Django Unchained and the Neo-Blaxploitation Western
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2013.i2.648Keywords:
Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino, blaxploitationAbstract
Django Unchained’s treatment of slavery and race issues has polarized audiences, especially African-American audiences. While Harvard professor and public intellectual Henry Louis Gates Jr. published a favorable three-part interview with director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino on his weblog The Root, filmmaker Spike Lee has charged Tarantino with (once again) overusing the “n-word” and with turning African American history into a Spaghetti Western spectacle of violence – an act he called “an insult to his ancestors” (quoted in Stern). Talk show host Tavis Smiley has likewise condemned the film as a misrepresentation of African American history, lamenting that Hollywood would only “greenlight a spoof about slavery, and it’s as if this spoof about slavery somehow makes slavery a bit easier to swallow” (Ibid.).References
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bell hooks. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Boss Nigger. Jack Arnold. 1975.
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Ciment, Michel, and Hubert Niogret. “Interview at Cannes.” 1992. Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 9-26.
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Django. Sergio Corbucci. 1966.
Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino. 2012.
A Fistful of Dollars. Sergio Leone. 1964.
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Guerrero, Ed. “The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation.” Movies and American Society. Ed. Steven J. Ross. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 250 – 273.
Hake, Sabine. Screen Nazis: Cinema, History, and Democracy. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2012.
Hall, Stuart. “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance.” Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism. No Ed. Paris: Unesco, 1980. 305-345.
Harris, Aisha. “When Blaxploitation Went West: Django Unchained Seems Tame by Comparison.” Slate Magazine. The Washington Post Company. 25 Dec. 2012. Last accessed 30/8/2013.
Hoberman, J. “Interview: Quentin Tarantino.” Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 153-165.
Inglorious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino. 2009.
Jameson, Frederic. The Political Unconscious: Narratives as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen, 1981.
Keough, Peter. “Quentin Tarantino: Press Conference on Jackie Brown.” Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 198-203.
Lawrence, Novotny. Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre. New York: Routledge, 2008.
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Shaft. Gordon Parks. 1971.
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The Soul of Nigger Charley. Larry G. Spangler. 1973.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Melvin Van Peebles. 1971.
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Althusser, Louis. “From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards and Investigation)” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Gen. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 1483-1509.
bell hooks. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Boss Nigger. Jack Arnold. 1975.
Brauner, David. Contemporary American Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010.
Carroll, Noël. “The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (and Beyond).” October 20 (1982): 51-81.
Ciment, Michel, and Hubert Niogret. “Interview at Cannes.” 1992. Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 9-26.
Cobb, Jelani. “Tarantino Unchained.” The New Yorker 2 Jan 2013. Last accessed 20/8/2013.
Diawara, Manthia. “Black American Cinema. The New Realism.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothey Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2010. 595-609.
Django. Sergio Corbucci. 1966.
Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino. 2012.
A Fistful of Dollars. Sergio Leone. 1964.
Gates, Henry Louis. “Tarantino 'Unchained,' Part 1: 'Django' Trilogy?” The Root 23 Dec. 2012. Last accessed 20/7/2013.
Gates, Henry Louis. “Tarantino 'Unchained,' Part 2: On the N-Word.” The Root 24 Dec. 2012. Last accessed 20/7/2013.
Gates, Henry Louis. “Tarantino 'Unchained,' Part 3: White Saviors.” The Root 25 Dec. 2012. Last accessed 20/7/2013.
Grant, William R. IV. Post-Soul Black Cinema: Discontinuities, Innovations, and Breakingpoints, 1970 – 1995. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Guerrero, Ed. “The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation.” Movies and American Society. Ed. Steven J. Ross. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 250 – 273.
Hake, Sabine. Screen Nazis: Cinema, History, and Democracy. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2012.
Hall, Stuart. “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance.” Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism. No Ed. Paris: Unesco, 1980. 305-345.
Harris, Aisha. “When Blaxploitation Went West: Django Unchained Seems Tame by Comparison.” Slate Magazine. The Washington Post Company. 25 Dec. 2012. Last accessed 30/8/2013.
Hoberman, J. “Interview: Quentin Tarantino.” Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 153-165.
Inglorious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino. 2009.
Jameson, Frederic. The Political Unconscious: Narratives as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen, 1981.
Keough, Peter. “Quentin Tarantino: Press Conference on Jackie Brown.” Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 198-203.
Lawrence, Novotny. Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre. New York: Routledge, 2008.
The Legend of Nigger Charley. Martin Goldman. 1972.
Leonard, David J., and Tamura A. Lomax. “Django Unchained: A Conversation between Two Friends.” The Feminist Wire 31 Dec. 2012. Last accessed 30/8/2013
Man and Boy. E. W. Swackhamer. 1971.
Mandingo. Richard Fleischer. 1975.
Mercer, Kobena, and Isaac Julien. “True Confessions.” 1986. Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art. Ed. Thelma Golden. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994. 191-200.
Mooney, Joshua. “Interview with Quentin Tarantino.” 1994. Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 70-79.
Nelson, Scott Reynolds. “‘Django’ Untangled: the Legend of the Bad Black Man.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 11 Jan. 2013. Last accessed 22/8/2013.
Reed, Ishmael. “Black, Audiences, White Stars and ‘Django Unchained.’” The Wall Street Journal 28. Dec. 2012.
Reservoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino. 1992.
Samuels, Allison. “Quentin Tarantino on Django Unchained and the Problem with ‘Roots.’” The Daily Beast. Newsweek. Last accessed 20/7/2013.
Shaft. Gordon Parks. 1971.
Stern, Marlow. “Tavis Smiley on Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained“ The Daily Beast. Newsweek 4 Jan. 2013. Last accessed 30/7/2013.
The Soul of Nigger Charley. Larry G. Spangler. 1973.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Melvin Van Peebles. 1971.
Udovitch, Mim. “Mim Udovitch/1996.” Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. Ed. Gerald Peary. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 166-175.
Winkler, Willi. “Zieh, Barack, Zieh.” Süddeutsche Zeitung 2./3. Feb. 2013: Wochenende Eins.
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