Django Unchained: A Movie Review
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about this week is nihilism, a juvenile preoccupation, no doubt. I’m thinking about it mostly in terms of gun control. If we controlled guns, would we really make the world a better place? Because obviously, human nature is such that violence has, and always will, be part of our nature. If it’s not guns, then it’s knives, and if not knives, then it’s fists, and if not fists, then teeth, and if not teeth, then nuclear bombs. Or something like that. This is not a fleshed out idea.
(I’ve got to write this review quickly, because my sister and I are going to see Les Miserable in an hour.)
Far worse things have happened than Newtown—innocents have been slaughtered throughout history. During World War II, for instance, the Nazis stuffed hundreds of thousands of women and children in gas chambers and suffocated them alive while they stampeded over each other to get near the door. It’s hard to believe that if that can happen, then as a race, we’re redeemable, no matter what sort of gun control laws we pass.
But that’s a selfish, individualistic, adolescent perspective–my life has always been a good one. I’ve never lived in poverty. I’ve never lived in a violent society. I’ve never gone hungry, or been oppressed by my government, or felt that I didn’t have rights because I was a woman. I don’t think things can get better, because all of my concerns are intellectual. If I lived in a society where, for instance, I wasn’t allowed to vote, or where I was routinely raped by my husband, I’m sure I would imagine a world where things could get better, not worse.
Which is why gun control, I suppose, can’t be thought of on an individual level. The United States, for the most part, is a wonderful place to live—not only for me. But that’s probably because of the generations of people before me, who fought for ideals. The right for democracy. The end of slavery. The rise of women’s liberation. The end of segregation. They made things better in this country; not worse. What’s to say that fighting for gun control, as a whole, won’t do the same?
The problem, of course, is that gun control is closely associated with being an American male. In our media, the strongest, bravest, most masculine men carry guns, and sure know how to use them to kill the bad guys. Many of the television characters I have fallen in love with—ahem, Raylan Givens from Justified—are gun-toting, black-and-white seeing, in-evil-believing, hot-blooded hunks.
(Yum!)
I think it’s unfair to blame popular culture—maybe—for the nation’s gun control problem, but it certainly helps perpetuate the idea that guns are cool. This especially struck me when I sat in the theater watching Django: Unchained, a movie, based on the “blaxploitation” genre from the 1970s, that relies almost entirely on gun violence to move the narrative.
Now, I know everyone fucking loves Django: Unchained. After the movie ended, the three teenage boys behind me declared it to be “perhaps the best movie ever made.” But from the second the first head blew off in a plume of gory blood after being shot at by a rifle-carrying German, I felt disgusted by it.
I know that Quentin Tarantino is all about aestheticizing violence—I personally love the “Kill Bill” movies, which are ridiculously gory—but in the wake of Newtown, and other gun tragedies earlier this week, I began to realize that what Quentin Tarantino does is copy works from other genres, and make them ridiculously, insanely violent; by doing so, he tricks everyone into thinking he is not only brilliant and revolutionary, but also really cool. In actuality, Django: Unchained was like most action movies I’ve seen this year—way too long, loud, and self-fellating.
Blaxploitation films were first made in the 1970s for urban black audiences, to allow them to feel empowered against the white male. I have never watched one, nor do I ever want to watch one, but my father, a child of the 1970s, told me that they involve a lot of kung fu. Apparently, there are also Native American Exploitation films, which star a character named Billy Jack. “It was awesome,” my dad told me the other day. “One time, Billy Jack told this other guy, ‘My right foot is going to hit your right cheek.’ And then pow! he knocked him out.”
If I were getting paid, or were extremely bored, I might do more research into this, but instead, why don’t you just read the Wikipedia page on the matter. So fuck you too.
Movies clearly got violent because of better and better computer software that made graphic violence easier to depict. Blah blah blah blah. But they also got violent, I’m guessing in no small part, because of the active lobbying of the NRA, who also backed a number of ridiculously violent, gun-centric video games. I have no evidence for this, but if you aren’t also suspicious, maybe would you like to buy the dragon I keep in my basement?
We began to accept ridiculously graphic, drawn out violence as a part of “reality.” The more “real” a television show was, the more “raw,” the more “brilliant,” the more epic the violent scenes. In “Boardwalk Empire,” they don’t just cut a dude’s throat. They draw the blade across his skin for 30 seconds while blood spurts everywhere, and the dude screams for the Lord to save him. They don’t just get in gun fights in “Sons of Anarchy.” They shoot bad guys at close range, and show the detritus seeping out of the exit hole in his brain. This probably happened in “Breaking Bad,” right? Oh yeah, it did. Remember when fucking Gus got his face blown off?
So yeah, it’s not all about gun violence, but it is about violence in general being an acceptable, even normal part of our daily experience. Perhaps it’s better that we experience violence through our television screens; maybe that keeps violence off the streets. But what happened to watching a good boxing match, in which no one gets killed? Or even just Ultimate Fighting? How come no has made an ultimate fighting drama yet? I’ll tell you why. The NRA. Ok, there’s where I got ridiculous.
All of this leads me to Django: Unchained, which is about a black slave, freed by a German doctor bounty hunter, who goes on a rampage with him to kill a bunch of bad guys so that he can make enough money to buy his wife, Broomhilda, back from Leonardo DiCaprio.
When the movie first opened, I was pleasantly surprised. I hate slavery! I love it when the bad guys get killed! It was hilarious! I loved the characters! Best of all, unlike most action films I’ve seen as of late, the narrative moved along at a brisk pace. Rather than taking 3 tries to find the bad guys the doctor and the slave were initially after, it took one try, and they were on their way to save fucking Broomhilda. Or so I fucking thought.
Because saving Broomhilda ended up taking a ridiculous amount of time, something like 2.5 hours, and involved countless, gory, bloody, awful, close range gun battles involving an incredibly diverse arsenal of firearms. After a few such scenes, I was digging my head into my arm, reading the Daily Mail to try to distract myself from the violence.
I’m generally not great at watching violence. I just don’t like it. It’s probably because I’m a woman, right? Anyway, even when shit gets hairy on Homeland, I have to get up, and walk into the other room to avoid it.
In other words, Django would have been tortuous for me no matter what; three weeks ago, I would have accepted it. But now, I must say, to my shock, it outraged me. “We must have a massive media campaign of the magnitude of anti-smoking or anti-crack campaigns to convince people that guns are not cool!” I proclaimed over dinner a few minutes after it ended.
Because what I realized, after so much thinking, and so much agreeing with my father, who feels so passionately about gun control that it’s made him, a former boxer, want to get physically violent, was that I don’t want to watch gun violence anymore in the media I absorb. I’m fucking over it. It’s gratuitous, and silly, and gives kids the wrong message. Those wiley little bastards! Back in my day, we had Freddie Prinze Junior.
Tarantino didn’t mean any harm with his movie—gore is his shtick. He didn’t even set out to make a “great American movie,” probably, or to cause any kind of debate. But in his films, the dumb, fat, stupid people get knocked off easily, because they deserved to get killed, right? And the smarter people are a little harder to kill, mostly because who wants to get rid of them so quickly, with their witty banter? And the smart people with the guns are the ones who ultimately succeed, and they do so by blowing the brains out of everyone around them.
Can you see how problematic that message is for the smart teenage boy who feels alienated from kids at school because they make fun of him? How about the manifesting schizophrenic one whose many realities are shaped by the things he absorbs from his environment, many of them violent video games and television shows where they make things seem perfectly ordinary, even heroic?
I can see it.
Anyway, I’m running out of time here. Don’t boycott Django: Unchained because of the violence. Not unless you like that sort of thing.
But think with me about how we can affect changes in our gun control laws. The only way we’ll get rid of guns in our society is by making them seem uncool, un-American, and only for fat, stupid, white people. One of the ways is by discouraging the glamorization of it in the media. Kung fu karate chopping someone unconscious is just as cool as blowing someone’s balls off, am I wrong? Let’s make great American movies about fucking kick-boxing, or something. Let’s fucking get kids into after school programs.
Anyway, fuck you if you don’t agree with me, I hope you don’t have a fucking gun.
