Django is Djunk

Quentin Tarantino's acceptance speech at this year's Oscars vindicated me. For years I've been saying that he's not the genius he's been made out to be, and anyone watching his bumbling attempt at humility would agree with me, if they were being honest with themselves. The way I feel about Tarantino is kind of like Salieri's view of Mozart in AMADEUS, except I don't perceive QT to be especially talented, so I've nothing of which to be jealous. Why I seem to be virtually alone in this assertation is beyond me.

I'm the only person I know who didn't like DJANGO UNCHAINED. It didn't start out that way; I actually enjoyed much of the first act. I would even argue that Christoph Waltz was more than a deserving Academy Award recipient for his portrayal of Dr. King Schultz. But as the film went on, it just wore me out. Running out of sources to derive from, Tarantino finally became derivative of himself. DJANGO is Tarantino trying to make a Tarantino movie.

Everyone talks about his movies as if there's this depth to them, but I see them as unprecedented in their superficiality. The word "homage" is tossed around haphazardly in regards to Tarantino, but, to me, an homage denotes a subtle influence; a wink or nod to a genre or director. This is not what's happening. Tarantino's films contain what he perceives to be homages, which are very different. Maybe it's because nothing with him is subtle, it's all at the surface, but whatever you want to call what it is he's doing, "homage" is a misnomer.

His filmmaking is lazy, never more apparently so in DJANGO. The best example of this is an interstitial, a title sequence of Jamie Foxx's Django & King Schultz trotting on horses in front of spectacular backdrops. Their journey, and a time lapse, is explained to us in a series of titles so that the adventure may continue… only this device is never used again. Basically, in lieu of concocting an interesting transition, he explained it to us, only it was completely irrelevant to the rest of the film's composition. See, someone truly paying homage would've featured multiple such transitions. This is merely a QT-perceived homage.

Another prime example of his laziness in storytelling is ironically also the best part of the entire film: Dr. King Schultz. With Schultz, Tarantino commits not the biggest, but certainly oldest dramatic transgression by employing the Deus ex machina. Basically the story is set into motion not by a reasonable series of events, but by Schultz stumbling upon the slave-traders transporting Django in the middle of the woods. Our two leads are brought together, put in the same place, somehow, without any plausible motivation for it.

Even deconstructing the plot takes little effort; our protagonist's motivation goes no lower than the surface. Django's goal is to rescue his wife. There's nothing wrong with this, primal urges certainly resonate onscreen, but couldn't it also be more nuanced than that? As we see it in the film, it's nothing more than a caveman-motivation: They took wife. Must get back wife. This is because QT's characters are caricatures. Sure they have unique ways of speaking and a backstory, but really their main duty is to look and sound cool while delivering their lines. That's as deep as he goes.

DJANGO UNCHAINED is inarguably an exploitation film. If you were wondering what exactly is being exploited, the answer is simple: slavery. I'm not accusing Tarantino of any racist intentions, but I don't think he made a movie devoid of racism. As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of slavery within the confines of DJANGO is to make its villains unlikeable. The film's heroes may not have boy scout resumes, but they're wonderful by comparison. 

All the atrocities of slavery depicted were sensationalized, heightened. Who could forget the brutal "Mandingo Fights," battles to the death between male slaves for plantation owners' entertainment. But guess what? They didn't even really happen. This is exploitation at its worst: exacerbating a sensitive subject to elicit an emotional response. Joke's on us, the audience, because we reacted to something artificial. But who are we kidding? It's not like Tarantino ever really had anything to add about slavery anyway. Much like Django's motivations, the movie's message about slavery is a caveman one: Slavery bad.

Easily the most despicable character in the movie is Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen, a slave with Stockholm Syndrome who inexplicably favors his white masters over his own kind. I don't doubt there were slaves like Stephen, but I would've appreciated some insight into why his character was that way. But of course we don't get any of that; we're forced to blindly accept that he's just a mean old man with screwed up allegiances. To me, Stephen ends up serving as a means to mitigate blame for slavery; it wasn't just whites, the blacks were responsible too. I don't' think this was Tarantino's intention, but it's most certainly his fault.

Before making an exploitation film, a simple question needs to be answered: is the material ripe for exploitation? I just don't think slavery is, especially after seeing DJANGO. Racism is a delicate subject in that if you're not helping the situation, you're hurting. While I don't think DJANGO is anywhere near BIRTH OF A NATION territory, it plain and simply does not help with the situation. It may not be overt racism, but, whether intentional or not, that doesn't mean it isn't racially subversive.

On a buddy's recommendation, I downloaded and starting reading DJANGO UNCHAINED's screenplay. "Check out his style," he said. "It's very unique." The grammatical sloppiness and misplaced apostrophes aside, there was something curious on the page: he used the word "nigger" multiple times in the scene description. Not only in dialogue, but in describing the actions. This is not a character saying it, this is Quentin using it as a noun, and not ironically or in quotes either. I view this as an insight into Tarantino's psyche. It's no accident that word found its way where it did, and I think he believes it's cool to use "nigger," that it gives him cache. Whatever the reason, his fascination with it isn't kosher.

It's gotten to the point that my feelings towards DJANGO have tainted Tarantino's previous films that I actually used to enjoy. It took me several films, but now I realize how flimsy the construction of his stories really are. Even PULP FICTION, which was one of my favorite movies when I first saw it, is disappointing in retrospect. I honestly doubt I'll ever see it again. This is because Quentin Tarantino is not a genius, but a fool in genius' clothing.

On one hand, it kind of sucks, but on the other, it kind of feels good to know I value substance over style.