Some manifestations of white privilege are so self-indulgent that black America finds itself struggling to understand their implications long after they sink into our collective psyche. This may prove to be the case with director Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained – even for those people who have not — or will not — view the film.
It’s already haunting Tavis Smiley and Spike Lee, two respected black thinkers and cultural contributors who famously refuse to partake in the current Django fascination. These two men, staunch and fearless advocates of justice and progress in black America, are not unjustified in their assessments of Hollywood and Quentin Tarantino; however, neither man can be taken seriously if their analyses of Django Unchained are defined only by bias and presumptions.
Let’s take Lee. “It’d be disrespectful to my ancestors to see that film. That’s the only thing I’m going to say. I can’t disrespect my ancestors,” the legendary director said in a Vibe interview approximately one week prior to the film’s Christmas Day release. But, of course this is just one blip in a long-standing beef between the auteurs.
Lee has been extremely vocal in critiquing Tarantino’s fascination with the word ni**er. “I’m not against the word, (though I am) and I use it, but not excessively,” said Lee in a 1997 interview with Variety. “And some people speak that way. But, Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want to be made — an honorary black man?” It can’t help that Django uses the word over 100 times.
Tavis Smiley, one of the films most recent and vocal detractors, also said in an interview with The Daily Beast that he didn’t have to see the film to form a valid opinion.
“I refuse to see it. I’m not going to pay to see it,” Smiley said. “But I’ve read the screenplay, and I have 25 family members and friends who have seen it, and have had thousands of conversations about this movie, so I can tell you frame by frame what happens,” he told the online news outlet.
“The greater problem with Hollywood is that there’s no balance,” the media pundit complained. “One might have a stronger stomach for a movie like Django if there was a library of films I could go to that tells the authentic story of slavery and segregation. But since that library doesn’t exist, since there’s no balance in Hollywood when it comes to the complexities of black life in America, then it makes it harder to stomach a spoof.”
There is an abundance of layered criticism that could be levied against the bit of cinematic hoodoo that is Django. The film is so mired in racial tropes, excessive violence and uncensored racist depravities that each scene has the potential to be an emotional landmine. Still, to speak on Django with any authority, the film must be seen for oneself.
If they had seen the film, they would understand that their criticisms must delve deeper than the idea of it being a “spoof” and a knee-jerk reaction to the – subjectively — gratuitous use of the word ni**er.
Django by no means makes a mockery of slavery – see Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, specifically the scene “Black Acting School,” if you’re looking for a plantation parody; in fact, Tarantino seems uncomfortable, unsure of his cultural footing as he pivots from vicious dog attacks and “Mandingo” fighting, to the malignant honor of being a house servant or master’s mistress. The scenes during which slaves are violent towards each other, or an unhinged Django is violent towards white people, are as revealing in their complete abandon as the slave punishment scenes are in their abruptness.
The filmmaker, despite his bravado and arrogance, merely hints at the brutal ugliness of slavery, because, as Tarantino stated during an interview in Germany, “the truth, or the reality, was a thousand times worse than what [he] showed.”
Tarantino’s mastery of his craft is evident in Django‘s fragile balance of several cinematic genres and gripping cultural portrayals based on his intuition. From the very beginning, Django confronts the viewer with his or her benign acceptance of this history; by its conclusion, many of them leave walking a tense tightrope of multi-faceted emotions.
That’s art. It is not something that one should necessarily like or enjoy; rather it is something that should make one feel. For that reason alone, Tarantino is deserving of every accolade that is sure to come his way this award season.
But that does not mean that his motivations should be trusted or respected. The eccentric filmmaker’s style can easily be described as “blackface in whiteface”: a man so in love with violence and hyper-masculinity that he fetishizes what he believes to be the pinnacle of both – Black Manhood. That he seeks entrée into the soul of blackness is irrefutable. What better way to do so than by co-opting the slave experience? It is much easier to tread on the hallowed ground of slavery once the boundary of acceptability has been shattered, and of course, in our culture that requires making it entertainment.
By positioning slavery as a plot mechanism in a spaghetti western, Tarantino reduces most of the blacks portrayed to peripheral chattel, while simultaneously under-girding the entire film with the strength of their story – his vision of our story. His views on the “peculiar institution” are cleverly embedded in dialogue spoken early in the film by Dr. Shultz, played by the talented Christopher Waltz, to Jamie Foxx’s brilliantly played Django.
“On one hand, I despise slavery,” he told the slave he had just stolen. “On the other hand, I need your help. And if you’re not in a position to refuse, all the better. So for the time being, I’m going to make this slavery malarkey work to my benefit.”
And that is precisely what Tarantino has been able to do – make this slavery “malarkey” work to his benefit while his detractors box themselves into indefensible positions.
Because they refuse to see the film.
We were unprepared for this sleek, stylized rendering of the black holocaust chronicling one man’s transition from slave to “gangsta.” With Rick Ross and Tupac bumping ominously in the background, Django’s assimilation into the brutal culture of slavers is portrayed as the ultimate, heroic vengeance. When he goes on his murderous rampage, he not only kills slave owners, all whites and one Sambo in his path, he becomes eerily similar to them. The qualities of cruelty and violence imperceptibly shift from the oppressor to the oppressed as if they were Django’s all along. By the film’s conclusion, the story is not one of slave rebellion, but of one martyred abolitionist’s transfer of power, as Dr. Shultz’s death empowers Django to go Rambo.
But neither Lee nor Smiley are able to discuss this sleight of hand. Because they refuse to see the film.
Both men are among those who feel that Tarantino’s liberal use of the word n***er is a symptom of his latent desire for African-American acceptance. While that may be true to some extent, in Django, its use is casual and unremarkable for the Antebellum South — never gratuitous. If anything, Django is the perfect conduit through which Tarantino can indulge his love affair with the word without its contextual authenticity being called into question.
But neither Lee nor Smiley can debate that point with any credibility. Because they refuse to see the film.
Although so much focus has been on Tarantino’s treatment of the slave experience, little mention has been made of his razor-sharp depiction of their white overseers. Ignorant, illiterate and incestuous, his disdain for them is palpable. They are depicted as the worst sort of scum — as cowards with no discernible skills or merit. This stands in stark contrast to Tarantino’s obvious voyeuristic attraction to all things black.
But neither Lee nor Smiley have remarked on that contradiction. Because they refuse to see the film.
Backstage at the 2013 Golden Globes, where Tarantino snagged the coveted best screenplay award, he expressed his refusal to even acknowledge the anger of detractors who can’t tell him what exactly it is that they find so reprehensible about Django.
“If somebody is out there actually saying when it comes to the word ni**er,” said Tarantino unfiltered, “I was using it in the movie more than it was being used in the Antebellum South in Mississippi, then feel free to make that case. But no one’s actually making that case. They are saying I should lie, that I should whitewash, that I should massage, and I never do that when it comes to my characters.”
But the loudest critics can’t refute these assertions, or any others. Because they refuse to see the film.
It’s not just members of the Hollywood mainstream that question such stubbornly uninformed critics.
In recent days, everyone from the venerable Dick Gregory to porn-peddler Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell have hurled egregious epithets at Spike Lee for his blanket denouncement of the film. And woven through combative rants, filled with such derogatory slurs as “punk,” “thug” and (curiously) “Uncle Tom,” is the dismissive question: “How can he criticize something that he has never even seen?”
It is the broad and inaccurate nature of Smiley and Lee’s critiques that have landed them in the awkward position of defending hollow — and perhaps baseless — objections.
Without having seen the film, Smiley and Lee must fall back on criticizing the Academy and Hollywood for ignoring black stories of value and perpetuating stereotypes. The Los Angeles Times reported in February of 2012 that the Academy that awards the coveted Oscar is nearly 94 percent Caucasian, mostly over the age of 60, and 77 percent male. Does this explain the trend in these awards being given when black men are depicted as corrupt (Denzel Washington, Training Day), when black women are portrayed as vulnerable playthings for white men (Halle Berry, Monster’s Ball), or when they are seen as sassy, asexual servants (Olivia Spencer, The Help). Perhaps.
But, rather than criticizing Hollywood for such apparent biases, the larger narrative should be: why are we still seeking validation from Hollywood? Why are we seeking trinkets and acknowledgment (or “fairness”) from a homogeneous power structure that should never be the compass for discerning black worth in any endeavor, least of which being the cinematic portrayal of the black experience?
I am not against Lee — who deserves respect for his unwavering fight to tell our stories with honor — for boycotting the film because he believes it exploits our ancestors. I also don’t fault Smiley – who, alongside Dr. Cornel West, has spoken truth to power despite an onslaught of animosity – who castigates the film’s perceived trivialization of our pain as we navigate through slavery’s wreckage.
But offering Django film free publicity with generic, overwrought criticism that is completely uninformed can easily be perceived as a media grab for relevancy. Thus, Lee and Smiley bring any potentially beneficial dialogue to a screeching halt.
It is way past the time that we should be able to have a cultural conversation about slavery that is more nuanced than anger over the “n-word” and hurt feelings because Hollywood is unkind. The bottom line is that mutual engagement is instrumental to any legitimate conversation about it. Anything less leaves our society a slave to a turbulent past – and at the mercy of a future much more perilous than any alternate reality conceived in the bowels of Tarantino’s dark imagination.
Follow Kirsten West Savali on Twitter at @KWestSavali.