Quentin Tarantino's Western movie "Django Unchained"

Josh's interpretation is pretty much how Sam Jackson read the character! The "Dick Cheney of Candieland."

Wow, I had no idea. But me, OTM:

You're playing a slave we haven't much seen on screen — someone who's not a victim and is, in fact, kind of the bad guy. Was that hard for you?

I don't think there's any question Stephen is one of the most despised Negroes in cinematic history. He's unapologetically menacing. He's the power behind the throne. He's the Dick Cheney of Candieland. But I also understand his position. He doesn't want to upset the apple cart. On the plantation, he can function like a free man. But he goes 75 miles away and he's just an ordinary slave.

Some of the power of the character just comes from the way he looks — a paunchy, hobbled old man with an old face. Not your usual Samuel Jackson character.

(Laughs.) No, it's not. At least, I hope it's not. Quentin and I wanted to give Stephen a certain look — we wanted him to appear like the most ancient slave in the place. Which he is. But we also wanted him to seem strong and smart. He looks feeble, but there's also something else there.

From the LATimes.

I'm just saying there's enough ambiguity at work that I can't tell if it's intentional

why wouldn't it be? would it even matter if it wasn't? the ambiguity is there either way

the movie effectively does show stephen in charge, it would've been shitty storytelling for him to whip out some free papers (???) at the end for who knows what reason. you complain so much about character motivation, but what would motivate him to do that?

Why would he care why Waltz was there or whether he wanted to buy Broomhilda? Why at the end does he cast away his cane and stand up straight? Why does he seem to have a tremor when he's talking around other white people, but sits stone still when he speaks in private with Leo? Again, just kind of sloppy and ambiguous.

what the... dude are you a robot or something

the part of this movie that sticks in my craw most -- not as a flaw, necessarily, just the thing that i think of most when i think of it at all -- is candie's rumination on "why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?"

an actual calvin candie would absolutely know the answer: because the lives of slaves were heavily policed. being on a slave patrol was a compulsory public duty for white men in southern states. there is enough evidence to suggest this relationship between state, owner and slave is the "insurrection" and "well-regulated militia" described by the 2nd amendment. slave uprisings were a regular enough historical occurrence to be popularly feared; keeping everybody in line was a constant public effort.

there is a strange idea still at work in american historical imagination that slaves must have been somewhat brainwashed or heavily ideologically indoctrinated into the idea of being slaves; a multi-generational anti-self-esteem effort or something. after all, who would put up with being a slave otherwise? (modern people really have a tough time imagining themselves being stuck in a subordinate position). the idea goes hand-in-hand with confederate apologetics that slavery was relatively "peaceful". the truth is that the south was something closer to an open-air prison camp, with every white person acting as warden.

for tarantino's story of individual heroism and revenge to work, the "mystery" of slave passivity is has to be kept alive as well. it wasn't really a mystery.

it's not really a mystery? i mean the movie goes pretty far in showing fucked up the entire system was to "keep everyone in line" - even Schultz, the first hero of the story, makes a mockery of the fact that he's a legalized murderer and corpse seller in this world

uh... p sure "tarantino's story" makes abundantly clear why a slave wouldn't slit his master's throat and why candie's theory is self-serving and abhorrent in the extreme. dude lays it out while desecrating the man's mortal remains

sorry there weren't subtitles explaining "while many white slaveowners actually believed this shit, it should be obvious by now that the game was rigged for a thousand miles in very direction."

"sorry there weren't subtitles" lol fuck off

xposting That's interesting, and an unintentional comparison to (speaking of) Australia, which was also largely a self-policed open-air prison camp. There was a point when people back in the UK would apparently commit petty crimes on purpose so as to be reunited with family in self-directed prison colony Sydney, which beat a crap life back home. Perhaps not a coincidence that Australian citizens eventually put an end to their status as criminal repository.

the movie effectively does show stephen in charge, it would've been shitty storytelling for him to whip out some free papers (???) at the end for who knows what reason. you complain so much about character motivation, but what would motivate him to do that?

I'll play this game, because it's a fun exercise and it's always entertaining to watch some of you get disproportionately aggravated.

There are several parallels between Django and Steven, some made explicit through the contrivances of the film. The fact that black slaver (which Django is pretending to be) and head house slave (which Steven is) are both underlined as the two worst kinds of black people, or the fact that upon meeting one other DiCaprio senses enough immediate tension to outright state "you two will hate each other" or whatever. But I think had Steven been revealed to be a freed slave it would have added an impactful irony to the story. Django and Steven would both have been freed slaves convinced it was in their best interest to remain under the respective care of a white master - Waltz and DiCaprio, respectfully, both at least temporarily their masters by choice. Django would be provided a freedom of movement with Waltz as his escort, Steven gets the be the brains behind the power, as long as he's on the plantation; that would be his motivation, as a freed slave, to essentially remain in the employ of DiCaprio. Except that when Django loses his master (Waltz) he ends up more powerful, able to exact his revenge the way he sees fit, with no check and none of Waltz's games. But when Steven loses his explicit, outright legal master, when DiCaprio is gunned down, he suddenly realizes what a lie he's been telling himself, because legally free or no, he suddenly loses his power and is reduced to just another slave. Heck, it could have even ended with Steven blowing his own head off as a final expression of what little power over himself he still has.

Anyway, this is what happens in my "Django: Remixed" cut, which will be out in 2033.

I liked the movie, but I also really dig your take, Josh.

http://jessehimself.tumblr.com/post/43450542625/me-tarzan-you-jane-me-django-you-chains

If you sit/fast-forward through the credits, those three toothless gents appear again, still in the “nigger cage” looking on. It’s quiet, until one says…. wait for it… “What’s that nigger’s name?” It’s supposed to be funny, somehow. These stupid slaves just walked to Candie Land with Django from the Cleopatra Club. They most definitely know Django’s name. Everyone knows his name. You chose only one bonus line after the credits and it’s only purpose was to squeeze in your 177th “nigger”? Really dude? Who is this film for again? Thank you for summing up this experience with a purposeless self-debasing line from the mouth of a cartoonishly dumb, snaggle-toothed black man, in a cage, with the door wide open.

etc.

damn, look at quentin grabbin him a meaty chunk. where is that photo from

http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2013/02/quentin-tarantino-django-unchained-director-ss#slide=1

incredible number of otm lines in caek's link

the first one lol altho

(that is "i mean the first one; lol. altho.")

anyway i am going only on memory of seeing it single time over a month ago but essay has seriously damaged my opinion of this hazy memory

some otm lines, plenty of offtm ones too

The entire time I watched the movie I tried to put myself in the mind of an African-American audience member, but of course, I can't really do that. I did think, however, as a Jew, of all the countless times I've sat through explicit anti-Semitism in the name of action, scares, suspense, history, jokes, drama, irony, or whatever, including in Tarantino's last film, and figured, well, close enough. One difference, though, is that as a Jew, I really don't currently live under the implied or real threat of constant discrimination, or the oft chance of bumping into a posse of Illinois Nazis. But that's neither here nor there when it comes to the potentially offensive depiction of "real" pain, tragedy, racism or whatever in the name of entertainment. Basically I'm conflicted on that front, but back to what I've screeded about already, it did leave me massively disappointed that Tarantino failed to shape his mess into a larger, more intellectually thought-provoking vision, which I thought "Basterds" at its best did do.

Black viewers have had wildly different reactions to this movie fwiw.

I find that hard to believe.

not really feelin' that post

Me neither. I dug the movie, a lot, but OTOH I think the most "problematic" part of the movie (the bit with the slaves in cages, and QT's stupid cameo, on through the end of the movie) also seemed sort-of superfluous. Seemed like QT could have had Django kick everyone's ass the first time around, skipped the bit after the credits, and in the process, he would have shaved 10-15 minutes off of a pretty long film.

I'm on board for asserting that Waltz gets all the expository moments to show he's a Good Guy At Heart.

The problem with that post (and with a lot of critiques of Tarantino) is that it does not speak the movie language that Tarantino is working in. To not get the genre resonance of “What’s that nigger’s name?” ("who was that masked man," etc) isn't astute, it's clueless. Love or hate the guy, and I can be on both sides of that, but if you're going to really engage with him you have to be at least basically fluent in pop culture and movie culture.

Waltz is p much the magic whitey in this pic

but if you're going to really engage with him you have to be at least basically fluent in pop culture and movie culture.

this is true on one level, of course, but the other way to look at it is that if you aren't as as big a believer in the emancipatory potential of pop culture then you can certainly critique Tarantino from that point of view. point beings, it's not the type of thing he's appropriating that's the problem, it's that he appropriates it without questioning it any deep way.

Not a fair critique if it's clearly not his intention to do so though.

yeah potentially my problem is that it isn't his intention to do so. hence my hand wringing up thread about not liking the same kind of movies that he does.

if you don't believe in the emancipatory potential of pop culture then why are you even watching this movie!

so i can talk about it on the internet, obv

otm

if you aren't as as big a believer in the emancipatory potential of pop culture then you can certainly critique Tarantino from that point of view

Sure. And any kind of slave-sploitation movie -- especially one made by a white guy -- is going to be open to all kinds of objections. Pretty much by definition. But there are still smarter critiques and less smart ones, and the smarter ones at least know what the movie's doing, the territory it's working (which is all cinematic, not historical), the tropes it's tweaking.

yeah, feel like so much culture criticism these days is just "maaaan, this is really problematic dontchaknow." *waves hands* feel like it's a lot harder to try to figure out how/why something works or why it fails at what it's trying to do.

well, sure, that post above would have been improved if the writer had pointed out how Django is problematic even when looked through the prism of Mandingo and those exploitation movies.

i love reading things about problematic something is

about how* problematic...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xZq3wrvcb9Q/SnXSnMLZ6OI/AAAAAAAAAa8/s4DebFHjdzs/S1600-R/headerforrmjsharpened.jpg

or when we problematize movies

Quentin Tarantino's Western movie "Django Unchained"

the "problematic" thing is only annoying for me when it's the conclusion and not an invitation to dig deeper and untangle things.

i've actually been thinking a lot about the difference between QT's films that are set in the criminal underworld vs the two that are set in history--or not only in history but the two greatest historical atrocities that are closest to hand, basically. what's gained/lost when you put *slavery* in the same cinematic context as, say, Kill Bill (or essentially address it with the same aesthetic toolkit). i dunno.

I think it's a lose-lose for Tarantino, actually, because he is neither expanding on the vocabulary of the stuff he's referencing, nor is he establishing a new way to think about race through this particular spectrum. In interviews lately, like the W interview posted above, he's very aware of the innate power/danger/confrontationalism of the material, and even says that in this instance he didn't want to paint Candie as even remotely ambiguously evil, since he (like Waltz's character) finds him so repellent that there is no moral nuance or whatever, which is something you get ample examples of in his degrees-of-badness-and-honor characters in his crime films. The problem is, that leaves this movie starting with a slavery-is-bad message and gives it nowhere to go from there save cartoonish comeuppance delivered in full. Not sure where is could or should have gone instead, necessarily, but for all his PoMo hopscotching and winks and nods, QT doesn't leave you a lot to chew on.

cartoonish comeuppance delivered in full

inglourious basterds in a nutshell

man who knew I would be channeling soderbergh

[REGARDING FILM CRAFT] No. I think her reading of that stuff was pretty superficial as well. She had a great gift for setting movies in cultural context, but what set her apart from most critics—and especially a lot of critics today—was that she was at her absolute best when she loved something. And that was exciting to read. Nowadays, I find critics to be very facile when they don’t like a film, but when they do like something they get tongue-tied.

^ re: pauline kael

from that hulksmashculturalcrit blog thingy

I think the prob I had with that blog post is like, its own position from which it was criticizing the movie. like, I 'got' it immediately - the dude was going for a full-on, this movie fails at verisimilitude. here's how the film fails at depitching the actual experience of what it must have happened during the time of slavery. and it's like, yeah dude, I get it, but to think that the movie was setting out to give the audience a completely 100% realistic portrayal of what slavery was like, that it was trying to be the next amistad, well dude I'm just gonna get off here because I'm never ever going to be watching the movie from your mindset. peace!

cartoonish comeuppance delivered in full

inglourious basterds in a nutshell

Sure, but how violence is depicted in films, as well as film as escapism vs. reality, are theme. Watching the Nazis get their own cartoonish comeuppance in a movie theater where the Nazis are also watching a cartoonishly violent film celebrating themselves, projected by the woman who has orchestrated their doom, is not the same as "wronged slave wants to kill those who wronged him and does so."

Also, in "Django" the squibs are splashy and def. OTT. Been a while, but don't recall Tarantino doing that in "Basterds."

I liked the combination of standard QT 2/3/4-character scenes with these operatic scenes with 50 townspeople/slaves/Klansmen/etc. Other than the Crazy 88s fight in Kill Bill, it seems like this is something new.

has anyone done a formalist comparison of the film to RW's Siegfried?

Also, in "Django" the squibs are splashy and def. OTT. Been a while, but don't recall Tarantino doing that in "Basterds."

everything in the first 2 hrs looked digital to me - first time I thought "squib" was in the Candie house shootout