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Did Spill.com overreact to Django Unchained?
I'm a humanitarian first and a film fan second, I'd never defend racism or prejudice. But I honestly felt like the Spill crew greatly misunderstood Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino's films have a strange hyper realistic tone to them, so naturally the films would include harsh language and brutality.
In Reservoir Dogs he told the story of an all male and white gang. Guess what? The gangsters were racists for the exception of the undercover cop Mr. Orange. It reminded us as an audience that these gangsters were awful people and that we should feel sympathy toward Mr. Orange and Marvin Nash.
In Pulp Fiction Jimmie Dimmick's use of the "N-word" seems rather jarring at first. Until you notice one huge thing, his wife Bonnie is black. It's cringe worthy, but some people are like that. Also the hill billy rapists use the "N-word" but they are hell billy rapists. I don't think Quentin Tarantino wanted us to like them.
Jackie Brown's plot fallows criminals so naturally they wouldn't be the best people on Earth. Do criminals care about being socially aware or doing the right thing? No, they are criminals.
Finally we have Django Unchained. When does the film take place? 1858 in the US. Yeah, not the best time for civil rights in America. The white characters used the "N-word" freely because that's how they talked back then. It also makes us feel Django's pain and root for him.
It's all about context here. Martin Scorsese and many other great film makers have done the same thing.
Tags: Awkward, Django, Race, Spill
Views: 194
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by MDS on -
Actually, the term of the time was "Negro" as seen here in a slave sale poster from 1840's....
.... and not the term used in the movie. So trying to say that the movie was "just the way people spoke back then" is wrong right from the start. Because, clearly with just 10sec of research, you will see that that "most commonly used" term was "Negro" and not what is seen in the movie.
But that's not really what the Spill Crew's problem with using the "Nigger" word is about. It's not that the movie USED the word, it's that the movie used the word TOO MANY TIMES. There is a vast difference and one that everyone seems to be totally ignoring. In a way, the same thing was said about "Unusual Suspect" , "South Park; Bigger Longer & Uncut" and "Scarface" with using the word "Fuck" (98 times, 146 times and 226 times respectively *in one way or another*) And that's what the problem is, the OVER USE of a word. By some accounts, there are over 120-140 (Depending on your source) uses of the word "nigger" in a 165min movie... That's a word at least once ever 2min or less for the ENTIRE MOVIE. At that point, you'll say that any word is being over used, be it a racial slur, a curse-word, or simply the color of the sky. NO MOVIE can use a word that over (once ever 2min or less) without starting to become repetitive and annoying. In this case, the word being used has negative racial/racist connections that once it becomes annoying can quickly turn into aggravating to just pure anger/hatred.
Which in this case is just ONE problem the crew had with the movie. If you go back to the audio review of the movie, you'll see that they also had a critical problem with the pacing of the movie, the format that was used (action mixed with slap-stick comedy then ending on gore) just didn't blend well and upset the pacing. Not only that, but they also had complaints about some characters (not the actors, but the characters) being kind of flat and uninteresting or underdeveloped. Not to mention, they also had a problem with the musical choices in the movie.
Or do you want to just ignore the actual PROBLEMS with the movie and just focus on the over-use of a racial slur? Because that's all anyone wants to seem to be interested in talking about.
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Permalink Reply by The One They Called Chucky on -
If I'm not mistaken, they weren't complaining so much that Tarantino overused it in the same way that South Park or Scarface did so much as Tarantino overused it to the point where it lost its narrative meaning.
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Permalink Reply by MDS on
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Yep, just like people complained about how the "fuck" in Scarface did the same thing... it took people "out of the movie" (meaning instead of watching the story and being interested... you become interested in the next time something happens/said)....and that's NEVER a good thing. Once you loose your audience's attention to your story there isn't any amount of writing that can make them GAIN attention back into that story.
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Permalink Reply by Samuel on -
No. This movie had poor editing. I'm a Tarantino fan, and I like to think that he did a bunch of different takes, sometimes using that word, sometimes not, but his new editor (He only worked with Sally Menke before she died two years ago,) made the wrong decisions based on what he though a Tarantino film was. There was a lot of great stuff in here, but a lot of shit that was really distracting. I was sure that the film was going to disappoint since I had hoped this would be the greatest movie since Casablanca, and I know the Spill Crew felt that way too.
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Permalink Reply by Ultimate Snyderman on -
Quentin Tarantino's films have a strange hyper realistic tone to them, so naturally the films would include harsh language and brutality.
So basically we have another case of " oh well its Tarantino, he always does this type of stuff so its okay." Also as MDS said, the proper/common term during that period was "negro" not "nigga".
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Permalink Reply by Randy Flagg on -
It got a little gratuitous.
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Permalink Reply by Alejandro Marquez on -
Tarantino's films have been over the top. It's just part of his style and is directed toward his audience who seem to love it. Evidently, the Spill crew is not part of that demographic.
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