Mid-way through 12 Years A Slave, I started to ask myself, “Who exactly is this film about?” Was it about Solomon Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), later renamed Platt, the talented violinist and free black man, kidnapped and sold into slavery? Or was it really about Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), the jet black enslaved cotton picker and bed warmer of the Epps plantation, who had never tasted freedom in her life and probably never did long after Northup stopped being a slave?
If you ask me, it’s Patsey.
[This post contains spoilers, so be advised]
Throughout the film (by way of Northup’s own memoir), we learn that Patsey is a favorite of Massa Edward Epps (Michael Fassbender) and a thorn in the side of Mary (Sarah Paulson), the mistress of the house. In one scene she is receiving special accolades from massa himself for once again, out-picking all the other field hands, including the men, by picking almost double the quantities of barrels of cotton. A few scenes later, we see Patsey dancing center in a circle of other enslaved black men and women, who all have been roused from slumber in the middle of the night to dance a jig, play music and entertain their owner. Massa Epps pays special attention to her, which causes Mistress Mary to fly into a jealous rage and bash a defenseless Patsey in the face with a cognac goblet, barely missing her right eye. Then the Massa and Mistress argue over her body – literally and figuratively speaking – as she lay howling on the floor in pain and agony.
The scene brought a slight chuckle from a small handful in the mostly black audience at the screening I attended here in Philly. Perhaps the chuckle, which seemed out of context, was out of discomfort at what was, thus far, a truly heavy-handed film. However, the light-heartedness, which some were taking from what they were seeing, became even more ill-fitting when in the next scene, as Massa Epps chases Northup around the plantation for daring to hold Patsey’s secret from him, someone in the row behind me, chuckled and then opined loud enough for others around her to hear, “Patsey musta put it on Massa…”
Even though what we were watching on screen is probably a very accurate depiction of what many of our people experienced through the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, you can sort of understand the cavalier nature in the way some of the descendants relate. First one, some of us feel as if we are so far removed from the atrocities of being treated like actual property that the images on the screen are just as foreign as if this was a film about life on another planet. And secondly, and probably most importantly, we really haven’t done a good job as a country, nor a community, in telling the truth – and the entire truth – about the founding of this great nation of ours. And it might be with intent as it seems that most folks want to forget about slavery all together. Even Morgan Freeman said recently in an interview with The Daily Beast, about why he’s not going to see 12 Years… ,“I don’t want my anger quotient exacerbated, you know? Things are bad enough as they are. I don’t want to keep punching myself in the face with it.” And this is coming from a guy who played a man whose sole character’s motivation was to drive around and be a hired companion to some ole’ racist lady named Miss Daisy.
However, our continued desire to forget the past is also why we have this black Tea Partier equating food stamps to the scraps from the master’s table. Or why renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson thinks that giving people public healthcare is akin to slavery. And it is also the reason why we have so many of our own folks believing that the enslavement of black women was of less importance or severity as what happened to black men. That black women had options including using their “sexual prowess,” aka vag*nas to somehow escape the worst of it. This collective twisted consciousness of black women and enslavement can be seen within the thinking of social commentaries done by the likes of Touré, who once remarked about the “brilliance” of enslaved black women, who “were sharp enough to trade that good-good for status or liberation.” It can also be seen through the viewing of the Russell Simmons-backed Harriet Tubman sex tape, which turned rape into some whimsical caper, in which Tubman too used her body for extra perks, like starting the Underground Railroad. And it can also been seen through the often divisive screed of Tariq Nasheed, film producer and so-called historian behind the popular documentary series Hidden Colors, who troll the Internets with his declaration of death to the “negro bed wench.” According to Nasheed, who has led several discussions on the term, including this most recent Ustream-cast entitled Tariq Nasheed Challenges the Bed Wench Movement, a modern-day Negro Bed Wench models herself after her predecessors during slavery, who he alleges volunteered to sleep with Massa in exchange for special perks and favor. He also suggests that it was the Negro Bed Wench, who actually liked slavery (because of all the free stuff she got) and snitched on the other slaves, who were trying to escape to freedom.
These Sally Hemings/Thomas Jefferson romance fantasies, which folks like to conjure up about black enslaved women offer a distorted and revisionist version to the harsh realities of what it meant to be chattel. There was no free will in slavery. An enslaved black man or woman had no more control over their lives than livestock having a say in if and when it will become hamburger meat. And although some were fortunate enough to figure out a route to freedom, the only choice most ancestors had was life or death. Everything else was out of your control, including what could or could not happen to your body. And as noted by writer Shafiqah Hudson in this essay about the use of the term to berate both the Olivia Pope character on Scandal and the real life female viewers who enjoy the show: “Controlling Black women’s behavior through name-calling and shaming is nothing new. Invoking something as somber and tragic as slavery to do it, while also nothing new, is shameful.”
As seen in 12 Years, there was little glory and salvation to be obtained in being “bed wench” to massa. There was certainly no glory to be had for the black enslaved “wench,” and her two children – one light skinned and the other her own dark brown complexion, who found themselves being sold away right with a stolen Platt. She too had kept the affections of a massa, who occasionally showered her, and their shared child, with extra trinkets more than he would the other enslaved men and women. But after drawing the ire of her master’s other daughter, she would have to bare the emotional toll of not only being sold away but having her children ripped from her arms as Platt (Northup) fiddled a song to assuage the troublesome ears of the potential buyers. Being a bed wench offered escape from hard labor on the field for Mistress Shaw, an enslaved black woman, who was also Patsey’s friend at the neighboring plantation. However, it didn’t stop Shaw – through gritted teeth and a forced smile – from wishing death upon her master, despite her favor with him as his “common-law-wife.”
And being bed mistress to massa certainly was of no benefit to Patsey, who stood powerlessly in the middle of a tug-of-war involving an obsessive husband and his spiteful wife, who often took her anger at her abusive husband out on the slave. Patsey’s status as a bed wench gave her no advantage in the power to determine whether or not she wanted to bed the always liquored up Massa Epps, who occasionally slapped her around during his penetration. There was no hi-fives for “putting it on massa” from Mistress Mary, who instead took pleasure in repeatedly scaring her face – first by a goblet, then by fingernail to the cheek and finally a gauge to eyeball. And her status as the apple of massa’s eye could not save her from being tied to a post and whipped bareback “down to the white meat,” for her malfeasance of leaving the plantation to borrow a bar of soap from Mistress Shaw – soap, which had been denied to her (and granted to the other slaves) by Mistress Mary, who wanted to keep her stinky and funky as a deterrent for her rapist husband. There was no benefit in being the bed wench because massa was under zero obligation to honor or respect any promise, pledge or gift for her “services.” In fact, all of the enslaved “negro bed wenches,” like other slaves, had no rights, which a white man had to respect. The only thing she could do was grin and bear it, even if at one point she would ask Northup to help her take her own life.
Steve McQueen and John Ridley (also esteemed black historian Henry Louis Gates, who consulted on the film) did an excellent job giving some much needed depth to not just Patsey as a character, but the countless untold, overlooked and revised stories of black women enslaved, who had to bear the brunt of not just massa but his mistress as well. Through the harsh telling and realistic depictions on-screen, we are faced with our lightbulb moment that there were no prostitutes on the plantation–just slaves. It certainly happened to the handful of snickering and snarky movie watchers, who faded to silence as Patsey’s story progressed.
Patsey is going to haunt you for a while – not because she was a well-drawn character but because she was inspired from a real person, possibly one of your ancestors, who suffered and endured greatly – in all respects – through the unwilling servitude of the building of this country. And I also hope that her spirit haunts those, who would have us believe that slavery was the equivalent of walking off a job you hate or sleeping with the boss to get a promotion. If it was up to the real life Patsey, she probably would not have wanted to be a “bed wench” to Massa Epps or any other massa. But it wasn’t up to her, was it?
