Django Unchained

    Film Sparks Discourse about History and Contemporary Social Issues

Photos by and property of Columbia Pictures

Still of Jamie Foxx (Django) from Django Unchained

    Quenton Tarantino's film, Django Unchained is not intended to provide a historical depiction of slavery in America, though certain elements are accurate and believable. It is primarily a fictional story created more for entertainment than historical content. It is an adventure, spaghetti western with much shooting and spewing of blood. It has even been labeled an updated version of the Blaxploitation films popular in the 1970s and 1980s.

     Django Unchained is the story of a male slave, Django (Jamie Foxx) who is freed by German bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) so that he (Django) can help Schultz find a band of murderous stage coach robbers who have high bounties on their heads. After they successfully apprehend the gang, Schultz offers Django the opportunity to become his bounty hunting partner, and in exchange, agrees to help Django find his enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from whom Django was separated when they were sold to different masters.
 

 Still of Christoph Waltz (Dr. King Shultz) and Jamie Foxx (Django) from Django Unchained

      After a prosperous winter of gunning down criminals and collecting bounties, Django and Shultz learn that Broomhilda is being held as a "comfort woman" at a plantation owed by the wealthy slaver, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). The bounty hunters contrive an elaborate charade to rescue her.
 

 Still of Jamie Foxx (Django), Kerry Washington (Broomhilda), and 

Christoph Waltz (Dr. King Shultz) from Django Unchained

     The unlikely partners pretend they desire to purchase a warrior slave for the gladiator sport in which slaves fight to the death, and they heard Candie has the strongest and best fighters. In the midst of negotiations, Candie's loyal head house slave, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), unravels the scheme, informs his master, and the spilling of blood escalates until the Candie Plantation is destroyed.
 

 Still of Samuel L. Jackson (Stephen) and Kerry Washington (Broomhilda)

 from Django Unchained

 In terms of storytelling, plot, and character development, the film supports Tarantino's reputation as a master of his craft. The twists and turns in the storyline make it totally unpredictable. It is noticeable, though, that Broomhilda, as a central character, is not fully developed, and most of her story is filtered through Django's eyes. Kerry Washington is excellent in the role of the classical "damsel in distress" who needs to be rescued, but greater depth of character would allow viewers to be even more emotionally invested in her struggle for freedom and her desire to reunite with Django. Although Django is a hero who rescues his woman, some viewers feel he is not concerned enough with the salvation of others who are also enslaved.

Photo by Andrew Cooper, SMPSP – © 2012 - The Weinstein Company

Still of Jamie Foxx (Django) and Franco Nero (Bar Patron) from Django Unchained 

      Historically, the film captures the brutality suffered by African-Americans during enslavement. The horrific lash marks on the backs of slaves, the use of castration as punishment, the transporting of slaves in face, neck, wrists, and leg shackles, the use of gladiator slaves for viewing entertainment, and the destruction of black families were all evils of slavery. However, there were some aspects of the film that were quite implausible. Django, even as a free man, would not have been allowed to eat dinner at a table with wealthy white slave owners. Stephen would not have been permitted to stand over his master at the dinner table, interrupt conversation, and tell his master what to do. After capture, Django would likely have been tortured, dismembered, and killed in front of a gathering of slaves. He probably would not have been sent to another plantation or turned over to another slave owner.

                                                          Photo by Andrew Cooper, SMPSP – © 2012 - The Weinstein Company

 Still of Jamie Foxx (Django) and Leonardo DiCaprio (Calvin Candie)                                                    

     For a number of reasons, Django has fueled the ongoing and sometimes contentious dialogue on several social and political issues. For African-Americans, it again raises the questions of whether people of other ethnicities, particularly white Americans, can tell stories depicting the African-American experience. In the artistic worlds of film and literature, many have expressed the view that authenticity is lacking when stories are told by people other than the ethnic group (or gender) being portrayed.

      In addition to who tells the stories, African-Americans are concerned with how those stories are told. Some African-Americans are insulted when the enslaved are depicted mainly as brainless, submissive beings who loved their masters more than themselves. The argument is that substantial numbers of those in bondage constantly plotted to destroy the institution of slavery, and that theme must exist in any stories on the subject. Some feel the best film storytelling approaches are documentaries, or in some cases, docudramas which portray events accurately and realistically, and anything else is disrespectful to the ancestors who suffered and died during what some African-Americans call the Maafa (Kiswahili term meaning great tragedy, and refers to the decimation of African lives during the middle passage and slavery).

     Having been released shortly after the killing of twenty elementary school students and six school staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in the shadow of other mass shootings that have occurred over the past 14 years since the Columbine high school massacre, and daily shootings in US urban areas, Django Unchained has become more fuel for the debate about whether violence in the media promotes violence in society, and what should be done about the proliferation of guns in America. Whether remedies lie in decreasing youth exposure to violent games, television shows and movies, gun control laws that remove high powered assault weapons from the street, armed security in schools, mental health care and stricter screening of those who purchase weapons, at this juncture, Django Unchained is evidence that violence in film is still a selling point.


        Still of Jamie Foxx from Django Unchained          © 2012 - The Weinstein Company   
                                  
     From a historical, social, and artistic perspective, Django Unchained is a film worth seeing. It embellishes history and in no way captures the totality of the horrors of slavery in America, but it reminds viewers of America's sordid past. Socially, the film, with its unrelenting bloodshed, forces us to continue examining the contemporary controversies around guns and violence in the media and the impact on society. Artistically, to the satisfaction of African-Americans viewers, it depicts a black hero, in spite of his flaws, who is actually alive at the end of the movie, and reunites with his black woman. Django Unchained is one story told from a particular viewpoint, and should be seen by African-Africans so that we can knowledgeably, intelligently, and constructively analyze what others say about us in their interpretation of our experience. It also reminds us that we must contribute to the discourse as we continue to tell our stories from our perspective.