I disagree with one of Williams’ key points, that Django has no innate worth. At first he has a small bit of specific knowledge, who the brothers are, but as time passes and we come to know him as a person, we find out that he has an innate talent, he is a crack shot with a gun, a tool of the white man. This is a signal that given the chance, a black man can quickly become the equal of a white man, even if his past has been one of deprivation and lack.

I believe the film urges white Americans to help their black brothers and sisters escape the chains of oppression and truly take control of their own lives, to become the heroes of the story, freeing their families and loved ones, and riding off into the sunset.

The Dr died, nobly, but he died, he was not heroic enough to take out Candie and live. But Django was smart enough, cunning enough and brave enough to surive to the end and triumph.

The west is the white man’s world still, this movie urges whites to let other peoples rise to the same level as we have enjoyed for many a decade, telling us that they will accomplish triumphs as great or greater than we have.

If he did it as he was making the film, then sure I would agree that is pretentious. But I can see him getting defensive after the fact when all people want to talk to him about is race when he was just trying to make something entertaining.

Jesse is not wrong in his description of the film, per se, he’s just missing a huge point- that Quentin Tarantino is a very talented but immature, overgrown 14-year-old. Quentin has no political agenda, he just wants to make things that he thinks are cool. And he thinks the idea of taking one of his favorite genres and giving it the Tarantino-twist of using a different Hollywood Underdog (first girls, then Jews, now slaves) is cool. So he made a movie that appeals to that sensibility. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. If you think it’s bad, criticize it for legitimate reasons, like the fact that he doesn’t actually have a story worth telling, that the good bits of his films are muddled by all the self-indulgent and uninteresting bits, and that he hasn’t made a great movie since Jackie Brown. But don’t criticize it for being something it isn’t; that’s just myopic. So there were no introspective, well-developed black characters in the film. Hello..! There were no introspective, well-developed characters PERIOD. QT doesn’t know how to do that on his own. 

QT can do what he wants, and you can make your own goddamn movie if you want. Xeni, your posts often betray such a one-sided agenda that they cease to be useful to your readers. We get that you want the world to be a very specific way, and any article that really supports it or really contradicts it gets your attention, and little else. People that agree with you just get more fodder to be angry with, while everyone else just tunes you out. How is that productive? 

Didn’t everyone get over this shit in the 90s with all the violence and N-bombs in Pulp Fiction?

Really, who’s going to go to a Tarantino movie so they can drop their monicals into their martinis? 

If you’re still squeamish about this shit in 2013, Ted is playing down the hall.

I would have liked to hear your opinion about the film instead of being encouraged by a person whose opinions I respect to grant more eyes to this sad and hateful rant.

I am predisposed to agree with you so I assume you linked this to express that the film was beautiful and this guy is an ass.

I could go piece by piece as well, but instead I will leave you with one thing that I LOVED about the movie that I learned from reading this article was a subjective experience when I thought it was an objective message in the film.

The author starts, ‘Dr. King commandeers a saloon and pours beers for the both of them. There is an odd series of obsessive, tight shots of King’s hands pouring and preparing the mugs of beer, wiping away the foam, etc. I promise I’ll come back to that later.’

I perked up!  Thinking: O shit is he going to talk about it?!  He is, he is!  Yes!  I loved that part… I gots to read ahead… my excitement is too much!

I read ahead, and the author continues, ‘…Which is odd because back in town, where Dr. King commandeered that saloon, we had plenty of time for a barrage of elaborate and irrelevant close ups of King’s hands pouring draft beers and wiping away the foam, etc. Why is that? Why must the field slaves remain faceless and out of frame for the entirety of this nearly three hour film but we have exhaustive closeups of pouring the perfect draft
beer?’

WHAT?!  How could you read that in that scene?  I thought for sure everyone saw it the way I did…  Here we have two people.  One person has lived in a life where he was introduced to the wonders of beer.  Introduced and encouraged to interpret and approach creatively.

Whether King spent his entire life mastering the perfect pour for the perfect glass of beer, or whether he was mentored to take care in even the pouring of the drink, matters little to the scene.  What matters is that his attention is real.

Why this made the scene so beautiful is because when he went to pour the two beers for himself and this other person, a person whose life would have deprived thaem of the knowledge King here holds on how to pour the perfect beer, King showed equal care to both glasses.

Had he visualised them as inequal, fuck even just as seperate, then he could have easily poured himself the perfect pour, and simply slopped together the second glass.

But he chose to share his knowledge with this other person, and share this beautiful experience of the perfect glass.

But there were a number of points like the one you mentioned that I can see where people can validly argue the exploitation angle.

Wow. That is some HEAVY vitriol.

I mean, I can understand not liking a movie, or a genre, or even a director. But you’re ranting like a madman, here.

It’s a movie. It exists to entertain. This particular movie is in a certain niche style. You don’t care for that style, and you’re not the intended audience. That’s all fine. Just relax, take a deep breath, and go watch a movie you DO enjoy. There’s no shortage of others to choose from.

I’d rather catheterize myself with a bamboo skewer than sit through another one of his bullshit hack attempts at whatever he thinks film making is. 

The single most offensive thing I come out of this discussion with, is the fact that the man is still being paid to work in Hollywood instead of mopping the floors of the local homeless shelter in exchange for their leftover soup.

“I was often invisible when topics of race arose, the racial adoptee that you spoke honestly in front of.”

This is always good for a laugh. However, age has increased my swarthiness, and I never get to hear the really good stuff any more.