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Spoiler Alert, tw: rape, torture

I just watched Get Out last night and it was incredible to say the least. And definitely one of my favorite films that I’ve seen recently. 

What I found most interesting, though, was that aspects of the film were so much more fact than fiction. And many parts had a sadly very real basis in black history.

There is historical precedent which shows that aspects of what happened to the black people in the film has also occurred in real life.

The film is a comedic psychological thriller in which black people are kidnapped, brainwashed into losing themselves and their blackness, and made into body puppets for white masters. As you watch as a black person, you can just sit there in shock and awe at just how evil it all is. 

But the film is not just a work of fiction. There is also historical precedent showing that many aspects of what happened to the black people in the film has also occurred in real life. And as I watched the movie, I immediately thought of slavery and specifically the “Seasoning” that slaves were put through to prepare them to be “proper” slaves on plantations.

The History of “Seasoning” Slaves

A slave’s journey did not end with the Middle Passage. “Seasoning” was then used to psychologically destroy them and make them submissive, “pliant” slaves

If you survived the slave forts known as “factories” on the African coast where hundreds of thousands died or the horrors of rape, beatings, starvation, sickness, humiliation, murder and more on the Middle Passage which killed millions more, you then were trafficked- bruised, sick, beaten and psychologically traumatized for sale to white plantation owners in the “New World.” But your journey of abuse and trauma was just beginning.

For slaves shipped to the Caribbean or South America (Over 90% of all slaves), you were then put through a process known as “Seasoning” which was intended to psychologically destroy you through torture and back-breaking physical labor in order to prepare you to be a “good” submissive, pliant slave.  

(One example of an instrument of torture used on African slaves. Image credit: Atlanta Black Star)

“Seasoning” involved torturing and breaking the person completely so that they would submit totally to your will and no longer resist or fight back. This is comparable to the practice of “breaking horses” so they will follow your commands and orders without question (x). 

The “Seasoning” period typically lasted 3 years and also occurred in large torture and forced labor camps, the most notorious ones being in Jamaica. And some reports document ~25% of new slaves dying during the 3 year “seasoning” period (x).

You were tortured, brutalized, progressively stripped of your African name and identity and anything that did not serve your purpose as a beast of burden for your white master. You were tortured for years to make you into (what they saw as) an “empty vessel” that they could pour themselves into and mold as they pleased.

Sound familiar?

Get Out embodied quite literally for me this very real history of “seasoning” slaves in action. Psychological torture and physical brutalization when you do not comply, and striving to completely break you as a black person and turn you into a submissive, pliant vessel for the wishes and orders of your white master. 

Found from various places online:

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Angela Y. Davis - Are Prisons Obsolete?

Angela Y. Davis - Race, Women, and Class

The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (link updated 1/14)

Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (link updated 1/14) 

The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America- Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki (link updated 1/14) 

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism - bell hooks (link updated 1/14) 

Feminism is for Everybody - bell hooks (link updated 1/14) 

Faces at the Bottom of the Well - Derrick Bell

I am Your Sister - Audre Lorde (link updated 1/14)

Black Feminist Thought-Patricia Hill Collins (updated 1/14) 

Gender Trouble - Judith Butler

Four books by Frantz Fanon

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Medical Apartheid - Harriet Washington

Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory  - edited by Michael Warner

Colonialism/Postcolonialism - Ania Loomba (updated 1/14)

Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault

The Gloria Anzaldua Reader

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher

This Bridge Called by Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

What is Cultural Studies? - John Storey (updated 1/14)

Cultural Theory and Popular Culture - John Storey (updated 1/14)

The Disability Studies Reader (updated 1/14)

Michel Foucault - Interviews and Other Writings

Michel Foucault - The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3

Michel Foucault - The Archeology of Knowledge

  This blog also has a lot more.