Race in a Tarantino Universe

Django Unchained opens with a title sequence befitting a classic Spaghetti Western—crone-like slaves stagger across a rocky red landscape, cling to their rags as “Django”, the eponymous song from the original Italian film, plays.

The scene changes: Dr. King Schultz, a dentist turned bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz, encounters two slavers hauling Django and four comrades across the West. Schultz speaks in prosaic rounds before he dispatches the slavers and liberates Django, whose lines are growled by Jamie Foxx. Schultz mounts his horse, and directs an addendum to the other travelling slaves—they can escort their owner back to town or kill the slaver and walk north to freedom. As Schultz and Django trot away, the slaver’s unmistakable screams reveal their choice.

This small decision begs Tarantino’s central question: “How do we achieve freedom in America?” Surely, it is not given, as asserted by Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, by proclamation; Django asserts a new goal for oppressed people: auto-emancipation.

Schultz and Django scour the antebellum South for bounties throughout the first half of the film with Django serving as Schultz’s trusty sidekick.  At first, Schultz is the white knight of Django, first rescuing Django and then treating Django with care due to his professed hatred for American racism. However, Schultz’s pact with, and demeanor toward, Django reveal that Schultz, too, has internalized racism. Schultz and Django make a pact hat if Django works for bounties for a winter, Schultz will give Django a third of the bounties and then usher Django to Candyland, Calvin Candie’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) slave plantation, to rescue Django’s wife. Schultz clearly does not consider Django an equal in bounty hunting, giving Django only a third of the profit, despite Django’s eminence with a gun—Schultz even calls Django the fastest gun in the South. Django is the more talented bounty hunter, yet Schultz benefits from the bounty’s largess.

Schultz’s demeanor also reveals difficulty accepting Django as equal. Schultz pulls Django aside as the group enters Candyland and admonishes Django for his aggressive demeanor toward Candie and his cronies. Django defends his aggressiveness and Schultz accepts Django’s portrayal to Candie as a slaver, albeit begrudgingly. Never nailed down to a stereotype, Foxx plays Django with an assertive Hollywood cool, Clint Eastwood-style hero. Tarantino writes a pithy and quotable gun-toting Western star, one that boys daydream about.

DiCaprio plays a long-winded Francophile although ignorant of French culture and language and devoted to phrenology, the hobby of skull-study favored by educated nineteenth century racists. As if there were any doubt, DiCaprio grooms his goatee with vigor befitting only a villain. Candie invigorates scenes with relish and dominance yet his character seems barren—too simple to duel wits with Schultz and too small to stop Django.

The arch-villain is the head house-slave, the groveling and tyrannical Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). Jackson has made a career of portraying modern racial clichés crafted with nuance that are uniquely Tarantino and Jackson. In Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackson played the gangster Jules Winnfield who partnered with blunder-prone and uncouth Vincent Vega (John Travolta). Jackson’s Jules plays a tacit impersonation of the ubiquitous ghettoized blacks in Hollywood cinema, sporting a Jheri-curl and bubbling over with vengeance. Tarantino drew criticism from Spike Lee for excessive use of the n-word in Pulp Fiction, primarily by Jules. Nevertheless, Jackson imbues Jules with depth—Jules is usually calm and ponders the justice of executing those who transgress against his boss. Vega, in contrast, errs repeatedly and gets himself into trouble because of his absent-mindedness.

Tarantino and Jackson use Jules to criticize film stereotypes which often cast righteous black heroes working against gangs and criminals. Jules is a Godfather-styled gangster with faith-imbued black spirit and culture; neither a caricature like other black film villains and heroes. Certainly a product of Tarantino’s contempt for one-dimensional black film stars, Jackson adds (ironically) an urban sensibility and thoughtfulness to Jules.

Tarantino and Jackson paired up in Tarantino’s next film, Jackie Brown. Jackson plays black-market gun runner Ordell Robbie who employs Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), a flight attendant for an airline as a smuggler. Grier too plays off movie stereotypes: Grier was a leading actress in 1970s blaxploitation movies as a bold black woman. She played the lead in Foxy Brown (1974) whose tagline read, “She’s the meanest chick in town! She’s brown sugar and spice but if you don’t treat her nice she’ll put you on ice.” In the film, Foxy Brown rescues a black woman from a life of drugs and sexual exploitation. Tarantino casts Jackie Brown in a more conventional Hollywood role as she attempts to play the A.T.F. and Robbie against each other. She plays a matter-of-fact woman struggling with losing her youth and working an unfulfilling job.

Jackie Brown is a commentary on traditional depictions of black women in Hollywood cinema as righteous, powerful, sassy, and exotically sexy—heroines like Foxy Brown. Jackie is Foxy’s antithesis, simply and principally concerned with problems endemic to middle class women of all races: aging with grace, finding a fulfilling job, and, as with divorced and unmarried women, finding a husband.

Jackson’s Robbie is also not a run-of-the-mill villain. He wears a grungy ponytail and is a brilliant talker. Robbie employs a terminally stoned white surfer girl (Bridget Fonda), a mangy ex-con (Robert De Niro), and his stewardess, Jackie Brown in his schemes. Robbie is a rebuke to Hollywood’s superficial black villains, who are often transparently evil and stupid; Robbie is cunning and clever, he sniffs out Jackie Brown’s schemes far earlier than A.T.F. agents. Tarantino critiques films by casting black characters in untraditional roles of crime movies.

Jackson’s Stephen plays a similar role. Stephen is Django’s nemesis in classic Western style—a scheming, evil villain. Stephen ingratiates himself to Candie—he has fully imbibed antebellum propaganda which asserted the inferiority of blacks. He uses the n-word with particular vigor, repeatedly employing it against Django and subordinate slaves. When Candie tells Stephen that Django will sleep in the plantation house, Stephen replies: “You gonna let this n**** sleep in the big house?!” Stephen’s angry use of the n-word and his domineeringof household slaves exemplify how racism in the antebellum South has survived in the United States. Stephen keeps down slaves far more effectively than the guns held by whites. Stephen’s dominance radiates from his use of language to demean and morally defeat slaves looking for freedom—he breaks their spirit before they attempt to raise weapons against whites. Calvin Candie muses on why slaves do not simply rise up and kill their white overbearers. Stephen’s iron-fist is the answer to this question—his domineering keeps slaves spiritually impotent. Tarantino lands squarely on Stephen as the film’s primary villain because his brand of racism is pervasive today. Stephen fights black freedom by defeating the pursuit of equality and liberation. Tarantino asserts that killing Stephen is an exercise not in asserting black equality, but freedom from Stephen’s parading of white righteousness and power.

Tarantino critiques the depiction of black women in film more subtly in Django Unchained. Kerry Washington plays Broomhilde von Shaft, who at first seems absent from the movie—she seems to have hardly ten lines through the film. She plays nearly a stock character, a classically innocent damsel in distress who Django must rescue. Her innocence implicitly criticizes depictions of black women in film as prominently shown in blaxploitation films. Black women have often been cast as powerful heroines, but Broomhilde is a foray into a character traditionally played by white women to assert that black women in film have been type-cast as powerful and traditionally white roles as innocent victims have been taboo for black women.

With Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino produced an immensely entertaining Spaghetti Western which is uniquely modern and self-aware. Tarantino asserts that liberation is not achieved by combating racism, but by asserting freedom from oppression. By criticizing Hollywood tropes, Tarantino puts a foot in both cinema history and historical criticism and brilliantly feeds both off each other to simultaneously awe and provoke audiences.