There is a lot that students can learn from historical movies. If students watch historically accurate movies such as 12 years a slave and Glory they can learn a lot about what it was like to live during that time. These movies show the circumstances and real events that took place.
In 12 years a slave we see Solomon Northup a free African American man get captured and sold into slavery. Scenarios like this actually happened in real life back then. The movie shows us how the capturing and selling of a slave may have happened, methods such as drugging free African American, capturing, and imprisoning them were used to acquire slaves if they get too close to the border. This movie also shows us how the slave owners treated their slaves such as Epps. Epps was a slave owner who became obsessed with a slave named Patsey and he would rape and abuse her. Epps was also known for being one of the most cruel slave masters and would wake the slaves up in the middle of the night just to make his slaves dance. All of these things are pictured in the movie and they also happened in real life but the movie helps us to see and better understand these things. Another real event which the movie pictures is how Epps wife was jealous of Patsey. As shown in the movie Epps wife actually was jealous of Patsy and would often abuse her according to HistoryvsHollywood.com "Nothing delighted the mistress more then seeing Patsy suffer." So all these things from the movie really did happen and seeing it helps understand it better.
Glory shows us how the first black regiment came together and how they performed in war. In Glory we see the first ever Regiment in the army composed of African American men. We see Robert Gould Shaw train these men and prepare them for war. When we analyze the movie we see that this regiment was clearly if not only created for labor. When Robert Gould Shaw can finally get his Regiment into war we see them perform extremely well and actually win their first battle. At their second battle at Fort Wagner the Regiment is sadly defeated and the whole Regiment including Shaw is killed. The most interesting part of this is that I know all of this information from watching the movie, and all of these events actually took place even the most powerful scene where Shaw refuses payment unless it was equal to those of the Regiment actually took place and inspired the Regiment to train harder.
Solomon Northup was born a free man and grew up a free man and had a wife and children. And in one day it was all gone he was a slave he didn't know if he would ever be rescued or if he would ever see his wife and children again. His circumstances were ones that I don’t think anyone would wanna be under. What if one day you woke up underfed, without any rights, and all you did was pick cotton for hours in the incredible heat and get whipped if you didn't pick enough. We can see racism in the movie when Solomon aka Platt picks 180 pound of cotton in a week then the new white servant only picks 60 pounds of cotton. Instead of whipping both of them, he only whips Solomon and just kindly tells the white man that he has to get faster and leaves him alone with no consequences. This is a scene where racism is shown the way that it really happened back in this time. The film does a great job of giving us an insight and being able to see with our own eyes what it was like for slaves back then. Studying books only doesn't give us the insight that watching movies does.
1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2024544/- Shows succes of 12 years a slave
2,3.http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/12-years-a-slave.php- Helps divide what really happened and what was just added to make the movie more interesting.
4.http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/glory-1989- Film review of Glory
Looks good, be sure to explain how you used each source, also your first pictures, hyperlink doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteAlso be sure to give each Source at the bottom a name and also have those hyperlinked as well.
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