Slavery's Interior - Cinema and the Perfomative Traumas of History

While slavery seems like a difficult subject to compare love to, it is easy to find were desire fits into slavery. There is the desire of white people to feel superior to another race as well as the desire to find justification for actions so to be considered within their right to control another person’s life. The slaves’ desires were to be considered free and equal and acknowledged as human.

In the case of slavery, the white people decided to see black people the way they wanted to, as something less than human, rather than what they were, human. It’s kind of like how we see what we desire in our lovers. The white people saw black people as what they desired, not human, so that they could justify enslaving them.

As weird as it may sound, I’d like to point out the relevance of love among slaves. In the times of slavery, slaves had no rights and therefore were not permitted to be married. Since slaves didn’t pay taxes, there was no incentive to get married for tax benefits, and procreation was sometimes taken control of by slave owners. Those slaves who wanted to get married were experiencing the truest of love. in the face of the ugliness of that time, they found beauty in each other and love in their families. There were no benefits to falling in love because families often got separated and marriage was out of the question. When slaves fell in love, it wasn’t for socioeconomic reasons or social reasons, it was just love, plain and simple. And as horrible as that is, it’s beautiful at the same time, and so rare to see now.

Desire to be disgusted? We want to see these movies about slavery that depict some of the worst things that have ever happened to humans in American history. We watch these films because we want to know and understand and experience and yet we leave disgusted and annoyed at our fellow former Americans, feeling disgraced that maybe our ancestors were slaveholders. When we watch these movies, we know what to expect. We’ve already read about what has happened. But we desire to experience it as if we were there so we feel that pain. We desire that pain because it’s part of remembering, even if we weren’t alive yet. And I think that’s important. We should desire to experience that pain because without that particular desire, the memory of that period of time dies.

Lastly, the clip Dr. Reed played from “Give Us Us Free!” was very powerful. The African American actor was amazing at conveying desire. You could see it in his face. I don’t think there’s really an accurate way to describe that scene other than heartbreakingly moving.