Scene Analysis of Django Unchained

(This is a companion piece to http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/19/opinion/williams-django-still-chained/index.html which you may want to read first.)

I find that I am often less interested in how you feel, than why you feel. It’s a running theme in my personal and professional life. Too often we wax poetic about our conclusions while overlooking the importance of whether or not we’re talking about the same thing. We’ve all wasted energy arguing with a friend, spouse or coworker, only to learn that we don’t agree on the facts.

We all have subjective experiences during and after viewing a film. Strong feelings about art are not easily transferred onto others. If you didn’t think it was amazing, or offensive, it’s going to be tough for someone to convince you that it was. We need to feel for ourselves.

Not “feeling offended” does not mean the material itself was not offensive. The most effective propaganda goes unnoticed. That’s kind of how it works. Neither damage nor ignorance require intent.

And reckless arrogance is not the same as bravery. The trendy suggestion that Django Unchained’s mere existence is stimulating “a conversation about slavery” is bizarrely vague and incomplete. To suggest that something’s mere presence grants it merit, applies a false metric.Do we now credit kidnappers for stimulating the national discourse on child safety? Of course not and by recognizing that, we recognize that a line does exist. Why are we reflexively handing out praise just for showing up? Is just showing up good enough in all sensitive genres now or only the ones based in specific atrocities or by specific directors?

When people are starved of something for long enough, in this case, inspiring historical narratives and human loss during slavery, it’s mere presence, regardless of quality or purpose, can trigger a grateful response. They may even blurt out sounds of approval; gratitude even. Touting that absence of outrage as validation of achievement, or worse yet, service to an underserved subject matter and people, is weak.

Django Unchained could have been amazing, had it been interested in the cinematic leadership it so proudly advertised. With that in mind, I offer a breakdown of the scenes that affected me. I may have missed something you loved or noticed something you didn’t.

The film itself:

We open on a montage of enslaved men, led in shackles through harsh terrain. Among them is Django. At nightfall, a fascinatingly fearless and witty Dr. King Schultz emerges. He verbally toys with their enslavers before murdering one, wounding the other| and liberating Django from his shackles. Without so much as a glance, Django walks directly away from his fellow men. The shackled men have just witnessed a truly incredible series of events, yet at no point in the entire experience do they ever acknowledge or communicate with each other. (Their entire existence is awash with violence, so it’s not a result of shock.) Dr. King throws them the key to their shackles and advises them to head north. These men literally hold the key to their shackles and they never try to free themselves, or even look at each other. They don’t consider or confer. They just stand there mouths agape, like shackled apes, and as if with one mind, they trudge forward on cue, to inflict violence upon the wounded white oppressor before them. This imagery is a choice that defies all survivalist logic. You have the key to the iron shackles that eat away at your raw ankles. Take them off. When first glimpsing freedom, they look not to each other or their own shackled ankles, but first to inflict violence upon the nearest white person. Which, incidentally is exactly what Django did when freed; physically assaulted the wounded white man by pressing the horses weight into his wound. Could the black men not have looked to North Star themselves? Displayed human initiative by assembling supplies from the wreckage or anything else a real, experienced adult man might do?

Django has lived and worked exclusively with enslaved black people for all 40+ years of his life, yet his behavior obstructs the viewers’ ability to empathize with these characters, and the millions they represent. They demonstrate absolutely no potential, no personhood. Violent crimes committed against children are generally viewed as more heinous than those against adults because it is inconceivable that they could have done anything to warrant brutal abuse. They are “innocent kids” “brimming with potential,” “they have their whole life ahead of them.” Is the exact same not true for people with dark complexions? Does illiteracy castrate personhood entirely?

If the slave is just that; some zombie slave, what can you expect of your audience when faced with their bondage? A shrug? A common 21st century version of this clouded lens reveals itself in simple distillations of modern behavior, “This guy cut in front of me in line.” vs. “This black guy cut in front of me in line.” What does his blackness have to do with it? We have become conditioned to view Blackness with distinct value associations that often double as qualifiers for behavior.

You didn’t notice that the black people in this scene appeared lobotomized because that’s usually how slaves are portrayed. Black males on screen are consistently represented as dumb, incurious and/or prone to violence. If we want true progress, we have to stop sharing the same lack of curiosity displayed by Tarantino and his fictional slaves.

More scenes:

Dr. King commandeers a saloon and pours beers for the both of them. There is an odd series of obsessive, tight shots of King’s hands pouring and preparing the mugs of beer, wiping away the foam, etc. I promise I’ll come back to that later.

Dr. King collects his first bounty and they make camp for the night. Finally Dr. King coaxes out of Django that he has a wife still in slavery. Django will seek her out once he earns his freedom.

Then they go shopping for clothes.

Django asks exactly zero questions about how best to find his beloved wife. He just tries on hats, asking Schultz if a certain hat looks okay. As he rummages through other fashions King tells Django to select his clothes already. Django cannot believe he’s being permitted to select his own clothing! Except that for this entire scene he’s been doing just that: picking out his own clothing.

We cut to Django on a horse dressed like Little Boy Blue Ludwig Van Negro. Get it? No matter the era, Negros naturally have childish tastes. He looks like a cartoon lawn jockey. Can’t you hear them laughing about it on set?

Django arrives to our first plantation just in time to be welcomed coldly by plantation owner Big Daddy Bennett (played by Don Johnson). This is a most bizarre slave plantation for a director who “wanted to explore slavery” and said “I am responsible for people talking about slavery in America in a way they haven’t in 30 yrs.“ On his custom built slave plantation, a fleet of slave women stroll the grounds giggling, in floor-to-shoulder gowns, like they’re in Versailles. Seriously, slaves, without a care in the world, swinging on swings and cracking jokes all day. Oh, and there’s a white guy with a rifle propped up and ready, like a prison guard in the yard. What are you doing sir – making sure they stroll casually enough? Tarantino was right, we have never felt the need to talk about slavery this way. Nor felt the need to clarify that chattel slavery was kind of the opposite of this strolling-in-finery situation we’re presented with.

Don Johnson is outraged by the sight of “a nigger on a horse” and demands that Django dismount.

King prompts Big Daddy to allow Django to tour the grounds, with his young slave girl. Considering that Django has spent virtually every waking minute of his life as a slave, on a plantation, it’s odd that he never seems to process the complexity his very first moments on a slave plantation as a “free man.” Instead he’s nasty to the slave girl and never even asks her if his wife Broomhilda is there on the plantation! We’ve established that she’s been sold and could be anywhere, you don’t want to give a quick description and see if she’s around?

When Django spots Ellis, the first Brittle brother, the slaves he is overseeing are just out of frame; faceless atmosphere.

In Django’s only real [non-imaginary] scene with his wife, Broomhilda, a flashback before they reunite, Django appears to save her from further whipping and escape to the woods with her. They finally begin to speak to each other; lovers communicating before us for the very first time until suddenly a contemporary singer’s voice is drowning out and distracting us from their [generic] dialogue. Why during the only definitive and incredibly vulnerable moment in the lives of Django and his wife, does the filmmaker literally construct an offscreen, off-century sound obstacle to detach us from the very characters whose story he claims to be telling? Guess who’s dialogue is never so irrelevant that it’s pitted against loud, off-century music? Dr. King, Calvin Candy or any other white person. It was our opportunity to align ourselves with our title character in his quest to get her back- it’s the only scene where they have a conversation in the entire film.

As Django storms towards the other two Brittle brothers, he passes more frolicking, well-dressed slaves playing on swings. The Brittle Brothers are cartoonish, bloodthirsty buffoons better suited to share the screen with Yosemite Sam than spark a real “conversation about slavery”. Sloppy, loud Big John Brittle, with Bible pages pinned all over his shirt, immediately declares his instability. His brother Lil Raj, ties a girl to a tree, while Big John continues deliriously babbling bible verses and gleefully warming up his bull whip for some good lashin’. Django has never held a gun before but he expertly whips out Dr. King’s under-the-cuff-gun-on-a-slide contraption and fires one perfect shot to Brittle’s heart, killing him instantly. Lil Raj witnesses this and literally bats his pistol around on his stomach like a blind, hooved drunkard for what felt like an eternity until finally Django strikes him with his brother’s bullwhip. Cue the circus music, clowns and unicycle bear! The camera looks up at the heroic Django, the sweeping music belies a dignity that simply cannot be matched by a grown man in a ridiculous velvet lawn jockey outfit.

The Brittle brothers are not generic representatives to Django. They are specifically Django’s horribly abusive overseers: his entire life of oppression personified before him, right now. Yet they weren’t mighty at all. In fact, an illiterate man who dresses like a child, and has never fired a weapon before, can just walk up and destroy them in 40 seconds flat. Slavery’s not that big a deal if you show some initiative.

Dr. King rides up and assesses Django’s work. He spots Ellis, the first Brittle brother Django laid eyes on. King lines him up with his rifle and guns him down. This marks the only time in the entire film where we see clean images of slaves laboring in the field. There’s only four of them and again, they’re not worthy of proper framing, never mind a close up. Which is odd because back in town, where Dr. King commandeered that saloon, we had plenty of time for a barrage of elaborate and irrelevant close ups of King’s hands pouring draft beers and wiping away the foam, etc. Why is that? Why must the field slaves remain faceless and out of frame for the entirety of this nearly three hour film but we have exhaustive closeups of pouring the perfect draft beer?

Our silly plantation owner Big Daddy, arrives to the commotion with the most bizarre and poorly researched posse ever assembled.