“Antebellum blaxploitation spaghetti western… what’s not to like?”
Lawrence Swan: New York City, Visual Artist
LOS ANGELES: Sunday, February 17, 2013
In my book, race is mostly a distraction. So, I was planning on avoiding Django Unchained, the current controversial film by Quentin Tarantino. The film Starring Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio pushes the hot button of RACE. Yet, Tarantino delivers a brand of movie that I actually enjoy. He tells stories of revenge. Stories, old and mythic in their narrative power. His climatic scenes are tomato ketchup bang ups with as much splatter and drip as in a Jackson Pollack action painting.
The explosive violence of Tarantino, felt appropriate suddenly as Christopher J. Dorner, 33, former LAPD officer was being hunted by increasingly gun-happy force. The accidental shooting of two female delivery truck drivers and a young male surfer were among the news stories circulating during the frightening man-hunt. Dorner’s smiling image, in association with his rambling Facebook manifesto, in which he expressed the intention to commit acts of violence coupled his navy reserve past, and stories of youthful altruism in the name of “integrity,” had everyone nervous, watching, waiting to find out what would be the outcome of the impending show-down. Propelled, perhaps in part by the intensity of this news story, we took refuge in the RAVE cinema, movie theater, stopping at the bar, to confer with our favorite bartender.
“OH!” She said when we told her we were there to see Django Unchained. She told us the story of her Christmas Day at the RAVE Cinema, where Tarantino spent the evening grilling movie-goers on their experience of the film. “He talked to my mom (a mature African American woman),” she said. “He wanted to know what she thought of certain parts of the movie. He wanted to know IF she found it, you know… racist.” Apparently, not since the lady replied she was sorry to admit she’d fallen asleep during the scenes in question, “It being Christmas Day and all…”
We were touched to hear of Tarantino’s commitment to his film and interest in the film’s impact upon viewers. This intense caring about the quality of one’s product is a measure of “integrity.” The film was true to Tarantino’s storytelling style. It featured, as a number of his films do, the extensive and fluid use of the dreaded, “N-WORD!” This is a word, I have been cautioned NOT to use by people whose intelligence I admire. Thus…
The controversy can be contained in a nutshell with famed director’s Spike Lee’s published comment, He told Vibe magazine, “I can’t speak on it ’cause I’m not gonna see it. The only thing I can say is it’s disrespectful to my ancestors, to see that film.”
The notion that seeing Django Unchained, is “disrespectful,” to anyone’s ancestors is well… silly. The film revolves around the mutual respect and affection between black and white people as much as it turns with the images of horror and savagery among the owners and exploiters of plantation property. Set is in the antebellum south, and telling the story of Django, a high-IQ BLACK man that earns the respect and friendship of a German bounty hunter, movingly played by Christoph Waltz.
The movie begins with slaves fettered in a chain gang and being transported by two cruel slave traders from one location to another, “somewhere in Texas,” the film takes OFF with a BANG and before you know it, the German bounty hunter character, a dentist by training, but a professional killer by trade are business partners and treating each other with brotherly affection. The bounty hunter treats the former slave like family, teaching the later to read and training him in a lucrative IF morally suspect profession.
The sale of flesh… Prostitution, Bounty Hunting, and Slavery… The HORROR The Horror of American History is one which I have steadfastly avoided, lest it besmirch my cultivated LOVE of our country. I see the world as full of opportunity and America as a place where the dream becomes reality. Our president’s story is unique to this nation long divided and yet united in the potential for change. America is the nation most flexible and progressive in the construction of new opportunities for alternate histories to flourish and provide images that elevate the HORROR of history into the song of victory.
Jamie Foxx is majestic in his representation of the anti-hero avenger. Waltz, the Austrian-German actor, nominated for an Oscar award for his performance as dentist turned bounty hunter and true friend to Django, is the ideal of the German town dweller unfettered by nationalist propaganda and committed to ideas of autonomy and self-determination. Samuel Jackson is spot-on as the evil head of the Candy-Land domestics. His paternal intimacy with Calvin Candy, Leonardo D’Caprio’s character, calling the later into the library for, “a talk,” over cognac.
Kerry Washington, effectively plays Broomhilda Von Shaft, (Conceived as the great-great-great grandmother of the 1970‘s blaxpoiltation films). German speaking love-object propelling Django forward into the Heart of Darkness, the epicenter of evil, Candy-Land plantation. Washington’s Afro-Angelic beauty shines as the movie hero’s trophy, his holy grail, in the film. She, alone, among the films protagonists remains unblemished by the blight of committing violence. We know from previous Tarantino films that he has no issue with portraying females as violent. (See: Invisibility in Django Unchained: Broomhilda in Chains by Eisa Nefertari Ule at EisaUlen.com for another perspective on this issue.) Yet, Broomhilda is rescued rather than dispensing retribution. She applauds, her man’s prowess, and rides off into the night at his side, at the film’s end.
This female prize is NEW to film in that African American women are just now arriving at being the LOVE OBJECT! Film history is NOT replete with women of color represented as trophy wives, worth the FIGHT. The diminutive Washington is a powerhouse actress. Watching her hold her own among the BIGGER than LIFE macho men that made this film, in the video of the press conference for this film. “She took a beating!” Says Tarantino of the actress’s dedication to film veracity. She withstood DiCaprio’s pummeling grip for two days of shooting in order to accurately transmit the horror the horror of the American slave experience.
The complaint that Django fails to provide a “Authentic,” African American personal is the theme of “Still too Good, Too Bad or Invisible,” by Nelson George, filmmaker and author of “Blackface: Reflections on African Americans and the Movies.” My feeling is that Hollywood is in the business of taking us where we WISH reality might GO! The films are about ESCAPE and like a runaway slave, I am branded by the LOVE of a good yarn, well spun, and told by master storyteller like Homer and perhaps, Tarantino’s Django Unchained is the new Odyssey for a NEW WILD WEST, mythology unfolding and ALIVE.
Dorner, the former officer gone mental, a raging murderer, was identified as toast in a cabin north of Los Angeles, near Big Bear. He didn’t, I presume, get to make contact with Charlie Sheen in time to prevent being fried for pointing the finger at the LAPD. I’m not sure I believe Dorner was fighting for a true cause. His mission, ultimately, would have been better served by civic activism, rather than violence.
At the end of the day, the film stands a great American film, a LOVE story of explosive alternative historical potential. In other words, “BANG! Bang! BANG!” Django Unchained is a HIT in my little black book.