Django Unchained:
A Look at Yesteryear to Better Understand Today?

Django Unchained will both entertain and enlightenDjango Unchained... despite what the Blacker-than-Black “Black Puritans” are moaning about, is a movie that elicits the wrath of Rednecks like Sean Hannity, AM Hate Radio and the FOX News pundits... and any movie that achieves that alone is a “cinematic masterpiece” in my e-book.

Like Spike’s joint Malcolm X... no one motion picture can “say it all, and be all to all...” it’s just a movie. Perhaps we ought not place them on such a pedestal, no?

Every movie can’t cure Cancer, let alone racism. It’s merely a flick, not a recently-discovered 200-year-old hidden documentary that will shine a light on the genocide once committed. If you’re intellectually curious about this horrific era in US history, you’ll have to read a few books.

“How do you keep a secret from a Black man...? Put it between the covers of a book... he’ll never, ever look there.” Even his “own story” can be hidden there. Now, if you put it in on a silver-screen... everyone’s a critic!

So I’m not here to damn a movie I found so highly entertaining that I laughed my Black ass off. On the contrary, I found this vehicle to be illuminating. It shined a light on certain aspects of American slavery that are shunned - the “White male inferiority complex” and their sexual desires.

Sex encompassed the cameo character roles that stole the show.

DiCaprio’s diabolically charming “Mr. Candy” offers a sharp comparison to today’s NCAA football farm system

Obviously, Jamie Foxx played a “complicated” role to perfection, that of a slave on a mission to save his wife and ride off into the sunset, while Chris Waltz was enchanting and interesting - a titanium-tongued liberal/progressive dentist slash Bounty Hunter - extremes embodied in one man.

Both actors brought their characters to life, and that’s the greatest accolade I can lay down.

However, more significantly, Django Unchained opened a window into the US past, helping to enlighten the masses to today’s White man... a glimpse into a time n’ place when White men “had their way” by any horrific means available, and today they’d rather the curtains stay drawn and the window closed, because baby, the past ain’t pretty...

Quentin Tarantino just snatched the blinds back n’ opened the window.

The sharp satire and irony that runs rampant throughout the ride is just that, stinging satire - Mr Webster, please: The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, witty language used to convey insults or scorn particularly in the context of contemporary, topical issues sarcasm.

If you can’t get to this, all I can say is - irony’s wasted on the stupid.

Nonetheless, Don Johnson ought to receive an Oscar, because he sure as hell gets a “Desi” for bringing to life “why” plantation owners were willing to defend their “unique” way of life. Sonny Crockett surrounded himself with voluptuous curvaceous Nubian creatures to pleasure him on his whim...

Pimping ain’t easy, and “big pimpin’” is a...

Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnson play two roles I never really pondered the importance of in the land of Dixie... pimp.

DiCaprio’s diabolically charming “Mr. Candy,” who is on the side for “sport” and profit, keeps a stable of Mandingos whom he pits against ebony gladiators owned by other White men of means, and thereby offers a sharp comparison to today’s NCAA football farm system. Try “plantations,” while the NFL is “Candyland.”

Django Unchained opened a window into the US pastOf course, a century ago, the equation of professional boxers to slaves, pitted against one another to the death, was an easy analogy. Recall Ken Norton, cast in Holly-rock’s Black Exploitation must see “Mandingo.” But now, today, 150 years beyond Black bondage, the non-reading masses don’t “make the connection” as easily. Of course, the gladiators in the ring like Floyd Mayweather, or on the hardwood like Kobe, or on the gridiron like RGIII and Ray-Ray, are making millions so the exploitation aspect is diminished.

The controlling, manipulation and profiting off Black men... it still, today, entices and pleasures a certain segment of White men - conservative aristocrat wannabes who deplore Obama and love Rush Limbaugh.

But note: if the players are making millions, then what are the team/plantation owners making? The broadcasting empire moguls and Wall Street captains-of-industry? Gazillions.

While the players are broke n’ busted 5 years out of the league, no accumulated wealth, no college degree earned... who’s the pimp and who’s the more-than-willing, high-priced whore working for what can comparatively be called “slave wages?”

Tarantino’s strategic pitting of man against man, until the barbaric death... along with the b- “back-drop” of each scene, brought to life the inhumane indifference held for Blacks, the “devaluation of Black life.” Forgive me for being brutally blunt, but as a Black man, and I speak for no, not “all Blacks” but surely for millions upon millions of Black folks, this flick was successful in illustrating, in stark Black n’ white and in vivid Technicolor, the “indifference” White folks held for Blacks in yesteryear – and which is still evident, even rampant, today.

Please note the “different” treatment Blacks receive at the hands of doctors, bankers, policemen, teachers... i.e., health, finance, law enforcement, and education.

For a lack of a better, more appropriate way of putting it, a large segment of White society is still treating Black Americans like Niggers, as they can get-away with it.

Ms. Washington’s “Broomhilda,” was placed in a metal pit, naked, as punishment, a “little beaten up.” I’m telling you, it’s no wonder today’s card-carrying Tea Party yearns to be able, like their grandpas did, “to demand” an ol’ Black lady give up her seat on a bus...

Everyone on that movie set understood that was the poignant point the movie was making.

That’s all I’m saying, that’s all.

Now how funky was Tarantino’s Lasagna Western… it highlighted the White man’s 500-year-old case of “Jungle Fever.” Please, let’s all recognize and admit the White man hates to talk about his “jones” for Black women - if nothing else it alienates his only ally, White women. Go figure. Butt-injections, lip-injections, risking “Cancer” to look tanned and bronzed... Barbie’s trying to fulfill somebody’s fantasy, yes?

Don Johnson’s “Big Daddy” role provided an idea of the “Hugh Heffner” lifestyle a man of means could maintain within the “peculiar institution” that was the South. When I hear Rush Limbaugh insulting the First Lady’s Coke-bottle figure and attacking other Black women, I can only imagine the ebony beauties he’d have in his stable had he lived during those good ol’ days.

All this supposed “rejection and deploring” of Black women is merely a “front” put up to mask the frustration and anger surrounding the historical fact Black women, for once in the history of this country, are not available for the White man’s “taking”... on a goddamn whim.

If you’re intellectually curious about this horrific era in US history, you’ll have to read a few book

Let’s not dismiss this fact: man to man, sitting in a locker room or clubhouse, there was a whole ruling class of White men who had grown accustomed to, can we say, a lifestyle of bedding women who looked like Beyonce, Gabrielle Union, Tina Turner, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Pearl Bailey, Dorothy Dandridge, Halle Berry - owning them like property, doing with them what they wished... on a whim. The system that facilitates this, as well as a damn near free labor pool with which to construct an empire - many White men were willing to fight for and defend this way of life, no? It was the “American Dream.”

And interestingly, we saw the role of Negroes so brainwashed they did the bidding of their masters. Samuel L. Jackson’s role, Steven, is the foundation, the cornerstone of today’s Black Conservatives - he embodies what is Judge Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell and the rest of the boot-lickin’ Black Republicans.

I doubt many Black Republicans will deny that Steven is the character with whom they can be most closely identify, and I hope they feel the warranted “shame.” How can these bastards support a political party that opposed the MLK Holiday, and yet back Apartheid, which has spawned the most recent reincarnation of the KKK - the TEA Party? 

How can JC Watts offer rhyme reason n’ rational in order to minimize and honestly justify the anger, animosity and outright hatred erupting out of Mount Redneck? Because they’re cut from the same cloth as Steven.

Django Unchained will continue to be talked-about for years to come, just as Pulp Fiction still is, not to mention Django Unchained will generate conversations much deeper and complex than anything Tyler Perry has produced or, for that matter, ever will.

So in the end, Django Unchained will both entertain and enlighten, shine a light on history and on the undeniable connections to the contemporary racial climate in our unquestionably polarized nation. What more can be asked of a mere movie?