Researching for 12 years...

In the course of my research I found two main gripes with the Samuel Bass character that I am studying. The first is how Brad Pitt’s character was heavily publicized even though his role in the movie was minute. This article from The Daily Beast argues that the movie used the fame and whiteness of Brad Pitt to make its mostly minority cast more relevant. This is evident from the horribly misleading movie posters displayed in Italy:

The other part that reviewers found troubling was the lack of development of Bass and the fact that the movie completely glassed over how much time and effort it took to actually get Solomon out of his crummy situation. According to one reviewer, “he worked for almost a year, sent out several letters, and when they weren't hearing anything back he began saving up for the trip to saratoga himself...”

I decided to investigate the disparity between the movie and the book further by actually reading the original book. This is the ultimate source because it was written by Solomon himself and it revealed that weeks had passed before Solomon even talked to Bass about his situation, much less received help from him. There is a lot of time and effort left out of this movie for sure.

12 Years a Slave

*Spoilers Obviously*

I am writing about the movie 12 Years a Slave which shares the story of a free black man being kidnapped and put through the tortures of slavery for 12 whole years. The element of the white savior comes at the very end when a traveler (Brad Pitt) arrives and presents the ultimate altruistic white sympathetic character type. His entire role in his two scenes is to intellectually beat down the slave master and risk his own life to help the protagonist, named Solomon.

The traveler fits into the White savior archetype in a variety of ways. He shows up very abruptly with not much context for his character other than his virtuous demeanor. He has no perceivable flaws and appears to be morally perfect, even risking himself for Solomon. This perfect character fixes the problem presented throughout in a matter of seconds in the movie, which made the story feel a bit empty.

However, this film did a great job of addressing the second problem: the Magic Negroes. All of the slaves in the movie had real personality and intelligence, something absent from most Slave movies. The slave owners used creature-terminology to describe the slaves, but the movie itself did give the slaves agency and morals. Solomon even was able to convince the master that a white man was lying, which is impressive for the circumstances.