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We Need ‘Slave Movies’ — Just Not the Ones We’re Getting
In light of ‘Antebellum,’ it’s time to rethink the slave film genre
At the announcement of any new “slave movie,” the online groans from Black audiences are nearly audible. While most people would be hard-pressed to name more than 10 “slave movies” in the past 50 years, “I’m tired of ‘slave movies’” is a frequent social media refrain — for good reason.
In the “slave movie” genre, enslaved Africans in America are central to the plot, or at least the backdrop of the story, and often face extreme violence. There’s often copious use of “n****r” and other racist slurs, as well as the prominence of a White savior for White liberals in the audience to project their fantasies on to how they would’ve behaved “back then.” The purpose is to inform audiences about the horrors of chattel slavery while also, weirdly, occupying that entertainment space. It’s a complicated dichotomy. It’s exhausting and, for many Black audience members, traumatic.
But the problem with “slave movies” is not that stories of enslaved Africans are being told on-screen. Often, it’s about which stories are being told, who is telling them, how they’re telling them, and why.
The films in the genre that Hollywood studio heads and financiers green-light and champion are…
