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  • Essay / Django Unchained – a reformed genre

    The classic western film genre arrived in Hollywood in response to World War II; a time when the United States of America needed to feel accountable after the atrocities it witnessed during the war. It was the first distinctly American film genre and, as such, relied on classic narrative structures while incorporating certain ideologies, social values, and concepts of nation or national identity of the time. During the classical era, the Hollywood western dominated much of the Hollywood landscape and was largely shaped by the state of social values ​​of the time. Due to the colonial outlook of post-World War II Hollywood cinema, the classic western was highly problematic in relation to the societal other. Additionally, as in most films of the classic Hollywood era, white protagonists were portrayed as the living embodiment of order on the frontier West, while non-white characters were the embodiment of chaos on the frontier. the border, or in some cases relegated to the status of background characters. it served no immediate purpose for the film. Order versus chaos, or lawman versus savage, was a very important theme that ran through the classic western, and the idea of ​​order triumphing over chaos stemmed from the American mentality of being optimistic at home. opportunities in a post-World War II world. Many years after the classic and revisionist Western, a new form of Western subgenre appeared, with a completely new social context; one that empowers the societal other while reminding audiences of America’s violent history. Enter, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Through the use of specific narrative structures, careful attention to historical facts, and a soundtrack that highlights and celebrates African American creativity and artistry, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is able to create a new form of Hollywood western which at the same time pays homage to a classic genre. while reinventing it for a contemporary cultural context. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original EssayThe film follows the story of Django Freeman, a freed African-American slave turned bounty hunter, who with the help of a German bounty hunter named Schultz, embarks on a quest to save his slave wife Broomhilda from the clutches of a sadistic plantation owner, Calvin Candie. On a completely narrative and structural level, Quentin Tarantino immediately succeeds in bringing the societal other to the fore. With the character of Django and the film as a whole, Tarantino parodies and pays homage to spaghetti westerns and the western genre. Django is the valiant hero of the film but he is not exactly a carbon copy of the protagonists of the classic western genre. While most protagonists in traditional westerns are clean-shaven, law-abiding (or law-enforcing in most cases) frontiersmen, Django is completely different. Django is an unshaven African-American tough guy with a gray moral compass, much more in the vein of Clint Eastwood's "The Man with No Name" from Sergio Leone's spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. What sets him most apart from traditional Western protagonists, however, is the fact that Django begins the film as a slave and is then freed some time later. He is the literal representation of the oppressed societal other, and Tarantino wanted Django to be exactly that, as a sort of homage to the unconventional hero of the spaghetti western.Tarantino frames the film's narrative around slavery to directly address issues related to race in the Western genre and, more importantly, the current sociopolitical climate. According to his essay History Unchained, Yarimar Bonilla, a professor at the University of Chicago, said that “Tarantino's film attempts to be a conscious meditation on the connections between the past and the present. His film is part of a broader debate, not only about what happened then, but also what is happening today. What is happening now, what the past means today . What relationships it allows, what words can and cannot be used to describe it, what heightened meaning these words convey, and what wounds they perpetuate in the present. Tarantino was clearly playing on the idea of ​​social change in the United States, as the country's first African-American president was elected to a second term. From a purely narrative standpoint, Tarantino specifically writes the film's screenplay to not only serve as a historical western tale, but also to spark a conversation about racial issues among its audience. His idea for the film appears to be to present America's brutal history of violence towards African Americans with the intention of reflecting on the social lessons that can be learned from the past, so that the story, in a contemporary context , does not repeat itself. When it comes to historical facts, Tarantino sparked significant controversy over the use of the "N-word" in the film. In an interview with critic Henry Louis Gates Jr, Tarantino defends his use of racial slurs in the film by stating: "Well, you know, if you're going to make a movie about slavery and you take a viewer from the 21st century and put it on stage. during this time, you're going to hear things that are going to be ugly, and you're going to see things that are going to be ugly. […] I don’t want it to be easy to digest. I want it to be a big, gigantic rock, a jagged pill, and you have no water. Tarantino is simply suggesting that the reason he uses the "N-word" excessively in his film is a matter of historical accuracy of the time period in which the film is set. His idea of ​​inserting modern audiences into the film's time period and not holding back any of the brutal atrocities that African Americans were subjected to, truly shows his attention to the audience-film relationship, as well as historical facts. But Yarimar Bonilla also assumes that, although Tarantino created the film with inspiration from the current political present, he is also directly concerned with questioning the western genre as a whole: "He is more interested in questioning genres, traditions and thematic canons of cinematic practice as well as in the debate on the historical narrative of slavery. And this rings true, considering both the similarities and differences between Tarantino's Western and classic and revisionist Westerns. It brings Django Unchained into its own subgenre, one that exists in a contemporary world while still retaining the core aspects and aesthetics of more traditional westerns. Although the film serves in some ways as a horrific reminder of America's violent past toward African-American slaves, it is also a showcase of African-American creativity and artistry. Specifically, through the film's use of a soundtrack compiled of songs written and performed by contemporary African-American hip hop artists. The film embraces hip hop culture and celebrates black identity. The film features the original song 100 Black Coffins by Rick Ross and many others by RZA, John Legend and Anthony Hamilton; great figures of.