“Queen of the fields”: Slavery’s Graphic Violence and the Black Female Body in 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

Abstract

This paper examines Steve McQueen’s strategy in 12 Years a Slave, which consists in filming the horrors of slavery through a narrative construction that mostly concerns Solomon Northup, a “temporary” slave who survives slavery, and a visual construction centered on Patsey, a “permanent” slave who is born and dies in slavery. This double construction allows viewers to get “into” and “out of” the history of slavery, without reproducing some of the problematic patterns that previous slavery-themed films have allowed.

Keywords

• slavery
• race
• slave narrative
• gender
• 12 Years a Slave
• Steve McQueen