The Hysterical Entertainment of Django Unchained: Realist or Ruthless?
by Luke Park
Spectacularly entertaining and hilariously violent, Quentin Tarantino’s award-winning 2012 Western Django Unchained succeeds with flying colors as pure spectacle. This sort of film is, after all, Tarantino’s specialty—the director is a master of distraction, of stylized violence, of pushing the conventions of the genres he tackles to the brink. Where Django Unchained succeeds as a piece of entertainment, however, it raises questions as a piece of historical cinema. In his interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Tarantino expresses his desire to recreate the “unfathomable place” of the antebellum South, to provide Black people with an empowering hero figure, to “deconstruct the Birth of a Nation through Django.” Django Unchained, then, exists at a crossroads: is the film historically retributive, or is it meant to exist as schlocky spaghetti Western extravaganza? Tarantino’s answer seems to be both: “It’s two separate stories I’ve always wanted to tell,” he says. Yet examining Django Unchained suggests the film fails as a piece of serious and potentially restorative historical fiction. In creating entertainment based on a cardinal sin of America, and championing its anti-hero protagonist as a symbol of Black liberation, Django Unchained becomes a piece of historical revisionism that breeds relief about enslavement where there should be nuance and discomfort.
Django Unchained is a revenge Western centered around a freed slave’s attempt at rescuing his wife and delivering justice to slave owners. Django Unchained, according to Tarantino, is supposed to be a piece beyond mere entertainment—but an “empowering movie” (Gates 51). Tarantino wants to engage with history, not just distract. Mentioning other films such as the racist epic The Birth of a Nation and early blaxploitation films such as The Legend of N***** Charley, Tarantino shows an overt desire to connect with and comment on preexisting narratives surrounding entertainment and race—and he believes he is the right person for the job, thanks to the inherently violent nature of his films and directorial style. Citing Sergio Corbucci’s violent filmmaking, Tarantino says “I can do it,” claiming he can tackle the Corbucci West through “being a slave in the antebellum South.” The supreme barbarism of the deep South necessitates his violent filmmaking—it is the way of realism. Tarantino’s project subsequently absolves itself of any responsibility toward its subject matter—the horrors and violence depicted in his film are instead a realist critique of a gruesome history.
Discrepancies arise when Django Unchained is examined critically, as the film is ignorant of the realities of slavery, and consequently fails to provide a “realist” account. Slave rebellion is impossible in Tarantino’s world. Django is special—among his fellow slaves he is the one uniquely desirous of revenge, the one with the wits, the cunning, the trigger-happy finger required for vengeance and liberation. He even goes so far as to tell Stephen, “I am that one n***** in 10,000”—the only one audacious enough to fight for his freedom (2:39:12-2:39:14). This is ultimately ignorant of the tensions of slavery; slave rebellions were widespread and numerous, and probably consisted of people just like Django—people fighting for their freedom, for their loved ones. Django is not an exceptional character, and to suggest that he is reinforces the idea of the submissive slave, an image that ultimately detracts from Black humanity and ignores the dehumanizing nature of slavery as an institution. This problem extends to the other enslaved people in Django Unchained. In the opening scene, while Django is freed from slavery, his fellow slaves are not, only vaguely told to follow the North Star while half-heartedly tossed a key to freedom (0:05:16-0:05-30). Near the end of the film, when Django deceives his captors, he leaves his fellow slaves in a carriage, stranded in the desert (2:27:59-2:29:37). The film cannot imagine a world where enslaved people collectively desire and fight for liberation, subsequently failing to provide a realistic critique of history.
Django Unchained misrepresents history, unsuccessfully escaping the mythologies bred around it—but the film’s more deliberate anachronisms also reveal more about its attitudes on slavery. In a scene depicting the KKK (which formed after the Civil War), members are seen complaining about the bags they wear on their heads to conceal their identities. Jokes are cracked about the effort it took to produce the “masks,” and limited field of vision (0:42:12-0:43:12). Yet while portraying the KKK as buffoons does make a mockery of their racism, it also problematically assumes that the KKK are bumbling idiots who are incapable of evil. Here are the shortcomings inherent to the hero narrative Tarantino attempts to fuse with accurate criticisms of history—a good story fundamentally requires that we suspend our disbelief, and thus Django Unchained must entertain us to succeed as a film—the KKK’s portrayal as comic relief ultimately plays into the narrative tropes the film must eventually run across.
“Django Unchained” has subsequently been criticized for its shortcomings as a piece of historically accurate fiction, a piece that fails to both realistically and fictionally encapsulate the grim realities of slavery. In “The Confessions of Quentin Tarantino: Whitewashing Slave Rebellion in Django Unchained,” Joseph Vogel quotes the following: “Tarantino’s ‘gift’ to Black people in Django is ultimately himself. The film does not represent compassion for the other so much as it announces Tarantino as White hip savior, who liberates the enslaved people by cool virtuosity—not unlike his protagonist, Dr. King Schultz” (Vogel 26-27). Yet to focus on the film’s shortcomings—Tarantino’s employment of White saviors (and even potential self-mythologizing of himself as one), frequent use of the n-word, and historical inaccuracies, would ultimately fail to understand the film’s most enduring value—its value as a piece of entertainment.
Vogel criticizes “traditional liberal counternarratives… in which the roles are reversed” (Vogel 17). These liberal counter-narratives fail to comment on history or provide reparations for Black people; a counter narrative’s primary function is to revise history, to make us feel good about the wrongs without righting them. The narratives also succeed in distracting us. Django Unchained has been cited by many as a critical and commercial success—the film currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 87% and grossed $400 million against a budget of $100 million (Tarantino). By all accounts, the film is a success as a piece of entertainment—popular acclaim has far outweighed critical response. Django Unchained has thus rewritten the narrative on slavery by affirming our preexisting conceptions of it—we praise a world where black liberation does not occur because we live within one where it has not yet occurred.
In creating a world of comfort under the guise of a disquieting and violent work of historical realism, Django Unchained reveals a worrying ease among Tarantino and critics with the realities of slavery and the violence associated with it. Tarantino’s project is one ultimately conceived within his comfort zone—in creating a spaghetti Western action adventure that coincides with a narrative on slavery, Tarantino employs his Tarantino-isms (explosions, cheesy scores, quick zooms) while tackling a sensitive subject. Yet Tarantino prioritizes entertainment, rather than a story where “they did this and they did that,” a story that would sacrifice fun in favor of facts (Gates 50). He subsequently creates a plot laden with tropes, one with good guys and bad guys and heroics and violence, which ultimately downplays the true extent of slavery’s injustice. In its acclaim, Django reveals that America is not yet free from the weight of its institutional evils. Tarantino has produced a masterpiece of entertainment, an amazing revenge story—and has done so at the cost of making light of slavery.
That we have collectively embraced a narrative that plays into so many stereotypes about slavery, that minimizes the impact of dangerous groups like the KKK, suggests our society continues to blindly accept injustices hurled toward its most marginalized members. To reflect on our history—an “unfathomable place” in Tarantino’s words, but the only fathomable reality for slaves in the antebellum South—would require us a space for discomfort and reflection over generational evils and traumas that last today. But doing so would require that we go beyond the comfort zones of heroic antics, even go beyond the ease offered to us by violence and vengeance. So we turn to entertainment. Entertainment creates a space where we can suspend all disbelief, even over our evils. It is a space with the potential to educate, but it is also a space that can distract. Django Unchained is unfortunately in the latter group. Ultimately, it seems that Django does the impossible: it makes us feel good about slavery. The fact that the film even is capable of such a thing reveals truths about the injustices of the society it was brought into. If any lesson is to be learned from Django, it is that healing can only happen through real change—not entertainment.
