Review: 'Amistad' - facts & fiction
By Monica Moorehead
The movie "Amistad" is both a moving epic and
socially stimulating.
Is it a typical Hollywood film? Of course, it is politically
and historically flawed, and it gushes with bourgeois morality.
But how many films tackle the issue of racism? Very few.
This alone makes a movie like "Amistad" well worth
seeing.
The movie focuses on a little-known armed insurrection
carried out by 53 heroic Africans against their slave masters
on July 1, 1839. The name of the slave ship was La Amistad,
which means friendship.
The leader of the insurrection was Singbe Pieh of the Mendi
nation located in Sierra Leone, once a colony of Britian.
Singbe is better known by his slave name: Joseph Cinque.
Djimon Hounsou-a 33-year-old actor/model who is originally
from Benin, a former French colony-plays Singbe. Seeing
Hounsou's portrayal of Singbe is alone worth the price of
admission. He brings a mix of proud dignity, righteous
determination and incredible charisma to the character.
Hounsou has already been nominated for a Golden Globe award
for best actor by the foreign press.
Acclaim and controversy
The movie has been a subject of critical acclaim and
controversy.
Right wingers who say slavery is history and no one needs to
be reminded about it have attacked the movie. Such racist views
only confirm why more movies exposing slavery and showing Black
history are needed.
A more consequential controversy is a lawsuit charging
literary theft by the movie's script writers. Barbara
Chase-Riboud, an African American author, filed a $10 million
lawsuit against director Steven Spielberg and his studio,
Dreamworks, for allegedly stealing passages from "Echo of
Lions," her book about the Amistad rebellion.
In addition, those who believe that a film about the
struggle against slavery-a very important chapter in the Black
struggle-should have a Black director have challenged the
movie. Director Spielberg is white.
The executive producer of "Amistad" is Debbie Allen-a
well-known African American dancer, choreographer, actor and
director. She had asked Spielberg to direct the movie.
But Black film director Spike Lee has questioned whether a
white director could truly bring a Black perspective to a story
like "Amistad." Even a brilliant director like Spielberg cannot
know what it is like to be Black growing up in a racist
society.
If a Black director had made "Amistad," most likely the
story would have been told more from Singbe's viewpoint and the
white lawyers would have been portrayed as more cynical.
The movie failed to stress who Singbe Pieh was. Hollywood
has a long history of racist, degrading depictions of African
peoples. A mass audience, especially in the United States,
should learn much more about Singbe.
Who Singbe Pieh was
Singbe was born in 1813 in a highly advanced and
well-organized village dominated by farmers but also including
skilled artisans. Rice was the main food staple.
When he was captured, millions of African peoples had
already been kidnapped and sold into slavery, mainly by Spain
and, in the earlier centuries, Portugal.
In January 1839 Singbe was kidnapped and sold to Pedro
Blanco, a Spanish slave trader at a notorious slave fortress
called Lomboko off the coast of West Africa. He reportedly
spent two months at Lomboko before being sent to Cuba to work
on the sugar plantations.
During this period, England and the United States had
outlawed slave trading on the high seas. But owning slaves was
still legal in the United States and certain parts of the
Caribbean. So even though the slave trade was supposedly
illegal, it continued.
Singbe, like some 20 million to 30 million of his sisters
and brothers, suffered unspeakable atrocities during the
notorious Middle Passage. The movie painfully and realistically
shows this for a few brief moments.
During this horrific, brutal trip to the Americas, hundreds
of African people would be forced into dungeons. Chained
together, they were treated worse than animals, packed tightly
like sardines, starved and beaten into submission.
Sailors raped the women. Newborn babies were thrown
overboard.
Historians have estimated that anywhere from one-third to
one-half of the Africans perished during the Middle Passage, a
great number by suicide. Even though Singbe was severely beaten
for not standing at attention for inspection, he was determined
to survive and not end up as a slave.
Once Singbe arrived in Havana, he and the other 52 Africans
were bought for $450 apiece. They were then to be transported
on La Amistad to the Cuban city of Puerto Principe.
It was on this journey that the Africans rebelled, took over
the ship and killed the captain. They ordered the ship's crew
to sail back to Africa. But the vessel took a meandering course
and ended up being seized by the U.S. Navy.
The Africans were then put on trial for the death of the
captain.
The movie spends most of its time on the trial against the
captured Africans. The legal argument centered on whether the
Africans were born as slaves or were born free.
The question of the morality of slavery is raised
indirectly. But the slave question inside the United States is
obscured.
Free labor vs. slave labor
In the movie, a great deal of attention is paid to John
Quincy Adams, superbly played by Anthony Hopkins. Adams, who
was a former president, was the lawyer for Singbe and the other
Africans before the Supreme Court in February 1841.
In the movie, Adams is portrayed as a compassionate, decent
guy. But Adams came from a rich family. His father was John
Adams, the second president of the United States and a member
of the Federalist Party, which was dominated by the emerging
Northern capitalists. Neither father nor son owned slaves, but
they did not lift a finger to help abolish slavery, even
legally. Adams made it clear that his legal defense was not
meant to challenge the Constitution, which made slavery
legal.
The movie doesn't really explain the motivation of Adams-a
ruling-class figure who had never before actively opposed
slavery.
The movie could have shown that at the heart of the Amistad
trial was the mounting conflict between two social
systems-slavery and free labor.
The slave system in the South-once a foundation for economic
expansion in the United States-was holding back the development
of capitalist industry. The Southern plantation aristocracy
ruled over an agricultural empire that was unable to develop
industry. The Northern capitalists were prospering and
expanding.
The Civil War broke out 20 years after the Amistad events
because the two systems could no longer live peacefully side by
side.
John Quincy Adams supported the expansion of capital into
the West through the Louisiana Purchase at the expense of the
Native peoples. But if slavery expanded into the West, it would
undermine wage labor and hold back the expansion of industry
and trade there.
At the time of the Amistad trial, over half the Supreme
Court was Southern slave owners. The case reached the Supreme
Court after President Martin Van Buren threw out a lower court
verdict that the mutineers had been illegally kidnapped from
Africa and therefore should be set free. Van Buren cherished
his relationship with the slaveholders in Congress and did not
want to risk losing the 1840 election, which he did anyway.
While the movie presents a positive picture of the Supreme
Court because of its decision to free the mutineers, it leaves
a false impression of the court. The ruling was on a narrow
question of international law and did not in any way challenge
slavery in the United States.
In fact, this same Supreme Court was responsible for
legitimizing slavery with the infamous Dred Scott decision in
1857-which stated that African slaves were "three-fifths human"
and therefore had no rights that white men had to respect. At
the time, only white men had rights under the Constitution.
Role of the abolitionist movement
Another drawback of the movie is the way it depicts the
abolitionist movement. The abolitionist movement is shown as
passive. In reality, the abolitionist movement took up the
cause of the Amistad defendants and raised money for their
defense.
When the Supreme Court did not offer free passage for the
Africans back to their homeland, abolitionists led by Lewis
Tappan organized meetings to raise money. People paid to hear
Singbe speak in his native language and to see the Africans
perform native dances.
Singbe spoke to a crowd of thousands in New York about his
fight against slavery. It took seven months to raise enough
money for all the Africans to return home.
The movie "Amistad," even with its political limitations,
remains a progressive, anti-racist movie. That is probably why
it didn't make the top-10 list of any well-known movie critics
this year. The movie has hardly received the kind of media
attention that Spielberg blockbuster movies are accustomed to
receiving.
On the other hand, probably some people who have gone to see
the movie because Spielberg was the director would not have
otherwise seen a film that supports an armed insurrection
against slavery. The audiences have tended to be
multinational.
Young Black students have been organizing to see the film
because they are interested in their African heritage. This is
a country still dominated by whites, so it is very important to
be able to see a movie that attempts to show a part of history
otherwise unknown to them.
The movie also offers the progressive movement the
opportunity to reach out to the audience with literature
promoting the Jericho '98 action to free political prisoners,
the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and other anti-racist
struggles.
In fact, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Singbe have a lot in common.
Both are political prisoners held captive by the same racist,
oppressive system.
Abu-Jamal recently wrote an illuminating piece entitled "La
Amistad and the American Law." He concludes: "That 'Cinque'
(Singbe Pieh) and his fellow captives were finally freed from
their American captivity by a court composed primarily of slave
owners was a remarkable, and unprecedented, achievement. We are
rightly and justly inspired by their passionate struggle for
freedom from Spanish and U.S. shackles, and their victory. For
Africans born in the U.S., however, it brought them no closer
to freedom.
"Unlike the captives of the Amistad, international law did
not apply to their wretched condition, and for them, as well as
those shackled Black millions in [pre-revolutionary] Cuba,
there was little to celebrate with this decision."
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page