Reimagining Redemption: a Critical Analysis of "Django Unchained"

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 onscreen purposefully transitions between realism and fantastical depictions, differentiating the seriousness of the slavery experience with the exaggeration and panache of the fictional violence in the story. The film further appeals to a multi-cultured America in the film’s revisionist themes, often setting morally gray characters in an equally gray world, which deepened the depiction of the South whilst simultaneously mirroring today’s social climate. That, along with the film’s depiction of race within the title character’s interactions with other characters, shows the effects of slavery as a systemic issue, and brings these contemporary issues onto the Western screen. Django: Unchained, through this approach, critiques American society on both past and present levels — reimagining a redemptive mythology story for one free Black man in America.

Though the film could be categorized as a period piece, or a “Southern,” Django: Unchained contains a lot 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, as he becomes an exceptional gunfighting action hero, and finds himself caught in the middle of two groups, in this case: White free men and Black slaves. The iconography associated with Westerns, like cowboy attire (hats, boots, spurs), horses, desert landscape, buddy cowboy sequences, Mexican influence in music and aesthetic, and even classic Western tropes like the maimed prostitute, are utilized by Tarantino to set a formal genre structure for the audience. Setting up the film with Western genre expectations, and adding a slavery-period layer to the setting by placing the story in Mississippi in 1858 just 2 years prior to the Civil War, manifests a New Frontier to conquer: the South. This setting particularly resonates with contemporary American audiences because of an ongoing social discourse on the psychological scars from slavery and the growing racially-motivated violence in America.

There are two main layers in the depictions of violence within Django that distinguish historically accurate violence from fictional story violence, and both criticize American society on a past and present level. The first that we are introduced to, are fantastical depictions of violence. Dr. King Schultz, a bounty hunter posing as a traveling dentist, shoots Django’s captors and introduces him to an alternate life, one that 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 White free men was fantastically shown (rather than realistically), because his character’s introduction to Dr. King Schultz incites the fairy-tale fantasy journey. Tarantino uses this showcase of violence specifically towards White free men with the exception of one Black slave Stephen. The flamboyance of the violence, acts visually to support the fairy-tale fantasy of Django and develops throughout the narrative to its awe-some finale in which Django bombs the Candyland mansion with dynamite. The times that fantastical violence is used — in the ending explosion and in the colorful deaths of White free men — Django is portrayed as an empowered Black free man. The film even incorporates modern rap music as another layer of Black empowerment and voice to these scenes, but also to tie the issues with modern ones, bringing audience’ reflections to the present. However if, as L.C. Mitchell argues,

…the spaghetti Western functions by displacing violence, it does imply the genre’s fundamental inadequacy to the task of historicizing violence, of expressing and comprehending violence as an identifiable response to specific causal factors. What such an endeavor produces, [he] suggest[s], is not a historically accurate depiction of a violent society, but rather a gratuitous presentation of extreme violence alongside, but disarticulated from, a depiction of that society, however historically accurate it may be.

Tarantino is known for his “violence for the sake of violence,” however, it is Tarantino’s distinctions of two different portrayals of violence that stand out in the film the most. The differentiation of the depictions of violence is purposeful and works hard to show and set apart the brutality of slavery from Tarantino’s more colorful and unrealistic style. And I would argue that the juxtaposition challenges the theme of violence; that Tarantino approached the film with a revisionist lens rather than abiding strictly to the themes within the Spaghetti Western form, and strives away from a “gratuitous presentation of extreme violence.” Where the fantastical depictions are shown fully onscreen, the historical violence in the South is often eluded to, and does not present itself onscreen directly. This does not take away from the realism or the emotion of the acts, but actually intensifies them, making them hard to watch. For example, a scene where a slave gets eaten alive by dogs is experienced through sound, glimpses of movement, and the expressions of surrounding characters. And the “Mandingo” fight scene in the Candyland mansion, escapes the cringe-worthy eye-gouging act by cutting to a maid dropping a bowl of candies. Moreover, Tarantino rests a lot of the action in the story at points where the film allows the viewer to absorb and reflect on the slave experience. The humiliation of Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) when Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) undresses her back for all at the dining table to see her deep whipping scars. The terror of a looming castration as Django hangs, chained upside down. The whipping, the hotbox, the cast-iron branding — the violence towards Black slaves was distinguished in this way, to be set apart from the fictional and fantastical violence in the story as a heavy mark of realism. And to critique American society in the present tense as well, Tarantino wrote repetitive lines in the script that prompted audiences to equate the dehumanization and violence inflicted on Black people back then and today, as the same treatment of violence against dogs. The scene in which Dr. King Schultz and Django are negotiating with a marshal to come out of the saloon without “[being] shot like a dog in the streets,” stands out because of the tension in negotiating with an armed officer of the law, but also because of the 2012 shooting of Black teen, Trayvon Martin, which happened the same year Django was released. Tarantino takes the critique a step further by writing a scene where a slave gets eaten alive by dogs — showing that Black slaves were treated even more-so cruelly than animals — and when Calvin Candie asks Django, “Are you used to seeing a man ripped apart by dogs?” Django responds, “No, I’m just used to America” utilizing a reflexive comment on current affairs to bring contemporary racial and violence issues to the forefront of the film’s themes.

With references to present-day events, where African American teens are shot like dogs in the street, Django becomes a story that is from this point heavily scrutinized, as audiences wonder how Django will conquer his problems, and in turn, wonder how a mixed America in the present day can follow. Tarantino emphasizes a revisionist approach to the Western to more closely relate to today’s society, rather than placing the story within the clear-cut black and white, good and bad boundaries of traditional Western genre films. Where the difference between the depictions of violence is clear, the difference between the characters’ morals is loosely cut. This formal element of typical revisionist films helps to align audiences’ understanding of the issues of slavery and to correlate those depictions to the racism and systemic issues embedded in society today. 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 one another in gray morality — and are all depicted as adapting to survive. The first relationship we see is that of Django and Dr. King Schultz, a White ally and business partner to Django, though Tarantino shows us right away that Schultz is not fully good. For one, Schultz is shown to audiences as visually gray in his costuming; when Calvin Candie first meets Django he refers to Schultz as his “friend in gray.” Audiences are lead to perceive Schultz as an ally, particularly in the fact that he “despise[s] slavery,” and helping 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 work, though not trading slaves, is still “dealing in a flesh for cash trade,” as a bounty hunter, which has its own questions in morality. Schultz, who proclaims to despise slavery, sees that Django is “not in a position to refuse,” saying he is “going to make this slavery malarkey work to [his] benefit” which Jarrod Dunham questions how Schultz’ position is distinguished from that of the typical plantation owner. The exploitive nature of the relationship, Dunham says, is left unexamined. I want to argue that this exploitive buddy cowboy 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 in a middle ground that reflects the reality of systemic racism and the social problems contributed by a society that behaves in the same way Schultz does: embracing the privileges of the system as long as it works to their benefit.

The second relationship scrutinized by critics is that of Samuel L. Jackson’s role as Stephen, a “Head House N*****,” which Django says is worse and more shameful than a “Black Slaver” the role he uses as a guise to rescue 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 view it as a strategy Tarantino uses to make White audiences more comfortable as a comedic element, and also as a character that enables an ending where it is not solely White owners that 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 depiction of the decisions slaves had to make to adapt and survive. Roxanne Gay writes,

In order to survive, some black people did what they had to do. Sometimes that meant becoming a part of the slavery system so that said system wouldn’t break them all the way down . . . slaves only had impossible choices, when they had choices at all.

Though some would argue that Tarantino did not give audiences means to sympathize with Stephen, these “impossible choices” can be reflected on in the “vivid and scary conveyance of Stephen’s duplicity,” Kate Temoney articulates, “and one cannot help but wonder about 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 that slavery victimized human beings, and brings audiences to reflect on the ways that African Americans have had to adapt in order to survive the continuation of that rooted racism in the system and society today.

Finally, Tarantino’s ending scene has two main functions: concluding Django’s Western redemption story, and permitting audiences to contemplate the arrival of a racial revolution in the present day. The action, in which Django accomplishes his mission of rescuing Hildi and distributing justice to every character that was responsible in part for her enslavement, is classic to 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 purposeful as well, utilizing only exaggerated, colorful displays of violence to keep Django’s vengeance within the fantastical realm, and using off-screen implications to comment on racial issues being systemic. Firstly, the German fairy-tale that underlined the narrative at the beginning, encouraged audiences to root for a Black revenge story. The fairy-tale, compares Django to Siegfried, a blonde hero who goes to rescue a woman also named Broomhilda in the mountains (I would like to point out that Tarantino purposefully showed Django and Schultz riding towards the mountains, despite Candyland not actually being in the mountains, but this further engrained the fairy-tale with our protagonist’s objective). Schultz, in telling the fairy-tale, did not mention, as Daniel O’Brien writes, that,

[Siegfried] was doomed by ambition, deception, and recklessness. Given Siegfried’s cooption by white supremacists, especially the Nazi regime, the film makes little of this racially charged analogy, other than showing a black man succeed where a white man, even one favored with supernatural powers, ultimately fails.

Django’s confident and exuberant display of violence in killing all the White members of Candyland, was prompted by the fairy-tale, and supported within a classic Western plot. It even came across to some audiences as a Black revenge fantasy, though as Yarimar Bonilla remarks, “belies the true stakes of Black revenge in the present.” The surface justice was the main narrative function of the final scene, and the fantasy element allows the film to create a Black gunslinging-slave-freer origin myth. But the implications that are left offscreen are what allows audiences to imagine the possibility of changing the current course for America’s racial divide and racially-motivated violence.

When Django rescues Hildi and ride off into the sunset together, the scene ignores the isolation of the accomplishment in the context of the rest of the South and the type of struggles they are riding off into. As Daniel O’Brien puts,

The latter aspect is localized and individualized. The racialized and enslaved world outside Django’s immediate space is barely touched or impacted by his actions (Extra-diegetically speaking, it is arguable that the destruction of the Candie estate would likely have adverse consequences for the local black population, from which Django will be safely removed.)

Meaning that the racism and social problems that confront African Americans is not condensed into a single part of the South, but rather exists systemically within American society and its origins, and, with the aid of modern rap music in the scene, encourages audiences to understand that it still does today.

Which leads to the analysis of the final scene in which I argue that Tarantino’s knowledge of and utilization of the Western genre form, reflects on contemporary racial tensions and prompts audiences to acknowledge a growing movement for racial equality. With the film taking place 2 years before the Civil War, the story is heightened by tensions that will amount to change and the abolishment of slavery. The contemporary social climate, too, senses an impending turning point with the states of emergencies in the U.S. after the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown murders, making the setting in Django a sort of ticking clock that coincides with tensions felt today about racial inequality and injustice. This ticking clock is visualized in the ending sequence of Django, as a reference to the Doomsday clock and its countdown to midnight which represents a hypothetical global catastrophe: nuclear war or climate change. The Doomsday clock is often portrayed in Westerns, like Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952) counting down the arrival of a villain, however Tarantino utilizes the countdown to tie the idea of a nuclear war with Django’s explosive victory, and the idea of a socio-cultural Doomsday clock that is counting down to a revolution for racial equality. This reading of the ending, coupled with the distinguishing ways that Tarantino portrays violence and race within this particular African American Western, drives the nail in deep to a sensitive and controversial social and cultural issue at the forefront of the American audiences’ mind at the time.

It is the distinction in depictions of violence, and the loose distinctions between morally gray characters: the realism of the slavery experience versus the fantasy of fictional violence comparison that proved necessary to appeal to American audiences. Django’s purposeful portrayal of these aimed to respect the psychological scars in society and to maintain the validity of those scars in racial discourse, rather than bury historical tragedy under gratuitous violence and gross inaccuracy. The fact that gratuitous violence is Tarantino’s usual style makes this distinction in depictions even more significant. And the only way that Tarantino could be able to approach the social issues in this Southern/Western narrative was in deviating from classic Spaghetti Western formulas, and challenging the genre expectations through a Revisionist lens. This in turn, mirrored America’s historical state with its contemporary state, and through this appeal to American audience’s understanding and interest in current racial tensions, illustrated the state to being confronted by a new ticking clock, and imagining a redemptive story for all free Black men in America.