ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses depictions of black suffering in three films about slavery: Beloved, Django Unchained, and 12 Years a Slave. However, in using graphic violence to illuminate the realities of plantation slavery, they risk blurring the lines between authenticity and spectacle. As Jenny Woodley explains, black women writers in the first half of the twentieth century challenged white representations of lynching by focusing on the effects of mob violence on African American families. In 12 Years a Slave, Epps’s sense of power comes from his ability to dominate the people he enslaves, both physically and sexually, and the audience is meant to abhor his violence. As cinema-going audiences witness the physical and psychological trauma of enslaved people, they have the potential to become voyeurs. In contrast to this subverted perspective, however, perhaps the most pornographic of all the whipping scenes so far produced on American screens is the whipping of Patsey in 12 Years a Slave.
