Film Analysis

America has had a horrible historical past characterized by racism, violence, and slavery.
Various films have been produced to tell the story and help viewers get a glimpse of the
country’s past. Quentin Tarantino has produced films such as Django Unchained, in which he
grapples with slavery experienced in America’s horrible past, but he depicts this like spaghetti
westerns. There is dissonance between the film’s camp representation and the gravity of the
subject matter that it presents. It is a controversial juxtaposition as the film playfully depicts a
sensitive matter about America’s horrible past. The film constantly depicts slavery and violence
as light matters, which shows Tarantino’s extreme liberty in how to depict matters of historical
importance. However, the film chooses a path not taken by many filmmakers in attempting to
remind the people of the real horrors of the country’s past and how some aspects of the past still
persist in the modern age. This paper explores Tarantino’s filmmaking style in Django
Unchained and the insensitivity with which he explores the horrible American past in his work as
a filmmaker.
America’s past harbors a terrible scar that keeps being opened to date; that of the
difference in skin color. The film manifests a power struggle and resistance between the
oppression of African Americans and the racist White Americans. Tarantino reflects the
conservative superior classes as they exercise their power over the second-class citizens. One f

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the significant issues in Tarantino’s approach is that he comes out as a counterfactual historian.
At first, the viewer is fascinated by the liberating and deeply appealing power that Tarantino
gives Django. The style is synonymous with what is seen in Inglorious Basterds, a film that was
released in 2009. The film shows the oppression of the Nazi people, and Tarantino gives
liberating power to the Jewish victims. To this extent, Tarantino seems objective about exploring
the horrible past and showing events as they happened.
Tarantino gives power to the weak fictional characters that enable them to break free
from the deeply rooted master-slave relationship and even revenge. By doing so, the fictional
characters have much more power than the real victims that existed in the past. The reality of
slavery and the oppression of Jews was in such a way that there were power differences. The
slaves, for example, had so much power compared to their white masters. The victims in the
films have much more power than the real victims could ever have. He introduces a new concept
in the film that was never present in America’s past.
Further, Tarantino’s film has historical inconsistencies, and this appears like a deliberate
attempt to ignore historical records. Creators of historical drams such as Django Unchained have
a responsibility, to tell the truth. However, Django Unchained leans more on the side of fictional
drama, and it fails at telling a real story that can be proven by existing historical records. It is a
blaxploitation, a spaghetti western, and a slave revenge flick, and Tarantino’s deliberate move to
make such a film shows his level of insensitivity and ignorance towards existing historical
records. He ironical mixes violence and humor so that the audience gets a combination of bother
horror and comic and does not get overwhelmed by the violence nor get tempted to disregard the
seriousness of the subject matter by the film’s humor. However, after watching the film, the
viewer ponders the combination of serious social issues such as racism and slavery with comics.

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This is what Tarantino aimed at achieving but what he failed to realize is that it depicts a
humorous treatment of slavery. Slavery is, however, a horrible experience in America’s past,
which cannot be regarded humorously as it led to the suffering of many African Americans for
many years.
A similarity in Tarantino’s approach in Django Unchained and Inglorious Basterds
proves that the filmmaker is only serious about his films and not about history. Inglorious
Basterds reveals the atrocities of war but in a way that aims at invoking a sense of amusement.
Its comedic deliverance shows the maker’s intent to mimic reality specifically related to the
events of World War II while at the same time entertaining the audience. Tarantino chooses a
pivotal event in America’s history, World War II. Many other films have been created based on
this topic in the country’s history. However, the Inglorious Basterds stands out as a film that
blatantly alters history to a very large extent. Some scenes, such as the ones involving Hitler, are
created in an unconvincing, comical, and unnecessary way, which makes the viewer wonder
whether the film is actually inspired by real historical events.
In both films, Tarantino’s style of “what if” is profound, and this makes him experiment
and imagine too much, leading him to show the audience what could have happened instead of
what actually happened. In Inglorious Basterds, the Jewish victim revenges by adopting the Nazi
apparatus and reconstructing a gas chamber. She succeeds in coming up with effective means to
kill. Tarantino retains the violent systems that existed in antebellum and France but destroy the
reality surrounding these systems. He switches actions and relations between master and slave
but does not challenge or change the awful system that characterizes the relationship. The film
still gives the system unshakeable power with which the victims are captive even when they
seem to be achieving perceived power. Empowerment is not real in the films as the victims still

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cannot speak for themselves. Tarantino liberates his characters from the chains of history by
forcing them to emulate their oppressors, as can be seen in Django and Shosanna Dreyfus. That
is not liberty in the actual sense or as it would be perceived in the modern world. The vengeance
that victims advance appears to be a different kind of slavery. They are free but still held captive
to violence.
Tarantino suppresses historicism and race, and this is a troubling aspect of his style.
Django, who is shown to have achieved freedom, is not yet free. He is in possession of Schultz,
who seems to despise slavery but is willing to take advantage of Django’s enslaved mind. Thus,
Schultz seems to embrace the system of slavery for as long as it continues to serve his interests.
It is ironic that Schultz declares Django a freeman moments after purchasing him. The
presentation of slavery in the film is in such a manner that it is stripped of its racist features and
justifications, then it is no longer armful. Thus, as long as slavery is not connected to racism,
then it is no longer cruel. It is just a business arrangement between two people and does not
qualify to be called slavery. Django is reduced to a position where his psychological needs are
totally disregarded. The film appears to reduce the evils of slavery by categorizing slavery into
what seems to be relatively tolerable slavery and condemning bad and intolerable forms of
slavery. Such a move appears to reduce the magnitude of slavery as a social ill that characterizes
the country’s horrible past.
Evidently, Tarantino unwittingly undermines and disregards the social consequences that
slavery had on the affected African Americans. He adopts the spaghetti western and uses it to
depict the anarchic and brutalizing violence that characterized violence associated with violence
as well as the activities related to World War II. The selected genre harbors a resistance to the
representation of slavery and human suffering, which shows a deliberate move to undermine the

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social and psychological dimension of slavery. It is also ignorant of the continuing crisis of
systemic racism that persisted after slavery was officially abolished and the era after the civil
rights were instituted. Tarantino employs aesthetic and narrative strategies that inappropriately
retell the country’s history (Dunham 402). Rather than reproducing the country’s history,
Tarantino reproduces a film that is reflective of strategic silence and ignorance that surround
systemic racism and the country’s history of slavery and oppression.
Tarantino took too many liberties in modifying American history. He seems to care more
about how well he narrates the stories from the past and not historical accuracy. There are issues
of historical accuracy in some of the scenes in Django Unchained. For example, Calvin Candie,
the villainous owner of the plantation and he seems to enjoy a scene where two slaves fight each
other. He watches the Mandingo fight, which has not yet been proven as a historical event. The
Mandingo sequence is a powerful moment that shows the deprivation experienced in the South
(Dunham 409).
However, history does not state with certainty that two sleaves were actually fighting.
Besides, slaves were a valuable possession in the South. Plantation owners would not enjoy a
fight between two slaves as that would be wasting or causing harm to a valuable source of labor.
However, from a storytelling perspective, the scene adds entertainment value to the film.
Tarantino was able to turn the history of slavery into a movie of violent entertainment, giving it
the classification of a spaghetti western film. He provides an entertaining spin in his film and
acts in total disregard of historical accuracy. He prioritizes entertaining his audience, even if this
occurs at the expense of relaying history as it occurred.
Overall, Tarantino’s manipulation of history in his work as a filmmaker is insensitive as
he acts in disregard of historical records. The filmmaker should choose entertaining fictional

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genres and create content that allows him to flex his creativity. However, when he chooses to do
historical films and still refuses to allow his work to be bound by historical events by adding and
leaving certain events that shape the country’s past, then he loses his audience. Horrible events in
America’s past should not be treated as fodder amusement or sources of entertainment to the
contemporary film audience. A filmmaker who chooses to create a historical film, as Tarantino
does, should brace themselves to reveal excruciating details of the horrible past, have violent
scenes, and rely on historical records. Otherwise, ignoring historical records shows a failure to
think historically and a form of escapism that may mislead the audience.

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Works Cited

Dunham, Jarrod. “The subject effaced: identity and race in Django Unchained.” Journal of Black
Studies 47.5 (2016): 402-422.