“Revenge is never a straight Line:” Whitewashing Blackness, Blaxploitation and the Development of White Imagery in Tarantino’s Django Unchained

Yıl 2024, Cilt: 34 Sayı: 2, 505 - 520, 24.12.2024

Beatrice Melodia Festa

https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2024-1478090

Öz

Despite its release dates back to 2012, Tarantino’s Django Unchained remains one of the most visual and memorable cinematic representations of slavery in American cinema. The film’s release inaugurated a long narrative cycle in Hollywood of bold portrayals of slavery on the big screen. However, Tarantino’s revisionist depiction of chattel slavery has generated a debate that is still open about the trouble for a white filmmaker to “revise” one of the darkest pages of American history infusing it with outlandish humor. The essay undertakes an analysis of how, beneath Django Unchained’s apparent depiction of black empowerment, Tarantino constructs an interplay between slave heroism and revenge, developing a form of “blaxploitation” through “white” revenge fantasies. In so doing, Tarantino creates a cinematic circularity that departs from the Spaghetti Western genre, develops the image of a black hero, ultimately creating a cinematic circularity that culminates in an aesthetic representation of vengeance that reclaims the memory of slavery and uses African American cultural history as a cinematic tool to offer a white perspective on chattel slavery. As such, the ultimate aim of this contribution is to shed light on how Tarantino’s whitewashes slave rebellion.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Tarantino, Django Unchained, blaxploitation, race, revenge

Kaynakça

• Botta, E. (2024). “Con la fine della Guerra civile inizia il selvaggio West”: quando Django incontro Zorro” [With the end of the Civil War, the Wild West begins: When Django met Zorro]. In E. Botta & S. Corrizzato. (Eds.). C’era una volta uno scrittore a Hollywood. La scrittura di/e Tarantino, (pp. 118-131). Verona: Ombre Corte. google scholar
• Cafiso, M. (2018). Myth in Black. Revisionismo ed Epica in Django Unchained [Myth in Black. Epic and Revisionism in Django Unchained], Iperstoria, 11, 122-126. google scholar
• Carr, J. (2016). Django Unchained. Disrupting Classical Hollywood Historical Realism?, Black Camera, 7(2), pp. 37-44. google scholar
• Cobb, J. (2013, January 2). Tarantino Unchained. The New Yorker- Culture Desk. https://www.newyorker.com/ culture/culture-desk/tarantino-unchained 11 One of Tarantino’s most famous quotes from Kill Bill: Volume 1. (2003). Miramax Films. google scholar
• Duhnam, J. (2016). “The Subject Effaced: Identity and Race in Django Unchained,” Journal of Black Studies, 27:5, 402-422. google scholar
• Fehrle, J. (2013). Django Unchained and the Blaxploitation Western. Iperstoria, 2, 1-16. google scholar
• Fleming, V. (1939). Gone with the Wind. Selznick International Pictures and Metro Goldwyn-Mayer. google scholar
• Fusco, S. (2015). “’A Little Somethin’ You Can’t Take Off’: La Storia e il cinema di Quentin Tarantino”, Acoma (9), 6985. google scholar
• Fusco, S. (2024). “Il cinema parziale di Quentin Tarantino” [Quentin Tarantino’s partial cinema]. In E. Botta & S. Corrizzato. (Eds.). C’era una volta uno scrittore a Hollywood. La scrittura di/e Tarantino, (pp. 17-37). Verona: Ombre Corte. google scholar
• Griffith, D.W. (1915). The Birth of a Nation. Epoch Producing Corporations. google scholar
• Harrington, A. (2016). Is Quentin Tarantino Calvin Candie?: The Essence of Exploitation in Django Unchained. Black Camera: An International Film Journal (7) 2, 79-87. google scholar
• Knauer, C. (2023). “Django Unchained” in Slavery on American Film, Abc-Clio Editions, 103-118. google scholar Nama, A. (2015). Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino. Austin: University of Texas Press. google scholar
• Navarro, M.L. (2013). “From The Birth of a Nation to Django Unchained: Hollywood’s Distorted Imagery of Race and Representation.” NAAAS Conference Scarborough. National Association of African American Studies, 1387-1404. google scholar
• Rosso, S. (2013). “Note sulla violenza in Django Unchained” [Notes on violence in Django Unchained]. Iperstoria, 2, 1-7. google scholar
• Tarantino, Q. (2003). Kill Bill: Volume 1. Miramax Films. google scholar
• Tarantino, Q. (2012). Django Unchained. Warner Bros. google scholar
• Vogel, J. (2018). The Confessions of Quentin Tarantino: Whitewashing Slave Rebellion in Django Unchained. The Journal of American Culture, 41(1), 17-27. google scholar