Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

.
Question 1

Did the movie version of 12 Years A Slave win the 2014 Golden Globe for Best Picture and on Jan 16, receive 9 Academy Award Nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Leading Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Did the 1853 autobiography on which the movie is based, become famous immediately and become a center-piece of the Abolitionist Movement leading to the Civil War because it is the autobiography of a free black man who had been both a husband and father when he was kidnapped in Washington DC in 1841 and sold into slavery until he was miraculously rescued 12 years later?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Are both versions important in painting a realistic picture of slavery in America -- NOT the "Gone With The Wind" happy servants of friendly masters, BUT RATHER the treatment of slaves as work animals who could be (and frequently were) raped or tortured or killed at will and whose families were routinely ripped apart as children and spouses were sold to other slave masters on distant plantations?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 4

In the movie version, how many incidents are shown of slaves being raped by their masters? Of slaves being killed when they tried to defend fellow slaves from being raped? Of slaves being whipped until their backs were bloody pulps? Of slaves having their children ripped from them and sold to owners of distant plantations? Of slaves being subjected to sadism, both physical and mental? Of slaves being routinely whipped at the end of every day they failed to pick enough cotton?

Answer 4

Yours truly had neither the heart nor the stomach to count.

Perhaps someone else could count and report.

Question 5

In the movie version shown at the Megaplex/Sandy on 11/19/2013, Solomon Northrup's slave owner is shown coming out to the field and dragging off one of the female slaves to a nearby shack to be raped and, when her slave husband objects, he is summarily shot dead in front of her and their slave child -- but in the movie version shown at the Broadway Theatre on 1/16/2014, this scene is omitted -- why is the Broadway Theatre showing an expurgated version?

Answer 5

It is true that the 1/16/2014 version shown at the Broadway theatre omits this scene.

Who knows why it was omitted?

But a shrewd guess would start with the fact that the scene and, indeed, all three of the plantations on which Solomon Northrup was enslaved, were located in the State of Louisiana.

And then take into account the fact that the rebellious black man described in Q&A-6 and Q&A-7 was killed on board the vessel that was transporting Solomon and his fellow slaves to Louisiana as he was trying to prevent one of the female slaves from being raped by a member of the crew.

Together with the fact that this event on board the vessel is one of the movie’s few departures from the book.

So with minor differences (a fellow slave being killed in the movie version rather than a slave husband, a knife being used in the movie version rather than a pistol, and no child of the victim witnessing the rape of the mother and summary execution of the father), the expurgated version of the movie has transplanted the event from Louisiana to the high seas.

The shrewd guess why???

The lead producer was Brad Pitt.

Following Hurricane Katrina, he founded and has been the moving force behind the “Make It Right Foundation” whose mission = “To be a catalyst for the redevelopment of the Lower 9th Ward, by building a neighborhood with safe and healthy homes inspired by Cradle to Cradle thinking with an emphasis on a high quality of design, while preserving the spirit of the community's culture.”

Accordingly, it is conceivable that the rape/murder scene which occurred in Louisiana per the book, was transplanted to the high seas in the expurgated movie version for some reason having to do with Brad Pitt’s foundation and his relationship to people in Louisiana.

Question 6

Does the movie version open with one of the other free black men kidnapped in Washington DC and then thrown together with Solomon Northrup, proposing a violent rebellion?

Answer 6

Yes.

Question 7

Was the rebellious victim any more successful than John Brown or Spartacus?

Answer 7

*****
John Brown was a white abolitionist who believed that an armed revolution was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in America. In 1859, he led an armed insurrection comprising primarily slaves at Harpers Ferry in what was then Virginia (it was located in the portion of Virginia that broke away at the beginning of the Civil War to become West Virginia and that was admitted as a state into the Union on 6/20/1863 in the middle of the Civil War).

John Brown’s insurrection was put down and he was hanged after a trial for treason. However, there was a considerable period of elapsed time between the insurrection and the hanging, during which his idealism and actions captured the imagination of the North.

Most historians agree that John Brown’s Harpers Ferry insurrection led, a year later, to the outset of the Civil War.

*****
Spartacus, of course, was the famous Roman slave who was forced to perform as a gladiator and who led a rebellion of gladiators that was joined by many Roman slaves from a wide area before being brutally put down by the Roman army with all survivors crucified.

It was famous as an inspiration for slaves everywhere during all ages long before being made into a famous movie in 1960 starring Kirk Douglas.

*****
Solomon Northrup’s rebellious colleague (1) was fictitious since he didn’t exist in the autobiography, and (2) even if he had been real, would have died in obscurity after being knifed to death within seconds of having started a one-person rebellion to prevent a rape.

However, just like John Brown and Spartacus became inspirations, the 12-Years-A-Slave rebel could become an inspiration courtesy of Brad Pitt’s wonderful movie.

Question 8

Does Brad Pitt play a pivotal role (though not the leading role) in the movie, in addition to being listed as the lead producer?

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

Does Brad Pitt deliver a sermon to Solomon Northrup's third slave owner about the religious hypocrisy of the slave owner?

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 10

Were all of the slave owners (including their spouses) portrayed as Christian hypocrites?

Answer 10

Yes.

Question 11

Is the utter agony of Solomon Northrup and his fellow slaves shown when they sing "Roll, Jordan, Roll" as they bury one of their fellow slaves who had died suddenly in the hot sun as they were picking cotton?

Answer 11

Yes.

Question 12

Why do you think that American slaves remained Christian rather than, like a significant percentage of modern-day African Americans such as Muhammad Ali, converting to Islam?

Answer 12

Probably because slaves were denied an education and denied access to any news of anything outside their incredibly-small world.

A more provocative question would be why, following the Civil War, most of the freed slaves and their descendants remained Christian rather than converting to Islam.

Especially since they had suffered (and continue to this day to suffer) so much at the hands of Christian hypocrites.

Question 13

Do polls routinely show that virtually all Americans believe in God but a majority now say they do not attend religious services because of the hypocrisy of those who do attend?

Answer 13

Yes.

Question 14

Are virtually all of the world's religions, including Christianity, based on The Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you)?

Answer 14

Yes.

Question 15

Is the hypocrisy that is reported in the polls a perception that religious practitioners fail/refuse to follow The Golden Rule?

Answer 15

Yes.

Question 16

Is this the reason why Pope Francis recently announced that "who am I" to judge homosexuals (while turning a blind eye to the issues of birth control and abortion vis-à-vis which Roman Catholic Doctrine permits him no leeway) -- and emphasizing instead on 11/24/2013 in a 224-page "Exhortation" (which is generally credited with clinching his being selected Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" a few weeks later) focusing on The Golden Rule and how that means, inter alia, economic equality despite the ensuing howls of protest from wealthy Catholics?

Answer 16

So it would appear.

Question 17

Wouldn't it have been nice in the 12 Years A Slave scene in which Brad Pitt is delivering his sermon to the slave owner about his Christian Hypocrisy if Pope Francis could have arrived in a time capsule just in the nick of time to support Brad Pitt?

Answer 17

Absolutely!!!

Though one wonders whether the slave owners were so morally bankrupt that even Christ would not have been able to convince them of their hypocrisy!!!

Question 18

Looking through the time telescope the other way (if that is not mixing metaphors too badly), isn’t Brad Pitt obviously relishing on screen the delivery of his sermon to Simon Northrup’s third slave owner so much that one is forced to conclude that the only reason why he did the movie version of 12 Years is that he really wanted the opportunity to deliver that sermon (Christian hypocrisy) TO MODERN-DAY AMERICA???

Answer 18

So it would appear.

Question 19

And that instead of “12 Years A Slave,” Brad Pitt’s movie version would more appropriately have been entitled: “Brad Pitt’s Sermon To Modern-Day America On Christian Hypocrisy Cleverly Disguised As A Sermon To Ante-Bellum American Slave Owners On Their Christian Hypocrisy”???

Answer 19

So it would appear.

Question 20

And that Brad Pitt and Pope Francis are really kindred spirits???

Answer 20

So it would appear.

Question 21

And that, forget about Oscars, Pope Francis should be succeeded as Time Magazine’s 2013 Person of the Year for his humanity in trying to bring The World to its senses, by Time Magazine’s selecting Brad Pitt next December as its 2014 Person of the Year for his valiant attempt to bring America to its senses???

Answer 21

Absolutely!!!