—more narrative complexity, more black experiences being represented in contemporary film, more artistic experimentation, more black screenwriters and directors allowed to use their creative talents beyond the struggle narrative. We’re ready for more of everything but the same, singular stories we’ve seen for so long.