Toxic Shock coupled with some Good performances, but ultimately poisonous!

Rating: 1/10 (29 January 2013)

It's taken me a while to write this review. There was so much hype for Quintin Tarantino's latest film, Django Unchained! My disappointment in the film was so overwhelming, that it sent me reeling into a week-long depression. When I watched the trailer, it looked like it would be a good movie. Then I saw Spike Lee's reaction, and it had me reconsider. I began doing some research, watching some of the films that influenced Tarantino, one of his favorite films, "Mandingo" and the Norman Wexler penned Sequel to "Mandingo," "Drum." "Drum," is almost the same film with Ken Norton in the same role for Norton, basically. These films made a lot of money. Interestingly, Norman Wexler went on to write the hugely popular "Saturday Night Fever." So, it's no secret that the Blaxploitation film Movement of the 70's was heralded by white writers and directors who's stereotypical notions of "blackness" blend savage and often extremely violent depictions of black life, and cash in big at the box office. Does it sound familiar I also re-watched some spaghetti westerns, westerns that were shot in Italy and Spain by Italians, sometimes with a few American actors, on very low budgets and often scoring with a huge profit margin at the box office. I watched "Death Rides A Horse," and the original, "Django," is also available in its entirety on you tube. Then I think I made the mistake of reading Tarantino's original script. The original script has a very long, brutal gang rape scene of Django's wife Broomhilda, played by Kerry Washington, and in the original script, Django is murdered in the end. So I went into the screening expecting to be completely outraged, but also feeling excited that Hollywood had made a film so offensive to the Black community, that there would be outrage and it could possibly spark a new wave of filmmakers making much better films about our history and current state of being. Nope! The film has been reviewed and reviewed and reviewed, so I'm going to get right to the point. My problems with the film are this: 1.) The n-word is used 110 times. 2.) Django, played brilliantly by Jamie Foxx, can only become heroic with Dr. King Shultz, played by Christoph Waltz, the white savior character's help and belief in him. 3.) Absurd graphic violence, heads exploding, a slave being torn apart by dogs, a woman being shot and sent flying back 20 feet... this is all just bad taste in my opinion. Things are so much more powerful when they're suggested and not shown graphically... 4.) They put my man Sam Jackson in black-face to play the "uncle tom" character. Damn! He isn't dark enough already? He has to be darker to play more evil? What's up with that? 5.) Broomhilda, Kerry Washington's character had like six lines in the whole film. What? A sister don't have no opinions or responses to share? Jesus... it was like a non-part for an actor of her caliber. They could have just gone ahead and cast a video vixen if they just wanted a mannequin. 6.) The depiction of the slaves is generally of an ignorant, slouching, defeated characters. Slavery was brutal, especially in this country in the south, but it's been documented by historians from the period like Pierre De Vaissiére and Baron De Wimpffen that enslaved Africans were extremely intelligent, crafty, clever, resilient, powerful human beings. 7.) Slaves fighting to the death is a complete fabrication, created by a racist lens in the slave narrative films of the 70s and made more graphic in this film. 8.) The overall experience of watching the film was unpleasant. The actors are good, the soundtrack is good, but the tone of the film was drenched in a certain vulgarity and void of soul quality that I found offensive. 9.) The scene where Django is about to have his balls cut off, I felt, was a mental castration to the Black men in the audience. 10.) The fact that folks in the small town in Texas were outraged by seeing Django riding a horse was completely ridiculous as it's pretty well known that between 15 and 25% of cowboys were Black. 11.) I see audiences reactions often being somewhat racist, depending on who's in the theater. If it's a predominantly white audience, they laugh at things like Django putting on a top hat. What's so funny about that? Top hats were in style back then, suckers! There is a lot of laughter for white audiences and very quiet reflection by Black audiences. 12.) I could go on and on... but I won't. So, overall, I felt like the film is extremely toxic for young viewers, gives a distorted sense of history, was bad taste and has gotten a lot of undue praise. Django Unchained creates some satisfaction for Black folks who see a brother kicking butt and not taking any crap from white folks, killing many of them brutally, often in cold blood and it's an outlet for our collective rage... to a degree. White people who watch the film get to feel morally superior to those backwards slave holders via the German bounty hunter who has a much greater command of the English language than that native speakers in the film. What is the effect of all this graphic violence on our minds? I'm one to believe its part of why there are so many shootings in this country. Seeing 300,000 murders on TV and in the movies by the time we're 18 years old can only make such violence seem like one of our options of behavior. Does this film open the dialog for a discussion of slavery in this country? Perhaps for some. But ultimately I feel like it does more harm than good.