What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the films of Quentin Tarantino?
Is it Travolta having a legendary comeback while wearing one of the most stylish wigs
of all time?
Or BJ Novak leaving his temp job at Dunder Mifflin to go hunt Nazis?
Or is it just an inspiring cacophony of Samuel L. Jackson yelling the f-word?
"English, motherf**ker! Do you speak it?!"
I bet whatever you pictured, it wasn’t a comprehensive subversion of the logic of slavery.
And that’s why today, we’re talking about Django Unchained - a movie that has all the
typical Tarantino hallmarks we love while also giving us an incredibly clever, nuanced,
and dare we say fun, criticism of slavery.
So join us as we break down the fastest, and flyest, gun in the west in this Wisecrack
edition on Django Unchained: Subverting the Logic of Slavery.
Alright guys, a quick recap is in order.
Django Unchained follows a captured runaway slave, Django, who gets rescued and taken
under the wing of genteel German bounty hunter King Schultz.
After teaching him his craft and making some good money in the process, Schultz accompanies
Django on a mission to rescue his wife, Broomhilde, from one of the most vile villains in recent
cinema - plantation owner Calvin Candie.
Now, one way to make an anti-slavery movie is to make revenge porn about a former slave
burning down a Southern plantation.
So, yeah, check.
But beneath the classic Tarantino-isms, Django provides three far more subtle commentaries
on slavery.
Part 1: You Can’t Cover Ugly with Civilization.
Surprisingly, Django Unchained offers a purpose to language beyond a vehicle in which one
crams as many “f***s” as possible.
"I don't want to hear no f***ing excuses Lewis!
I ain't giving f***ing excuses man, I'm telling you-- I don't f***ing-- I'm giving you f***ing
reason!"
That’s because from the perspective of the white slavers like Big Daddy and Calvin Candie,
white bodies represent culture and civilization, while black bodies are seen as uncivilized
and incapable of proper use of language and appreciation of culture.
Enter Schultz.
This eloquent German speaks English as a second language so well that it confounds the native-speaking
slavers.
"He needs to have, panache.
Needs to have what, what?
Panache, uh.
A sense of showmanship.
Showmanship, yes."
And, well, let’s just say it’s not his accent: "So, I wish to parlay with you.
Speak English."
His mastery of English vocabulary confuses those around him multiple times: "My good
man I'm simply trying to ascertain.
Speak English godamn-it."
Meanwhile his rhetorical skills allow him to talk circles around the simpletons of the
American South "but I'm willing to wager this man was elected sheriff sometime in the past
two years."
Schultz disrupts the racist binary we just discussed by making these self satisfied Southerners
look wildly uncivilized by comparison.
He’s basically an emblem of the mythical European civilization that American men of
means built their plantations on.
And he’s the walking reminder that these self styled men of culture are, well, they're
full of shit.
The idea that slaves were incapable of proper language goes back to Aristotle.
For Aristotle, humans differed from animals based on “logos” - a Greek word meaning
both speech and reason.
By contrast, my dog Woody can only communicate by “phonos” - the yapping and barking
that can only communicate fear, displeasure, and hunger, as well as other base instincts.
More importantly, Aristotle used this to justify slavery in Greece because they were, in his
mind, only capable of receiving and understanding “logos” but not possessing it.
In other words, slaves weren’t capable of proper speech and the reason that came up
with it.
And not surprisingly, this language-based justification for slavery, and racism just
never died.
Django takes this dichotomy and flips it.
Some of the cruelest slavers mumble so incoherently that they make Post Malone sound articulate.
Contrast that with the clearly intelligible slaves: "They walked us from the Greenville
auction and he rode in on a horse with a white man."
At every opportunity, the film contrasts how Schultz treats slaves with how every other
white person does.
Unlike his peers, Schultz uses the honorific Fraulein when talking to Broomhilde, instead
of the N-Word.
Candie, however, demands the french honorific “Monsieur,” as a sign of respect.
"And he prefers Monsieur Candie to Mr. Candie.
He doesn't speak French, don't speak French to him, it will embarrass him."
Whereas Schultz uses titles as a form of voluntary respect, Candie uses them as mandatory submission.
Now we can see a similar dynamic with the way the film uses beer.
Early in the film Schultz buys, well, steals Django a beer.
And this seems to symbolize the transition from a freeman and slave relationship to a
couple of coworkers having a cold one after a long day’s work.
Later in the film we see Candie order a beer for one of his fighters after a victory, but
this exchange doesn’t have the same Cheers-esque vibe.
Instead, Candie is using beer as a sick sort of reward for an enslaved man forced to literally
murder another man for the enjoyment of two slave owners.
One beer represents shared humanity, while the other represents cold blooded savagery.
"You enjoy that boy."
Now at the same time, even the multilingual European man of culture isn’t all that civilized.
For one, he’s a bounty hunter who literally kills people for a job.
"The way the slave trade deals in human lives for cash, a bounty hunter deals in corpses."
And while he isn’t a fan of owning people, he still buys Django for his own self interest
and more-or-less forces him into helping him out.
"On the one hand I despise slavery.
On the other hand, I need your help, if you're not in the position to refuse all the better."
Though unlike the others, he at least acknowledges that this isn’t a moral act, just a pragmatic
one.
We see the contrast between Schultz and the faux-civilized white southerners at its peak
once we’re introduced to Calvin Candie, I mean, monsieur Candie, a title he demands
even though he doesn’t speak or understand French.
Oh, and he has the hots for his sister.
Candie even tries to show off his German to Schultz, but, well he doesn’t quite nail
it.
And while Schultz manages to play his part while letting Candie look like a jackass,
he reaches his boiling point when a woman starts playing Beethoven on the harp.
After having a flashback about what he’d seen earlier, Schultz can no longer deal with
having a beautiful product of his culture appropriated by people who are truly savages.
"Could you please stop playing Beethoven!"
And while we’re on the topic of some of Europe’s most notable exports to the colonies,
it's worth mentioning how the Christian bible, the book meant to signify proper European
religion, was used to justify slavery.
We see this in action when Django is on his first bounty job at Big Daddy’s plantation
and comes upon one of the Brittle brothers literally quoting the bible while preparing
to whip a slave.
"And the lord said the fear in ye, and the dread in ye, shall be on every beast of the
earth."
Not only this, he has a page of the bible pinned to his shirt over his heart.
Which serves as a great target for Django to put a bullet through.
It’s as if Django’s shot points out the bloody hypocrisy of using Christianity to
justify savagery.
"I like the way you die boy."
Maybe you couldn't recognize the verse Brittle is reciting, but it was Genesis 9 verse 2,
when God gives mankind power over all the beasts, birds, fish, etc.
A perfect justification for slavery if you think that slaves are less than human.
Part 2: Using the Symbols of Slavery to Make Slavery Look Stupid.
While language and culture are the most obvious ways in which the film s***s on slavery, we
can also see how it uses everything from fashion to music to iconography to further flip the
logic of slavery on its head.
One way to understand what Tarantino is doing is to consider Joseph Cinque, leader of the
Amistad Rebellion.
Cinque led a revolt in which a group of illegally purchased slaves took control of the Amistad
back from their Spanish captors.
Cinque and his comrades became surprising folk heroes, even as they fought charges of
mutiny and murder.
Now importantly, Cinque was portrayed in media in the style and fashion of a noble from the
culture that enslaved him.
In one newspaper, he was sketched in buccaneer’s clothes, striking a gallant pose with the
cane knife he used to murder his captors.
Historian Marcus Rediker describes this depiction and others as “egalitarian” and “subversive.”
Meanwhile, abolitionists accused the Spanish slavers as being savage pirates.
We see something similar happen in the movie when Schultz gives Django a makeover and he
comes out dressed like one of the three musketeers: “you mean you chose to dress like that?”
But this isn’t just the setup for a joke, Django’s attire is deliberately abrasive
for anyone who would reserve such an outfit for a white civilized man of culture.
This, and Django’s horseback riding, an activity historically associated with the
well-to-do, draws ire or surprise from everyone around him.
"It's a **** on a horse."
And of course in one of the film’s final scenes, Django takes out Steven’s knees
and leaves him in a Plantation shaped powder keg on a horse while wearing Candie’s clothes.
Django’s aesthetic choices in some ways resemble what theorist José Esteban Muñoz
called “disidentification.”
For Muñoz, disidentification is a strategy of acting against a dominant ideology that
does not simply try to escape it or assimilate within it.
Rather, one takes the cultural logic of say, slavery, and mangles its symbols from within.
Django does not don the attire of a Southern aristocrat to become one, but rather to abuse
the very notion of the Southern Gentleman.
We see a similar logic in the work of artist Kehinde Wiley, who would paint Harlem residents
in the style of classic European art.
Tarantino also plays with the soundtrack to emphasize how Django flips the script on all
types of cultural expectations, and uses what might seem out of sync with a Western set
in the mid-nineteenth century - rap music.
But this choice makes perfect sense when we consider that rap music has long been used
by those in positions of racial and economic inequality to call on people to, as Public
Enemy so beautifully put it, “We got to fight the powers that be!
Fight the power!”
With this power often being the type of systemic white supremacy rooted in the history of American
slavery.
Rap music has often been used to fantasize about both changing one’s circumstances
and seeking revenge for this injustice along the way.
So it makes sense that the song that Rick Ross and Jamie Foxx wrote for the film, 100
Black Coffins, has lyrics like: “Our revenge is the sweetest, bitch cause I'm coming / Gonna
die in my arms, for what you did to my mother.”
So what seems like a weird juxtaposition of genre and soundtrack ends up being the perfect
way to highlight Django’s journey of seeking power and revenge under conditions of oppression.
Now to move from rap to opera, and no, we’re not talking about Hamilton, music is also
used by Schultz to give context to Django’s journey to save his wife.
Using Richard Wagner’s “Twilight of the Gods”, the fourth and final opera in his
“The Ring of the Nibelung”, Schultz interprets Django’s attempt to rescue Broomhilda in
a way that makes Django the Siegfried of his own story of revenge.
"Plus when a German meets a real life Siegfried that's kind of a big deal.
As a German I'm obliged to help you on your quest to rescue your beloved Broomhilda."
Wagner’s opera can also be read via the lens of his friend-then-enemy, or frenthenemy,
Friedrich Nietzsche, whose Twilight of the Idols is a nod to Wagner’s Twilight of the
Gods.
It’s not a stretch to say that Wagner’s Siegfried can be read as a Nietzschean ubermensch,
one who responds to a nihilistic lack of values by powerfully creating new ones.
So if Django is the Siegfried of the film, he is also a sort of ubermensch who responds
to the nihilist values of slavery and white supremacy not with rational appeals for reform
and dialogue, but by both metaphorically and literally burning the whole damn thing to
the ground.
Much like how the whole world burns down to start anew for Wagner, in Django Unchained
the fiery destruction of Candyland can be seen as a metaphorical call for the destruction
of the institution of slavery in general.
It’s also highly unlikely that the guy who made Inglorious Basterds isn’t also aware
that Wagner’s Ring Cycle was basically the soundtrack for German nationalism.
"One cannot understand National Socialism, if one does not understand Wagner."
So he’s using a narrative once appropriated by the Nazis to support white supremacy to
tell a slavery revenge narrative that destroys white supremacy.
Not bad.
And in one final act of symbolic subversion, Tarantino uses the Western to frame this slave
revenge fantasy.
And in case you haven’t seen many westerns, they usually consist of strong jawed white
dudes like John Wayne killing off villainized Native Americans while making brothel workers
swoon.
In Django Unchained, the white cowboy types are instead taken out by a freed slave, a
subject largely ignored in the Western canon.
Part 3: Acting Out of Slavery.
The final way we can consider how slavery is subverted in the film will bring pride
to the heart of all the theater kids out there, as it’s a consideration of the role of acting.
And don’t worry, we’re not talking about how Leo should have won an Oscar.
The type of acting we are talking about here is related to the agency of individuals.
There is a ton of academic debate about the question of agency in slavery.
While some imagine that slaves had their humanity stripped away so fully that they were completely
lacking in any agency and autonomy, others explore the kinds of freedom slaves were able
to exert.
There are a tons of historical examples of small, or big, actions slaves took in the
name of resistance.
Work slowdowns, arson, straight up murder, etc.
But of course the retaliations for these acts of rebellion were so horrific that many would
have been justifiably dissuaded from these acts of freedom.
In Django Unchained, acting is the primary means by which Django has agency.
We see this as Schultz prepares Django for their mission to trick Candie and save Broomhilde
“You will playing a character.”
And of course Django even has a wardrobe for this character, as we’ve previously mentioned.
We see Django’s agency expressed via the decisions he makes while acting out this role.
He is put in a position to both berate other slaves, lash out at Candie’s crew, and even
sit by approvingly as a runaway slave is ripped apart by dogs.
And it’s important to note here that Django’s decisions are neither good or bad, but rather
the decisions he gets to make within the scope of the limited agency he is granted.
He doesn’t chose to treat Candie’s slaves poorly out of hatred, but out of the necessity
of his own survival.
This acting range comes in handy later when Django has to outsmart a gang of Australians
to regain his freedom and complete his mission.
He plays a part, and even uses props "I got the handbill right here in my pocket, if you
let me get it.
Get it out."
to put on such a convincing performance that the Aussies literally hand him a gun.
But maybe the most striking example of agency through acting is Candie’s head house slave,
Stephen.
Now Stephen really, really hates Django, like, a lot "he's gonna stay in the big house?"
And this is likely a hatred born of envy, as while Stephen has worked his ass off to
become as powerful as possible within the system of slavery, Django has gained freedom
through breaking out of that system all together.
But one thing they do have in common is their shared employment of the dramatic arts for
personal gain.
Stephen has performed his way out of the harsh labor of the fields and into the relative
comfort of Candie’s home, and has even gotten to the point where he can snap back and disagree
with his master.
"Take her out, why?"
And like a new boyfriend trying too hard to impress their partner’s parents around the
holidays, Stephen laughs way too hard at Candie’s stupid jokes.
"Well hell, I can't imagine two weeks in Boston.
Two weeks in Boston!"
But unlike an insecure boyfriend, Stephen knows exactly what he’s doing, as he uses
this performed laughter to gain trust and influence.
And this influence is on full display when it’s Stephen, not Candie, who realizes that
Schultz and Django have been playing them the whole time "They ain't here for no muscle
bound Jimmy.
They here for that girl."
Stephen is a student of non-verbal acting as well, performing a fake limp, which necessitates
a fake cane, so that he appears physically weak.
This disarms any suspicions anyone might have about Stephen being skilled or powerful.
While Stephen is definitely a sort of villain, as even Django treats him to the same fate
as the white slavers, it’s important to see this villainy in the larger context.
Is Stephen a bad dude who served the interests of his white master over those of his fellow
slaves?
Absolutely.
But did he have any other way to get some sort of freedom under conditions of slavery?
Probably not.
And for all we know, Stephen never had the luxury of a fake German dentist showing up
to free him and teach him how to shoot his way to freedom.
Stephen is simply trying to manifest his own power playing the cards he was dealt, and
those cards truly suck.
So there you have it.
A movie that you might have dismissed as Tarantino’s irreverent attempt to make a slavery western
is in fact one of the sharpest criticisms of slavery, and of white supremacy, in recent
cinema.
And most importantly, it answers the all important question, what would it be like to see a young
Jonah Hill play a member of a pre-KKK hate group wearing poorly cut sheets on their heads
as they ride horses?