Steve Lipkin When Victims Speak

1) In his essay “When Victims Speak (or, what happened when Spielberg added Amistad to his list?)”, Steve Lipkin declares that rather simply retelling the injustice slave story, Steven Spielberg's docudrama Amistad takes the confrontation between emotional import of the story and its social and political background to convince audiences with the moral truth of American jurisprudence through the empower voice of enslave.

2) In his essay “When Victims Speak, (or, what happened when Spielberg added Amistad to his list?)”, Steve Lipkin stresses the necessity of learning moral truth through the function of storytelling and empower of articulation. Rather focus on telling the enslave story, Lipkin centers on Spielberg’s Amistad speaks as the voice for these African enslave victims, “as a matter of victims progressively attaining empowerment through articulation.” (Lipkin 28). Lipkin claims the empowered articulation, “entailed not only liberation but also recognition.” (Lipkin 30)

3) Steve Lipkin argues that the importance of the individual voice and the implication in the film:

Spielberg's
Articulation is important for enslave people to get what they deserved. Articulation is not privilege for anyone or any race, but the right for every common people in general. Without the articulation, these enslave people can’t be free. Without their own articulation, these enslave won’t get recognition. With the empowerment of the voice, the justice can truly come to the ground and extend to everyone. By echoing the voice of justice, the court scene importantly expresses the importance of humanity. In this case, their articulation becomes the performer of both justice and humanity. These enslave people are no longer weak. Therefore, rather than retelling a simply story of enslave people, Amistad turns to be the glorification of humanity and