In a climactic scene, Django informs his happily enslaved nemesis that he is the one n-word in ten thousand audacious enough to kill anyone standing in the way of freedom. Is this how Americans actually perceive slavery? More often than not, the answer to that question is answered in the affirmative. It is precisely because of the extant mythology of black subservience that these scenes pack such a cathartic payload.
In my sixteen years of teaching African-American history, one sadly common theme has been the number of black students who shy away from courses dealing with slavery out of shame that slaves never fought back. It seems almost pedantic to point out that slavery was nothing like this. The slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution. Nearly two hundred thousand black men, most of them former slaves, enlisted in the Union Army in order to accomplish en masse precisely what Django attempts to do alone: risk death in order to free those whom they loved.
The alternate history is found not in the story of vengeful ex-slave but in the idea that he could be the only one. The central conflict is not between an ex-slave and a slaver but between two archetypes—the militant and the sellout. But in creating Stephen, Tarantino necessarily trafficked in the stereotypes he was ostensibly responding to. Samuel L. And I'm thankful that I did.
Because if I had got on doing music back in or whenever, I'd probably be singing on a cruise ship now. Remember this from ? In the meantime, I'm tempted to view Foxx's life as a grand act of reinvention; a flight from his past, playing piano for racists in the state of his birth. But the actor is having none of it. Despite everything, he still cares for Texas. I had a great upbringing and you learn how to get along, to do what you need to do as a young black man growing up in the south.
You know, I performed at the new [Dallas] Cowboys Stadium a while back. And meeting those guys as just regular people outside of politics, you realise they're great people. They're just like me and you. Can he be serious? I confess that I had Bush cast more in the role of the Calvin Candie-ish plantation owner, smirking from his veranda while the field hands do the work.
There's a difference between the man and his politics. I'm not excusing anything George Bush did in his politics, but I rate people on how I meet them. That's not going to change me from being a Democrat to a Republican, but that's just the team they play for.
Different values, different ways of doing things. But that Texas camaraderie: there's nothing like it. Foxx checks his phone and then shoots me a look. They knee-jerked to slavery, they knee-jerked towards the n-word. But I come from the south and that's where the word grew. And I think that gave me an upper hand on the material. I know people like Stephen.
I know people like Calvin Candie. I played cheese-and-wine parties for men who called us niggers. But my grandmother worked as a housemaid all her life and she taught me some truths. I learned those lessons and I learned them in the south, and I did a pretty good job of it too. So now, when I go back to Terrell, all the people come out. Smalltown boy done good. I wonder what his grandmother would have made of Django Unchained. No doubt the language alone would give her conniptions?
On adopting his stage name, Foxx admits that it didn't feel real. It was a costume, a pose, a magic ticket to get him through the door. These days it feels like a much snugger fit. He was Eric Bishop in Texas and now he's Jamie Foxx in Hollywood and there are only a few people left who remember how it used to be. He thinks it over. You are either the brutal, slave torturing white master that is Leonardo Dicaprio's 'Calvin Candie,' or you're the benevolent, won't even shake a racist's hand slave-saver that is Christoph Waltz's 'King Shultz.
I don't believe that most of the people in this world exist at such extremes. The truth is, most us would not have been Django and most white people wouldn't have been Calvin Candie. On the flipside, that doesn't mean that every white person who voted for Obama this election would've been an abolitionist in , or that every black Republican would have been a conniving house slave.
The truth ain't ever black and white -- it always lies in the gray. By painting all of the characters with such broad strokes and by wrapping the film up neatly into what is essentially a happy ending, Tarantino robs the viewers of any incentive to place themselves in the film and reconcile who they are today against who they might've been during that time.
That annoys me. Much like the film's polarizing characterization of its protagonists, the debate around Django Unchained is equally polarizing. It seems everybody with an opinion on the film must either be for it or against it. The problem with this kind of compartmentalization is that it creates an extremely narrow and myopic lens through which we're allowed to view the film.
The folks who believe the film is great tend to cite its greatness as a buffer to all criticism folks might levy against it. The folks who are against it, cite its perceived racism as paramount to any artistic value the film might hold.
Let me be clear: Django Unchained is by no means a great film. Anyone who tells you that this film is high art worthy of all manner of praise is likely struggling to reconcile the various emotions the film suggests. It is meanderingly long, the characterization leaves much to be desired as outlined above and it departs way too far from the historical record for a film essentially billed as a slave narrative.
And even if it were a great film -- its greatness would not mean it is thereby freed of all critical analysis. Let me also be clear about this: Django Unchained is by no means a racist film.
Does the film err on the insensitive side -- sure. Is it almost pornographic in its depiction of the brutalization of blacks? But it also gives one of the most shockingly graphic depictions of the horror that was American slavery that we've ever seen in a Hollywood film.
It also shows just how deeply ingrained racism is in this country. And it also gives us our first big-budget, fictional super-hero slave. Despite its shortcomings, Tarantino has crafted an Django's most important achievement is that it forces us to come to terms with the fact that it's completely possible to be both thoroughly entertained News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes.
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