by Christopher Barr
“When we speak (or
listen, for that matter), we never merely interact with others; our speech
activity is grounded on our accepting and relying on a complex network of rules
and other kinds of presuppositions. That is to say, our communication with others
(and with our self, perhaps) is grounded in and acted out through ‘the big
Other.’ The big Other comes through us in how we speak and in how we comprehend
the other.”
-
Slavoj Zizek
12 Years A Slave was a brilliant film
depicting a point in early American history that most people would wish to
forget, but should never want to. It’s
based on the autobiography of Solomon Northrup, a black man that lived in New
York State with his family as a free people. He dined and wined and played violin
while living a life of a cultured man in an intellectually growing
society. He was then sold
into slavery and lived 12 years as a beaten man that was the property of his
white masters.
Solomon was a bit unique in the traditional telling of
this story, the story of black people during slavery. Unique because unlike the stolen black
people shipped to American from Sierra Leone, Africa, Solomon was already an
American enjoying the wealthy fruits of the new world. He was pulled from that life and
transported to a life of living hell, a hell thanks to the white people that
believed that these black people they had purchased were their property.
One thing I found most interesting about this film was
the authority a human being held over another, simply as a point of rule. There was no actual universal rule
that justified why one race of people held dominion over another race of
people. There were a number
of times throughout the film I was thinking, ‘storm the master, kill him or her
and then be free.’ But the
slaves didn’t, these plantations and cotton picking fields didn’t have barbwire
fences like prisons do today. There
were no walls, no prison guards, just obedience, fear of the Big Other, fear of
grand authority when none existed in the real world but only within the
Symbolic Order, the rule was that those black slaves were property. Not only did the masters know it but
the slaves knew it all too well.
I’m reminded of a book I read when I was studying
criminology about police detectives commenting on troubling cases they had. One such case was of a man with a
knife that broke into a house during thanksgiving and held a whole family at
knife point. There were
five little kids, four women and five men, all varying in age. This one man with a knife entered
their house, overtook everyone, tied them all up and proceeded to murder them
one by one. He started with
the youngest, two little girls, cutting and slicing them and then worked his
way up to the oldest. It
took him all night but he slaughtered and tortured them all, then left, never
to be caught. The cops on
the case were horrified, as anyone would, but they were perturbed about one
thing, after realizing the perpetrator held only a knife, why didn’t they jump
him? There were five grown
men and four grown women, why not jump him? Surely
one or two might’ve been killed but they would have eventually overpowered this
man. But they didn’t, their
collective fear of the authority of the Big Other kept them, unfortunately in their
place long enough for this crazed man to fulfill his sick fantasy.
What I find thought-provoking about the Big Other is
it only exists within the Symbolic Order and outside that, it is
meaningless. It’s us who
give it meaning as did the black people during the slave days. Through our ignorance, either self-imposed
or governmental, we simply comply because we don’t know better. We do this with areas that don’t harm
us directly like religion and government in most cases, but yet we comply
because they seem to know better and we don’t question it.
No human being should have to be subject to slavery no
matter what their race, but we live in a world of slavery. We always have and always will. The elite will continue to enslave its
populace, but the difference from now and then, is we are unaware of that
slavery. Unlike inmates in
prisons who are aware of their incarceration, we are unaware of our own slavery
and servitude to the corporate and governmental system, which pays us enough to
make us feel free but never enough to rise up above the system and revolt.
The only point to tell a true story of slavery is to
juxtapose it with the state of today. People
need to reflect on themselves and their station in modern society, where they
work and who rules over them. This
film was about the death of cultivation, the death of learning so the so-called
strong can hold supremacy over the so-called weak. This is the story of today as it was
the story then, not to take way from the atrocities of that time in American
history, but it’s important we don’t think of the film as simply a period piece
that society has grown and evolved out of.
I think we should see the film as something contemporary and present, we
should see the film as a telling of how we are capable of treating each other,
and how the aspiring man can become victim to those that have fallen, not
religiously but intellectually and logically.
Religion in this film plays the part of mediator; it
allows the white man power over their black slaves without dogmatic
judgment. As religion is
not an actual real phenomena outside the imagination of men, the ruling class
were able to make their laws on slavery divine, simply because they said so,
before they wrote the book in the name of a divine creator they themselves
created. Black people
followed this white man’s bible as scripture from the lord and savior without
ever realizing that they as a race were scammed two fold, not only do they
follow it but they followed it into their own servitude. It can be said
that it wasn’t up to them to understand that they were to become victims of
property labor law in the early days of the United States. Ideally the innocent should be free of such
thoughts but in the time of slavery it simply wasn’t the case.
Why do we fear a man with a gun, because he may shoot us? Why do we fear a man with a voice over
a hundred people because he has the power to kill us all? Or does he, I’m thinking there might
be a bluff in there somewhere. Maybe
the point of the story is the person we fear the most when it comes to how we
look at the world is ourselves. The
Big Other is how we look at the world and not how the world is. Slavery exists today and is hidden
from our first world purview, so we can all sit and lament about how bad they
all had it, as we watch our 300 channels and wear designer clothing,
manufactured by modern day slaves that live during our time but simply out of our view.
“My narrative is at
an end. I have no comments to make upon
the subject of Slavery. Those who read
this book may form their own opinions on the ‘peculiar institution.’ What it may be in the other States, I do not
profess to know; what it is in the region of Red River, is truly and faithfully
delineated in these pages. This is no
fiction, no exaggeration. If I have
failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader too prominently the
bright side of the picture. I doubt not
hundreds have been as unfortunate as myself; that hundreds of free citizens
have been kidnapped and sold into slavery, and are at this moment wearing out
their lives on plantations in Texas and Louisiana. But I forbear. Chastened and subdued in spirit by the
sufferings I have borne, and thankful to that good Being through whose mercy I
have been restored to happiness and liberty, I hope henceforward to lead an
upright though lowly life, and rest at last in the church yard where my father
sleeps.” - Solomon Northrup (Closing passage to his autobiography. 1853)
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