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.