If you believe press reports, Twelve Years a Slave is undeniably one of the greatest — perhaps the greatest — film of 2013. Not due to any skill in filmmaking, which remains to be seen, or audience response — the film was only released last weekend. But solely because Slave (directed by Steve McQueen, not the dead one with the motorcycle, I’m pretty sure), is this year’s PC film, one made for the single purpose of preaching a very contemporary and meticulously constructed racial message.
In this it joins a number of other recent pictures such as The Help and The Butler, and even, in a twisted way, Django. These films are all examples of a generally unrecognized subgenre of the propaganda film. They are racial films designed to raise an admonishing finger toward the white audience regarding its “legacy” as slaveholders while bolstering the blacks in their conviction of victimhood.
This type of film started with the “Roots” miniseries in 1977 and continued with The Color Purple (1985), Glory (989), and Amistad (1997). As can be seen from that list, such films generally appeared once or twice a decade. Now we have three in a little over a year’s time. (Not counting Django, which is a demented reversal of the basic formula.)
These films are generally of the “historical” genre, set in either the slavery period or the segregation era that followed. The storylines are cursory, and manipulated for political impact throughout. Characterization is on a cartoon level, with whites either evil racists or weak, vacillating types who simply go along. Blacks are uniformly noble and long-suffering. Abolitionists, where they appear, as in Amistad, are creepy religious types with their own agenda. Racial relations are the sole topic of interest, overcoming even the events of the Civil War, and leaving the impression that race, and race alone, is the crucial hinge of American history, one that swings only one way. The United States is a façade, its promise of freedom a lie, its idealism an exercise in hypocrisy. The only emotional responses allowed in this universe are outrage from blacks and guilt from whites. In a very real sense, they are the reverse image of D.W. Griffith’s racist epic Birth of a Nation, which depicted blacks as vicious animals and the Klan as knights restoring an unsettled world. (It also acted as an inspiration to Woodrow Wilson in his policy toward blacks.)