Quentin Tarantino's Western movie "Django Unchained"

idk this kinda gets at something else that's been bugging me about this movie - like for the first time in a decade a big budget hollywood movie that depicted slavery and is about a black protagonist got bankrolled and made - a rare event - and that seems to have made everybody want the movie to depict their own personal vision of how slavery was - and obviously the movie can't be all things to all people!

like it's take on race and racism is probably not that smart (it's tarantino!) but maybe it's enough that it does tell a story of black revenge in the antebellum south and makes the audience feel good about doing so? like, clearly it's just a fantastical mythic story - does it have to be More and Say Something about slavery? idk

xpost

yes in agreement -- it's a racist trope. so what do we make of the fact that the character django basically takes shape along those lines?

can't decide whether the fact that django doesn't become a liberator is:

- an effectively non-PC gesture; "realistic" insofar (as thomp noted) as it doesn't assume django would somehow sprout a full consciousness of himself as a political actor

- but wait, isn't this a fantasy? what duty does tarantino have to present an "accurate" or in any event plausible account

- and actually, is it really so hard to imagine that many slaves did have a strong consciousness of their identity as an oppressed group? i mean, the history of the american south is littered with slave rebellions, not that you hear much about them in high school or whatever

- in fact, if it is a counter-historical fantasy, why not make django a spartacus figure, and depict a successful slave revolution? that would make it the real equivalent of inglourious basterds. but maybe it's even harder to imagine.

disagree about the movie corroborating "everyone else is servile and passive" there's clear foreshadowing that the other slaves will similarly go django.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 5:32 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's some ambiguity on this score i guess but even when he kills the slave traders at the end, he doesn't make any gesture of solidarity with the other slaves he leaves behind and as he rides off we get a shot of him gaping, slack-jawed. not sure what this is meant to signify but i read it as django being such an impossible figure in that context that they literally did not know what to make of him. there's def. no "i am spartacus!" coming-into-consciousness moment at the end.

there is however such a moment in mandingo but the film leaves us to ponder what will become of it.

xpost: I honestly found that aspect kind of thrilling. and additionally the portrayal of the antebellum south as an ugly and evil place was welcome.

"get a shot of THEM (other slaves) gaping, slack-jawed..."

sorry for confusing typo

yeah, that's what jelanie cobb was getting at in his nyer piece - by depicting only django as exceptional, it takes away the agency of the other slaves in the movie, and is not a reflection of the actual widespread sabotage and revolt that happened during slavery

xpost: I honestly found that aspect kind of thrilling. and additionally the portrayal of the antebellum south as an ugly and evil place was welcome.

― ryan, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 5:42 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hoo-boy, you will love the shit out of mandingo then. if anything it depicts a plantation culture that's even more depraved.

you've sold me! Gonna check it out

also i think pontecorvo's "burn" would make an interesting counterpoint to DJANGO. very interesting. the brando/evaristo marquez relationship in that film is an interesting contrast with the waltz/jamie foxx relationship in DJANGO.

xpost

it's on blu-ray.

it is really in your face and i wouldn't be surprised if you love it or you found it hateful; caveat emptor and shit.

anyway I'm gonna link to these two blog posts again because they express better than I could why django as a lone-hero movie is ultimately okay:

http://4thletter.net/2013/01/django-unchained-i-cant-pay-no-doctor-bills-but-whiteys-on-the-moon/
http://4thletter.net/2013/01/django-unchained-jump-at-de-sun/

also recommended:

charles burnett's documentary/essay/meditation on nat turner and his portrayal in american literature and film. born from the ashes of a nat turner script that burnett could not sell. would love to see THAT movie.

btw the burnett film is called "nat turner: a troublesome property" which is one of the most elegant double meanings i've ever seen in the title of a work of art.

the jacobin piece linked to upthread touches on some of these same points, though its a lot more strident

yeah, like, we all would like to see the story of nat turner get made w/ the budget of django unchained - but that's never going to happen.

it's not a particularly progressive portrayal, but when handed the agency to take revenge upon their captors or to stay servile, every slave in the movie except SLJ chooses revenge, so Foxx saying "I AM that 1 in 10,000" isn't actually true, but is just bragging. It's actually SLJ who is the 1 in 10,000.

what a shame about that Burnett script!

well what do you know?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBsw3kfoO7I

takes an hour; will be the best 60 minutes you spend this week IMO.

Mandingo is required viewing before Django imo

or after, whatevs.

a lot of white critics (like ebert and vincent canby) were deeply, deeply offended by mandingo but many radical black nationalist groups get it 100%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex7E_lyHMAA

xxxxp If Django led a huge slave rebellion it wouldn't be self-contained in the same way Spaghetti Westerns generally were. They are small stories told large, with a handful of characters and a minimalist plot. Personally I felt a lot of constraints in this movie was to make it more faithful to the ideal of a Spaghetti Western and less to make it faithful to history. The question most people are asking is if that is a moral choice when dealing with the subject of slavery.

I think "How come Django wasn't Spartacus!?!" type questions are what Dayo was getting at, this is one film and it can't meet everyone's desires nor should it try.

right but there is still meaning to how tarantino made certain decisions as opposed to others

must say that seeing this with a completely integrated audience on opening night in a huge downtown theater definitely gave it a lustre it probably won't have the 2nd time around.

when the rick ross song came on guy seated next to me raised his arms as if in prayer, smiled wryly, and said, "awwwwwwww yeah."

he doesn't make any gesture of solidarity with the other slaves he leaves behind and as he rides off we get a shot of him gaping, slack-jawed. not sure what this is meant to signify but i read it as django being such an impossible figure in that context that they literally did not know what to make of him. there's def.

one of the slaves he leaves behind (the one he yelled at on the trail) slowly smiles as django rides off

Never seen Mandingo, but this makes me especially curious:

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2012/12/mandingo.html

i'm not defending the movie but there were never any implications that django's motivation was anything other than just personal - he never seems very interested in the wider social implications of what he's doing - so it's consistent (if maybe not very exciting) that he doesn't lead a slave rebellion or whatever.

one of the slaves he leaves behind (the one he yelled at on the trail) slowly smiles as django rides off

i think in a lot of ways this shot is the heart of the movie. for better or worse. I found it quite moving while also having the same reservations i noted above.

otm

i'll have to see it again--what sort of smile is it?

i do remember a reaction shot of the other slaves looking befuddled. does the smile occur in the same shot or is it later in a series of reaction shots?

i'm not defending the movie but there were never any implications that django's motivation was anything other than just personal - he never seems very interested in the wider social implications of what he's doing - so it's consistent (if maybe not very exciting) that he doesn't lead a slave rebellion or whatever.

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, January 17, 2013 9:20 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's true; the waltz character has the "social consciousness" that django either lacks or is uninterested in. i don't think this portrayal is necessarily true or false, right or wrong, but i do wonder what it "tells" about tarantino's intentions that he drew the characters this way instead of portraying e.g. the dawning of a revolutionary consciousness, as in "burn!"

of course in "burn!" the relationship b/t the white mercenary and his black "protegé" is more complicated--from the start, and in how it develops. imagine if schultz turned out to be an agent provocateur on behalf of another plantation owner and you get the idea.

it's the scene right after Tarantino is blown up by dynamite--as Django rides off there is a very long lingering shot of one of the slaves watching, first with something like confusion and awe, and then a slow slight admiring smile.

iirc as its cutting between the shots of django riding away and the slaves looking at him ride off, a close-up of that slave is mixed in where he smiles in a satisfied way that seems to indicate admiration

that is the social consciousness angle for Tarantino i suppose--Django as myth and heroic inspiration.

Those slaves freed from the cart by Django will likely be captured.

not in california they wont

xpost

So will Django and Broomhilda.

but they have their freedom papers, unlike the cart slaves

lots of liberated slaves (and northern blacks who were never slaves) were "recaptured" and sold back into slavery if they were in the "wrong" state.

django II?

django rechained

but they have their freedom papers

I know it's looking past the boundaries of a myth-making movie to wonder whether those freedom papers would have mattered a damn had Broonhilde and Django been captured by Southerners.

you guys he is a superhero who just killed like 100 people and blew up a mansion, I am sure he can get out of the south

well yeah but at least it would make a premise for a sequel. not that i'd want a sequel.

Django 2chained

If there's a sequel it would likely take place during the civil war, which could be pretty interesting. Django could be some kind of Union mercenary, and knowing Tarantino's penchant for alternate history maybe he kills Jefferson Davis?

BTW I'm already mailing my treatment to the Weinsteins...

Jefferson Davis played by Helen Mirren.

sequel should fast forward 25 years and have SLJ play django