Before going to see 12 Years a Slave, I rented Gone with the Wind. The difference between the two films are like day and night. GWTW showed a South with handsome gentlemen and beautiful southern belles. Their homes were gorgeous estates with vaulted ceilings and winding staircases. The whites were kind benevolent masters and the blacks were befuddled, child-like dependents. The slave quarters was never shown in GWTW. The KKK was not mentioned but alluded to as a political meeting. 12 Years shows a very different South. Margaret Mitchells fanciful, Hollywood enhanced romanticism is removed and underneath the antebellum gallantry we find harsh cruelty. We see hard work performed under the threat of whipping or worst. We see the N-word used regularly. We see the complexity of the master-slave system and the devastating effects it had on both whites and blacks. In the end the same topic, the Old south, is told by two different viewpoints. Margaret Mitchell, a white unemployed journalist, who recounted stories of an earlier generation of southerners, and Solomon Northup whose biography details the living as a slave under the most hellish brutal conditions.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 20:16:25 +0000
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