Django, the N-Word, and How We Talk About Race in 2013

I think all the Aussie characters in that scene used the word black, not just Tarantino. It was a definite shift in the language, and I was thinking at the time, maybe that was a more common word for Australians to use in that era.

Anyway, I loved the movie, and I wasn't sure if I would, but it was seriously one of the more visceral and satisfying experiences I've had watching a movie in a while. I don't know if it trivialises the horror of the antebellum south to use it as a backdrop for a revenge fantasy, but it sure elevates a revenge fantasy to borrow the outrage and injustice of that time. I couldn't believe how much I wanted to see all those fuckers get torn to pieces in a hail of bullets. In that, the movie doesn't disappoint. In fact, the only disappointing thing I found was the way that all the female characters are irrelevent and decorative (that and yet another scene of a parent being murdered in front of their child).

And man! Who knew that DiCaprio could redeem himself this way. For the first time since Basketball Diaries, I actually forgot I was watching Leonardo DiCaprio act. Lately I just find him unwatchable, but he was great in this.

But I think people mistake the role and motives of the Dr. King character. He's not Django's "white saviour" and he certainly doesn't "die for black justice". On the contrary, Django and his wife were about to walk out of there free and clear, and King fucked them both royally by indulging himself in his fit of spite. The more I thought about him, in fact, the more selfish he appeared. In his first scene, he kills one slaver and disables another, and allows the other slaves to free themselves (they are very interested in freedom, by the way, and waste no time killing the other slaver, so I can't understand what Williams is talking about in that article) but he doesn't free Django! He still needs him, after all, and his first priority is completing his contract. He promises to free him after, of course, and pay him for his trouble, so we assume he's a pretty nice guy for a slave owner, but what if Django gets killed in the pursuit of this contract? King doesn't seem to care. And curiously, he also seems rather unconcerned with his own life as well (which we see in the end turns out to be the case when he basically throws it away). He intentionally carries out his duties in the most reckless way possible, as if a hit just wouldn't be right if it didn't involve him narrowly escaping death.

Two things happen to pique his interest in Django. He turns out to be a natural genius with a gun, and he tells King about his wife, the german-speaking black woman named Brunhilda. Naturally King is amazed at this coincidence, and decides he'll help Django rescue his wife if Django agrees to partner with him for the winter. Not out of charity, but as a business arrangement. Even so, I feel there's more to this. Why did this German dentist come to the US to face mortal danger over and over for money? You can make good money as a dentist and nobody shoots at you. Why does he put himself in danger to help free Django's wife? Why, in a later scene, when Candie has one of his slaves torn apart by dogs, does King have a harder time dealing with it than Django does, and nearly blows the whole operation? And why, finally, does he throw his life away (and Django and Brunhilda's, theoretically) just so he can have the satisfaction of shooting a racist?

This is my theory: I think King had a black wife back in Germany. She died in a horribly tragic way that was specifically related to racism, and, stricken with grief, he left his home to come to the wild west, where a lone man with a gun can travel around shooting slave traders for money, satisfying his need for vengeance, and maybe get killed in the process, which is probably what he was after subconsciously all along. In this context, his rather demented behaviour begins to make sense. Remember the scene where he first meets Hildy? Didn't it seem a bit creepy the way he was staring at her, mooning about how beautiful she is? I don't think he was seeing her at all. He was seeing his own tragically lost bride.

So King frees Django, yes, but basically just to use him. First to make money, and then to play out his own desire to save the woman he loved, through this convenient proxy. But he can't keep it together. Despite his cool facade, he is a very emotionally tramautised person, and he loses his head when Candie pushes him too far. And in doing so, comes very close to getting Django and Brunhilda killed. Who knows? Django might have actually had an easier time of it if he'd gone on his suicide mission without his "saviour". After King is killed, he's chained and enslaved all over again, maybe worse off than before, if that's possible.

This time, there's nobody to free Django. He has to take what he's learned from his brief taste of freedom and find a way to free himself. Which he does, of course, and not by chance or brute strength, but by outsmarting his captors, with a very clever and plausible story. Now he's truely unchained, because he broke his shackles himself, and he rides back to Candieland for the final bloodbath.

So I disagree that King fits the mold of the typical white saviour. He is a catalyst for our hero, but not a hero himself. He is a remarkable man, an enlightened man, but ultimately a self-interested man who is intensely damaged, and doomed to self-destruction. Despite all the ways he's helped Django, in the end, he winds up being another obstacle to overcome on Django's road to freedom.

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

While we're on the subject of Tarantino, am I the only person in the world who thought Inglorious Basterds sucked? I've even read film critics call it his best movie. To me, it felt clumsy and contrived the whole way through, becoming cartoonish whenever it wasn't outright dull. The only entertaining thing in it was Waltz's performance. Why does everyone love this movie?

I fell asleep halfway through it. Couldn't say that about Resevoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.

About the anachronism of motherfucker, Bacchus, you may well be right, but it's still used by Tarantino as a device that is intended to remind people of Jackson's character in PF.

And did I miss something in Django? Who the hell is the woman with the axe? The one with the scarf across her face? Is Django going to be another Kill Bill kind of narrative?

Inglorious Basterds was unbelievably bad, considering the hype.

I love WW2 movies and still havent been able to watch that one.

Try Hell is for Heroes for reality. Very well done even with Steve McQueen

To look at another film based on the Civil War period, the portrayal of Stonewall Jackson's deeply religious character in Gods and Generals is completely alien from any way we'd expect a person to act nowadays. I found the character jarring to the point of distraction. Attempts at by-the-book accuracy can sometimes backfire when one is translating for a modern audience.

While the film did glorify the south, and swept a lot of its racist nature under the rug, it did show - correctly -  that racist attitudes were not divided along political lines in that conflict.

Actually , two other examples I can think of - one of which used that disputed word, and both of which used satire and fantasy - Blazing Saddles, and O Brother Where Art Thou.

In the latter, again, we know it is fantasy, but I have a really hard time believing a community in the 1930s would turn on a community figure when they learned he was a member of the Klan. As if in the real world people wouldn't know already. Birth of a Nation was more honest.

So why criticize Tarantino? Is it that we see it as exploitation? How are the Coen brothers not just as bad for using the backdrop of a deeply exploitative culture for their translation of the Odyssey, without really getting into the issues?

Because I think the argument of presumed historical accuracy is a non-starter. Plenty of films and books get away with that. Tarantino is just more up-front than most.

Catch "late to the party as usual" Fire finally watched Django this weekend. Prepare to hear my take on a movie you've all forgotten about!

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

I think people mistake the role and motives of the Dr. King character. He's not Django's "white saviour" and he certainly doesn't "die for black justice". On the contrary, Django and his wife were about to walk out of there free and clear, and King fucked them both royally by indulging himself in his fit of spite. The more I thought about him, in fact, the more selfish he appeared. In his first scene, he kills one slaver and disables another, and allows the other slaves to free themselves (they are very interested in freedom, by the way, and waste no time killing the other slaver, so I can't understand what Williams is talking about in that article) but he doesn't free Django! He still needs him, after all, and his first priority is completing his contract. He promises to free him after, of course, and pay him for his trouble, so we assume he's a pretty nice guy for a slave owner, but what if Django gets killed in the pursuit of this contract? King doesn't seem to care. And curiously, he also seems rather unconcerned with his own life as well (which we see in the end turns out to be the case when he basically throws it away). He intentionally carries out his duties in the most reckless way possible, as if a hit just wouldn't be right if it didn't involve him narrowly escaping death.

This was my take as well. If I were a graduate student, I would be tempted to argue that King represents the well-meaning white liberal: likeable, moralistic, cast as heroic -- but ultimately self-serving and ruthless when it comes down to brass tacks. He's a bounty hunter for crissakes. He shoots people in the back in cold blood and then produces some dubious piece of paper which somehow convinces everyone he was right to do so!

As for slavery, it seems deployed more as a substitute for emotional gravitas -- rather like rape seems to be used in many Hollywood movies these days -- to what's really a pretty generically conventional Western. I don't think slavery is depicted realistically at all: it's not enough to show scarred backs or whatever. Especially since the only black characters he depicts with any depth apart from Django is the Uncle Tom House servent, Samuel L. I did like the one Mandingo slave who Django frees from the Australians and who gives a Meaningful Nod to Django's moxy (which I think Williams misses above). So in this sense, it's no different from a hundred other Hollywood movies about slavery.

Aesthetically, it's Tarantino's best film for awhile. There were two brilliant scenes in Basterds, but it was awful on the whole. King's character is fantastic, and his dialogue superb -- which he delivers perfectly, of course. The visuals are rich in film references and camp, and it's nice to see something in the Leone/Peckinpah tradition. But don't pretend this is some great alternative to Hollywood pastiche. It's just a very well-done version of Hollywood's usual racist, sexist, macho tripe.