Single-Hero Slavery Films Erase Collective Agency

Films about slavery like Amistad and Django Unchained romanticize by giving heroic agency to only one enslaved individual (e.g., Cinqué as descendant of kings) while everyone else falls away, whereas Melville's 'Benito Cereno' is superior because it grants the enslaved full human complexity—heroic, oppressed, manipulative, and sneaky like everyone else.