Comparison Of The Amistad Case Portrayal In Howard Jones' Novel Mutiny On The Amistad And Movie Amistad By Steven Spielberg

Following the reading of the Mutiny on the Amistad, by Howard Jones and the viewing of the film Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg, I found that the book provides more detail about the story of the Amistad in 1839, whereas the film provided a more emotional and comprehensible depiction of the story. Throughout this essay, I am going to be comparing the film to the book and which one I found provided a better experience when learning history through each medium. I took the approach of watching the film first and then reading the book. I am a visual learner and by doing this it allowed me to remember the scenes from the movie while I was reading them as well as read points that were not mentioned in the film. I am now going to compare the two mediums and provide an answer to which I feel is best suited to teach history to a university class.

I think we can more readily learn that the film provides a more emotional connection and visual experience as opposed to the book. The first being that the actors can express the emotions with body language, facial expressions, tone in their voice and even the mood that the scene is shot in. The book cannot do this. When reading the book, you must visualize what is being read and put faces to people as well as set the scenes in your head. This is explained when Cinque stands up and yells “Give us Free” in the courtroom you can see and feel the emotion he has as he wants all of his people to be proven innocent so desperately. When reading this in the book it is hard to understand the passion behind the scene and how important it was as the Mendi people could not understand nor speak English. This was another aspect that more easily learned throughout the movie as opposed to the book. The movie allows the viewer to understand the struggles between Baldwin and the Africans when trying to speak to each other until they found a translator.

The book mentions that Lieutenant Meade of the USS Washington (the boat that found the Amistad) realized that no blacks on the Amistad could speak English when he and his men boarded the ship. Lieutenant Meade could not find one African that could speak English, they only found Ruiz and Montes and he could understand Spanish, making it difficult to solve what happened on the Amistad. (Pg. 4-5). It is easy to understand now why it was such a challenging trial as the Spaniards had the advantage as the Americans could understand them compared to the Africans in which no one could comprehend what they were saying. This is one of the few times in the book it is mentioned that the Africans and Americans had a difficult time communicating. Whereas the movie provides many scenes where you can see the frustrations of the Africans when trying to express themselves.

Both the film and the novel are about the story of the fifty-three Africans that were taken from their home of Sierra Leone and sold to the Queen of Spain in Cuba, on the way back they rebel and end up on trial in the United States for their freedom. This is the gist of what happens in the story of the Amistad. I would argue that both mediums are telling the same story, but the book provides a lot more detail on the events that took place and is a more useful piece of academic material. Some material such as the information on the Cuban planters. The planters fought hard against the freeing of black slaves as it would cost them more money to produce sugar and coffee beans.

This is important because this is how these Africans were brought and eventually sold to Spain as in Havana, Cuba, the slaves would be stored under the deck of the incoming boats and then sold to buyers. In this case, the Queen of Spain, as Spain and England had an anti-slave agreement (Pg. 18-20). As well as there was a point made that if it was not racism and the presidential election the case of the Amistad may have been over in the fall of 1939 (Pg. 47). There is one thing that the film does a better job than the book at revealing and that is the lack of information there was about the Africans. This could be due to Jones trying to explain the story with no one group as the victims of the case or it could be due to the language barrier that I have mentioned and getting information from the Africans was just too difficult.

Now to the film, the Amistad is that of a standard Hollywood film, in that there are certain pieces of the story that have been altered to make the film appealing to people and get them to want to watch it. The first major altercation is that of Roger Baldwin, in the film he is depicted as a self-centred attorney only looking to advance his career by taking on the case. We do not see him respect the African as humans until near the end of the film. Thus, is different than how the book described Roger Baldwin, he was already interested in fighting for slaves’ rights and freedoms before he took the case as he had previously won cases on a slave’s freedom before the superior court soon after joining the bar in 1811 (pg. 37.) The second adjustment that Spielberg made was his portrayal of Cinque, the lead African in the mutiny, as the master mind behind the mutiny on the Amistad. In the film, Cinque was shown killing the captain with a sword, but the book says that Cinque only knocked the Captain to the ground, letting the other Africans strangle the Captain to death. (pg. 25).

There is also a major modification to John Quincy Adams speech. In the film he is the only attorney, from either side, to give a speech at the supreme court making it seem like his speech was so convincing the judges didn’t need to hear anything else. When in fact in the book it goes on to state that the trial lasted several days and both sides gave arguments. The book talks about how after Baldwin and Adams completed their defence, Gilpin returned to the stand to give his counterarguments, eventually leading to Justice Story giving the verdict. (Pg. 182-191) Finally, the other difference that I noticed was the major importance of the origin of the Africans in the film, and yes this was a very important piece to the trial. The film did not state the origin of the Africans for the majority of the film whereas the book begins with telling us that the slaves where loaded on to a ship on the west coast of Africa on route to Cuba to be sold. (Pg. 14-15)

Both the book and film show us the uprising from the beginning to the landing on American soil, then through all of the trials and finally the freedom the Africans get at the end. The book is more accurate than the film and the details that were omitted did not present a different account of the history of the story. Based on these points I believe that although the film leaves out some details and changes the order that the facts were presented in the book, they do tell the same story.

I believe that there is one medium that is more suited for academic study and that is the book written by Howard Jones. The book is very informative as it uses materials such as court records, legal documents and research done by experts in the subject of the Amistad. By doing this it provided Jones with a substantial amount of information to use and deliver an analysis of all of the events in the story of the Amistad. This is what gives the book an advantage over the film as when people read the book, they know that everything they are reading is facts and exactly what happened in 1839 during the Amistad mutiny.

Whereas the film was produced in Hollywood and was made purely for entertainment and not academic sources. The book provides details on why this case was so important during the presidential elections in the United States in the fall of 1839. This case could divide the Northern and Southern States as well as the divergences that could arise between America and Spain. The film does mention some of these problems that could result from the Africans being freed, but it doesn’t go into detail as in the film's storyline it was not as important.

Now, onto where both the book and the film got their sources to produce their respective mediums. As mentioned earlier the book got all of its information about the Amistad case through federal court achieves legal documents from the U.S. Congress, libraries, memoirs and journals from African Captives. These are all listed in the back of the book under the sections notes (Pg. 221) where each note from the book has an abbreviation beside it stating where the information is sourced. The film got its sources from the book although it changed up the order to how they were presented and the amount of which was told. The film also only used sources that would be relevant to the story that Spielberg wanted to present.

If I were given the task to teach this subject to a first-year university class my preferable medium for teaching would be to use the film. This is because even though the film does not follow the exact format as the book and does have some missing events in it, it still tells the story of the Mutiny on the Amistad by only including the most important details. Another reason as to why I would use the film is because the film is only two and a half hours long compared to the 280+ page book. With that being said it will be important to tell them that there are some inaccurate/mistimed events in the film. This is important because university students tend to have a lot of work to do in their courses so only requiring them to watch the movie may be more reasonable to their course load.

In conclusion, I believe that both the film and the book are both very good pieces of study when learning the case of the Amistad. They both tell the same story just in different ways, but you still get all the main details no matter which one you choose. I would give the edge to the book for purely academic purposes, but the film has the edge for appeal and interest level. Overall both mediums can be used to enhance your knowledge on the case of the Amistad.