By refusing to name Jackie Robinson, Cecil Gaines, or Solomon Northrop, these films do more to serve broader narratives about an alleged post-racial America. Rather, these stories, filled with suffering, noble Negroes, ultimately are less concerned with these black lives (after all, they are nameless as far as the titles are concerned). They fit a cinematic post-racial narrative that suggests that most of America’s racial problems are in the mythic past.

While these narratives follow Black characters, they are not primarily invested in telling the stories of Jackie Robinson, Eugene Allen/Cecil Gaines, or Solomon Northrop. Instead black men function as props in their own tales, which ultimately aim to “teach” liberal white viewers about the “horrors” of slavery and pre-1965 life in America from within the safe confines of their nearest Cineplex; the conclusion of each film provides a neat way to close the door on those histories. Jackie Robinson goes on to integrate baseball and in 1997, his jersey number, 42, was retired across Major League Baseball. Eugene Allen/Cecil Gaines finally gets the White House Head of Staff promotion he deserves and meets President Barack Obama to close the post-racial loop, demonstrating that if black people just “go slow” they will get the rights they want (and implicitly deserve). Lastly, as the film’s narrative ends, Solomon Northrop is reunited with his family, implicitly suggesting that his wrongful enslavement had been righted (although that was not a typical outcome for many free black men and women who were wrongfully re-enslaved). Ultimately, these films are more concerned with providing satisfying narrative closure than showing the things that were as narratively neat in these men’s lives – like Solomon Northrop’s inability to sue the men responsible for his re-enslavement.

Ultimately, 42, 12 Years a Slave, and The Butler are biopics centered on black men’s lives. However, two other biopics released this year help to illuminate the point I am making, Captain Phillips and Philomena. Captain Phillips is centered on Richard Phillips triumph over Somali bodies (whose bodies stand in for blackness) and Philomena focuses on the titular character’s search for the child taken away from her. While there is some cultural understanding of Captain Richard Phillips, there is little cultural knowledge about Philomena Lee. Nevertheless, we understand that we are specifically seeing Captain Richard Phillips’ story. This is Philomena Lee’s story. We understand the centrality of these particular white people’s stories because of our cultural rootedness in the notion that whiteness is multiplicitous while blackness is monolithic.

By excluding the names of Robinson, Allen/Gaines, and Northrop in the film’s titles, these films remove the personal suffering of these men and instead focus on the lessons to be learned. These nameless black bodies then, stand in for a broader black experience that reifies the monolithic cultural understanding of cinematic blackness.

This failure to name these particular black men within the titles of these quality films with black casts (and this argument can be extended to The Help), suggests the utility of the representational labor black bodies are called on to cinematically perform. These films, with their inanimately named titular subjects also stand in for blackness on the world stage. Unlike most films with primarily black casts (and those not deemed “quality” because they are not centered on black suffering) like Baggage Claim or any of the films within the Tyler Perry oeuvre, they are largely segregated into US markets whereas more than a quarter of The Butler’s overall gross was derived from international markets. In this way, the namelessness of the black bodies travels its inanimate self to worldwide markets.

Ultimately then, 42, The Butler, and 12 Years A Slave concomitantly participate in and reify the notion of the nobly suffering negro while also suggesting the relative lack of importance in naming black bodies in film titles. While the titles certainly gesture toward the subject matter of the film, the legacies of the individual stories of Jackie Robinson, Eugene Allen/Cecil Gaines, and Solomon Northrop get lost in translation. Instead, viewers are invited to take the “lessons” of these suffering black bodies and find comfort in the ways black people in American “have overcome,” while allowing the myth of post-racial America to strengthen its roots.

1) Rupert Murdoch has had an eventful few weeks following the announcement of his divorce. First the good news, as the splitting of News Corp. into publishing and entertainment arms has led to big business for the newly named 21st Century Fox, which will hold onto the film and television studios as well as their cable channels. The immediate result was 21st Century Fox getting one of the highest valuations over Disney and Viacom with a growth in shares over 2%.

2) Now for Murdoch’s bad news, as reports this past week allege Murdoch was caught on a secret audio recording admitting to bribery of police officials, stemming from the investigations into News Corp. tabloids hacking into phones in Britain. Murdoch belittles police and the hacking inquiry, while giving support to his staff for their known behaviors. Scotland Yard has already requested access to the tapes, while Parliament member and Labour Party politician Chris Bryant has requested the FBI take action and press corporate corruption charges against News Corp.

3) Major shake-ups in Warner Bros. executive management structure, starting with the ousting of Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov.   Rather than simply replace Robinov, Warner Bros. instead has created a new three-person team to lead the division, made up of Greg Silverman, Sue Kroll, and Toby Emmerich, all promoted from within. However, the three will all be reporting directly to Warner CEO Kevin Tsujihara, giving him more direct power over the film studio, in addition to his increased control of the television side.

4) Sticking with Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures is officially no longer tied to Warner, with talks ending and Legendary’s Thomas Tullmoving onto talks with others studios, such as Fox and NBCUniversal, with the latter seeming the most promising.

5) One more story for Warner Bros., as the studio has clashed with The Weinstein Co. over the title of TWC’s upcoming film “The Butler.” Warner won an arbitration over the title after asserting their rights to the title due to a 1916 comedy short of the same name (Of course!). TWC’s attorney David Boies plans to appeal and possibly file a lawsuit challenging the MPAA’s ruling, citing the claim of a confusion over the films as having “no plausible basis.” Warner Bros. responded, citing past TWC “rules violations.” This should move fast, as the film (Whatever it will be named) is currently scheduled for an August 16 release in the U.S.

6) Jim Carrey has come out against the violence in “Kick-Ass 2,” the upcoming sequel that Carrey himself co-stars in and features heavy violence involving an 11-year hold vigilante. A tweet referencing Sandy Hook had Carrey saying he couldn’t support the level of violence in the film. Executive producer and original comic writer Mark Millar responded with surprise, noting how Carrey approached them about appearing in the sequel after enjoying the original.

7) The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy Awards folks) has extended an invitation to 276 film professionals to join the Academy, an unusually large number. The list of names is markedly younger than in years past, as well as more diverse with several invitations to Latinos and an expansion of the documentary branch.

8) Just months after he helped reveal the XBox One, Microsoft’s president of Interactive Entertainment Business Don Mattrick has left the company to become CEO of social gaming giant Zynga, best known for Facebook games like Farmville. Mattrick was lured away with a compensation package from Zynga of over $50 million in cash and stock.

9) Two of the largest book publishers in the world have merged, with the newly formed Penguin-Random House becoming the undisputed king in publishing and a possible competition to Amazon. Penguin-Random House now controls about 30% of trade book sales.

10) Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail will not have its official retail release until tomorrow, but after partnering with Samsung that saw the company purchase one million copies for its smartphone and tablet users to download via a free app, the album will likely be certified platinum immediately upon its release. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) changed their rules for certification to allow those pre-release digital sales to Samsung to count towards its total immediately, rather than waiting the normal 30 days for digital sales. Billboard, however, will not count the one million Samsung sales towards its total for ranking on its Billboard 200 chart. So… we may never know if Jay-Z’s new record is actually popular.