towardperpetualpeaceofmind:
I see what you are saying about how white voices are often privileged over black ones (as well as the voices of other marginalized races and ethnicities). However, your argument about the speaking credentials of barbers on organic chemistry (etc) is not the same thing. while QT might not be as credible a speaker on black issues as Spike Lee, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be allowed to speak on black issues; the catch is that we have the right to not listen, or in this case to watch Spike’s movies instead of Quentin’s if we prefer. To put it a different way: As a writer, QT has the right to write any character or story he wants; we have teh right to tell him to shut the fuck up if we want as well.
Samuel L. Jackson in a Blues Brothers suit carrying a wallet branded with “Badass Motherfucker” is a character. That is recycled and revised Blaxploitation fiction. However, a Black couple separated by slavery and beaten by members of the KKK are not the creative property of Quentin Tarantino.
The Ku Klux Klan was founded after the Civil War. Django Unchained takes place 2 years before the Civil War began. Be careful with your facts.
These “characters” are based on historical facts and lived experiences of racist violence. When I think of famous Black filmmakers in Hollywood, I struggle to think beyond Spike Lee and Tyler Perry; when I think of famous white filmmakers in Hollywood, I struggle to keep track. This structural inequity and white supremacy in US show business makes Tarantino’s accusation of (reverse) racism highly untenable. The fact that one of these precious few Black filmmakers dared to challenge the racism of a white director’s movies, one of the few in Hollywood who could tell a story like Django Unchained without racism and be entitled to tell it, makes Tarantino’s accusation deplorable and ridiculous.
Even a movie supposedly centered around a slave turned bounty hunter in pursuit of revenge is a movie that stars white people with Black people in supporting roles.
The blacks are in supporting roles? Is that why Candie and Shultz are killed before Django actually rescues Broomhilda without assistance? That’s a strange argument, especially because the movie starts with Django and ends with Django, almost always (if not actually always) choosing to follow Django at the expense of following Shultz when they part ways. Further, the movie is primarily about rescuing Django’s wife. It’s about accomplishing Django’s goal. Django is the Siegfried character in this story. It’s about Django.
And to be accurate, slavery is reduced to nothing more than a geographical backdrop, social scenery, and circumstantial setting for a signature Tarantino parody—this time using a Spaghetti Western formula. But there was something about selling this as a Western that confused me. I had no trouble comprehending the references in the throwback “Wild West” font of the opening credits, the desert-like landscape, and John Wayne outlaw music. However for the rest of the movie, audiences were apparently meant to believe a Western was taking place in the… Antebellum South?
Considering westerns took place at the same time as slavery, that texas was a slave holding state, it’s not that hard to believe. QT is actually on record as saying that part of why he wanted to make a western involving slavery was because it has been systemicly ignored by a genre (the western) that should have included it but instead has worked hard to white wash the history of the American old west.
I got a sickening feeling after the movie spent its ten minutes in Texas and shifted to southern plantations, that the era of chattel slavery was chosen because it provided new opportunities for Tarantino to explore/exploit gratuitous violence. And I’m not talking about the many white people whose heads were blown through and whose dicks were shot off, or the projectile blood from any number of body parts exploding like a can of red paint on the receiving end of a shotgun. This is all typical for a Tarantino flick. I’m talking about the two mandingo slaves who fight to the death in Calvin Candie’s parlor, ending with both men covered in blood and the victor not only clawing his victim’s eyes out by hand, but also smashing his face with a hammer. I’m talking about the slave who is attacked and torn to death by a pack of vicious dogs, a punishment ordered by Calvin Candie. I’m talking about Jamie Foxx as Django hanging naked from his ankles almost visibly castrated by a white slaver with an orange-hot blade, and Kerry Washington as his wife Broomhilda whipped and nearly bashed in the head with a hammer by Calvin Candie. As it turns out, the institution of slavery was not violent and/or awful enough, but must be saturated with a series of humiliations and atrocities in its storytelling.
The point was to show how brutal slavery was in a way that no other film (except perhaps Roots) has. It’s not just a backdrop. Its the whole damn point.
All I can say about Leonardo Dicaprio’s performance as Calvin Candie is that it made him less of a convincing actor and more of a convincing racist. He was a little bit too believable for me, and by that I mean the slave master stole the show from the slave.
So you were so convinced by his performance that you now believe he’s a racist? That’s what good acting is supposed to do.
The comic camp created around this national shame is expressed and made sympathetic through many exchanges of witty banter and Tarantino’s tendency to make heinous villains handsome, charming, and/or funny. A hooded white militia spends at least five minutes having a *hilarious* argument about one of their wives insufficiently cutting the eye-holes in the white “bags” on their heads. Although no one in the movie explicitly called them the KKK, they wore symbolic hoods and made a brief allusion to attacks in their “full regalia.” An opportunity to make the most excessive, outrageous, and overdone scene involving the KKK in their “full regalia,” and Tarantino didn’t take it. He made a subtle hint at these things that younger or less informed people in the audience might not notice. He made these characters look like simple vigilantes on horseback with cheap pillowcases on their heads.
I addressed the KKK issue above, but the fact that the scene is funny is due to the fact that QT is saying that racism and the behavior that the KKK would later adopt is fucking stupid.
Yet when Django is given the “freedom” to purchase his own “valet” uniform, he emerges from the store with a white bow at his chin, a blue satin coat to match his blue satin trousers, silk stockings, and buckled shoes—an entirely unexplained transformation.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe someone who has never been allowed to choose his own clothing and instead was forced to wear rags might choose to dress in a elaborate and flamboyant way? Seriously?
Multiple comic spectacles are made of Black characters and the brutality of the violence they suffer, but the KKK only give a quick mention of their “regalia.”
If you think that the brutality that blacks suffered in this film was comic, you may want to consider your own racism. Or, and I hope this is the case, there were other people in the theater laughing at those parts, I think that says more bout them than the film itself
That is not Tarantino’s style; he doesn’t deal with any subject matter delicately, discreetly, sensitively, conscientiously, or with subtlety. Yet the KKK were somewhat disguised and miraculously escaped his confrontational and sensationalist plagiarism.
I could never imagine the diverse experiences Black folks might have when/if they see this movie, nor can I, as a white person, legitimately or personally take offense to the use of the N word. I can only comment on the extent to which I became more convinced the instances of the N word outnumbered the lines of dialogue Black characters had in the movie. After hearing the word fifty times, I stopped counting.
You know what I find offensive as a black man? The idea that a movie about slavry should avoid the use of the word nigger (or any of it’s variants) because that shit is a white washing lie that does not show slavery to be a racist and vile as it was.
Kerry Washington spoke less than ten times in two hours and forty five minutes. She is seen being ruthlessly whipped and branded as an object of abuse, or as a figment of Django’s imagination, until her physical form is finally produced when she is dragged naked and screaming from Calvin Candie’s “hot box”—a box in direct sunlight, mostly buried underground, and locked from the outside.
I think the point about Kerry Washington’s character having very fews lines is an important one from a feminist perspective. However, from a black feminist perspective (and I am speaking based not only on my own reading of the film but because of conversations i’ve had with black women who saw the film) the fact that a black woman is considered so valuable and important that not only does she have a husband (blacks weren’t always allowed to marry) but he comes to rescue. I can’t think of a single damsel in distress type movie where a black man comes to rescue a black woman. Yes she has few lines, but her role is to be precious and loved.
Any other Black women who appear on screen are speechless, disoriented, or helpless.
Yes and no. Many of the female slaves at candieland are speechless because slaves weren’t exactly allowed to express themselves freely. Additionally, many appeared terrified. Because screwing up or appeared to screw up could get you beaten, raped or killed (see the things that happen or are implied to have happen to Hildie). I would like to note the character of Sheba. She is the only speaking female character who get’s to just be eye candy—a role traditionally reserved of white women. Sheba, a blaclk woman get’s to simply have the role of being beautiful. (also, not the way she is shot: the focus is on her face, not her body) These things aren’t perfect reprsentations of black women or even enslaved black women, but they do say important things about how slavery was for them as well as to show a black women in a way that only white women are traditionally able to have.
Django, whose name is the title of the movie and his vengeance the focus, spends 90% of the story saying next to nothing.
Consider the possibility that acting and story telling isn’t all about talking. Just consider it.
Ultimately, this was an exploration of the white villain versus the white hero.
Again, is that why both of them are dead before the resolution of the film? And is that also why teh plot focuses on Django’s goals not Shultz’s?
And, oh yeah, a slave gets his wife and his freedom in the end.
Yep, just the whole focus of the film: Also Django wasn’t a slave. He got his freedom. he fought for it. How could you forget that and reduce him to chattel. Why couldn’t you remember he wasn’t property?
There are two white heroes in Django Unchained. Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz) is the compassionate white bounty hunter who heroically dictates the terms of Django’s service and his freedom—an emphasis on white kindness and generosity, which I would say is the least important narrative to privilege in a movie about slavery.
The film actually problematizes Shultz’s heroism because it is very clear by Shultz own admission that he was using slavery to his advantage for personal profit even though he thought it was morally wrong. Thomas Jefferson, famous slave owner, employed similar logic while he hated slavery but profited massively by it.
Schultz is, after all, the star and the one who avenges the slaves by killing Calvin Candie in the end. He was so overcome by his disgust for Candie’s racism that he just couldn’t help himself.
This is an important point: Shultz botches the rescue and get’s Django re-enslaved—what a shitty hero. Django has to then free himself by his own wit and then rescue Hildie on his own. Now that’s heroic.
After this climactic assassination, the last few moments where Django kills the rest of the white people in the movie and Calvin Candie’s “House Negro” (Samuel L. Jackson) seem like an afterthought.
You didn’t think it was important to mention the name of the black character that blew the whistle on Django and Shultz’s plot? That’s interesting, because he seemed really important.
Django is given his moment only after Schultz has had his. The second white hero, Tarantino himself,
If QT is a hero why doe he cast himself as a slave owner?
delivers his version of victory, justice, and power to slaves by giving a happy ending to Django and Broomhilda.
Again, they weren’t slaves, the were people, free people.
This is the question I always have whenever filmmakers practice racism by appropriating stories from/inventing stories about POC: if this is a fantasy, if this is creative fiction, then why is racial oppression an inevitable and nonnegotiable reality? It seems the facts of white supremacy must remain true to life when any number of ridiculous things—a German bounty hunter disguising himself as a dentist, or a white woman writing the memoirs of Black maids—are unlimited in their fabrication. These fantasies are about good white people who grant some form of freedom to unusually talented characters of color, lending more attention to the Great Emancipator Complex than to well-developed and substantive roles for POC. As long as audiences are somewhat comforted by this, and equally entertained, one of the most gruesome tragedies in human history can be easily converted into a disgraceful and campy bloodbath. It is a filmmaker’s “right” to do so.
You know what would be really comforting to white audiences? Writing a story where white people don’t have to deal with racism (you know, like you’re suggesting). I wonder where we could find any of those…
I have a limited perspective in this dialogue as a white person, and I can only speak to something I intellectually understand--not something I experience. Choosing to reblog this critique needs context and disclosure of intent for many reasons, not the least of which is this is a blog designed for white folks, so it needs to be made very clear that I am neither requesting nor inviting any counterpoints from white followers. I think this critique warranted respect as one directly from someone in the Black community, rather than the hostile and uninteresting tantrums circulated by a few white folks. I reblogged a "critique" from one white follower shortly after I published the Django post only because addressing their issues was significant to the larger discussion. I am not going to reblog/respond to people who, first of all, can't read the entire post and who, second of all, can't craft a more articulate reaction beyond "Suck a dick." In case there are questions in anyone's mind along the valid lines of "why are you only responding to a critique from a Black person," this is not what is happening and I hope this explanation will answer them.
To the OP of the critique: I'm going to respond briefly, because I would like to acknowledge some of the issues being raised that directly concern the post--not your experience of seeing the movie and how you personally responded to it. These are things I can't, shouldn't, and have no place to comment on. I just feel as if some of the points I made were misunderstood, and I would like to respectfully address them.
First and foremost, I did not personally find the Black violence in the movie comic. I found it hugely problematic that comic spectacles were made of the Black violence, and by this I mean white characters always had clever remarks, witty monologues, or one-liners to deliver before a gruesome scene of Black violence unfolded. The lines were written to be amusing, but I did not respond to them in this way. And the fashion Django chooses to wear seemed like more of a punchline to me than an unimaginable outfit to replace with rags, confirmed by how most of the audience in the theater laughed at him when he emerged from the tailor. This was a comic and lavish spectacle made at the expense of his hero, but the KKK got the humble treatment of historical accuracy.
As for the KKK, I agree with you that I and anyone else should be careful with these facts--especially Quentin Tarantino. Yes, this is true, they were not yet officially recognized or formally organized in 1858, and this is precisely why I questioned their appearance in the movie in the post. If the KKK did not exist yet, then my point was to critically examine Tarantino's decision to put such a clear reference to them in the movie at all, then somewhat disguise them. They had no fundamental purpose to the overall plot-line, and no smaller purpose aside from cheap comic relief. So I felt Tarantino was being very irresponsible with the KKK--making this a comic and restrained moment, instead of creating a spectacle around the gruesomeness and brutality of their behavior. I am more interested in the selective historical authenticity/accuracy Tarantino employed in this film, and what that says about his social position as a white writer and filmmaker. Because while I agree with you that the point was to make the KKK look like they were "fucking stupid," I'm not sure presenting them as a bunch of inept and harmless morons is really... historically accurate, or a particularly good idea.
This seems to be one of the most common criticisms of the post: that I somehow ignored or didn't appropriately deal with the historical accuracy of the KKK or the N word. What I don't understand is when it inevitably devolves into a defense of the film along the lines of 'you can't expect historical accuracy from Hollywood,' which seems to be followed by a defense of the film along the lines of 'Tarantino's use of the KKK, gratuitous slave violence, and the N word was historically accurate and therefore justified.' I also never said the N word shouldn't be in a movie about slavery--I said I was convinced the N word was said more often than the Black characters in the movie spoke. If there is no expectation/rule for Hollywood films to be historically accurate, then I don't understand why Tarantino's excessive use of the N word has been defended in this way. You're absolutely right it shouldn't be whitewashed away from movies about slavery, but I sincerely do not see how I was arguing in favor of that.
As always, Black followers are more than welcome and invited to check my privilege and to respond to this post, or comment on that which I am not entitled to comment.
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