Da Gordon a Django. Figurazioni dell'eroismo e memoria della schiavitù negli Stati Uniti

Abstract

Even before its release in 2012 Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained was the object of hot transatlantic discussions, mostly criticizing the film as one more item to add to the long list of “white savior narratives” produced by Hollywood and questioning the right of white authors to appropriate black stories. Indeed, unlike the Caribbean and other former slave countries, where the public memorialization of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade has recently shifted its focus from benevolent white heroes to black freedom fighters, the US still finds black heroism and the representation of the agency of the enslaved problematic. While challenging the interpretation of Tarantino’s film as a white savior narrative, this essay deals with the US failure to represent black rebels fighting for emancipation in the public space. It also explores African American visual and literary counternarratives of black heroism, finally asking whether Jamie Foxx’s Django, though an individualistic hero who lacks racial awareness, responds to contemporary young blacks’ distrust in progressive narratives of the US race question.