In director Quentin Tarantino's film Django: Unchained, a revisionist approach to the genre allowed the film to appeal to American audiences in a few ways: a juxtaposition of violence on screen intentionally transitions between realism and fantastical depictions, differentiating the severity of the experience of slavery with the exaggeration and elegance of the fictional violence in the story. The film further appeals to a multicultural America in the film's revisionist themes, often setting morally gray characters in an equally gray world, which deepened the representation of the South while simultaneously mirroring today's social climate. This, along with the depiction of race within the title character's interactions with other characters, shows the effects of slavery as a systemic problem and brings these contemporary issues to the Western screen. Django: Unchained, through this approach, criticizes American society on both a past and present level, reinventing a mythological story of redemption for a free black man in America. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay While the film might be classified as a period or “Southern” film, Django: Unchained contains many of the formal elements of a Western. The plot is a typical plot structure of a western: the formation of an origin story for the protagonist Django, when he becomes an exceptional shooting action hero and finds himself caught in the middle of two groups, in this case: free white men and Black Slaves. Iconography associated with Westerns, such as cowboy attire (hats, boots, spurs), horses, desert landscape, buddy cowboy sequences, Mexican influence in music and aesthetics, and even classic clichés Westerns such as The Mutilated Prostitute, are used by Tarantino to create a formal atmosphere structure of the genre for the audience. By setting the film with the expectations of the Western genre and adding a layer of slavery to the setting by placing the story in Mississippi in 1858 just 2 years before the Civil War, a new frontier emerges to conquer: the South. This setting particularly resonates with contemporary American audiences due to an ongoing social discourse about the psychological scars of slavery and increasing racially motivated violence in America. There are two main layers to the depictions of violence within Django that distinguish historically accurate violence from fictional history. violence, and both criticize American society on a past and present level. The first ones presented to us are fantastic representations of violence. Dr. King Schultz, a bounty hunter posing as a traveling dentist, shoots Django's captors and introduces him to an alternative life, which could give Django his freedom and his revenge. Visually, these violent acts are exaggerated, unrealistic, and colorful. And it was important that Django's introduction to violence against free white men was shown in a fantastical (rather than realistic) way, because his character's introduction to Dr. King Schultz incites the fairy-tale fantasy journey. Tarantino uses this display of violence specifically against free white men, with the exception of a black slave Stephen. The exuberance of violence works visually to support Django's fairy-tale fantasy and develops over the course of the narrative until its majestic finale in which Django bombs the Candyland mansion with dynamite. In moments where fantastic violence is used - in the final explosion and in thecolored deaths of white freemen - Django is portrayed as a black freeman with power. The film also incorporates modern rap music as an added layer of black empowerment and voice in these scenes, but also to connect the issues with modern ones, bringing the audience's reflections to the present. However, if, as LC Mitchell argues, ... spaghetti Westerns function by supplanting violence, this implies a fundamental inadequacy for the task of historicizing violence, of expressing and understanding violence as an identifiable response to specific causal factors. What such an effort produces, [he] suggests, is not a historically accurate representation of a violent society, but rather a gratuitous presentation of extreme violence alongside, but disjointed, a representation of that society, however historically accurate it may be. be.Tarantino is known for his "violence for violence's sake", however, it is Tarantino's distinctions between two different depictions of violence that stand out most in the film. The differentiation of depictions of violence is purposeful and works hard to show and distinguish the brutality of slavery from Tarantino's more colorful and unrealistic style. And I would say that the juxtaposition challenges the theme of violence; that Tarantino approached the film with a revisionist lens rather than strictly sticking to themes within the Spaghetti Western form, and moves away from a "gratuitous presentation of extreme violence". Where fantasy depictions are shown fully on screen, historical violence in the South is often elided and not presented directly on screen. This doesn't take away from the realism or emotion of the acts, but rather intensifies them, making them difficult to watch. For example, a scene in which a slave is eaten alive by dogs is experienced through sound, glimpses of movement, and the expressions of the surrounding characters. And "Mandingo's" fight scene in the Candyland mansion escapes the embarrassing act of eye-rolling by cutting to a waitress dropping a bowl of candy. Additionally, Tarantino focuses much of the story's action where the film allows the viewer to absorb and reflect on the slave's experience. Broomhilda's (Kerry Washington) humiliation when Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) undresses her in front of everyone at the dinner table to see her deep whipping scars. The terror of looming castration as Django hangs, chained upside down. The flogging, the hotbox, the cast iron brand: violence against black slaves was distinguished in this way, to be distinguished from the fictional and fantastic violence of the story as a strong sign of realism. And to criticize American society even in the present, Tarantino wrote repetitive lines in the script that pushed audiences to equate the dehumanization and violence inflicted on blacks then and now, with the same treatment of violence against dogs. The scene in which Dr. King Schultz and Django are negotiating with a marshal to get out of the saloon without "[getting] shot like a dog in the street", stands out because of the tension in negotiating with an armed police officer, but also because of the 2012 shooting of black teenager, Trayvon Martin, which occurred the same year Django was released. Tarantino takes the criticism one step further by writing a scene in which a slave is eaten alive by dogs – proving that black slaves were treated even more cruelly than animals – and when Calvin Candie asks Django, "Are you used to seeing a man quartered ?apart from the dogs?” Django responds, "No, I'm just used to America," using thoughtful commentary on current affairs to bring up the issuescontemporary stories on race and violence are at the forefront of the film's themes. With references to today's events, where African American teenagers are shot like dogs on the street, Django becomes a story that from this point is carefully examined, as the audience wonders how Django will solve his problems and, in turn, wonders how may a mixed America follow in the present day. Tarantino emphasizes a revisionist approach to the Western to relate more closely to today's society, rather than placing the story within the stark confines of black and white, good and bad of traditional Western genre films. Where the difference between the depictions of violence is clear, the difference between the morals of the characters is loosely cut. This formal element of typical revisionist films helps align audiences' understanding of issues of slavery and relate such depictions to racism and systemic issues rooted in today's society. The revisionist Western lens shows the world as morally ambiguous, blurring the divide between heroes and villains. The characters in this film, namely Django (Jamie Foxx), Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), resemble each other in gray morality - and are all depicted as adapting to survive. The first relationship we see is between Django and Dr. King Schultz, a white ally and business partner of Django, although Tarantino quickly shows us that Schultz isn't all that good. First, Schultz is shown to the audience as visually gray in his costumes; when Calvin Candie first meets Django, he refers to Schultz as his "friend in grey". The audience is led to perceive Schultz as an ally, particularly as he "despises slavery" and helps Django on a difficult mission to purchase and rescue Django's wife, Broomhilda (Hildi). But Schultz is also shown as morally questionable, as he is heard telling Django multiple times that his job, while not trading slaves, is still "trading flesh for the sake of cash trading", like a bounty hunter, who has his questions about morality. . Schultz, who professes to despise slavery, sees that Django is "in no position to refuse", saying that he will "make this slavery malarkey work to [his] advantage", which Jarrod Dunham questions as the position of Schultz is distinguished from that of the typical plantation owner. The exploitative nature of the relationship, Dunham says, goes unexamined. I want to argue that this exploitative cowboy buddy relationship between Django and Schultz actually deepens the role of the white cowboy. The film does not show Schultz as inherently good or bad, but somewhere in between that reflects the reality of systemic racism and the social problems brought by a society that behaves the same way as Schultz: embracing the privileges of the system as long as it works to their advantage . The second relationship examined by critics is that of Samuel L. Jackson's role as Stephen, a "Head House N*****", who Django calls worse and more shameful than a "Black Slaver". role which he uses as a pretext to save Hildi. Stephen, is portrayed as "an Uncle Tom [character] whose servility," as A. O. Scott observes, "has mutated into monstrosity..." Many criticize this character because some see it as a strategy that Tarantino uses to put white audiences more comfortable as a comedian. element, and also as a character that allows for an ending in which not only the white owners die, but also a black arch-villain. I want to argue that Stephen was not a strategy to appeal to white audiences, but rather a representation of the decisions slaves had to make to adapt and survive.Roxanne Gay writes: To survive, some blacks did what they had to do. Sometimes this meant becoming part of the system of slavery so that that system would not destroy them completely. . . slaves only had impossible choices, when they had choices at all. Although some argue that Tarantino has not given the audience the means to sympathize with Stephen, these "impossible choices" can be reflected in the "vivid and frightening transmission of Stephen's duplicity", Kate Temoney states: "and one cannot help but question the psychology behind it all and appreciate the complexity of the dynamics of victimization." Stephen's portrayal of the Uncle Tom character illustrates the psychological ways in which slavery victimized human beings and leads the audience to reflect on the ways in which African Americans had to adapt to survive the continuation of racism entrenched in the system and society of today. , Tarantino's final scene has two main functions: to conclude the redemption story of Django's Western and to allow the audience to contemplate the arrival of a racial revolution in the present day. The action, in which Django carries out his mission to save Hildi and mete out justice to all the characters responsible in part for her enslavement, is classic in Western plots to enact a revenge fantasy on the surface of the film. But I would argue that the depictions of race and violence in the Final Act are also intentional, using only exaggerated and colorful displays of violence to keep Django's vengeance within the fantasy realm, and using off-screen implications to comment on the racial issues that they are systemic. . First, the German fairy tale that underlined the narrative at the beginning encouraged the audience to root for a story of black revenge. The fairy tale compares Django to Siegfried, a blond hero who goes into the mountains to save a woman named Broomhilda (I would like to point out that Tarantino purposely showed Django and Schultz riding into the mountains, despite Candyland not actually being in the mountains, but this further grounded the fairy tale with the goal of our protagonist). Schultz, in telling the tale, did not mention, as Daniel O'Brien writes, that [Siegfried] was doomed by ambition, deceit and recklessness. Given Siegfried's co-optation by white supremacists, particularly the Nazi regime, the film makes little of this racially charged analogy, beyond showing a black man succeeding where a white man, even one with supernatural powers, ultimately fails. the violence in killing all the white members of Candyland, was inspired by the fairy tale and supported within a classic western plot. To some viewers it even seemed like a black revenge fantasy, even if, as Yarimar Bonilla notes, it "belies the very stakes of black revenge in the present." Superficial justice was the main narrative function of the final scene, and the fantasy element allows the film to create an origin myth of the black, freed slave gunfighter. But the implications that are left off screen are what allow audiences to imagine the possibility of changing the current course of America's racial divide and racially motivated violence. When Django saves Hildi and they ride off into the sunset together, the scene ignores the isolation of the outcome. in the context of the rest of the South and the kind of struggles they are engaging in. As Daniel O'Brien states, the latter aspect is localized and individualized. The racialized and enslaved world outside of Django's immediate space is barely touched or affected by his actions (extra-diegetically speaking, it is arguable that the..