Everything Oscar is not always gold

By Julie Masiga

Los Angeles, USA: I have a problem with 12 Years a Slave, not just as a film, but also as the conduit for recognition of Lupita Nyong’o. It is 133 minutes of the best acting, showing people in their worst light.

Beyond showcasing – with award winning skill – the darkest depths of the human heart, I see little other value in the film. It comes with a bitter taste in one’s mouth, especially if one is black. I don’t know what good can ever come of a white person calling a black person a nigger – whether it is in the fantasy world of the movies or otherwise.

12 Years a Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup, screen written from a book that he authored himself. Northup was a free man living in 19th Century New York before he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South.

Twelve years after he was abducted by a crew of white slave traders, he was rescued by white abolitionists. The irony of the white man being both a slave master and saviour is hard to miss. Despite holding his head high, and keeping his dignity about him for that humiliating decade, he was still denied the self-agency to free himself. And yet, that was the true story of Northup’s life.

But the dramatisation of his experiences seems to have made that life slightly less triumphant than it must have been in real time. As heart-wrenching as the film is to watch, and despite the immense skill of the actors, this is yet another picture that should have been left in words.

At this point in the history of the world, where is the value in another gratuitous depiction of the horrors of slavery? What is the takeaway, especially from this kind of biographical endeavour? Hundreds of years later, the effects of the slave trade are self-evident. Must we really be reminded that it happened? I would say not. History should not cause us to endlessly mourn an egregious past – we are better off learning from it so that we never return to the same atrocities. And learning from the past shouldn’t demand that we re-live it in Technicolour.  That’s my problem with 12 Years A Slave. It tells a sad story for the sake of telling a sad story.

It is unfortunate that Lupita has received her first Oscar award for playing a dark skinned, field slave. The contrast between her character in the film and the glamorous, ‘it girl’ she has become in Hollywood circles, and indeed around the world, is astounding.

In a strange way, it is almost as if the monstrous media machine that has expanded her image way beyond the four corners of the movie screen, is mocking her. It is just a matter of time before some bad Press starts to make its way through the cracks. Lupita has a lot going for her, but nobody is perfect, not least when there is a spotlight trained on every move celebrities make.

We certainly have a very good actress in the talented Lupita. She embodies the spirit of her character, Patsy, giving life to a slave that has been dead for hundreds of years. And it does seem that she has begun her career at the top of the game – the challenge now will be to do one better. She starts her life on the silver screen with a Best Supporting Actress win, and it could mean that the only way is down into the abyss of Hollywood oblivion. But that’s a worst-case scenario.

Lupita’s first project after 12 Years a Slave was released in February. The film Non-Stop is a big studio thriller that stars Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore. It can’t be a bad thing to go from starring alongside Brad Pitt in 12 Years a Slave to starring alongside Liam Neeson. The best thing about this new film is that it takes her as far away from the Patsy character as possible.

It immediately opens up the opportunity for the young actress to take on roles outside of the dark skinned, field slave pigeonhole. It breaks the typecasting mould right from the outset. Which is good, because there is such a thing as the ‘Oscar curse’ especially when it comes to black women in Hollywood. It could be argued that it’s better to be a nominee than a winner, especially if you’re a female of colour.

The first black woman to win the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting role was Hattie McDaniel. She won for playing a maid in 1939’s Gone with the Wind. The win tied a neat, little bow on a career that had seen her play a maid in one role after the other, and after Oscar night, she pretty much fell off the grid.

More than 70 years later, Octavia Spencer won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing a maid in 2011’s The Help. The film is a 1960s segregation story told from the perspective of a white woman who, much like Solomon Northup, casts white society as both oppressor and saviour of the disenfranchised black masses. Other than the critically acclaimed Fruitvale Station, another biopic about a black man brutalised by the excesses of white society, Ms Spencer hasn’t been cast in any big, mainstream roles since her win either.

Of the black, female nominees who’ve gone on to win Oscar gold, Halle Berry is the only black woman in all the years that the Academy has been in existence, to win for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Berry played the wife of an executed prisoner who falls in love with his (the husband’s) racist executioner. Clearly, the oppressor/saviour motif never gets old. Since then, she’s been in the headlines more for her personal life than anything else.

The other black female stars – Hattie McDaniel, Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Hudson, Monique and Octavia Spencer – were all winners in the Supporting Actress category. Whoopi Goldberg is by far the most successful of them all, quite possibly because the film that got her the win (Ghost) was perhaps a bit more mainstream than the rest. It didn’t make any attempt to box her into playing roles that only black women can play.

Aged 31, and with such a great start in the industry, Lupita has nothing but time to prove to the world just how versatile and talented she really is.