Quentin Tarantino's Django unchained
Subtitle: the continuation of metacinema
By: edited by Oliver C. Speck
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9781628928396; 9781628926606
Subjects: Django unchained (Motion picture)
Description: "Django Unchained is certainly Quentin Tarantino's most commercially-successful film and is arguably also his most controversial. Fellow director Spike Lee has denounced the representation of race and slavery in the film, while many African American writers have defended the white auteur. The use of extremely graphic violence in the film, even by Tarantino's standards, at a time when gun control is being hotly debated, has sparked further controversy and has led to angry outbursts by the director himself. Moreover, Django Unchained has become a popular culture phenomenon, with t-shirts, highly contentious action figures, posters, and strong DVD/BluRay sales. The topic (slavery and revenge), the setting (a few years before the Civil War), the intentionally provocative generic roots (Spaghetti Western and Blaxploitation) and the many intertexts and references (to German and French culture) demand a thorough examination. Befitting such a complex film, the essays collected here represent a diverse group of scholars who examine Django Unchained from many perspectives"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-306) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : A southern state of exception / Oliver C. Speck; title: Part 1: Cultural roots and intertexts : Germany, France, and the United States. Dr. "King" Schultz as ideologue and emblem : the German Enlightenment and the legacy of the 1848 revolutions in Django Unchained / Robert von Dassanowsky ; Franco-faux-ne : Django's jive / Margaret Ozierski ; Of handshakes and dragons : Django's German cousins / Dana Weber ; Django and Lincoln : the suffering slave and the law of slavery / Gregory L. Kaster; title: Part 2: Philosophy unchained : ethics, body space, and evil. Bodies in and out of place : Django Unchained and body spaces / Alexander D. Ornella ; The "D" is silent, but human rights are not : Django unchained as human rights discourse / Kate E. Temoney ; Hark, hark, the (dis)enchanted Kantian, or Tarantino's "Evil" and its anti-cathartic resonance / Dara Waldron ; Value and violence in Django unchained / William Brown; title: Part 3: Questions of race and representation : What is a "Black film"? Thirteen ways of looking at a Black film : What does it mean to be a Black film in twenty-first century America? / Heather Ashley Hayes and Gilbert B. Rodman ; Chained to it : the recurrence of the frontier hero in the films of Quentin Tarantino / Samuel P. Perry ; "Crowdsourcing" "The Bad-Ass Slave" : a critique of Quentin Tarantino's Django unchained / Reynaldo Anderson, D.L. Stephenson, and Chante Anderson ; Guess who's coming to get her : stereotypes, mythification, and white redemption / Ryan J. Weaver and Nichole K. Kathol ; Django blues : whiteness and Hollywood's continued failures / David J. Leonard.