The arguments against Django typically center on one of two things. One is the (supposed) arrogance demonstrated by a white man publicly imagining the history of black oppression in America. Spike Lee is the most notable critic here, claiming that he refuses to see the movie because Tarantino’s role as writer is an affront to a very real and very much still living crime. The second, related point is that the film makes heavy use of a certain slur. As the writer of the script, Tarantino’s whiteness is again called into question, and Django’s racist slave-owners begin to blend with their creator. There is a kind of insensitivity to public discourse on race that Tarantino has ignored, offending many.
The problem here is that neither of these criticisms are really about the film. Take the second of the arguments against Django: what upsets people is not that the n-word is said in the film, but that Tarantino decided it would be said. It’s not that the word is portrayed positively or that it’s heavy-handed or that it’s use is trite―it’s that Tarantino shouldn’t have written it in the first place.
Now, there’s a reason I’m writing ‘n-word’ instead of that phrase’s referent, and it’s because in a conversation (or whatever conversation-like form this article entails), my use of the word carries with it vast cultural power likely to offend and obscure whatever point I’m capable of making. The demands of social correctness are necessary here for any discourse to exist. But Tarantino isn’t having a conversation: he’s making a film. He’s making a work of art. Art, if it is to be art, cannot be polite. It cannot be judged on those grounds. For Tarantino to make the film, he must write the n-word into his scripts, and to fault him for that is just as disingenuous as it was absurd to censor the word from Huckleberry Finn.
Of course, the details of Tarantino’s scripting are irrelevant if he never should have made the movie at all, and so the second argument collapses into the first and we end up with Lee’s position: given the issues involved, it simply isn’t right, or maybe even possible, for Tarantino to make Django Unchained. It’s a kind of artwork he is unable to make because the issue of slavery is so closely tied to race that in making the film, he is further aggravating racial relations in a negative way at best, and at worst continuing the attack on black culture by white culture.
But that position assumes far too much. The history of slavery (and, for that matter, of the Mexican-American War, the abuse of Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the genocide of the Native Americans...) is something that must be reckoned with by all races. As a white man, and especially a Southerner, I have inherited the crimes of my ancestors. As an American living in a time when racial boundaries are still well-defined and racism is still a visible problem, I have to confront the oppression perpetrated against blacks as well. Art is perhaps the form to do so. Condemning Tarantino for addressing the issue at all implicitly assumes that slavery is only a black issue. It silences whites from engaging with the evil woven in American history.
None of this is to say that Django is a good film. Nor am I saying that Django has a beneficial contribution to race problems in America. Perhaps his trademarked style (and penchant for re-writing history) may in fact be problematic. Perhaps it does attempt to speak for blacks or further racism in some way. But if that’s true, it’s because of the specifically cinematic qualities of the film, because of its execution, style, and insight. To criticize Tarantino for having made the film at all is cowardice of the worst kind because it doesn’t actually allow one to make these criticisms. Instead, it refuses the insights a piece of art could provide by turning away. It simply accepts the status quo.
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