In The Amistad I noticed there are two categories of music played out, American Patrotic and “traditional” African. The Amistad is problematic in the way that it reflects the exoticism and primitiveness of African culture through the music. After finding out that Cinque is still on trial the drumming begins. He stands in front of the fire, exposing his body to the Americans. This whole scene is mythical and magical, but also violent. The drumming is loud and primal. In contrast, scenes that portray characters of great American pride are backlit with patriotic music, symbolizing class, and truthfulness (see youtube video). At the end when the slaves are set free the music in the room symbolizes American pride. It pushes forward the objective view that it was an American win for the slaves, because of the heroic music in the background. It is then not the slaves win but displace the win onto the Americans, it also displaces blame of slavery onto the Spanish.
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I noticed this too and was going to write a post about it. The music was really good (of course – it’s John Williams) and I thought it added a lot to the film, but it seemed almost painfully obvious that the music was divided into the “Africa” music and the “American patriotic” music as you described. The Africa music definitely enhanced the idea so commonly expressed in films (take Tomb Raider II for example) that Africa serves as this primitive, natural, rough, mysterious and intriguing place. In this movie, I’m not sure it was a bad thing (if it was more like Tomb Raider, where all we saw was a bunch of wild animals, that may have been a different story). I think that the music was varied and expressive enough that it was a good choice for the film, but it did stand out… though maybe only because we were paying specific attention to it for the class.
This scene really jumped out at me as well. Cinque, James Covey, and Joadson are all seated in a row and at a pivotal moment, when John Quincy Adams announces that, “Who we are is who we were,” (at 2:17:20) the camera focuses on the three men. Still playing the patriotic music, it looked like a gradient of freedom starting from Cinque ending with Joadson. This, to me, looked like the director’s attempt at showing American history as a progress narrative. We once owned slaves, but look at us now with our black President!
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