ABSTRACT
The opening of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained features a Western ballad playing as slave traders atop horses lead slaves on foot through the desert terrain of Texas. The Western theme music and topography foreshadow the transition of the title character, Django, from chattel slave to gun slinging frontier hero. So begins the “bloody live action cartoon” (Scott, 2012, p. C1) and Tarantino’s (2012) self-described quest to “deconstruct Birth of a Nation ” through a re-articulation of spaghetti Westerns and Blaxploitation fi lms. Django Unchained attempts to deal with the ugliness of slavery through graphic representations of violence endured by slaves and by creating a Black character capable of revisiting that violence on a plantation owner and his underlings. Along the way, Tarantino invites audiences to witness brutal Mandingo fi ghts, the devouring of a slave by ravenous dogs, threatened castration of the title character, and other violent actions accompanied by steady deployment of the “N” word. The movie’s themes and representations of violence make it a complicated text. Tarantino (2012) justifi ed his creative choices during an interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., promoting the release of Django Unchained by arguing: “It’s like, look, the stuff that we show is really harsh, and it’s supposed to be harsh, but it was [actually] a lot worse.” Tarantino’s comment suggested he thinks the violence of the fi lm is necessary to convey a particular message about the evils of slavery. Many interpretations of the violence and representation of slavery are available. Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, the fi lm’s African American stars, found the fi lm a unique and productive representation and retelling of slavery (Tarantino and Cast, 2012).
