'Django' and the American Culture of Violence

I went to Quentin Tarantino's latest bloodfest Django Unchained at the local multiplex yesterday in order to be able to say I had seen all nine nominees for the Best Picture Oscar. While driving to the cinema, I was sort of dreading it and looked upon the outing as more of an obligation so I could win the Oscar pool at an upcoming award-show party rather than as a pleasure. I was not wild about Pulp Fiction and only watched the first 20 minutes of Inglorious Bastards on TV and knew the director-screenwriter's penchant for ultraviolence. But whoa, did this picture blow me away and not with disgust.

Django is sort of an anti-spaghetti Western  or an inside-out Gone With the Wind. Tarantino uses the cliches of the lone gunfighter, Clint Eastwood movies to rip apart the brutal culture of America's slavery-lovin' past. (It's interesting that another Best Picture nominee, Lincoln, also deals with the issue but through a John Ford, feel-good Steven Spielberg lens.) The title character (Jamie Foxx) is a slave who joins a white, German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to kill evil racists outlaws disguised as upstanding citizens. After many adventures, the duo attempt to rescue Django's wife (Kerry Washington), now bound to the dandyish Calvin Candy (Leonardo DiCaprio) at his massive plantation Candyland, a symbol for the entire corrupt slave system.