The Historical Trauma of Slavery in the Film Version of...

The Historical Trauma of Slavery in the Film Version of Toni Morrisons Beloved The film Beloved was released in 1998 to mixed reviews. The movie, based on Toni Morrisons novel, tells a ghost story from an African American perspective. It takes place only a few years after the abolishment of slavery, with the traumatic scars still fresh and unable to be healed. In the film the protagonist, Sethe, is revisited by the ghost of the daughter she murdered eighteen years earlier. I shall argue that her daughter, Beloved, is the embodiment of the trauma of the African American experience of slavery. In order to support this claim, I will explain what constitutes historical trauma in film, how historical trauma is specifically represented†¦show more content†¦All of the critics were writing for the public sphere, which is characterized by Inch and Warnick as containing arguments that are intended for public or general audiences (52). In this case, the argument for the public sphere is directed toward movie-going audiences. The argument field is the evaluation o f films during the 1990s, and could more specifically include historical films created in the 1990s. The argument field is an important point to my argument because historical film contains many debatable points, all of which will be discussed after the reviews are summarized. The critics felt that the movie did not make a smooth enough transition from the novel, and felt that the overall content was too complicated. Richard Blake from America argued, the complexity of the novel becomes simply confusion in the film (1). Blake was also critical of the director, Jonathan Demme, and said, [h]is use of sepia-tinted film stock and oblique camera angles calls attention to itself and distracts from the characters (2). The article Beloved Its Not, from the Economist also responded negatively to the movie. The author states that [t]he main problem is the film itself: most audiences are not eager to endure nearly three hours of a cerebral film with an original storyline featuring supernatural themes, murder, rape and slavery (2). John Simon of the National Review also dislikes the complications of