Is Django Unchained Historically Accurate

[Lalo Scalf]

I finally saw Django Unchained. As a historian, I was reluctant to watch it. After all, to me the details matter. And after reading at least seven reviews of the film, I knew that Django Unchained bore little resemblance to a historically accurate portrayal of slavery. After all it is a Spaghetti Western flipped on its head, featuring a Black cowboy hero bent on saving his enslaved wife.

After watching the film, I can confirm that many of the details found in the film are profoundly ahistorical. While I was watching, I started to make a list of the things that were just completely wrong. I eventually got tired and stopped writing.

Blair L.M. Kelley is an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University; she is also the author of the award-winning Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson. Follow her on Twitter: @profblmkelley

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With the death of Dr. King (!) Schultz, Django becomes a different sort of movie, one in which the plot is no longer framed by the meta-narrative of freedom struggle and the aspiration of interracial cooperation; or, put more pointedly, by the thematics of white racial mentorship made seemingly inevitable by the historical extension of previously all-white rights to blacks. (Johnson 17)

In Basterds, the heroes blow up the Nazi high command. In Django, the hero blows up the plantation, and he rides off into the sunset with his girl by his side. Both deploy a reversal of expectations late in the film, which leads to an historically-ludicrous conclusion in both (though Django, by not explicitly violating history retains perhaps the thinnest veneer of plausibility).[5] And both are steeped in the genre traditions that their films at once are the product of and seek to explode.

The criticisms leveled by Smiley and Lee are a racially-, politically- and personally- charged version of the perennial criticism leveled against historical films: they are historically inaccurate. A western, they seem to believe, cannot be accurate. More importantly, an inaccurate film cannot portray their ancestors with the gravity they deserve. And moreover, since the film is a work of historical fiction (rather than a based-on-a-true-story biopic) that roughly adheres to the framework outlined above, Tarantino is not only permitted, but required to invent characters and scenes that did not happen.

And those social programs seem to take centre stage in other right-wing discourses about slavery and race. More recently, in January of 2014, Phil Robertson, one of the stars of the hit A&E reality show Duck Dynasty caused a minor public controversy by voicing his views in a GQ cover story:

The question is reflective of the work of historians who have, over the past sixty years, revealed a picture of slavery in America as a complex institution with more diversity than uniformity of experience for all involved. (Berlin; Parish) The experience of slaves on a small farm in Maryland would have been markedly different than that on a large plantation in Georgia; some slave owners were renowned for their violent cruelty while some were not. The major remaining common denominator remains that it was a system that relied upon dehumanizing a group of people in large or small ways so that they would accept the subhuman role into which they were forced by their masters. But the methods, details, and circumstances encountered and employ by each slave, each trader and each master differed.

The wife character, Broomhilda, played by Kerry Washington is monotonous to discuss for hers is a shockingly flat role. Her character serves the sole purpose of providing a backdrop in a fairy tale fantasy about an alpha male.

The sub-text of Django Unchained is one which reflects US race culture at large, namely the misrepresentation of slavery as disconnected from the present day. After all, what better way to disengage from continued nuisances of racism, patriarchy and exploitation culturally than by offering a token black male superhero who exists in a vacuum and white characters that are so comical that no white American today could possibly relate to them.

Having watched the movie I felt nothing less than crushed, not by the story itself, as insensitive as it is, certainly not by the gleeful director, but by the general approval it has received from black audiences.

There was a time when a black person in the American south could be killed simply for looking a white person in the eye, let alone by rebelling against him or her. Yet many did. I shudder at the thought of what these ancestors would make of a story that implies that they did not fight for their independence, what would the articulate and determined ancestresses make of seeing themselves portrayed as voiceless props.

Django unchanined, for all its Tarantinoesque flair, ridicules the greatest tragedy in African history and I am grateful that Spike Lee took upon himself the thankless task of repudiating the slander.

I "gently" take issue with applying so much weight the social implications of this movie. Wouldn't be enough to say " I saw it. I wish it were more historically accurate"? And then address the differences?

I say this because no matter what the art form, once it's "finished" it should be used to educate. The knee jerk reaction to anything QT does is no different than a lyricist being told "I hate what you recorded. Go back and make it accurate".

We aren't moving fast enough to artistically represent the huge scope of American Slavery. We are afraid to use facts because "because it would offend white media". We are afraid to use the power of myth "Because it would offend the ancestors". What does that leave us with. Tyler Perry?

As for the violence, I have my redline when it comes to movies. I avoid slasher, torture films like a pretty girl with a giant cold sore on her lips. But I have been able to enjoy QT films (Kill Bill being my on of my favorites) The overall story telling is unique. I respect the authors opinion. But the problem isn't in Quentin making the movie. It's why it's so rare that others don't use slavery as a backdrop for more art.

the movie is a movie and a damn good one. yes a black hero and you know what some stuff for black people to think about. the ending was nice you are in the right place stay right there damn house negro take this.

Your critique is spot on. However, I do believe there is a place for fantasy in the world of creativity. I find the idea of this movie not much unlike Inglorious Bastards. There is so much misinformation in regards to slavery. As a graduate student focusing on the African Diaspora, I see that often in general conversation. Slavery is such an enduring legacy in our psyche and who we are as a people, but I think the real issue is that we need to have films that explore the breadth of slavery and its impact. More, more, and more. But, I do believe there is a place for representing slavery in a variety of ways because it was an institution of great magnitude with many nuances from place to place and plantation to plantation.

It still amazes me as to some of the more startling points of view regarding the merits of this movie. I did not view it but I saw clips, previews and interviews by the stars and close family members described in vivid detail the gratuitous violence in this movie.

The dialogue shows how greedy these planation owners were and how they were nothing but dealers in human flesh and misery. Big Daddy is rude at one point but quickly resumes his facade when more money is mentioned.

This is an allusion to the fact that Big Daddy is also probably literally a big daddy as in many of these enslaved people he sells are also his own kids(which is why there are so many shades of black people then and now). The brown men with guns are probably his sons and they are all coming to help protect Big Daddy.

I rather like discussions to ensue as a response to something. It means we are thinking and as a result, growing. If we make everything politically correct, people will have no need to react, act or even think.

Hi Amaka, thanks for this reasoning, I agree with you in terms of evading political correctness. The issue is not that the movie was politically incorrect but rather that its popularity indicates such a miseducation of slavery and rebellion among African descendants. So my piece is a critique of the uncritical response more so than the movie itself.

I disliked Inglorious Basterds and understood why Russians and jewish folks took offense of it.

I do western reenactments for the RGA, and I found the movie to be adequate, people who are offended by this movie are offended by that time in history, the word was used loosely, if not more than they could portray in the movie. I am offended by us blacks today who can't handle history, and understand it is not re-writable. I applaud Tarantino for attacking a taboo subject that the rest of the America is to immature to grasp or understand, yeah those times sucked for african-americans, but that doesn't mean they did not exist. Sticks and stones, lights camera action, grow up or read some history.

If you can't hear the word nigger and not get offended, stop calling yourself Black or african-american. Did you know the word Brunette was also used to degrade Blacks? Did you also know you have no right to take offense to the word if it is not used directly towards you. YOU ALL ARE IGNORANT, GO READ SOME BOOKS, ACTUALLY READ.

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