Django Unchained is definitely one of the best films of 2012. It may not get everything it deserves at the Oscars, but thankfully people are seeing it anyway and it’s getting plenty of love at the box office.
Tarantino is Back
Quentin Tarantino is back in his usual style with this film. It is full of excessive, almost cartoonish, violence and gore. The song choices are a hodgepodge of genres, styles and decades, yet with each choice fitting perfectly with the mood and meaning Tarantino is conveying. The images convey both the time period the story takes place in with plenty of homages to a more modern style. It’s still post-modern filmmaking at it’s finest.
The style isn’t the only thing familiar in this film, however. Having recently discussed Pulp Fiction with some of you, I couldn’t help but find some parallels between these works.
Django Unchained forces us as an audience to look at slavery, one of America’s most famous sins, through a new lens. We’ve heard the story told in so many ways, but Tarantino brings a new light to things, as he always does.
One of the key parallels to Pulp Fiction is that there is no “good guy” in this film. We have no Lincoln, no abolitionist, no righteous preacher or prophet. We are left only with multiple layers and levels of evil. Our “heroes” are merely better than the villains around them. They are killers themselves, on a journey to both vengeance and money. In many ways, we only classify them as heroes because they have better motives than those they kill. We label bounty hunters as heroes; bounty hunters who we usually classify as scum and villainy in other films.
Can We Call it Justice?
Once again, Tarantino is playing with our ideas of justice; what it is and who deals it out. Django and Dr. Schultz are giving many people what they deserve. They hunt down criminals for the state of Texas, men who the world is most likely better without. But they aren’t necessarily concerned completely with justice: while they kill men who abuse slaves, they don’t set all the slaves free. They leave the slaves on their own, in the middle of a forest in the cold of night. They aren’t concerned with setting all things right, but Schultz will bring some men to justice for money and because he believes men with lesser moral fiber than he should die. Django will do the same so that he can get one step closer to the wife he’s separated from, killing the men who have done him wrong.
In the end, Django gets a happy ending, riding off into the night with his wife, leaving many a slaver and criminal dead in his wake. Was justice dealt out? Maybe, but maybe not through just means. As with Pulp Fiction, good and evil are relative to the situation you are in. As long as you save the world from men more evil than you, your means are justified.
We as an audience go through a journey into the world of slavery and come out on the other side feeling like good has won. But should we? This film tells us that things like justice aren’t always black and white, that there is a gray area that each of us must navigate and hopefully become the hero in each situations. A hero not by virtue, but by being only slightly more just than those you kill. As long as you are better than the victim of your wrath, you’re ok.
It makes for a good movie, but what do you think? Is this how we should see and interact with the world? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the movie in the comments.
Ben — I don’t know if you saw my Django post, but it’s pretty much got the opposite opinion of yours re: heroes, especially in terms of things like leaving the slaves in the forest in the middle of the night. I think the point isn’t slavery, but rather, what Django wants vs. what is in his way of getting it. Slavery is only cultural context for a story about desire. Your definition of a hero assumes the definition that hero = savior of others from unjust circumstances. This makes me ask questions like: can we save others by saving ourselves? must we be our own heroes first? Is Django a hero for a modern day audience because he is ideologically “saving us” from the evil ideas of his culture? Does it matter that he didn’t rescue tons of other slaves in the movie, because he was still able to teach us something? Does his sense of personal justice sufficiently influence and inspire others (other characters in the movie, and/or viewers), or does influencing and inspiring others necessarily involve saving them from physical evil? If Paul tells us we can be content in all circumstances, do we need to be saved from unjust circumstances in order to be free? Okay, wow, that’s a lot…. great post. Can’t wait for Fight Club tomorrow!
Lots of good stuff Melissa… I should have read your post before I wrote mine!
You’re right, I didn’t do my job of defining my terms, and was being lazy in my post and relying on assumed definitions of these terms. My main point was to look at how Tarantino is circumventing our normal assumptions of heroes and placing us in a world where the rules are different. You’re right though the story is not asking whether we should see them as “heroes” by our definition, but how these two men are able to get what they desire.
If you get down to it, it’s just what you pointed out: justice in this movie is concerned with personal injustices in many ways. Django’s mission to right the wrongs done to him and his family, and if he serves capital-J Justice in doing so, all is well. But that is not his primary purpose, nor what makes him a hero. He does his part, and at least his world is a little better.
Which brings me back to my point in this post and our Pulp Fiction discussion, which is in Tarantino’s movies, each setting and circumstance has it’s own rules, it’s own levels of good and evil.
Thanks for lots more to think about with this film, I especially like your point asking,
I think your intuition is right here. We can cheer for Django because if this timeline were actual history, maybe Django could make our present a little different. I realize Tarantino is merely using the time period as a backdrop for his own universe, but it is fun to think about it’s relation to our own
On justice: Justice is necessarily complex in a world where not all humans have the same basic rights protected. When a slave owner’s abuse of his slaves is not illegal, where and what is justice? An inherent flaw exists in a society that supports slavery. D.U. shows us many unjust and unpleasant consequences of slavery’s support. In this particular context — I should say because of this particular context — the film maintains a moral gravity. You can only justify this kind of tale in a situation where law is either seriously flawed or largely neglected. Interestingly, Tarantino didn’t have to make much up to create such a situation. He just needed to put the bad part of the antebellum South on screen. I find it interesting that so much of the discussion focuses on the morality of Django’s actions instead of the evil institution from which he comes.
I listened to a great interview between Tarantino and Henry L. Gates, Jr. You may enjoy it, and it’ll probably help you think about Django. It helped me anyway. http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/tarantino-talks-gates-podcast-special
Good stuff Shane! Yeah, I think conversation fundamentally shifts when you think of Django’s actions not in our own world, but in the world he comes from in this movie. You can’t make sweeping morality judgments because the rules aren’t the same.
But I also think it’s worth discussing their morality in relation to our own. Even though the “law” is unjust and neglected, Tarantino made Django and Schultz ambassadors of sorts for the law, killing people for the government. Again, I realize said government is flawed, but these characters are representing it, and perhaps even redeeming it by righting the wrongs it is allowing.
Once again, Tarantino is playing with subtleties and redefining what we think we know about right and wrong by showing that situations make decisions relative. I’ll have to check out that interview, now I’m intrigued!