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OT: Spike Lee rips "Django"

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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#281 » by Jmonty580 » Wed Jan 9, 2013 4:31 pm

It just goes to show how desensitised people have become to slavery, I think people want to make light of it and distance themselves from it because its still a hurtful horrific thing that happen. I think there are still real emotions today about what happened that people dont want to confront. Imo a movie like this makes light of something that shouldnt be made light of. It would be like making a silly super hero comedy about 9/11 or the CT school shooting. Those things are way to fresh though to kid about, slavery is alot further away so people think its ok now for some reason. I think most people wont be offended. I personally was not, but I still say its a shame that it makes light of such a serious thing, and part of me wishes i was offended.
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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#282 » by prophet_of_rage » Wed Jan 9, 2013 6:37 pm

I just can't believe that people think this is a real commentary on slavery. It's an excuse to create gore. Beautiful, but vapid.
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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#283 » by BKAY » Wed Jan 9, 2013 7:30 pm

might have been a little tasteless but damn good movie.
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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#284 » by moocow007 » Wed Jan 9, 2013 8:17 pm

Joe Curry wrote:i never saw a Tarrentino film , is that weird ?


Yes. And definitely worth an experience. He's a obviously foot fetishist whose quirky movies always involves pretty much every scene going a step or two beyond what every other movie in similar situations would stop. Hero's die. Bad guys live. Sexual taboo's are flaunted. Good guys with bad traits. Bad guys with good traits.
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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#285 » by yaboynyp » Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:37 pm

prophet_of_rage wrote:
j4remi wrote:
cgmw wrote:To be clear, I'm not offended by Django in the slightest (except for Jaime Foxx's fake scrotum afro wig). I just understand where Spike's coming from and agree with his general point.

To me, the violent scenes you mentioned came off primarily as cool movie scenes and secondarily about slavery. I can imagine Tarantino story boarding them out, excited like a little boy, "yeah we'll have f*cking Mandingo Fighting on the parlor room floor with a f*cking eye gouge and a hammer, and then f*cking dogs will f*cking tear a Mandingo Fighter limb from limb..." It comes off as gratuitous. He's good at staging these scenes, and obviously has a lot of fun with it. Even to the point where he self-efacingly packs himself with dynamite and blows himself up with a single perfectly placed Django bullet.

That's why Schultz's big racial epiphany at the end rung hollow. I didn't believe for a second that a professional killer would be shaken by dogs ripping apart a man. No. I knew Tarantino just needed a reason for yet another gratuitous killing scene. It's why his movies have no true emotional depth.

Tarantino paints in broad simple strokes. Good guys are good. Bad guys are bad. Those who need to die die and those who need to walk off into the sunset do. He uses simplistic, hackneyed, familiar storytelling as a vehicle for cool, clever, fun, snappy, outrageous, funny, and most-of-all violent scenes.

There's depth to these characters, but not the kind of depth that makes people relate on an emotional level. Or at least not me and my cold dead heart, anyway. Telling a story in this style about one of humankind's most deeply emotional subject matters should in fact ruffle some feathers.


Two things, Spike didn't see the movie...so his power to comment on it is severely undermined and if you don't know how QT boarded it out...it's tough to comment on how those scenes came about.

Schultz's epiphany was built up from extremely early on if you paid attention to all the cues. A professional killer spent the movie justifying his murder by saying "they're bad people" ...the dog scene haunted him bc when he went to save an innocent man, Django drew the parallel between Schultz and Candie. Schultz sees himself in Candie when he realizes they're both murderers, it a multi-level moment when he shoots Candie...he's committing suicide literally AND figuratively.

QT does indeed paint in broad simple strokes, but there are still layers to his storytelling. He cut a ton from the original script, apparently he had a lot of time dedicated to fleshing out Hilda that he had to drop. I think that could have gone a long way toward giving the love story more depth but it also would have hurt the profitability of the film.

And you're right, telling any story set within the times of slavery should ruffle feathers. But the fact that people would be happier to brush it under the rug and just accept it as "well it's too controversial to write about, talk about or try to work within" is upsetting to me. Like I said, even if someone hates the movie...at least he's willing to acknowledge a time in our history that exposes how ugly our treatment of others can be rather than just ignore it or pretend it never happened...and at the very worst at least he spawned a discussion about the pain and suffering that happened rather than taking the "we have a black president now...clean slate"

prophet_of_rage wrote:He is a talented B-movie maker. Nothing more nothing less.

And for all you who says: "Everybody says the N-Word, it's no big deal." Then why don't you write it out and stop using nonsense like "the N-word?" That's because it is a big deal.


Think about context here...it's a movie set in the times of slavery with a bunch of slave owners in it...what do you expect?


I do think about the context. This is QT a shockmaster, making a spaghetti western in slavery times, treating the deep south as if it were the Wild West. This is QT who is infamous for his licence with the word nigg@r using it 110 in a film and saying "Well, it's slavery times so it's authentic." Well, what about your other films where the use is gratuitous? Especially the films where there are no Black people? Reservoir Dogs, for instance? Why have it 38 times in Jackie Brown? There is a larger issue here.

Spike's argument is that slavery is not something to make a comedy about. QT has made a comedy about slavery. He has not made a serious film. He remade a B-movie. That's it. And my original point about the n-word was for people who were saying that it should have no power or impact because people (currently) say it all the time. My question then is if it is acceptable why do we use nonsense terms like the "N-Word?" And we all know why because the term is offensive.


Pretty compelling argument….
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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#286 » by j4remi » Thu Jan 10, 2013 12:35 am

prophet_of_rage wrote:
I do think about the context. This is QT a shockmaster, making a spaghetti western in slavery times, treating the deep south as if it were the Wild West. This is QT who is infamous for his licence with the word nigg@r using it 110 in a film and saying "Well, it's slavery times so it's authentic." Well, what about your other films where the use is gratuitous? Especially the films where there are no Black people? Reservoir Dogs, for instance? Why have it 38 times in Jackie Brown? There is a larger issue here.

Spike's argument is that slavery is not something to make a comedy about. QT has made a comedy about slavery. He has not made a serious film. He remade a B-movie. That's it. And my original point about the n-word was for people who were saying that it should have no power or impact because people (currently) say it all the time. My question then is if it is acceptable why do we use nonsense terms like the "N-Word?" And we all know why because the term is offensive.


QT isn't a shock master, he makes hyper violent movies sure...but this is a lot of fluff to fill out an argument. If you had a problem with the N word in other movies, fine. Bare in mind that outside of the scene in Pulp Fiction which I think was in bad taste but never found all that bad, he always has villains use the word. QT equates racism with evil pretty consistently as an auteur. When someone like cgmw makes arguments about his character development, that's cool...but this over simplification of what went on in the movie is off base.

It's not a comedy whatsoever. It's an action movie first, a love story second and there are comedic elements sprinkled throughout. The violence toward slave was never light hearted or weakened. I saw this post on another board and I think this guy gets my point of view and maybe says it better than I could.

First off it wasn't the KKK, which was not founded at the time. They were a rag tag group of racists out trying to kill a black man and his white friend; pretty evil thing to do, in the eyes of MOST people who saw the movie.

QT films always portray moments of levity in dangerous characters. Consider the ridiculous conversations two hit men continually got into in Pulp Fiction, or how comical yet dangerous the Jew Hunter was in Inglorious Basterds. Yet in Django, these characters are not portrayed in a positive or effective light - they're objects of scorn, ridicule, and disgust. The rest of the film features very serious racists who are very good at being racists (Candie especially), so the notion that the film trivializes slavery is just stupid. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest most non-rich slave owning southerners in 1858 were dumbasses.

No one left that movie thinking "oh boy, why were blacks so afraid of slavers back then, they were clowns lolll." Nah b. I thought it was brilliant the way QT flipped stereotypes throughout the film. Hell, nearly every white character in the film is a dumbass. Even the formidable Candie clearly wouldn't be as dangerous without the true brains behind him: Stephen, the black slave.

People are just looking for something to be offended by. When was the last time a major blockbuster film featured a black protagonist killing evil white people? When was the last film that portrayed slaves getting whipped, branded, castrated...and all the other stuff that history books leave out? And yall are complaining? If a black man directed this you'd be jumping for joy
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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#287 » by moocow007 » Thu Jan 10, 2013 1:01 am

On all this angst...ive never taken any Tarantino movie as anything as sheer shocking, vulgar and funny comedic action that is sometimes best watched drunk, other times alone and other times right after getting laid. I wasnt offended with his stereotypes of my race cause I understood that that was not the intent of it. In fact at times him exaggerating racial stereotypes actually help highlight to me how stupid the very stereotyping that goes on really is and how pathetic those people are.
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Re: OT: Spike Lee rips "Django" 

Post#288 » by Pharmcat » Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:45 am

moocow007 wrote:On all this angst...ive never taken any Tarantino movie as anything as sheer shocking, vulgar and funny comedic action that is sometimes best watched drunk, other times alone and other times right after getting laid. I wasnt offended with his stereotypes of my race cause I understood that that was not the intent of it. In fact at times him exaggerating racial stereotypes actually help highlight to me how stupid the very stereotyping that goes on really is and how pathetic those people are.


:lol: :lol:
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