Django Unchained
Feb. 17th, 2013 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skull_bearerYes I waited until Febuary to see my first film of 2013, sue me.
I have an odd relationship with Tarantino movies. On one hand he is without a doubt a terrific director with his own unique style, and the films he makes are very good. However, for some reason, I've yet to see a film of his that grabs me by the throat and doesn't let me go until the last moments. I can never say I love any film of his. It's not his fault, there's just something about them that doesn't quite mesh with me. That being said, I've not met a Tarantino film that I actively dislike (except, for very personal reasons, Inglorious Basterds), so every time a film of his comes out, I usually go and see it because it guarantees a good time. Not every film has to be District 9.
So, that being said, I went to see Django Unchained. To me, it looked like what Inglorious Basterds should have been, and was at the very least not covering a historical period I was familiar with. I went in expecting gore, slaughter and good dialogue, with perhaps a little hope that this would be the film that would make me understand why Tarantino is so universally beloved by so many.
I'm sorry to say I still haven't got it, but that's all I can complain about, because Django Unchained is a rollickingly good film, and I had a really good time. It was, all around, really good, really fun, and really, really satisfying in a visceral way you only get with Tarantino films.
Unlike Basterds, in which I hated the title characters to the point I wanted to Nazis to blow them up as soon as possible, the main characters of Django and Schultz are very likable. They're not always likeable people, but as an audience there's no real problem in rooting for them. The bad guys similarly, are so repellently bad that it's a joy and delight when they get blown away in showers of bullets and floods of very pretty blood.
And dynamite. Let us not forget the dynamite.
Now, please take this as the ignorant ramblings of someone who has never personaly experienced racism, although has studied various forms of it and is aware of many of its manifestations, but anyone who says this film is racist has either not seen the film, or was wearing special goggles which showed Birth of a Nation instead.
I think the key of this is in looking at what racism actually is, and what I believe it is (along with sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry) is a series of stereotypes. It's basically your brain trying to find the easiest ways of thinking about the complex world around us. It's much, much easier for your brain to just say 'this group of people are all x' rather than trying to see all of them as individuals, which uses more energy. It's why racism tends to be more prevalent among people who are less educated, and why it's so prevalent, because it's basically your brain being lazy.
How does it work into Django?
Well for that the common stereotype of black people has to be examined. This stereotype is not necessarily negative (oh boy, do I hate it what people say 'this wasn't racist/sexist/etc, that person was protrayed in a good light'. Fuck that shit. Fuck it to death), but even the best part of it (ie: 'Black people are good at physical sport') feeds into the negative ('black people are not so bright') as there are all parts of the same stereotype. The stereotype of the black male as strong, violent, not so bright, prone to crime, etc. I'm sure you get the idea.
So the examination should be: how much does Django Unchained work with the common black (particularly black male) stereotype, and how does it subvert it? The biggest example I think is in the intelligence of the character. How smart is Django, in comparison with the other white characters?
On first impression one would be tempted to notch that one as a fail for the movie, Django spends much of the film following suggestions by his white comrade Schultz, who advises more cunning schemes to Django's more straight forward 'go in and shoot 'em up' approach. That, on the face of it, is uncomfortable, the black man prefering to go in guns blazing without a thought, and the white man advising caution and guile. So much, so stereotypical.
However.
Where Django subverts this is when these plans actually play out. Schultz and Django first follow Schultz's more cunning ruse to rescue his wife... and the plan fails. Moreover, it fails SPECTACULARLY. Schultz dies, Django is captured and sold off to be worked to death, and his wife is still trapped. When Django escapes, he comes back and enacts his original plan, and that succeeds. The result is less that Django wasn't thinking, but rather that he was more familiar with this environment than Schultz, and acted accordingly. Schultz overrode him, and the plan failed because Schultz didn't understand the depths of what they were dealing with here.
Not to mention, that the reason Schultz plan failed in the first place was that one fo the bad guys picked up on it, Steven, the black house slave, who is quickly and blatently exposed as being far, far cleverer and more dangerous than his repellent but somewhat moronic owner.
One of the most revoltingly funny ironies, is when Candie shows off the skull of a black slave to prove that black people are naturally inferior... just after his black slave Steven had pointed out a plot he'd cheerfully walked into. Yeah, wow.
And the whole sequence with the KKK. I'm not sure how well it fit into the movie as a whole, but wow, that was hilarious, and finally answered something I always wondered about the KKK: how do they see with those hoods on when riding? (Spoiler: they don't.) They are protrayed as utter incompetant morons, who the heroes mow down and don't spend a second thought on.
The one area the film falls down on is in its gender politics, but even that is subverted in an interesting fashion. The main character, Brunhilda, is a fairly classic damsel in distress. She's beautiful, she's loved by the main character, she needs to be rescued from peril, and so on. I don't think I need to review the female stereotypes there.
However, these are not black female stereotypes. Black female stereotypes (in as much as they exist at all) focus on, as far as I can tell, sass, 'attitude' and purely sexual beauty. Brunhilda is none of these. Brunhilda, as her namesake suggests, is the western female: classically beautiful, cultured, virginal. (I use this word in the metaphorical sense because while it's pretty clear all the way through that Brunhilda is being used as a 'comfort woman' at Candieland and definitely not a virgin, at no point does this translate in her somehow being worth less. Django doesn't care, and neither does the film)
This isn't just hinted; it is explained at length and explicitly, with Schultz drawing comparisons between the legend of Seigfried and Django's life. Dango Unchained is using one tired old stereotype to dispel another. It's quite stunning.
It's also notable that Tarantino showed a great sense of equality in evil. Although Candie's sister was not as outrageously evil as he was, her evil was no less horrendous for being hidden, and Django blows her away same as the others.
Also, while I don't believe anti-white racism really exists, in that white people as a whole are not subject to the cultural stereotype as other ethnicities are, I could almost see Tarantino setting out some kind of template for it in Django with the Candie siblings. The casual cruelty of power, the anemic almost-incest between them, the stupidity and mindless confidence that 'this is the way things are'. It's... odd. This isn't any kind of complaint, it's just fascinating.
I was actually expecting more of Jackson's Uncle Tom character Steven. Acually, forget I said Uncle Tom. Steven is a complete subversion of the Uncle Tom stereotype. He plays it to the hilt, but underneath, it's clear he's the one running the show. He's got the entire house, white and black, dancing to his tune and he knows how to play each and every one of them. But considering how much his preformance was touted, I sort of expected him to have more screentime. Oh well, if the worse you can say about a three hour long film is that it should have been longer, it's no bad thing.
Christopher Waltz was wonderful as ever. I think he's becoming Tarantino's next muse, but I did like how he didn't let him become the star of the show. there were a few points in which he started to slip, but then he got killed off and we were watching the Jamie Foxx show again, as it should have been.
There's a lot about this character that intrigues me. Particularly in the last scene he's in, when he's buying Brunhilda. On one hand, his action in shooting Candie was phenomenally stupid considering it shat things up for Django and Brunhilda, and I did wonder if this was some kind of expy for white cultural guilt, that white liberal outrage is just making things worse. In this case, Schultz sacrificing Django and Brunhilda's happiness for his own sense of moral justice.
But it could also have been read as a sort of ultimate rejection. In shaking Candie's hand, Schultz would become part of the very system he now loathed with every fibre of his being. There wouldn't be any kind of victory, even if Django and Brunhilda went free, because it would have been a victory by the terms of the enemy. In the end, you have to surrender to the system, or reject it and be destroyed, Schultz chose the latter.
Also I liked that in contrast with Waltz' previous role; Django Unchained is positively Germanopile, German culture looks in at every angle, and oddly for the modern audience, it is celebrated. The legend of Seigfried is used as a template for the hero's journey. German is the lauguage of freedom when Schultz and Brunhilda plot together in a language the Candies cannot understand. Schultz finally breaks down when Candie's sister plays Beethoven, unable to stand that such beautiful music can be played in such a sick place.
And I think this is the crux of the argument against Django as a racist film. Tarantino took elements from the whitest of the white myths, from a culture who's connection with racism is infamous, and married it with black protagonists and an antagonist. And it works beautifully.
You know... maybe this might be the Tarantino film for me after all.
I have an odd relationship with Tarantino movies. On one hand he is without a doubt a terrific director with his own unique style, and the films he makes are very good. However, for some reason, I've yet to see a film of his that grabs me by the throat and doesn't let me go until the last moments. I can never say I love any film of his. It's not his fault, there's just something about them that doesn't quite mesh with me. That being said, I've not met a Tarantino film that I actively dislike (except, for very personal reasons, Inglorious Basterds), so every time a film of his comes out, I usually go and see it because it guarantees a good time. Not every film has to be District 9.
So, that being said, I went to see Django Unchained. To me, it looked like what Inglorious Basterds should have been, and was at the very least not covering a historical period I was familiar with. I went in expecting gore, slaughter and good dialogue, with perhaps a little hope that this would be the film that would make me understand why Tarantino is so universally beloved by so many.
I'm sorry to say I still haven't got it, but that's all I can complain about, because Django Unchained is a rollickingly good film, and I had a really good time. It was, all around, really good, really fun, and really, really satisfying in a visceral way you only get with Tarantino films.
Unlike Basterds, in which I hated the title characters to the point I wanted to Nazis to blow them up as soon as possible, the main characters of Django and Schultz are very likable. They're not always likeable people, but as an audience there's no real problem in rooting for them. The bad guys similarly, are so repellently bad that it's a joy and delight when they get blown away in showers of bullets and floods of very pretty blood.
And dynamite. Let us not forget the dynamite.
Now, please take this as the ignorant ramblings of someone who has never personaly experienced racism, although has studied various forms of it and is aware of many of its manifestations, but anyone who says this film is racist has either not seen the film, or was wearing special goggles which showed Birth of a Nation instead.
I think the key of this is in looking at what racism actually is, and what I believe it is (along with sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry) is a series of stereotypes. It's basically your brain trying to find the easiest ways of thinking about the complex world around us. It's much, much easier for your brain to just say 'this group of people are all x' rather than trying to see all of them as individuals, which uses more energy. It's why racism tends to be more prevalent among people who are less educated, and why it's so prevalent, because it's basically your brain being lazy.
How does it work into Django?
Well for that the common stereotype of black people has to be examined. This stereotype is not necessarily negative (oh boy, do I hate it what people say 'this wasn't racist/sexist/etc, that person was protrayed in a good light'. Fuck that shit. Fuck it to death), but even the best part of it (ie: 'Black people are good at physical sport') feeds into the negative ('black people are not so bright') as there are all parts of the same stereotype. The stereotype of the black male as strong, violent, not so bright, prone to crime, etc. I'm sure you get the idea.
So the examination should be: how much does Django Unchained work with the common black (particularly black male) stereotype, and how does it subvert it? The biggest example I think is in the intelligence of the character. How smart is Django, in comparison with the other white characters?
On first impression one would be tempted to notch that one as a fail for the movie, Django spends much of the film following suggestions by his white comrade Schultz, who advises more cunning schemes to Django's more straight forward 'go in and shoot 'em up' approach. That, on the face of it, is uncomfortable, the black man prefering to go in guns blazing without a thought, and the white man advising caution and guile. So much, so stereotypical.
However.
Where Django subverts this is when these plans actually play out. Schultz and Django first follow Schultz's more cunning ruse to rescue his wife... and the plan fails. Moreover, it fails SPECTACULARLY. Schultz dies, Django is captured and sold off to be worked to death, and his wife is still trapped. When Django escapes, he comes back and enacts his original plan, and that succeeds. The result is less that Django wasn't thinking, but rather that he was more familiar with this environment than Schultz, and acted accordingly. Schultz overrode him, and the plan failed because Schultz didn't understand the depths of what they were dealing with here.
Not to mention, that the reason Schultz plan failed in the first place was that one fo the bad guys picked up on it, Steven, the black house slave, who is quickly and blatently exposed as being far, far cleverer and more dangerous than his repellent but somewhat moronic owner.
One of the most revoltingly funny ironies, is when Candie shows off the skull of a black slave to prove that black people are naturally inferior... just after his black slave Steven had pointed out a plot he'd cheerfully walked into. Yeah, wow.
And the whole sequence with the KKK. I'm not sure how well it fit into the movie as a whole, but wow, that was hilarious, and finally answered something I always wondered about the KKK: how do they see with those hoods on when riding? (Spoiler: they don't.) They are protrayed as utter incompetant morons, who the heroes mow down and don't spend a second thought on.
The one area the film falls down on is in its gender politics, but even that is subverted in an interesting fashion. The main character, Brunhilda, is a fairly classic damsel in distress. She's beautiful, she's loved by the main character, she needs to be rescued from peril, and so on. I don't think I need to review the female stereotypes there.
However, these are not black female stereotypes. Black female stereotypes (in as much as they exist at all) focus on, as far as I can tell, sass, 'attitude' and purely sexual beauty. Brunhilda is none of these. Brunhilda, as her namesake suggests, is the western female: classically beautiful, cultured, virginal. (I use this word in the metaphorical sense because while it's pretty clear all the way through that Brunhilda is being used as a 'comfort woman' at Candieland and definitely not a virgin, at no point does this translate in her somehow being worth less. Django doesn't care, and neither does the film)
This isn't just hinted; it is explained at length and explicitly, with Schultz drawing comparisons between the legend of Seigfried and Django's life. Dango Unchained is using one tired old stereotype to dispel another. It's quite stunning.
It's also notable that Tarantino showed a great sense of equality in evil. Although Candie's sister was not as outrageously evil as he was, her evil was no less horrendous for being hidden, and Django blows her away same as the others.
Also, while I don't believe anti-white racism really exists, in that white people as a whole are not subject to the cultural stereotype as other ethnicities are, I could almost see Tarantino setting out some kind of template for it in Django with the Candie siblings. The casual cruelty of power, the anemic almost-incest between them, the stupidity and mindless confidence that 'this is the way things are'. It's... odd. This isn't any kind of complaint, it's just fascinating.
I was actually expecting more of Jackson's Uncle Tom character Steven. Acually, forget I said Uncle Tom. Steven is a complete subversion of the Uncle Tom stereotype. He plays it to the hilt, but underneath, it's clear he's the one running the show. He's got the entire house, white and black, dancing to his tune and he knows how to play each and every one of them. But considering how much his preformance was touted, I sort of expected him to have more screentime. Oh well, if the worse you can say about a three hour long film is that it should have been longer, it's no bad thing.
Christopher Waltz was wonderful as ever. I think he's becoming Tarantino's next muse, but I did like how he didn't let him become the star of the show. there were a few points in which he started to slip, but then he got killed off and we were watching the Jamie Foxx show again, as it should have been.
There's a lot about this character that intrigues me. Particularly in the last scene he's in, when he's buying Brunhilda. On one hand, his action in shooting Candie was phenomenally stupid considering it shat things up for Django and Brunhilda, and I did wonder if this was some kind of expy for white cultural guilt, that white liberal outrage is just making things worse. In this case, Schultz sacrificing Django and Brunhilda's happiness for his own sense of moral justice.
But it could also have been read as a sort of ultimate rejection. In shaking Candie's hand, Schultz would become part of the very system he now loathed with every fibre of his being. There wouldn't be any kind of victory, even if Django and Brunhilda went free, because it would have been a victory by the terms of the enemy. In the end, you have to surrender to the system, or reject it and be destroyed, Schultz chose the latter.
Also I liked that in contrast with Waltz' previous role; Django Unchained is positively Germanopile, German culture looks in at every angle, and oddly for the modern audience, it is celebrated. The legend of Seigfried is used as a template for the hero's journey. German is the lauguage of freedom when Schultz and Brunhilda plot together in a language the Candies cannot understand. Schultz finally breaks down when Candie's sister plays Beethoven, unable to stand that such beautiful music can be played in such a sick place.
And I think this is the crux of the argument against Django as a racist film. Tarantino took elements from the whitest of the white myths, from a culture who's connection with racism is infamous, and married it with black protagonists and an antagonist. And it works beautifully.
You know... maybe this might be the Tarantino film for me after all.