StaggShire

Amistad and Slavery

I really really enjoyed watching this edited movie. I’m pretty good at being a sympathetic and empathetic person, but this movie really helped me see aspects of slavery I’d never thought of before. For example, at the beginning of the movie there is this shot of a heaving, sweating, heavily breathing something. Because it is so dark and because that something is so dark, it takes a minute or two and a slight change in camera angle to tell that it is actually a person, Joseph Cinque to be precise. This helped me understand the beastlike, wolf caught in a trap attitude that a lot of blacks had to reach in order to survive. I know a lot of white people back then said the blacks were “animals”. Throughout different times in the movie I could see that animalistic behavior. On one hand, the “animalistic” behavior such as keeping the young boy’s body was just unfamiliar and cultural. On the other hand, other behaviors that were also shown in the movie were indeed animalistic, but only because through the white cruelty and circumstances, they had to become in some ways something less than human, something capable of surviving what no human being (or animal ) should have to go through. I know that if I had that happen to me, I would really have to let go of the more human part of me to let go of the pain and to survive. In a strong fashion, acting animalistic is an important reminder of the humanity of the slaves, and of the inhumanity of their circumstances and captors.

Also, the scene where Joseph Cinque is with his family and then gets captured without them knowing just went straight to my heart. The fact that Africans captured and slaves in America were and could be wrenched away from their families at any moment has always been a very somber reality for me. However, now that I am married, I just kept picturing my dear husband and best friend Kevin being dragged away into the underbrush, or I standing at the head of the ship back to Africa, like Joseph Cinque, not knowing what lay ahead, not knowing that my family was not going to be there. This gripping realization and the vivid feelings I had made my appreciation and testimony of the plan of salvation grow so much stronger. I am so grateful that I can be with my family again after I die, and it makes me so happy that Joseph Cinque is with his family again, right now as I write this and you read this.
I also realized, seeing the scars that were still on Joseph Cinque’s skin once the case was won for good and the handcuffs removed, that there was so much emotional baggage that the slaves and the Africans on the Amistad had to deal with. For example, the Mende who interpreted- even though he was a free black, even though he could read and write- what was he losing by being here in the United States and not in Africa? What of his culture and his heritage went slipping away, lost for his whole life? I know there was a least one point in the movie where it seemed from the look on his face while watching the Africans that he felt a keen sense of loss and longing.

Thank you, Dr. Holzapfel, for the opportunity to so poignantly expand my already eager understanding and deep love and respect for African cultures and peoples.