Django

Django

there is an issue here which should not be.  The issue basically is the reverence we feel to historical truth and accuracy, a sort of holy grail- an artifact so long lost it is a fiction and as a practical matter does not exist.   Quentin Tarantino seems to use his films to snatch and claim some characteristic of Black life as he sees it in America- the thug styles in pulp fiction, how he made the phrases M***F**** seem like a punctuation mark in nouveau Black-speak  ( let me tel you if you hang around enough Black men you see he has a point--ahhhhmeiii!)

Now the movie-- Django
It is about exploits and they appeal to people with a mindset towards video games, amazing film special effects, or movies in general which oversize physical abilities ( Iron Man, Spider man, Batman, Bourne parts 1- 100, "24"  -which i loved_-- you get the pattern). Now the Black elites seem divided , some boycott the film find its historic faults (Spike Lee, i am a huge fan). Equivocate over its artistic merits by finding difficulties in the historic record ( like Angela Rye, i am a fan- she is smart). But to many in the masses it is earth shattering,  mind expanding -gratefully received heroism.

Quaere: Why would we back away from that--???!!!
 
First one sees there are other aspects of Black history-(1) we are not the only group who can see the record or interpret it; another sobering fact- there were so many years, month and days of Tarantino's career before now when someone could have told a Django without the excesses of bad language and historical inaccuracy.  There ought to be some gratitude for an event which focuses young minds on an old history which is still very much in our everyday in America but forgotten like a campaign slogan from a lost campaign. ( The 2nd Amendment some think is about owning a machine gun, was about militias who chased down and sometime executed Black people who escaped from plantation- prison camps) . James Madison was a slave owner who hanged 30 men recaptured trying to escape from his prison camp plantation( later became president with a smalllll  p ) and was one of the drafters of the 2nd Amendment.
For example, Affirmative action ended not because Black people chose, but because the historic record was left fallow-  there are lives in being that were touched by ex-slaves, children of parents who knew their slave predecessors by witness of Mother and Father.  My Grandmother, knew her slave ancestors and she raised me- so  to say there are no present effects of slavery- well neither mule nor the 40 acres have yet arrived, and as far as I know those who were paid reparations for slavery and abolition were slave owners in the South who started this garbage to begin with.

My point is not reparations, nor Affirmative Action- my point is history and how the record is lost until found by someone like Tarantino, or Oprah, a film Producer--then the historical accuracy voices are raised when they seemed conspicuously absent in more meaningful events- like tracing the loss of wealth in Black families from the enslavement (kidnap and murder) of our slave ancestors when making public policy designed to overcome the effects of slavery...anyway

Django viewers have come to speak to me, among people i know, people I ask- hardly a scientific poll, more like random comments and rumors- like good evidence at a trial by jury  ; ) ) . I have been told that it  has appeal to people who can go to a movie, pay a lot for popcorn, and see a Black man do the wild and heroic stuff that we rarely see done by a Black man even in the imagination of fiction; and for what it is worth- for some it raises the idea of self esteem, and group esteem for many others.

Perhaps it raises an opportunity for Black leadership to promote some of those historically accurate facts and events-- you know  while so many are looking, and hungry for popcorn...hdm