The past two years have seen at least three high-profile films (Twelve Years a Slave, Django Unchained and Lincoln) tackle the subject of slavery in America. In fact, it’s a topic with such a vast and painful history that Hollywood returns to it again and again. But perhaps the most significant exploration of slavery in the media came from television. Roots, a miniseries adapted from Alex Haley’s novel in 1977, follows one African American family from the birth and subsequent abduction of Kunta Kinte in the Gambia during Colonial times, right through to the aftermath of the American Civil War. A sequel series, entitled Roots: The Next Generations, which follows the story from 1882 to the 1960s, and a TV movie, Roots: The Gift, also exists, but for the purpose of this article, we will be exploring only the original, ground-breaking miniseries.
Roots was ground-breaking for its time, and is still a remarkable undertaking to this day. Frequently shown in schools (my History class must have seen it five times!), it is perhaps the most involved and comprehensive depiction of slavery in the media. It is also one of the most effective. By focusing solely on one family’s journey, but by following said family over numerous generations, the story at once feels intimate but all-encompassing: a personal journey yet documenting the varied experiences of the slaves according to the time period and the situation. What is shown on screen, while not in any way close to the graphic treatment of slaves in Django Unchained, is incredibly brutal and disturbing, and this is in part due to the miniseries format, allowing the events to be dragged out, so that we can see suffering in its entirety. The problem with slavery in cinema is that the running time is too short to truly immerse yourself and understand that level of pain. Roots has no such problem.
Roots is only three years shy of a 40th anniversary, and yet its horrors remain fresh in the mind. For such a relatively recent history, it is still a complete shock to contemporary audiences. Given that civil rights were only granted to black citizens in 1965, the impact on audiences in the 1970s was even greater. The History Channel is planning a remake, but given how strong Roots remains as a viewing experience, why bother?