What ‘12 Years a Slave’ teaches us

I just finished watching the movie 12 Years a Slave. It was very uncomfortable for me from the onset. I was tempted to walk out. I have an abhorrence of cruelty. It was hard for me that it went on throughout the whole movie. It was a well-made movie, which means the cruelty was graphic. The welts on the slaves’ backs —gulp! It was hard for me to stomach.

 It’s shocking how people can be so cruel. Connected to the cruelty is cold-heartedness — an inability to feel for the other. Sometimes there’s vengeance in one’s heart. Behind the scenes of cruelty there is evilness pushing it all. Holding onto and even encouraging the cruelty. It’s ugly.

 What’s even more disturbing is when the one in control is cruel. To see what that does to everyone is horrifying. For example, the scene where the kidnapped freeman Solomon Northup is hung by the neck for hours on end... around him, children continue playing, women do their chores. They dare not take him down from the noose, otherwise they too will be beaten. So they deaden themselves. For how else can one witness pain and not be affected unless something inside has become dead?

Or when the white master Epps forces Solomon to whip another slave — it is not only physical cruelty, it’s cruelty to the soul.

 Uncomfortable as it may have made me feel, in retrospect the showing in full honesty of the cruelty of those times ensures that it will not happen again.

 I feel a similar ugliness when I consider activities that destroy the environment, affecting farmers and fishermen — especially when it is done just for profit. It is coldhearted and material. They don’t care what happens or who is put at risk as long as the money is made.

 I went online and looked at the effect of the abolition of slavery. The cruelty did not disappear; it just looked for other venues of expression. It is critical that the prevailing norm says this kind of behavior is unacceptable. It was interesting to read that women who were offered paying jobs preferred to stay at home and be with their children because this was something they could not do as slaves. They preferred to stay home and take care of their men.

I looked at the film and possibly one of the motives behind it and the spiritual path. From my experience, to be able to get rid of one’s negative qualities, one must be able to see it first — in its entirety. That’s the first step. For example I was having a session with a friend, and an awareness of his fears emerged. How this was there since childhood. How these fears continued to color the way he saw and reacted to the world. This clearly was the first step towards liberation from these influences.

That’s why, uncomfortable as it may be, this whole Janet Napoles thing — the scale and breadth of it — is necessary to rid our society of this scourge. In personal and collective life, seeing things clearly, in depth, is an effective way of getting rid of them.

As with all movies that depict cruelty, I have a hard time watching. I have found that one way to “survive” the movie is by going to a place in me that is “distant” from it — so I actually view the movie from a distance. I am not so “inside” as I tend to be when I watch them. Which is why feel-good movies are more my cup of tea. So in life, sometimes distancing from events is necessary. A bird’s eye view wherein one is not so sucked into the reactions of the moment, and can move forward.

Having said that, I emerged from the cinema in a contemplative mood. My son, Roberto, repeatedly said, “Mom! It’s a movie about slavery. What do you expect? You can’t sugarcoat it — the essence is to show it for what it was.” This, then, is what life is all about. Evil won’t go away. We need to see it in all its guises for what it is. See the weaknesses within ourselves for what they are. And then align with the highest forces of truth and good. Doing that will make us strong. Then evil and negativity will have had a purpose, a value: something to show us the light.

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 I can be reached at regina _lopez@abs-cbn.com.