"Django Unchained": Intense, Relevant, Fashionable.

The S#!$ Gets Real

"Django Unchained," (2012) Tarantino Slavery-Western featuring a woman of color as damsel in distress

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Women of color, fear not! Independent Hollywood has come to the rescue.

Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," starring Jamie Foxx in the title role, and Kerry Washington as the female lead, is the answer to the question about what to do with that restless energy you undoubtedly are harboring as the nation ponders leaping off the fiscal cliff. The answer is: ponder feminist politics whilst meditating upon this film. That is what I did when I applied my cultural studies knowledge whist watching this movie. 

Tinsletown knows how to tap into the collective zeitgeist. Right now, the nation is like a damsel in need of rescuing. But a specific kind of damsel - a woman-of-color damsel. Can you think of a movie where the heroine in need is a slave? Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained (2012) may have broken new ground - and created a brand new film genre that is far, far removed from grindhouse. I call it womanist-cinema in honor of Alice Walker's phrase "womanist" which is often used as a counterweight to the term, feminist. 

This movie sheds light on the startling lack of Hollywood movies that have portrayed black women as feminine, beautiful, and in need of rescuing. Thus, a truth about society is revealed: too many black women have been bereft of a hero, period. And due, in large part, to historic genocidal removal of strong, fearless, black men, Hollywood and society is not used to seeing strong, fearless black men as horse-riding, quick-draws, on a mission to protect the women-folk.

No, instead, Hollywood has historically been OK with the pimpin'-video-ho-nation of black men who have dominated the small and big screen with a particular brand of masculinity that makes bank. No judgment intended, but it should be noted that Tarantino's "Django" breaks the mold and offers hope to those looking for something different. Much deserving of recognition is the protagonist, Jamie Foxx, who plays Django. Foxx brings a new brand of machismo home to the box office. 

Bravo, QT! This movie kicked slavery in the bum, revived the Western, and made the vulnerability of women of African descent relevant. This vulnerability regarding black women is something the female star, Kerry Washington, discusses in the LA Times. Also, of note, the fashion in Django is as fantastic as the story-line. 

However intriguing the aesthetics, the issue of feminist politics within this film offers much for thought. Traditional, second-wave feminists take note. "Django Unchained" raises the question: Does the woman of color need to be saved? This question, often at the root of feminist discourse, is addressed squarely in this film. As an emerging cultural studies scholar, I argue that Tarantino may have created an entirely new genre of movie by melding the "spaghetti-Western" to a slavery epic featuring a black damsel who is a victim of torture and is in need of rescuing. 

Timing is key and "Django Unchained" seems to tap into that collective fear that the least will perish due to the preponderance of greed at the expense of moral decency. Women of color have historically been placed at a disadvantage economically, socially, spiritually, physically, and intellectually - especially during the economic catastrophe of the American-slavery-regime, and Tarnatino gets this.

Tarantino's mark is all over this movie. Despite this film's requisite over-the-topness in the form of gratuitous violence, which borders on cartoonish, generous use of the "n-word", which can also seem to de-sensitize one to the shock of this epithet, and running gags, that seem to depend on a pre-existing knowledge of cinema, this film very much represents Tarantino's quest for the perfect way to tell the story of enslavement American-style. Kerry Washington's Brunhilda/Broomhilda embodies these contradictions. She is stoic, beautiful, scarred, terrified, and schocked by the prospect of freedom.

"Hildy," as she is called, is a German-speaking slave of African descent. Traumatized and sequestered in Candieland, she soldiers on in the home of Calvin Candie, played to perfection by Leonardo DiCaprio. Foxx is the undeniable star of the film, but I agree with other reviewers who have said that the entire cast of this movie deserves recognition for outstanding performances and DiCaprio's performance is off the chain. He has it - that right mix of insanity and vulnerability which this role requires. His interpretive gifts are evident in the seemingly ad-libbed gestures such as when he nervously twists his locks as he ascends the stairs of Candieland.  Candie's hyper energy is a counterweight to the misery of Hildy who has no idea that her love, Django, is on the way.

I cheered, and I recoiled, as I identified with Django and his mentor traveling the ever-changing landscape. The journey of Django and his mentor, a dentist and bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), united the bleak Texas landscape with the lush Southern plantationscape. This film is an epic, pre-Civil War roadtrip on horseback which seeks to function as a psychic reconnaissance mission as Django sheds his enslavement as a result of Schultz's intervention. As white man frees black, their relationship grows and becomes a mission of conscience.

The symbolism is undeniable as black man and white work together on behalf of the U.S. Government to reign in the Wild West. This is a powerful statement that cannot be ignored. It takes this kind of inter-racial fraternal relationship to bring the film to its inevitable conclusion - the rescue of the black woman.

The woman of color represents the insecurity of a nation grappling with the psychic fall-out from centuries of economic dependence on slavery, the resulting civil war, and catastrophic geographic and socio-economic, destruction.

While the nation worries about whether taxes will rise on the middle class, "Django Unchained" presents a reflection on the poorest of the poor during a time in our nation's history when it was legal to own people.

So, if you are on edge, or simply confused about whether to make a New Year's resolution, no worries. Go to the movies. There are some great ones playing now, and Tarantino has outdone himself with his Western/slavery homage, "Django Unchained" (2012).

Quentin Tarantino's "Django Uncahined" presents us with an unexpected catharsis. Catharsis is in no way over-used in describing this film.

- G.T.