A
few days ago a friend and I went to go see 12 Years a Slave. It’s a fantastic
movie that I strongly recommend (if you can handle scenes of torture well), and
I noticed that the two main slave masters in the film were both in bad faith
according to Sartre. Slave owners? In bad faith? Who would have guessed, am I right?
However, the reasons that the two lied to themselves, and ultimately denied the
fact that slavery is immoral, emerged from different sources, and caused the
two men to act differently as masters. This post will include minor character spoilers,
but nothing too movie-ruining.
The first
slave owner was relatively kind, he admitted that Solomon, the captured
freeman, had considerable talent and treated him amicably. One could even say that the slave owner, Mr.
Ford, respected Solomon and his acquired wisdom and skill. Things get
complicated though when Ford’s overseer taunts Solomon, resulting in physical violence
from both parties. The overseer is a man who truly sees slaves as nothing but
property, his mistreatment of the slaves boosting his ego and sense of power.
When Solomon stands up to him and his unfair treatment, the Overseer sets out
to murder him to assert his dominance. Before he can kill Solomon, Mr. Ford
enters the scene and stops the attempt, as he has a personal attachment to
Solomon. Later on in the night Mr. Ford
reveals to Solomon that the overseer will murder him if he ever gets the
chance, so to save his life he sold Solomon to a different slave owner. As a
plea for freedom, Solomon begins to tell Mr. Ford that he is not a slave, that
he is actually a freeman from New York, to which Mr. Ford meekly says “don’t
say that, I can’t hear that.” This direct refusal to acknowledge the truth,
that he has enslaved a man who should be free, is a perfect example of Sartre’s
idea of the dismissal of facticity. Mr. Ford becomes transcendence alone, and
thus is in bad faith.
The second
slave owner, Mr. Epps, played by the fantastic Michael Fassbender, is a complete
180 from Mr. Ford. He is a violent man, an alcoholic, unpredictable, and genuinely
terrifying. He validates his relentless behavior by quoting bible verses. He
reads to the slaves that it “is scripture that if a slave disobeys his master,
that the slave should be punished with hundreds of lashes”, and he is orthodox in this belief. This is a different sort of lie to oneself, one that
I think that this character truly believes. Unlike Mr. Ford, Mr.Epps does not
feel any guilt for what he is doing, quite the opposite in fact, as he believes
he is acting in accordance with God’s will. Which brings me to ask, is a person
still in bad faith when they believe that they are acting truthfully? Mr. Epps
is very obviously a terrible man, but he does not deny the facts as Mr. Ford
does, he embraces them. He embraces
slavery as a practice, but believes he is a holy man. It is his dismissal of
the fact that torture against people is wrong that makes me believe he is in
bad faith, but to Mr. Epps, the slaves are not people, they’re property. I don’t
know what Sartre would say to the complete ignorance of truth in this case,
because Mr. Epps believes in a different truth all together.
I guess my
real question is, is it fair for Sartre to classify somebody to be in bad faith
when they don’t believe they are lying to themselves? Is their ignorance their
crime, and thus they belong to be in bad faith?
P.S. Brad
Pitt’s character in this is the PERFECT
Kant, believing in the equality of all men and in his duty to help out
Solomon. In the theater I was like, wow this is SO deontological.
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