QUENTIN TARANTINO’S DJANGO UNCHAINED the woild that's evil and selfish, Now I'd ike that. But that shit aint the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil ‘men. But I'm tryin’ Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd’ Tom Gunning, The Films of Fite Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (London: BF! Press, 2001), 194 This is probably a reference to "Nigger Heaven,” the famous novel by Carl Van Vechten (1926). ''m referring specifically here to Spike Lee's contentious dismissal of a film he hadn't actually seen. Whie his response amplifiad the contentiousness of the film as a film about slavery, Lea's own misgivings about a fim he hadn't seen personified the very issues Terantino was addressing: the policing of black characterization in Copies, Imagine There's No Woman, 83 Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960). Richard Prince, Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies (London: The Athlone Press), xi Prince, 241, Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Califomia: Stanford University Press, 1998) 8 Value and Violence in Django Unchained William Brown jango Unchained tells the story of Dr. "King" Schultz (Christoph NWalta), who liberates @ slave, Django Wamie Foxx), from the Speck Brothers ames Remar and James Russo) so that he can then use Django's familiarity with the Brittle Brothers (M. C. Gainey, Cooper Huckabee, Doc Duhame} to Kill and win bounty for them, Having achieved this, and having won bounty on various other ‘outlaws, Django and Schultz decide to find and to liberate Diango’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from Souther slave owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio}. Believing that Candie will not accept a straight offer for Broomhilda, Schultz persuades Django thet they should adopt the personae of slavers looking for Mandingo wrestlers, which are one of Candie's passions, Having convinced Candie of their plan, Schultz and-Django accompany Candie back to his plantation, Candyland, to find Broomhilda. Candie’s perspicacious house slave Stephen (Semuel L. Jackson) realizes that Broombilda and Django know each other, and as a result figures out that the interest in Mandingo wrestlers is just a ploy. When Stephen tails him as much, Candie then angrily sells Broomhilda to Schultz and Django for the sum of US$ 12,000. However, when Candie insists that ‘Schultz shake his hand to seal the deal, the latter, appalled by Cancie's treatment of his slaves, shoots Candie dead. A gunfight breaks out;QUENTIN TARANTINO’S DJANGO UNCHAINED Schultz is murdered, while Django kils many people before Stephen ses Broomhilda as collateral for Django to give himself up. Sold back into slavery, Django escapes once again, returns to Candyland kills all remgining white people and Stephen, and then rides off with Broomhilde, having recovered the papers confirming her freedom, from Schultz's dead body. Although the above synopsis of the film indicates that Django Unchained does feature a few twists and turns, the film's story is relatively simple. In fact, one might even say that a bit of twisting toward the end notwithstanding, the film is very straightiorward: Schultz finds Django at the film's outset and his original quest— to collect bounty on the Brittle Brothers—is accomplished not 40 minutes into the film. Finding Broomhilda is not difficult, nor is convincing Candie that they are interested in Mandingo wrestlers, They even buy Broomhilds in spite of Stephen's intervention on Candie's behalf, Schultz's refusal to shake Candie's hand then sets into motion the film's violent ending, but basically Django turns up, kills nearly everyone, gets sold back into slavery, tricks his way out of slavery, comes back to Candyland, kils those he left behind, and rides off with Broomhilda. What is more, the characters in the film are relatively simplistic or schematic: Schultz is @ bounty hunter who Gislikes slavery and siavers; Django loves Broomhilda and wants to Save her; Candie is a racist slaver; and the various criminals in the film are, well, criminals—practically all of whom get killed @s the film progresses. In other words, Django Unchained is a surprisingly simple flm—and yet to watch it feels like an intense and engaging experience, as personal experience alone testifies. 't Django Unchained is not really a film that involves a complex plot, nor a film that has complex characters, then what is it about the film that does make it so engaging? In this chapter, | shell argue thet ‘what makes Django Unchained such an engaging experience are the ‘ideas that it suggests regarding @ number of things that have at their Center the historical fact of slavery. These include the relationship between the body and value—or how it is that we put a price on the human body. This relationship is central to capitalism, which as ® result also becomes a core concem for the film, even if itis not named by any of the film's characters. The film also reflects quite Consciously at timas on the act of seeing and what it means to see, VALUE AND VIOLENCE IN DJANGO UNCHAINED suggesting, as | shall arquo, that the concept of disembodied vision iscentral to capitalisr, which in turn sees bodies obtain value, which in tur is at the root of siavery. However, while Django Unchained is fim and therefors Ase something that we see meaning that the film might be understood as “capitalst”) it is also e film that encourages us to feernot simply in accordance with any particular character, but to fee (he etfects of| slavery itelt In this wey, the film “uses cinematic techn ques, especially sound, in order to become a fim thet rejects the disembodied regime of vision and visuality that is central to capitalism, and instead to propose that we feel slavery, ' sensetion that makes slavery—and by extension capitalism— intolerable. As such, Django Unchained critiques the way in which slavery and exploitation are—and in mutated form perhaps continue ‘tobe—at the heart of capitalism, and how feeling instead of seeing ftom a distance might help us to become less exploitative, maybe etter” human beings. Bodies and value Django Unchained is unambiguous in depicting the relationshio Between the human body and value. Repeatedly in the fm, we see Prices placed on the heads of humans, both dead and alive. Schultz buys” Django from the Speck Brothers at the flm’s beginning {or USS 125), before then kiling and collecting bounty {USS 200} on Wilrd Peck (Don Stioud), who had been masquerading as Sheriff Bi Sharp inthe town of Doughty, Texas n their pursuit of the Brie Bithrs, Schutz and Django nly cam tobe onthe far of "Big aday" Spencer Bemett (Don Johnson) to buy a black woman for USS 5,000, athough they then kil the Britle Brothers instead. Django aed Schultz find and shoot down Smitty Becall (Michael Bacall fora ounty of USS 7000, as well as members of both the Bacall ang the Wilsor-yle gangs—as0 for bounty. Schultz then offers USS 500 to Candie 10 reimourse him for the loss of D’Artagnan (Ato Essandoh), a wrestler who escares Candyland because he no longer wants to fght to the death, Diengo stops Schultz from making this payment and DiAvtagnan is instead ripped apart by dogs belonging to theQUENTIN TARANTINO’S DJANGO UNCHAINED Stonesiphers, a white family living irvnear Candyland and working for Calvin Candie, Finally, Django and Schultz offer US$ 12,000 for an unseen Mandingo wrestler named Eskimo Joe, @ sur that eventually they pay for Broomhilda. In other words, it is very clear in Django Unchained that bodies can have a price Itisimportant o distinguish here between value and price. For, asthe figures above suggest, Django Unchained follows 2 logic of increasing the price paid for human bodies—from US$ 125 to US$ 12,000—as the film progresses—with the exception of D’Artagnan, who seems to have been a bargain fighter at US$ 500 if others are worth several thousand dollars. However, while price involves naming a specific figure for a body, value is the name thet we can give to the system of pricing as a whole. In other words, it is not that bodies are given high" or “low” prices that is the concern of Django Unchained, indeed, it seems odd that Django is “worth” nearly ten times less than Broomhilde—but the specific figures are perhaps not important except to convey a sense of growing tension in the film (the figures rise as the tension rises). What is of concem in Django Unchained is that one puts a price on @ human body at all—and the system of pricing is what we (after Kari Marx) are calling value. itis not a particular price on a human head that is at issue in Django Unchained. That is, the film does nat say that Django is “cheap’ and that Broomhilda is “expensive"—even if, based on the sums exchanged in the film, we can draw this conclusion if we wanted to (though | think we would be wrong to do so). It is the whole system of value that is at issue. For, once a system of value is in place, then it only stands to reason that human bodies become dehumanized (humans are seen as prices rather than as humans) and competition for better and better prices ensues. In other words, we move away. from the commonly accepted epithet that no sum of money is worth ‘a human life to the historical realty that human lives have been—and still are—measured economically. And if value produces competition {as traders in flesh want to get better prices for the human goods that they are selling, then it logically follows that one begins to treat humans not as “priceless,” but rather as ciphers for sums of money: Candie sees D’Artaanan not as a human being, but as an investment of US$ 500. It is only a short step from seeing humans as a sum of money to seeing humans, then, as entertainment (Candie rmsking Mandingo wrestlers fight each other) and as no more than animals. VALUE AND VIOLENCE IN DJANGO UNCHAINED Now, animals do play a big role in Django Unchained, and while it is @ common feature of Quentin Tarantino's scripts to give a narne to all of his characters—even if we do not hear that name spoken during the film—in Django Unchained he seems also to have given names to some of the animals, including the horses Fritz and Tony, We also see goats (in Daughtry), dogs {cn the outskirts of Candyland), and buffalo ‘and antelope as Django and Schultz ride together through the winter wilderness of the American South. But while Tarantino—and Schultz end Diango—might name treir horses, most of the other characters do not. Instead we hear slaves referred to as “black creatures” by Big Daddy—as if the “good” characters in the film treated their animals like humans, while the “bad” characters treat humans like animals— ‘even though, ironically, Candie’s chief henchman is @ man by the name of Mr Pooch (James Remar in a second role). This dichotomy is not perfect, because when preparing the Mandingo wrestling cover to rescue Broomhilda from Candie, even Schultz starts off by making ‘an analogy between Djangc’s desire to obtain Broomhilda and @ man who wants to buy a horse—as if Broamhilda were @ horse, a piece af property that one simply buys and sells. However, with regard to Schultz, we shall explore later on his ambivalence as a character (he is ambivalent even if he is not particularly deep or complex, since we know litle about him except that he hails from Disseldorf in Germany, that he has been in the United States some four years, and that he used to be a dentist before turning bounty hunter) Before retuming to the problematic nature of Schultz as a character {and potentially of Django Unchained as @ whole}, however, we should look in more detail at the capitalist system that has at its core the system of value that in turn puts prices on bodies and thus results in slavery Capitalism: Slavery I mentioned the name of Karl Marx earlier, Some readers might be wary that they have before their eyes a communist tract, and/or that Tam about 1o offer up a Marxist reading of the film that Is more about (my own?} Marxism chan about the film itself. With regard to the former fear, | can only say that while communism has for a longQUENTIN TARANTINO’S DJANGO UNCHAINED time had a bad press (in the West, as has Marx, too, there has of late been afforded 10 Marx greater credit as a perceptive analyst of the workings of capital, regardless of whether his prediction with Engels that capitalism become communism has thus far proven wrong, This is not just a case of preexisting Marxists, such as Terry Eagleton and David Harvey, publishing works on and/or that draw heavily on Marx. This is also a case of leading economists, with Paul Krugman most prominent among them, finding prescience and relevence in Marx to holp us understand the workings of capitalism today. Within film studies, Marx has also taken on renewed relevance in some quarters, with an edited collection and a monograph by Ewa Mazierska being perhaps the most notable among them.’ Nonetheless, even if Marx is understood as stil relevant today, | do not want to make of Django Unchainedan unduly Marxist ilm. Even though it features a prominent German character, the film makes no reference to Marx or Marxism However, Django Unchained is a film about slavery; itis also a film that, @s we shall see, inspects the conditions that allow slavery to exist; itis, as 2 result of this, also a film that is at least in part about capitalism; and therefore, having over the course of several thousand pages examined the workings of capitalism, Marx might be useful in helping us to understand the film. Marx can be dry, and my intention here is not to hammer readers around the head—as Calvin Candie might do—with lengthy quotations from Marx and brittle analysis of slavery {though | personally am not against such things; exhaustive analysis of slavery—and how it is perhaps the bedrock of all contemporary wealth—is, | suspect, more fruitful than simplistic homilies saying slavery is bad). However, | shall quote Marx once—in order to show how he viewed slavery as forming an integral part of the capitalist system. In a letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenko from 1846, Marx write Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgecis industry ‘as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton: without cotton you have no modern industry, It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry, Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance, Without slavery North America, the roost VALUE AND VIOLENCE IN DJANGO UNCHAINED progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy—the complete decay of modern commerce and civilisation. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations. Thus slavery, because it is ‘an economic category, has always existed among the irstitutions of the peoples, Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed t without disguise upon the New World ‘As noted by Ken Lawrence, who also cites this passage, Marx's views ‘on slavery did develop over time, and my desi is not to ignore 8s much. However, the above quotation does indicate the way in which Marx viewed slavery as being integral to bourgeois industry—n« Just in North America, but globally. Colonialism might have involved colonizing countries extracting material resources from colonized countties, thereby making the colonizing countries richer; but itis the extraction of human bodies ("human resources”) from the colonies that Marx singles out as “giving the colonies their value”: when @ human is bought and sold, but never to be peid for the labor that they give to their owner, then the owner extracts something close to pure profit rom that person, meaning that the owner's patt to riches: is accelerated enormously when compared with instituting what we might today call legitimate working conditions and acknewledging workers’ and human rights. In short, then, slavery was part of a worldwide “get rich quick” scheme; and it was the bourgeoisie that get rich, by no means the slaves. ‘As mentioned, Django Unchained does not refer directly to Marx and the film is not obviously one about global capital. It seems, instead, to refer more specifcaly, or better exclusively, to slavery in the United States—not the United States as part ofa global economy. However, there are perhaps signs of globalization in the fim: as mentioned, Schultz is a German, while Candie has an affectation for all things French. Meanwhile, Django frees himself at the end of the {ilm from a group of Australian and American slave drivers Tarantino himself plays an Australian, witha somewhat questionable aocent) In ether words, Django Unchained arguably does allude to globalization and pethaps the global nature of the slave trade, through :he film's(QUENTIN TARANTINO'S DJANGO UNCHAINED references to non-American places and its non-American characters (which also include an Italian played by Franco Nero, to be discussed below). While the “global” aspects of Django Unchained are not particularly pronounced, they are nonetheless there. Furthermore, much more pronounced in the film is the way in which slavery is key to bourgeois society, which translates here into white American society. During the film, we see Candie enjoying seeing slaves fight each other; but perhaps more telling is that while the prices of human lives are continually negotiated, it is always white people bartering over black people. At the flm’s outset, Schultz haggles for Django with Dicky Speck; he initially barters with Big Daddy for a female slave before finding the Brittle Brothers; and of ‘course he tries to convince Candie that heis aftera Mandingo wrestler rather than Broombilda. The latter case is important: Candie is furious when he finds out that Schultz is after Broomhilda, not a Mandingo wrestler, and yet his reaction—and the need for the film to develop the Mandingo wrestler subterfuge as a whole—is problematic. ‘Some viewers might ask themselves: why not just ask Candie up-front for Broomhiida? Since he does finally sell her, Schultz and Django might have saved themselves a lot of trouble—and Schutte would have saved his own life—if they'd not developed the Mandingo wrestling ruse, and had instead just tried to buy Broomhilda outright. Sure, they may not have got a good price for her—but as it turns out they pay a sum described as “ridiculous” for her anyway, and lots of people die in the process. It's not that Schultz and Django should bbe beyond making mistakes; they misjudge how things will go at Candyland and while the consequences are disastrous, to err is only human. Important is the fact that they want to get Broomhilia for a {00d price. And Candie's anger seems to stem as much from the fact that he was close to selling Broomhilda for less than she is worth in the eyes of Schultz and Django than from the fact that the Mandingo wrestler cover was, precisely, a cover. In other words, Candie is riled for not getting maximum profit out of Broomhilda; otherwise he appears to care litte for her and could happily see her come and go if it were not that Schultz and Django specifically want her. Let us be as clear as possible. Candie’s anger might also be motivated by racism: he does not want to be conned by a black ‘man, Django; nor does he want to see a black man walk away with VALUE AND VIOLENCE IN DJANGO UNCHAINED fa black woman from his slave plantation. Similarly, what partially drives Candie might also be straight disappointment that he is not going to sell @ Mandingo wrestlar to Schultz, But mainly it seems that Candie’s motivation is to maximize profit and to get as much money 2s possible out of Broomhilda, about whom he otherwise ‘seems to care little and on whom he thus might atherwise place little value. In other words, slavery here is a tool for bourgeois (and white} enrichment, with slaves as playthings whose price may rise and fal, and who are really just an excuse for white folks to do business with ‘each other—with business here being a euphernism for going into competition with each other, the competition being who can make ‘the most amount of proiit from a human body. Furthermore, the links between slavery and industry more generally are demonstrated in Django Unchained by the way in which Django is sold back into slavery to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company. Over the course of the film, we do see some slaves picking cotton in the fields—in particular at Big Daddy's plantation. But the mejority of slaves in the film are house slaves owned by individuals. The reference to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company reminds us, then, of the corporate nature of slavery; slavery does not simply involve a history of house servants, but also a history, described by Stephen ‘to Django, of people turning big rocks into litle rocks. As anyone who has seen Harlan County USA (Barbara Koppie, USA, 1976) will know, mining has long since involved exploited workers without slavery (what Marx might characterize as “disguised slavery"), even though mining produces the raw materials needed to construct or provide energy for our whole society. In other words, slavery is not confined to the home, but is key to industry as a whole; itis an integral part of capitalism. Furthermore, Django Unchained opens with shots of the ‘Speck Brothers driving a chain gang of slaves through the desert. We see shots of Django himself set against the rocks of the desert—with ‘one shot in particular featuring the focus being pulled from rock to Django and back again. We might be tempted to read the image as suggesting Django to be some “force of nature’ but in the context of the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company, it also seems as though Django is a reminder of how the creation of capitalist society's entire infrastructure—predicated upon turning those big rocks into litle rocks—historicaly is rooted in actual and disguised slavery,QUENTIN TARANTINO’S DJANGO UNCHAINED The act of seeing There is a strong emphasis in Django Unchained on vision and seeing. This comes through most prominently in a couple of plac First, there is an amusing scene in which some proto-Ku Klux Klan members argue about how they cannot see through the bags that they wear on their heads. Not only does this sequence convey something along the lines of racists are blind, or blinkered, people, but it also suggests two other things: that vision is embodied, and ‘that capitalism relies on denying this. Vision is markedly embodied for these characters precisely because the bags prevent them from seeing; they cannot distance their eyes from their bodies in such a way hat they see from a detached perspective; instead that their eyes are attached to their heads, which are also on their shoulders is palpable to them, Nonetheless, one of the intended upshots of wearing bags with eyeholes is to create anonymity while also preserving vision—to become eyes without bodies thet look upon and judge those whom these would-be Klan members deem to condemn. In other words, the Klan gives itself authority by appealing not to an embodied vision, but to an “objective” or detached vision that sees “accurately” the world and which therefore is ustified in its racism. The link between would-be disembodied vision and capital in Django Unchainedis made even clearer when one of the Stonesipher trackers, played by Zoé Bell, is pictured locking at a stereoscope, The mysterious female wears @ bandana around her face, meaning that she, like the bagheads, gives the impression of being a pair of disembodied eyes. That she looks at a stereoscope reinforces her role as detached observer, What is more, the stereoscopic image that she observes is reminiscent of the early stereoscopic images that artist Ken Jacobs has recently reworked in his experimental 3D film, Capitalism: Siavery (USA, 2008). Capitalism: Slavery uses early 3D images of slaves and slavers to demonstrate the way in which capitalism makes spectacles of human bodies, turning them into an attraction to be consumed, and thus depriving them of their humanity. It is thought that the stereoscopic image is of the Poseicion Temple at Paestum in Italy;* however, the image appears so brietly in the film that itis hard not to imagine seeing the two figures before the tomple a slaves, as we see in the Jacobs film. Indeed, blogger Mstrmnd VALUE AND VIOLENCE IN DJANGO UNCHAINED. makes exactly this mistake—albeit without reference to Jacobs.” Given that the female tracker is a slaver, her use of the stereoscope thus suggests how spectacle (bodies as attractions that one looks at in a supposedly detached manner) is key to capitalism and slavery, since when one sees bodies as merely means for entertainment, tone no longer sees bodies as human beings. In other words, one is already a step closer to seeing bodies as commodities that one buys and sells. Django Unchained, then, offers an implicit critique of the regime of vision and visuality that allows capitalism and slavery to take place, The bagheads and the masked woman suggest disembodied vision, and how the perpetuation of its possibility helps to spread capitalism and its concomitant emphasis on bodies as objects, or as slaves. This we can compare to Django himself, who uses a spyalass +0 spot Elis Brittle as he flees Big Daddy's plantation after the death of his brothers Big John and Lil Raj. Django observes through the glass, but he also uses this as a too! to interact with, rather than detachedly to observe, the world: Elis is nat to be looked at, but to ‘be shot. This perhaps accounts for the use of rifle sights in the film as ‘a whole: Django and Schultz ean both see, but they do not just look, they also change (by shooting) Since Django Unwired is a film, one might say that it, 100, partakes of a system of looking, since the film viewer sits in the movie theater and observes spectacular bodies-as-atiractions that are somehow dehumanized, objects for entertainment rather than real people. However, this is not really the case, since Django Unchained is a film that invites not a disembodied, but precisely an embodied viewing position on the part of the spectator. Let us look at how this is so, and how we can read the film’s Spaghetti Western aesthetics ina poltticaV/politicized manner. Feeling the Spaghetti Western Django Unchained contains numerous rapid zooms in and zooms fut, with zooms in marking particular moments when a character's attention is grabbed: Schultz's arrival in the dead of night to the ‘Specks’ chain gang, seeing a black man on a horse in Daughtry,QUENTIN TARANTINO’S DJANGO UNCHAINED drawing attention to Candie when we first meet him. The technique of the 200m works well, since we see (and, vie “whooshing” on the soundtrack, heer) movement as part of vision: the rushed blur of image as the camera reframes suggests the physical nature of the image and the camera, thereby lending to the image a metaphorical “body” that in turn suggests not a detached film viewer, but an embodied viewer who does not simply observe, but who also in various respects feels the film. There are other ways in which Django Unchained is less a film hat one simply watches and more a film that one also feeis—with the film's sound design being integral to this. To take one small ‘example, when Schultz and Broomhilda meet in Schultz's guestroom at Candyland, she takes a glass of water. We hear the gentle sound of fingers on glass as Broomhilda stands before Schultz, Almost certainly this was not sound captured on set, but rather sound added to the image in postpraduction; a tiny detail—the musical echo of fingers touching glass—transports us from detached observers of the scene to viewers who think about and recall what it feels like to have a glass in hand. It is not necessarily that we can feel all that Broomhilda is feeling (nervousness, perhaps anticipation, as she sizes up this German man before het), but we certainly are given a greater sense of the physical dimension of this moment. When it comes to the graphic violence for which Tarantino is of course famous, then, this haptic/feeling dimension of his filmmaking is only more clear: deep thuds, horrific squeiches of blood, and the crushing of bene all make of violence not something that we can watch for amusement, as does Candie with the Mandingo wrestling slaves, but something that we feel, By feeling the cruelty of slavery, ‘we are in a much better position as viewers to understand more fully the effects of slavery, and thereby we might be in a position not to replicate or perpetuate slavery today. What is more, rather than being 2 film that is complicit with the very system of detached observation that enables slavery in the first place (seeing people as objects) attractions/spectacles, not as human beings) means we commodify them, with the commodification of bodies being at the core of overt and disguised slavery, both of which are logical extensions of capitalism, as per Marx (Figure 8.1). VALUE AND VIOLENCE IN DJANGO UNCHAINED FIGURE 8.1 The two Djangos During the scene where Candie watches his slave Big Fred {Escalante Lundy) beat the slave (Clay Donahue Fontenot) of Amerigo \Vessepi,it is perhaps important that we see Franco Nero as Vessepi, since Nero played the title character in Sergio Corbucei’s Django (italy/Spain, 1966). This is not simply 2 case of Nero being Italian and thus suggesting globalization. Instead, it is about how Nero embodies the Spaghetti Western genre as a whole. David Martin Jones writes about how Django femong other Spaghetti Westerns) involves action-packed situation atter action-packed situation, thereby becoming structurally episodic, es opposed to linear and causal, while iso reflecting the way in which rrodern capital besets those who live Under it with an endless/relentiess set of obstacles to overcome.® The long duration of Django Unctained, its lack of interest in detaiied character develooment and/or got camplaity, together with the film's equally episodic structure similarly suggest the relentless ature of capitalism—but here with a fantasy happy ending rather than with the more muted ending of Corbucc's original film (Django survives, but with crushed hands, while his love interest, Maria (Loredana Nusciak!, gets shot, even if she also survivesi. In other words, not only does Django Unchained strive to be a firm that is to be felt as much as itis to he seen, which means that its form works alongside its content in critiquing capitalism and siavery, but it also bolongs to @ genre that has been reed historically as a genre that is tical of contemporary global capital(QUENTIN TARANTINO’S DJANGO UNCHAINED Issues with the film For all of the above “politically correct” criticism that Diango Unchainedofters up, however, the film is more ambiguous than | have so far suggested, Schultz is a bounty hunter and his killing human for money is not dissimilar to slavers also using and killing humans for money—e parallel that he himself draws, In other words, the prices ut on the heads of criminals is simply anather part of the capitalist world that has the placing of material value on human life at its core: indeed, it demonstrates that the law is complicit with placing value on human life, and thus perhaps encouraging of slavery. Perhaps it is for this reason that Django must operate outside of the law by the film's end if he is to escape slavery with Broomhilda and to become @ freeman—sinoe the law in fact offers him no protection, Nonetheless, while we side with Schultz and Django, both are also killers—Schultz for example, kills the Speck Brothers, various bagheads, and Calvin Candie even though there is no bounty on their heads. Furthermore, Schultz buys Django at first; he is happy to comply with slavery when it suits him, it seems. We could potentially excuse Schultz for his bad traits, because he learns to hate slavery, and itis Candie’s treatment of D’Artagnan that disgusts him so much that he refuses to shake hands with him (thereby compromising his own, Django and Broomhilda’s ives, ironically enough, because of his refusal to touch Candie}, However, the perceived flimsiness of Django Unchained's plot is also problematic: even though we are encouraged to fee! tho violont moments in the film, they nonetheless seem gratuitously staged rather than embedded into a film in which the violence seer inevitable. Perhaps this conveys the gratuitous nature of historical Violence toward slaves; nonetheless, Tarantino still walks @ fine line between critiquing and repeating the very same structures that he critiques, And while Django Unchained does not repeet the mon cinematic trick of implying that slavery’s end was uniquely the work of white men, as is perhaps suggested in both Amis (Steven Spielberg, 1997) and Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012) sin which white characters VALUE AND VIOLENCE IN DJANGO UNCHAINED teach black characters how to act or speak, o the meaning of words (e.g. Django not understanding what “positive” means}—meaning thet even when free, Django will rot be accepted into the world until he effectively becomes “white” (arguably a fact reasserted by the film's spectacularly violent end—Django in the end simply kills everyone, with savagery his only option for success—before performing circus tricks/becoming a spectacle/attraction on his horse) However, while these issues remain unresolved here, I conclude by suggesting the relevance of Django Unchained to today, Slavery is today outlawed in most/many parts of the world, even though there are as many if not more people in slavery today as there have been at any other period in history.” However, as per the Marx quotation earlor in this chapter, overt slavery in the United States and other parts of the world was simply the fipside of “disguised slavery”— which is the exploitative workings of capitalism more generally Disguised slavery" is, broadly speaking, the implementation of a society in which humans are treated as commodities, and who are underpaid and who must work all the hours God gives them simply in order to keep afloat, if possible, As slavery was, for Marx, the phenomenon that in fact held together capitalism worldwide, so is capitalism today {even if overlooking slavery as it continues to exist) held together by the exploitation of the working classes. For this reason, Django Unchained still speaks of inequality and exploitation today, not least because the regime of vision criticized in Django Unchained is stil very much in power (perhaps it is no coincidence that 3D and spectacle are once again central to contemporary visual culture}. Django Unchained may present a fantastic escape from this ‘worid—thereby ultimately offering a spectacle that does not quite help us to think around or rethink the issues of social inequality that face us today, But in helping us to feel slavery, and to feel the suffering brought about by the whip and the rope, perhaps we will be in a better position not to look at our fellow humans as spectacular attractions offered up for our consumption/entertainment, but as, precisely, our fellows, whom we treat as we would expect others to treat us.QUENTIN TARANTINO'S DJANGO UNCHAINED yard: Berghahn, Forthcoming). See also her id the Hi ine Poverty of Phil: Philasopty of Poverty {New York: Intemational Publishers, nd, 94-86, 1 Ken Lawrence, "Karl Marx on American nation Service 1976, http:/hwwen.sojournertruth. net rypdt {accessed July 8, 201 slanuary 14, 2013, htp:iahathawayor m/2013/01/14/django-nchained stereoscopie-ph July 8, 2013). See Mstmnd, hitohwv 9 accessed July 8, 2013 David Martin-Jones, Buchanan and Pati 8 See Wiliam People, M PART THREE Questions of Race and Representation: What Is a “Black Film”?