Jamie Foxx – Bitch Flicks

On ‘Annie,’ Lady ‘Ghostbusters,’ and “Ruined” Childhoods

And the matter of representation here is so important. Little Black girls deserve to see themselves on screen, to try to be like Annie the way I tried to be like Punky Brewster when I was a kid. They deserve to see this kind of Cinderella story, where the benefactor is a successful Black businessman (Jamie Foxx as cell phone-mogul and mayoral candidate Will Stacks, the less-creepily named equivalent to Daddy Warbucks). Black parents deserve to take their kids to movies that will show families like theirs. And people of all ages and all races need to see Black actors star in movies like this so the gross privileged reaction of “but the star isn’t white OH NOES!” goes away.

'Annie' (2014) movie poster — *Annie* (2014) movie poster

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

Some conversations I have had about the 2014 remake of Annie, starring Quvenzhané Wallis:

“Got any exciting plans this weekend?”

“Yes! I’m finally going to get to see the new Annie!”

“Why are you excited about that?”

“Well I probably watched the old movie upwards of 100 times when I was a kid.”

“I would think then you’d want to avoid this one? It’s probably just going to ruin your childhood memories.”

“Is it weird that I feel weird about the new Annie being Black?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s just that my image of the character is a little redheaded girl with freckles.”

“Well the original image of the character didn’t have pupils in her eyes, so, things change.”

Comic Annie's creepy blank eyes. — Comic Annie’s creepy blank eyes.

When an Annie remake was announced in 2011, produced by Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith with their daughter Willow attached to play the title character, the “Annie can’t be Black!” nonsense started up, and ebbed and flowed with every new development on the film. Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis cast. “Annie can’t be Black!” Trailer released. “Annie can’t be Black!” Film opens and enjoys modest box office success. “ANNIE CAN’T BE BLACK!”

The remake brilliantly takes on this “controversy” by opening on a white curly-haired redheaded girl with freckles named Annie, who tapdances when she finishes giving her school report. The teacher then calls up “Annie B.” and out comes Quvenzhané Wallis with her charm cranked up to 11. She gets the classroom to participate in her report on FDR and the New Deal, and I can’t imagine anyone in the audience not being won over by the new Annie in this one scene, unless your racism is the Klan kind and not the internalized “but Annie NEEDS to be white” kind. (Which is still bad, and you should work on that.)

In fact, the new Annie being Black is a huge benefit to this film. First, it gives it a reason to exist. Family-friendly movies with Black protagonists are desperately lacking. Plus, an all-white crew of plucky foster kids (in this movie, Annie is very adamant she is a foster kid and not an orphan, because she believes her parents to be alive) in modern-day New York would be unbelievable. And it lets Quvenzhané Wallis star, and I defy you to name a more charming child actor working today.

Family-friendly movies starring black actors are important. — Family-friendly movies starring Black actors are important.

The movie itself? I liked it a lot! It has some issues: 1) Cameron Diaz can’t sing 2) everything sounds a little excessively auto-tuned (Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhané Wallis CAN sing, so that’s no excuse) 3) The new songs don’t blend in as well as they could have 4) The Obamas do not cameo in place of Annie meeting FDR 5) Rooster Hannigan doesn’t exist, and Traci Thoms as Lily St. Regis stand-in doesn’t get to sing “Easy Street,” so the best scene from the 1982 movie turns into one of the worst in the remake (Cameron Diaz really, really, REALLY can’t sing).

And here’s the thing: it could have been TERRIBLE and my childhood would be intact! It wouldn’t make the old movie cease to exist, wouldn’t change my memories of loving it as a child. Also my childhood was a lot more than one weird musical with a racist caricature named Punjab serving as the inexplicably mystical valet to a guy named, for realskies, Daddy Warbucks.

And embittered dudes out there, your childhoods were more than Ghostbusters as dudes. Lady Ghostbusters will NOT ruin your childhood unless the movie is actually about them time travelling to steal your lunch money and eat your homework (I would actually totally watch that movie).

Look. Every now and then they threaten to remake Casablanca. At one point there were rumors of a Bennifer (that’s the former power couple Ben Affleck and J.Lo for those with a short celeb culture memory) version. And yes, this gives me the “WHY!? NO! HANDS OFF!” reaction that I suppose people are having to new Annie and new Ghostbusters. So I’m trying to be sympathetic and give people the benefit of the doubt here, that they aren’t just being racist or sexist.

Did the Looney Tunes take on Casablanca ruin my childhood or my adulthood? — Did the Looney Tunes take on *Casablanca* ruin my childhood or my adulthood?

But keep this in mind, childhood-defenders who are particularly upset when their childhood faves stop being white or male: changing the demographic profile of the stars gives these remakes a reason to exist. Like, if they HAD remade Casablanca with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, but made it about modern-day immigration issues (people forget that Casablanca was NOT a period piece) it might have been really interesting! Making the Ghostbusters women gives them the ability to create relatively original characters instead of awkwardly attempting to replicate the old ones. And the world needs more women-led comedy films, like it needs more Black family films.

The world absolutely does not need more movies starring white people, especially white dudes. I say this as a white person. I’ve had my fill. Hollywood relies on remakes and reboots an incredible amount, and thank goodness they’ve taken to changing the race or gender of some of these characters or we’d be in a never-ending cycle of universal white dudeliness.

It's going to be ok. — It’s going to be OK.

So fellow white people, please keep in mind: you will still exist if you are not absurdly over-represented on screen. White dudes: Remember how upset you were when they made Starbuck a girl? Remember how that was awesome? It’s going to be OK.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. She is an actual orphan so you should trust her take on Annie.

‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’: Rise of Electrozzzzzzzz

‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro’ is one of those rare movies to opt for a soft open abroad before its US release, so I got to see it a week before y’all. Yay for me, I guess? I won’t spoil anything for you, unless you consider “it’s not very good” to be a spoiler.

Spider-man insists: "No Spoilers!" — Spider-Man insists: “No Spoilers!”

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro is one of those rare movies to opt for a soft open abroad before its US release, so I got to see it a week before y’all. Yay for me, I guess? I won’t spoil anything for you, unless you consider “it’s not very good” to be a spoiler.

Unlike its predecessor, which was essentially a remake of a movie that was only 10 years old, Amazing Spider-Man 2 is not completely pointless out of the gate. It at least has the opportunity to tell a story we haven’t seen on film before. And all comic book movie sequels benefit from not needing to spend the whole first act on the origin story. But Amazing Spider-Man 2 squanders that advantage with indulgent origin stories for two of the three (!) supervillains in the piece (alongside various goons within the evil Oscorp empire. Like the terrible third installment of the last Spider-Man franchise, Rise of Electro goes for quantity in lieu of quality with its antagonists).

We spend a good bit of time with Jamie Foxx’s Max Dillon before he becomes Electro, and he’s unfortunately one of those “aren’t socially awkward geeks THE WORST and also probably mentally unstable?” characters in a movie that only exists because of a massive fanbase of geeks (some of whom may be socially awkward and/or mentally unstable. I’m all three and I have yet to become a supervillain). And Foxx just isn’t convincing as a socially awkward geek, even with every nerd alert! cliché imaginable up to and including a pocket protector:

Becoming an electricity-controlling villain doesn’t make the character any more interesting. He suffers from the Green Lantern problem of showing little creativity in exercising his phenomenal powers. Dude can decorporealize into electric energy and he pretty much just makes lightning bolts. Electro could be completely eliminated from the movie, and it would still be long enough and have sufficient plot. That’s not a good place to be with your main villain and the subject of your film’s subtitle. (Contrast Captain America 2‘s Winter Soldier, who despite not having much screen time is the catalyst for the highest emotional stakes in the film; and finds more ways to be creatively violent with just super strength and a metal arm than Electro does with godlike powers.)

Dane DeHaan and Harry Osborn — Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn

Somewhat less bland is Harry Osborn, even though he’s one of the recycled bits from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films. Now, Reader, I must confess that around midway through Dane DeHaan’s first scene as Harry, with the same old “poor little rich boy” daddy issues but with a comb-overed rat weasel in the place of James Franco, I turned to my viewing companion and whispered, “I miss the hot one.”

But as soon as DeHaan shared the screen with Andrew Garfield, I wanted to take it all back. Reconnecting with childhood friend Peter, Harry gets much-needed dimension by having something to do other than pout. To my astonishment, the comb-overed rat weasel started to charm me! It helps that DeHaan and Garfield’s chemistry is second only to Garfield and Stone’s, who are ACTUALLY IN LOVE.

Also, weasels are kind of cute! Who knew?

So even when Harry went back to his busy moping and raging schedule, I delighted in DeHaan’s scenery-chewing hyperdrama. He stopped looking so much like a weasel and more like a young Leonardo DiCaprio. Could this dude end up on the countless teen girls’ bedroom walls?

Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn — Probably not.

My reversal regarding Dane DeHaan reminded me how nice it must be to be a dude actor and not have to be particularly attractive to succeed. Emma Stone is fantastic and all, but maybe there’s a rat-faced Gwen Stacy out there who would have really blown the doors off?

And it’s possible DeHaan was only so interesting to me because I was desperate for something to sustain me through the interminable 142 minutes of this movie. I would have rather spent that time watching that clip of Emma Stone lip synching 57 times in a row, and I suggest you do the same.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. She cannot do whatever a spider can.

Race and the Academy: Black Characters, Stories, and the Danger of Django

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” – W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Written by Leigh Kolb

When I first wrote about Django Unchained, I focused on the power of Django’s story, and how Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Quentin Tarantino give Django the “white access” he needs to get into Candyland and into movie theaters.

I was excited and hopeful about what the film could symbolize on a grand scale, that a revenge-fantasy that shows the horrors of slavery and has a Black protagonist who overtakes his oppressors was a box office hit and was set to receive numerous award nominations.

My excitement was short-lived. Jamie Foxx (Django) and Samuel L. Jackson (Stephen) were shut out of acting categories for both the Golden Globes and Academy Awards.

While their co-stars are completely deserving of recognition for incredible acting (Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio were nominated for Golden Globes and Waltz for an Academy Award–Waltz won both), Foxx’s lack of nominations is symptomatic of a larger Hollywood problem–not only whose stories audiences see, but also whose stories get awards.

When Tarantino understandably felt uncomfortable with the thought of filming scenes of a slave auction and brutality against slaves, he struggled with not wanting to film those scenes in the American south. He sought advice from Sidney Poitier (the first African American to win a Best Actor Oscar). His response:

“‘Sidney basically told me to man up,’ Tarantino says. ‘He said, ‘Quentin, for whatever reason, you’ve been inspired to make this film. You can’t be afraid of your own movie. You must treat them like actors, not property. If you do that, you’ll be fine.'”

Overall, Tarantino was fine. His Black actors, however, were not recognized for their performances (this was reminiscent of his 1997 film Jackie Brown, which received Golden Globe nods for Samuel L. Jackson and the title character, Pam Grier, but only received an acting Academy Award nomination for white co-star Robert Forster).

In an Oscar year that feature films that deal with race (The New York Times recently published an excellent article examining race and the roles of Black men in this year’s Oscar contenders), the acting awards nominations are startlingly white (Denzel Washington and Quvenzhané Wallis being the exceptions).

I want to focus mostly on the Black actors and actresses who have won Academy Awards, the plots of the films they were in (synopses from imdb.com) and their character descriptions. I know that this topic is complex and demands analysis far beyond this, but a brief reflection shows a pattern.

[Warning: spoilers ahead!]

Lilies of the Field (1963, Sidney Poitier, Best Actor): An unemployed construction worker (Homer Smith) heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water when his car overheats. The farm is being worked by a group of East European Catholic nuns, headed by the strict mother superior (Mother Maria), who believes that Homer has been sent by God to build a much needed church in the desert.

– Homer Smith: handyman who provides unpaid labor to a group of nuns

Training Day (2001, Denzel Washington, Best Actor): On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who isn’t what he appears.

– Alonzo Harris: crooked narcotics officer, killed at the end

Monster’s Ball (2001, Halle Berry, Best Actress): After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard reexamines his attitudes while falling in love with the African-American wife of the last prisoner he executed.

– Leticia Musgrove: struggling single mother, incarcerated husband, object of lust for racist cop

Ray (2004, Jamie Foxx, Best Actor): The life and career of the legendary popular music pianist, Ray Charles.

– Ray Charles: blind man overcomes odds, becomes music legend

The Last King of Scotland (2006, Forest Whitaker, Best Actor): Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970s.

– Idi Amin: Ugandan president, evil, hundreds of thousands died under his regime

Flight (2012, Denzel Washington, Best Actor – pending): An airline pilot saves a flight from crashing, but an investigation into the malfunctions reveals something troubling.
– William “Whip” Whitaker: alcoholic, drug-addict pilot, ends up incarcerated

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, Quvenzhané Wallis, Best Actress – pending): Faced with both her hot-tempered father’s fading health and melting ice-caps that flood her ramshackle bayou community and unleash ancient aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy must learn the ways of courage and love.

– Hushpuppy: precocious five-year-old girl living in poverty with a dying, abusive father

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982, Louis Gossett, Jr., Best Supporting Actor): A young man must complete his work at a Navy Flight school to become an aviator, with the help of a tough gunnery sergeant and his new girlfriend.

– Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley: rigid drill instructor, trains protagonist

Gone With the Wind (1939, Hattie McDaniel, Best Supporting Actress): American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

– Mammy: “outspoken handmaid”

Glory (1989, Denzel Washington, Best Supporting Actor): Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War’s first all-Black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.

– Pvt. Trip: escaped slave, dies fighting

Ghost (1990, Whoopi Goldberg, Best Supporting Actress): After being killed during a botched mugging, a man’s love for his partner enables him to remain on earth as a ghost.

– Oda Mae Brown: con artist/psychic, “confidence trickster”

Jerry Maguire (1996, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Best Supporting Actor): When a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent with the only athlete who stays with him.

– Rod Tidwell: football player

Million Dollar Baby (2004, Morgan Freeman, Best Supporting Actor): A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional.

– Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris: narrator, retired boxer, employee at gym

Dreamgirls (2006, Jennifer Hudson, Best Supporting Actress): Based on the Broadway musical, a trio of Black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s.

– Effie White: lead singer of the Dreamettes until she gets forced out of the group, becomes an “impoverished welfare mother”

Precious (2009, Mo’Nique, Best Supporting Actress): In New York City’s Harlem circa 1987, an overweight, abused, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child is invited to enroll in an alternative school in hopes that her life can head in a new direction.

– Mary Lee Johnston: unemployed, abusive (sexually, physically and emotionally), scams government for more welfare

The Help (2011, Octavia Spencer, Best Supporting Actress): An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maids’ point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

– Minny Jackson: outspoken, difficult maid; good cook

Of the four Black men who have won Best Actor Oscars, two are in powerful positions of authority and are evil (they serve as foils to their noble white co-stars), one provides free labor (let that sink in), and the other is a musician. The Black Best Supporting Actor winners quite literally support white protagonists.

The Black female actresses’ winning roles are even more troubling. None of them really has independent agency, except for maybe Hushpuppy–who is a child (she’s also not expected to win). Otherwise the list is full of maids, single mothers on welfare, and one trickster con artist. It felt horrible to even type that.

These characters are comfortable and safe to white audiences. If the character seems unsafe to white audiences, he or she is punished. Last year, the LA Times released a study that Oscar voters were 94 percent white and 77 percent male. Certainly this affects the Academy’s choices.

Now let’s look at the plot synopsis for Django Unchained.

Django Unchained: With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

– Django Freeman: trained, violent bounty hunter, whips and kills white people, burns down a plantation

One of these things is not like the others.

Django Unchained ends with a triumphant Black couple who have gained their revenge, freedom, and love. Think about how vastly different that ending is than those that are provided to Black characters in the films above. Many white couples and individuals end those films successfully, with complex story arcs that show their agency and growth.

When W.E.B. Du Bois discusses the “double consciousness” of seeing oneself “through the eyes of others,” he could very well be talking about modern-day Hollywood. He saw the world looking at African Americans with “amused contempt and pity,” and it’s hard to look at that list of Academy Award winners and not come to that same conclusion.

Meanwhile, Lincoln has been nominated in three out of the four major acting categories (all white actors). This is a film about abolishing slavery from a totally white and white-washed perspective (the omission of Frederick Douglass is unbelievable).

Whose stories get told? Whose stories get accolades?

It’s pretty clear. The Academy (94 percent white and 77 percent male) values stories that reflect their privileged consciousness and reinforce the Black double-consciousness that Du Bois was attempting to push through over 100 years ago.

Those chains, it seems, remain unbroken.

—–

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

2013 Academy Awards Diversity Checklist

Written by Lady T

I want to talk a little about the Oscar nominees this year. (“But, Lady T, you talk too much about the Oscars.” “Oh yeah? Your MOM talks too much about the Oscars!”)

Seriously, she can’t shut up about him.

Mostly, I want to talk about the Oscars in terms of diversity. We all know that the Academy Awards are usually all about white dudes recognizing other white dudes (and women, in the acting categories). How did the Academy fare this year in terms of recognizing women in non-acting roles, and people of color in general? Let’s take a look.

Number of Men Nominated for Best Director: 5/5

Commentary: Kathryn Bigelow was infamously snubbed for a directing nomination for her work on Zero Dark Thirty. Was this a deliberate act of sexism on the part of the Academy? I would say yes, except for the fact that Ben Affleck was also overlooked for his work on Argo, and they were both considered frontrunners in this category. (Bigelow won almost all the precursor awards prior to the announcement of the Oscar nominations, and Affleck has won all the precursor awards after the announcement.) I think Bigelow and Affleck were overlooked simply because everyone underestimated the appeal of Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild, the two little movies that could. The backlash against Bigelow in the press, however, certainly reeks of sexism.

Whatevs, she already has two.

Number of People of Color Nominated for Best Director: 1/5

Commentary: Ang Lee is nominated for his work on Life of Pi. This is good news, because Ang Lee is an excellent director and deserves every nomination that comes his way.

The “A” in “Ang” stands for “Awesome.”

Number of Best Picture-Nominated Films With a Person of Color as a Protagonist: 4/9

Number of Best Picture-Nominated Films With a Person of Color as a Protagonist, Played by a POC Actor: 3/9

Commentary: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, and Life of Pi have all been nominated for Best Picture, and their films all have POC actors/protagonists (Quvenzhane Wallis, Jamie Foxx, and Suraj Sharma, respectively). Argo technically has a POC protagonist, but the role played by a white actor (Ben Affleck). I don’t know whether Affleck cast himself out of vanity, an understandable desire to perform and direct at the same time, fear that the racist film industry wouldn’t stand behind and promote a film without a famous white actor in the lead role, or all of the above.

Jamie Foxx as Django in my favorite movie of the year

Number of Best Picture Winners With a Person of Color as a Protagonist, Played By a POC Actor: 5.5/84

Commentary: In the history of the Academy Awards, 5.5 films with POC as protagonists have won the Best Picture award – In The Heat of the Night, Gandhi, Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Emperor, Slumdog Millionaire, and Crash. (I said 5.5 because Crash is an ensemble film without a clear protagonist, and also because it’s not well-written and barely counts a movie.) It’s also worth noting that two of those films – In the Heat of the Night and Driving Miss Daisy – have white co-protagonists who share an equal load with their POC co-leads.

So, this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees have almost as many POC leads as all Best Picture WINNERS in history. Does that make this year awesome or previous years really, really white? Make of that what you will.

The unbelievably cute kids in Slumdog Millionaire

Number of Best Actor Nominees From Best Picture Nominees: 3/5

Number of Best Actress Nominees From Best Picture Nominees: 4/5

Commentary: Last year, exactly one Best Picture nominee out of nine (The Help) had a female protagonist, and only one Best Actress nominee was from a Best Picture nominee. (Three of the Best Actor nominees were from Best Picture nominees.) This year, the number of Best Actress nominees from Best Picture nominees actually outnumber the number of Best Actor nominees from Best Picture nominees.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that two of these Best Actress nominees – Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook and Emmanuelle Riva in Amour – are co-protagonists to their male leads, played by Bradley Cooper and Jean-Louis Trintignant. But Quvenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty are unquestionably the leads in their films.

Quvenzhane Wallis in my other favorite movie of the year

Is the Academy finally starting to recognize that movies starring women, about women, are worthwhile films, films that tell universal stories about the human condition, films that are not just “women’s films?” Let’s hope so.

Did you notice anything about the diversity, and lack thereof, in the Academy Award nominations? Have at it at the comments!

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

2013 Academy Awards Diversity Checklist

Written by Lady T

I want to talk a little about the Oscar nominees this year. (“But, Lady T, you talk too much about the Oscars.” “Oh yeah? Your MOM talks too much about the Oscars!”)

Seriously, she can’t shut up about him.

Number of Men Nominated for Best Director: 5/5

Whatevs, she already has two.

Number of People of Color Nominated for Best Director: 1/5

Commentary: Ang Lee is nominated for his work on Life of Pi. This is good news, because Ang Lee is an excellent director and deserves every nomination that comes his way.

The “A” in “Ang” stands for “Awesome.”

Number of Best Picture-Nominated Films With a Person of Color as a Protagonist: 4/9

Number of Best Picture-Nominated Films With a Person of Color as a Protagonist, Played by a POC Actor: 3/9

Jamie Foxx as Django in my favorite movie of the year

Number of Best Picture Winners With a Person of Color as a Protagonist, Played By a POC Actor: 5.5/84

The unbelievably cute kids in Slumdog Millionaire

Number of Best Actor Nominees From Best Picture Nominees: 3/5

Number of Best Actress Nominees From Best Picture Nominees: 4/5

Quvenzhane Wallis in my other favorite movie of the year

Did you notice anything about the diversity, and lack thereof, in the Academy Award nominations? Have at it at the comments!

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

The Power of Narrative in ‘Django Unchained’

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

Written by Leigh Kolb

Spoilers ahead

In 2011, two presidential hopefuls signed a pledge that, in its original form, insinuated that African-American children had families that were more cohesive and better off during slavery.

Texas and Tennessee both in the last two years have seen school boards and political activist groups push K-12 curriculum that “softens” slavery references, explores the “positive aspects of American slavery” and downplays minority struggles throughout American history.

A southern governor issued a proclamation for Confederate History Month with no references to slavery in 2010.

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, an anti-slavery revenge fantasy (based more in fact than fiction) was released just a few days before the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was passed on Jan. 1, 1863 (however, it would be almost three more years until slavery was outlawed in the United States with the Thirteenth Amendment).

If you find the above information upsetting–that many are trying to whitewash a history so fresh and raw (after all, 150 years is not that long ago)–then Django Unchained is for you. If you don’t find the above information jarring, then perhaps the film is especially for you.

Tarantino has been candid in many interviews about his desire to showcase this time in American history (the film is set in 1858, two years before the start of the Civil War). His 2009 film Inglourious Basterds was a Holocaust revenge fantasy–not historically accurate, but emotionally fulfilling. Django Unchained‘s fiction isn’t as factually inaccurate, but the cathartic nature of looking at a historical horror through the lens of revenge is still there.

Tarantino recently explained this catharsis on NPR:

“… to actually take an action story and put it in that kind of backdrop where slavery or the pain of World War II is the backdrop of an exciting adventure story — that can be something else. And then in my adventure story, I can have the people who are historically portrayed as the victims be the victors and the avengers.”

He goes on:

“You know, there’s not this big demand for, you know, movies that deal with the darkest part of America’s history, and the part that we’re still paying for to this day. They’re scared of how white audiences are going to feel about it; they’re scared about how black audiences are going to feel about it.”

This fear is certainly understandable, since America’s history of slavery, racism and subjugation is still, in many ways, a taboo topic (or a topic rife with revisionism). Django Unchained, however, does everything right.

The opening scene of the film is a line of raw, whipped black backs. This image is not foreign to audiences–people are generally well-versed in that aspect of violence against slaves. The image is awful and uncomfortable, but eases the audience in to this time period with something familiar. As the film progresses, layers of violence and misery are peeled back until audiences are squirming and uncomfortable. As they should be.

For the first part of the film, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Django (Jamie Foxx) are portrayed as partners. Both have stories, and basically split the role of protagonist. Schultz frees Django to aid in his bounty hunting. In their time together, Schultz teaches Django to read, shoot and “act” however he needed to in order to accomplish his goals.

Schultz teaches Django how to shoot and read, granting him access to the free world.

The poignant scenes where Schultz and Django are eating together in their camp highlight the importance of authentic voices. They ask one other questions and learn one another’s stories. Schultz acts shocked when he learns that Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), speaks German. He was intrigued by their story, and asked Django about her and their life together.

The importance of the authentic voice and hearing people tell their own stories is essential. How, then, can Tarantino, a white man in 2012, effectively bring the injustice of slavery to mass audiences?

The answer can really be found in the film itself.

Schultz tells Django the legend of Brünnhilda (which mirrors Django’s own journey for his wife). Django asks Schultz why he is helping him, and why he cares whether he finds his wife, and Schultz answers, “I’ve never given anybody their freedom before. I feel responsible for you.”

This responsibility to give Django access to the free world is similar to Tarantino’s responsibility to bring this black empowerment film to mass audiences. It’s about access, not help or hand outs. Access is what white Americans (especially white American males) still have at this point, and they should be responsible for sharing that access with others and telling important stories. Tarantino’s popularity and neutrality (as a white man with no other “agenda”) gave access to this story.

Could a black man have made a film with a celebrated hero who says, “Kill white people and get paid for it? What’s not to like?” I can’t imagine that would have had the same mass appeal. While I’m not suggesting that this is a fair or good scenario, that’s where we are in our history. And if we’re going to continue to have people downplaying our nation’s history of oppression and “softening” slavery, we need these stories more than ever.

As this access is granted to Django, the story becomes more and more his own. He changes after the first bounty kill. Two men are getting ready to whip an enslaved woman; Django shoots the one who is quoting Bible passages and holding the Bible (he shoots him through a Bible page that is stapled to his shirt) and whips the other. He has claimed his place, and his journey begins to be more wholly his own. (The shot to the Bible page is also important considering pro-slavery factions would use the Bible as a defense for owning slaves.)

Django turns the whip on the oppressor.

By the time the two reach Candyland, Django has truly come into his own. As they travel across the horizon, rapper Rick Ross’s “100 Black Coffins” plays as Django struts on his horse (Foxx was instrumental in helping choose this music). The rap works, and indicates a shift in whose story we’re really starting to see. When Schultz warns Django to stop “antagonizing” plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), Django asserts that he’s just “getting dirty,” and acting like he knows he needs to. This dialogue upends the “know your place” rhetoric that even well-meaning, slavery-hating Schultz falls into.

The use of mandingo fighting as a plot point (both to get Schultz and Django to Candyland, and also to horrify the audience) is important. While forcing slaves to fight or entertain for sport and profit was not uncommon, this kind of fighting until death didn’t appear to happen. And before you take a big sigh of relief (it wasn’t that bad, then), the main reason this kind of fighting would not have happened is because it was economically unwise to kill someone who would be a strong worker. It’s all business.

Candie’s continued references to phrenology remind us that in addition to the perceived Biblical support of slavery, pseudoscience of the time also supported racist (and sexist) ideas about people’s capabilities.

When he breaks apart old Ben’s skull at the dining room table, one can’t help but think about poor Yorick in Hamlet. As Hamlet cradles the skull of his father’s jester who he knew well as a child (much like Ben’s role as Candie’s father’s slave), he considers life and death and reflects upon how we all end up the same. Ben’s skull, however, launches Candie into a tirade about phrenology, as he breaks a piece off to show the indentions that prove black people are biologically subservient.

House slave Stephen, left, Broomhilda and Candie.

Behind Candie always in these dining room scenes is a marble statue of two Roman gladiators fighting (his hobby is nothing new), and is Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), his house slave. Stephen embodies the Stockholm Syndrome kind of subservience that Candie sees as inherent. He plays the ultimate “Uncle Tom” character to foil Django’s free and increasingly independent and violent nature. Of course, in keeping with the Ben/Yorick parallel, Stephen also is much more clever than Candie is, and has wisdom and knowledge (Shakespeare often gave the jesters/fools much more wisdom than their masters).

Stephen.

The way Candie and Stephen treat Broomhilda is abhorrent, and Django predicted correctly that she was used as a “comfort girl” (sex slave). While her part is the damsel in distress, she’s clearly as fierce and independent as she can be (when they arrive at Candyland, she’s being brutally punished for trying to escape).

As business is being settled toward the end, Schultz cannot stop the images of a dog killing a runaway slave they’d encountered earlier. He’s not angered by losing a much larger amount of money than he’d anticipated, or being “caught” in a scheme. He’s haunted by the brutality he’s seen at Candyland. He starts discussing The Three Musketeers with Candie, and tells him that Alexandre Dumas was black (again reinforcing the idea that it is important to have the whole story to avoid reducing people to stereotypes). A demand for a handshake becomes too much for Schultz, and he shoots Candie, setting off a bloodbath. He knows he’s sacrificing himself with that gesture, but it’s worth it to him.

Few remain alive after the resulting gunfight, but Django and Broomhilda are both caught and punished. Django, in the throes of torture and seconds away from castration, is visited by Stephen, who rattles off all the ways they could have punished him, but Candie’s sister ordered that he be shipped to a quarry, where he’d be enslaved again.

“This will be the story of you, Django,” says Stephen.

While Django’s story began by being freed by Schultz and partnering with him, thus receiving access to the free world, he long ago became the author of his own story. And Stephen’s wrong–Django wins. Django frees himself this time.

As Django kills Stephen, Stephen screams, “You can’t destroy Candyland–there’ll always be a Candyland!”

And while Django does effectively end Candyland, Stephen isn’t incorrect. Candylands will exist for years after Django leaves, and we are still feeling what Candyland was in America today.

In an interview with VIBE, DiCaprio, Washington and Foxx discussed their reactions to the screenplay. DiCaprio said,

“For me, the initial thing obviously was playing someone so disreputable and horrible whose ideas I obviously couldn’t connect with on any level. I remember our first read through, and some of my questions were about the amount of violence, the amount of racism, the explicit use of certain language. It was hard for me to wrap my head around it. My initial response was, ‘Do we need to go this far?'”

Foxx and Washington said,

Foxx: “When President Obama became president in 2008, a blemish on my hometown was the fact that it wasn’t on the front page of the newspaper. When they went down to talk to them, they went [country accent] ‘Hey listen, we run a newspaper, not a scrap book.’ I’m paraphrasing. So I had both of my daughters come down to the plantation, and I walked them through and I said, ‘This is where your people come from. This is your background.’ And I said, ‘this is more than just a movie for your father.’ My little daughter, I took her into the shack, and I said, ‘these are where the slaves stayed.’ Every two, three years there is a movie about the holocaust because they want you to remember and they want you to be reminded of what it was. When was the last time you seen a movie about slavery?”
Washington: “When is the last time you saw a movie about slavery where a black man frees himself?”
Foxx: “We read back in the day about Nat Turner and other guys who were not taking it. That’s why, when I read the script and we went back to the plantation, there were certain things inside me bubbling up.”

These responses are indicative of the conversations about our own history. White people frequently echo variations on a theme of “I didn’t have anything to do with that.” It’s easy to denigrate and forget a past that we keep ourselves disconnected from. For black Americans, however, there is a sense of connectivity, of history, to that time and place. As there should be–for everyone, no matter how painful it is.

Django leaves a pile of bodies in his trail to freedom.

Django Unchained is an excellent film. The writing, direction, acting and soundtrack are powerful. And while it’s poised to be at the receiving end of many accolades this awards season, the best, most lasting impression it can leave is to change conversations and common narratives (even fictional ones) so that whitewashing our history becomes impossible.

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.