Actress Keke Palmer has responded to backlash following the release of the trailer for her new movie, “Alice,” which opens in theaters on March 18.
The film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. “Alice,” tells the story of an enslaved woman who flees an 1880s plantation, only to learn that it is actually 1973.
She then crosses paths with political activist Frank, played by rapper Common, who helps her put the pieces of her life back together. Alice vows to seek revenge against the man who enslaved her (Jonny Lee Miller).
“I felt like it spoke to history in the Black slave narrative in a way that was not so victimizing,” she told PEOPLE. “There’s only one angle that we usually get the slave narrative from, and it’s usually from an oppressor standpoint. It does not empower the youth and it does not come with a sense of pride that I feel like I’ve always felt growing up when my parents talk to me about our history.”
After seeing the trailer, many called the upcoming release “trauma porn,” and decried another slave movie release. The flick is directed by Krystin Ver Linden, one of Variety’s 2022 “10 Directors to Watch.”
Trauma porn is media that showcases a marginalized group’s pain and trauma in extreme quantities for the sake of entertainment for other non-marginalized groups.
“It’s not trauma porn,” she added. “It’s like, ‘This happened. Let’s show you how our people found hope.’ If a character like Alice was able to keep going and she actually endured slavery, then what do you think that you could do? That, to me, is very powerful and important for my generation to see because we are at that breaking point in our own way.”
In the trailer, Alice tells her former master, “It’s the woman you used to ‘own.’ You watched us get tormented. It’s my turn now.”
