TD: Hope you had a good holiday season, brother. Where to start on the monster that is Django? There's so much in this thing. So, I'll start off with my initial impressions. First and foremost, I have to admit that, when it comes to movies that dare to even brush up against the issue of slavery - let along forcefully confront it - I feel like we're starved and stunted. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a movie that dealt with slavery in any significant way? Lincoln simply gave us the standard stoic black characters - you know, the ones that smile and nod approvingly before shuffling off of the screen, never to be seen again. Who's given us a halfway decent depiction of slaves or black folk in the age of slavery prior to Lincoln? Who's given us a character that we can sink our teeth into? Do we have to go back to Amistad circa 1997? I just finished another article that mentions that Reginald Hudlin, one of the producers of Django, and a successful director and producer in his own right, has been trying to get a movie on the Middle Passage done for the last two decades, to no avail. Danny Glover's biopic of the Haitian Revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture is in a state of suspended animation, a 30-year old ball of potential energy. So, it's not like there's a lack of interest on the part of black directors/producers to make films that deal with slavery. It's just abundantly clear that black directors/producers will never, ever, get all of the green lights necessary to make a cadre of movies pertaining to slavery. Historian and writer Jelani Cobb, a thoughtful critic of Django, starts his critique of the movie saying as much. So, when we get down to it, isn't this titanic dearth of representation the first fact we have to deal with as we contend with this movie?
CP: It goes without saying that a Black director could not get a film about slavery made. But that to me is not the question, rather what would be the tone of such a film? Lincoln suggests the manner in which such a film would be made. I think it may be necessary to step back from the film about slavery as some sort of religious icon. I am not convinced that overtly committed political directors could avoid the necessary reverence. The solemn, stoic, long suffering Negroes of Lincoln and Amistad seem to be the way to depict the enslaved. Tarantino's mash-up breathes something vivid in to a rare yet strangely moribund depiction of Black people. I am not sure if the analysis of the film should start on Hollywood's fear of righteous Black anger. Let's take that as given. I am not sure this connects to Spike Lee's criticisms of Tarantino but it may be worth it to ask what about Tarantino (aside from being white) that gives him the green lights to make a film. Let's be honest it is not just Black director's inability to get films about slavery made, Hollywood in general isn't interested in the topic. So why Tarantino?
TD: You're certainly right to suggest that the reverential depiction of slaves has been (and will no doubt continue to be) a problem. When it comes to depictions of slavery, we don't have a whole lot to choose from. The stoic slave has been the cinematic corrective to the depiction of black folks as beasts and such. So, when we get slaves shown at all, they're given gravitas and...wait for it..."dignity." As others have said, slaves are usually foils to set up benevolent, anti-slavery white folks who are determined to "give us free." Sadly, that image is far from moribund - it's vibrant and well-fed. Interestingly, one of the more consistent critiques of the movie that I've seen from black folks (scholars in particular) is that the movie shies away from more substantive depictions of day-to-day subversion and resistance. "Why aren't there more rebellious people in this movie?" goes the line in a number of places. At any rate, I think QT is uniquely suited to make this type of flick. First off, as a student of film, he's stated in an interview that he was seriously worn down by the "soul-killing...victimization" that defined most movies that dealt with slavery. I'm with him on that. On the other end of the spectrum were historical "capital H" documentaries that told the story of slavery from a factual basis. He didn't want to do that either. Instead, he wanted to give us, as you say, the mashup: part western adventure, part travel film, part romance - where a brother gets to save the love of his life and, in QT's words, "have the catharsis of painting the walls" with the blood of slaveholding tyrants. Secondly - he's been gearing up to do something like this for some time. Let's review his body of work: western-style, lone avenger type flick? Check. Revenge flick? Double check. Fantastical riff on historical narrative? Check. Willingness and ability to give us buckets of blood in the process of redemption and revenge? No doubt. Plus, when you take into account QT's ability to mash different genres together - I think that may be the linchpin that makes this whole endeavor possible, because I can't see this movie being made any way except as a spaghetti western of sorts. Slavery purists and folks overly burdened by the need for authenticity (regardless of that pesky fiction/nonfiction divide) were never going to get a movie that would make them nod with approval. But the rest of us got a movie that, in my view, worked on multiple levels and did what it set out to do. So, do you think QT is suited for this type of endeavor?
CP: That damnable dignified Negro! Better than what has been presented and yet still not completely who we are! Certainly the Mother Jones review of Django touches upon QT's failure to show more regular and elaborate forms of resistance amongst the community of the enslaved. I believe his focus on the conventions of the narrative and investment in an American atomic portrayal of heroism (I can't call it exclusively masculimist because there is KIll Bill Vols. 1 and 2) limits a more possible accuracy (trying to get the proper level of speculative language when discussing the expectations of historicity in a fictive work). In short John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Clint Eastwood, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglass, et al, when gun slinging all worked alone (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Magnificent Seven are spectacular exceptions to the rule). And they tend to save damsels instead of working with women. So QT's commitment to genre specs limits the community driven nature of historic resistance to slavery. And arguably, his writing of history could have indulged far greater revenge fantasies. If Adolf Hitler could burn to death in a Parisian movie theater in Inglorious Basterds then why not have Django's ("the D is silent") revenge on Candieland spark a mass revolt among the enslaved in that part of Mississippi? So a truly epic scale was missed as QT loses the opportunity for swarms of sweaty, angry Black people to surge across blood drenched cottony white fields.
Despite this I will accept the emotional and cultural historicity of the film as we see many of the tropes of Black cultural life on display and get a strong sense of the psychological dynamic from which they arose. From warrior to trickster, the film gives us a complex range of ways Black people functioned in the institution. I feel as if Django should have kept the early Afro, astride his horse like the bastard child of Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner and Jim Brown as an amalgamation of assertive personhood in Black culture and history. And we cannot ignore the flip trickster side of that in Sam L. Jackson's turn as the disingenuous Star Wars Emperor, like, Steven. All of this to say. I continue to reflect on a certain level of engaged cultural truthiness within the film and am dubious about pinning the film to any sort of historical accuracy.
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