Dissent: That KKK Scene

Never say that I don't like hearing the views of those that differ to my own. Here is a comment on one of the Django piece i did from a fella who used to attend KKK meetings:

"The KKK really is vastly different than it’s portrayed in the media. I attended the Indianapolis chapter a few times in the early 90s and to be honest, the meetings were boring as hell. We would talk over coffee, then there was a reading, then we watched a movie. That was it. There were some old robes in the coat room, but we never even put them on. No pillowcases either, lol."

Fair enough. I personally don't have an issue with how boring the Knights are, it's the other activities I have an issue with.

Django: That KKK Scene

I remember coming out of the cinema after just watching Django Unchained spoiling for a fight; so naturally I logged onto Twitter and quickly found one. To be fair the following debate was heated but respectful. He had one point that I found difficult to accept and it’s a point that I’ve heard repeatedly elsewhere.

As a black man, I should be offended/ disrespected by Django.

As you’ve probably guessed already from reading my posts, I find nothing about Django Unchained offensive or disrespectful. Well, almost nothing.

There is one scene.

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After Django and his good Doctor pay a visit to Don Johnson’s (Big Daddy) plantation to assassinate a pair of fugitives, Big Daddy rounds up all of his white friends to teach Django and his “nigger loving" companion a lesson.

What follows is probably the funniest scene of the whole movie and possibly one of the funniest scenes of any Tarantino movie.

One of Big Daddy’s fellow racists was in charge of brining pillow cases with holes cut out in them so the soon to be murders could see where they are going, but his wife didn’t do it properly. Big Daddy’s group of racists argue over these pillow cases to the point of absurdity.

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Like I said, the scene is ridiculously funny. I was laughing my head off until I realised that the room full of mostly white faces were laughing along with me – and then I stopped laughing.

Essentially what Tarantino was doing in the scene was re-writing history and showing his version of how the Klu Klux Klang was created. In his mind, the KKK were a bunch of racist idiots, who couldn’t get anything simple done - like cutting holes in a pillow case. Except, in the real world they could.

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This scene proves that Tarantino is a hell of a talent. I personally think he’s a better writer than director. But with this scene, I did feel a whiff of disrespect.

I’m not accusing Tarantino or those who helplessly laughed at this scene of racism – but I am saying that maybe there wasn’t a real appreciation of history. The bumbling idiots depicted in that scene where part of an institution that killed thousands as they cowardly hid their identity in those pillow cases.

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Most of all, I respect QT’s giant balls for even writing the scene. But maybe, even for me, his toe may have crossed a line.


                            @chocoteddyfilms

Django and Bullshit

I’m a huge fan of Spike Lee. In fact, fan is an understatement - I consider him a hero. To top it off, he’s an Arsenal fan. I say this to make it clear that I get no pleasure out of saying anything negative about the man. But his criticism of Django is straight up bullshit:

 “I can’t speak on it ’cause I’m not gonna see it. The only thing I can say is,it’s disrespectful to my ancestors, to see that film.” – Spike Lee

How? The fact that a white man has directed a film which uses the word ‘nigger’ liberally? I know that Spike has had a long time beef with QT, but this particular nit he chose pick is a bug too far. The greatest television show of my time, The Wire, also uses the word ‘nigger’ like it’s the word ‘a’ or ‘and’. In The Wire, not only is the word used by black characters, but like most of QT’s films, it’s used by white people as well. Not only white people, but white “Poh-Leece” - just to add insult to injury. Now as far as I or my Google searches know, Spike has no beef whatsoever with The Wire, the way it uses racial profanity or, for that matter, its two snow white creators. In fact,he’s a fan of this great piece of television work.

Now, I maybe simplifying Spike Lee’s and others who have a race based argument against Django Unchained, but I have a real problem with hypocrisy, especially when it comes from my own (black) camp. How can you wild-out against something you haven’t experienced? How do you know that it is disrespectful to your ancestors?

...

This is the point where I stop concentrating on Spike Lee as I already feel uneasy. Instead I’m going to concentrate my erk at a man I have no problem disliking – Tavis Smiley.

Every time I’ve heard Tavis Smiley speak, I’ve wanted to smack something. He’s the type of public figure that begs to be taken seriously, not only by the American black public, but by black people full stop - but every time he has said anything black related, I’ve wanted to disagree with him, even if he I agreed with his general point. I’m sure everyone has one – but he’s that one quasi-famous person that I just can’t stand.

...

Tavis Smiley gave one of the most maddening interviews I have ever read, period, for The Daily Beast about Django Unchained. In this interview, he pretty much echo’s Lee saying he hasn’t seen Tarantino’s film, but goes on to savage it as if he has. It’s pretty shameful.

There is a rotten insincerity that infects his words and I’m not sure he even knows it:

 "I’m troubled that Hollywood won’t get serious about making an authentic film about the holocaust of slavery but they will greenlight a spoof about slavery, and it’s as if this spoof about slavery somehow makes slavery a bit easier to swallow. The suffering of black people is not reducible to revenge and retribution. The black tradition has taught the nation what it means to love. Put it another way: black people have learned to love America in spite of, not because of, so if the justification for the film in the end is, as Jamie Foxx’s Django says, “What, kill white people and get paid for it? What’s wrong with that?”­ well again, black suffering is not reducible to revenge and retribution. "Tarantino even went on the record saying Roots was inauthentic. First of all, Tarantino is not a historian. When people see his film who don’t have any understanding of history, they take it as history, because Tarantino passes himself off as a historian by declaring Roots inauthentic, and then goes on to make the “authentic” story about slavery. It doesn’t tell the truth about what the black contribution to this country has been. Tarantino has the right to make whatever films he wants to make. What he’s not entitled to is his own set of facts and to lecture black people about the inauthenticity of an iconic, game-changing series like Roots. I don’t take kindly to white folk like Tarantino lecturing black folk about their history. That’s just unacceptable. Tarantino is absolutely exhausting." - Tavis Smiley

There is a hint of a reasonable point in there somewhere. African American’s have a wonderful history of forgiving but not forgetting one of the worst injustice known in human history, slavery – but he’s assuming that the majority of black people are not aware that Django Unchained IS NOT REAL. I’m pretty certain that I and most other black cinema goers are aware that Django is, indeed, fiction and does not set out to be a dramatisation of history. No matter how much Tavis would like us to believe that Tarantino believes his films are a historical lesson, he doesn’t and importantly, WE (black folks) DON’T.

And here is the thing. I don’t understand what is so controversial about the Django line about “killing white folk”. Every time I've heard this line used to criticise the movie, it’s used to suggest that somehow the general public will believe that all black people secretly feel this way (we really don't by the way. You're safe). What pisses me off most is the suggestion Tavis and other critics make that it was beyond the realm of possibility that, way back when, a slave in Django’s position would have said and felt the same way. Almost as if a free slave thinking that way was a disgrace.

But it’s the Roots analysis that turns me off totally to Tavis' argument. Here’s the thing, I read what Quentin and Reginald Hudlin (the black producer of Django) actually said about Roots – a TV series I have watched god knows how many times – and they have a point. QT goes on to qualify his inauthentic claims by highlighting the Roots finale's closing scene where the freed slave, Chicken George, has the opportunity to put a whooping on his former rapist of a owner, in front of his newly freed family. Instead of opening a can of hurt, he chooses to be the “bigger man” and walk away.  That scene and the lack of authentic anger in other instances in Roots is QT’s main beef:

“Bulls--t, no way he becomes the bigger man at that moment. The powers that be during the ’70s didn’t want to send the message of revenge to African-Americans. They didn’t want to give black people any ideas. But anyone knows that would never happen in that situation. And in Django ­Unchained we make that clear.” - Quentin Tarantino

That's a very difficult point to argue against. And although I absolutely adore Roots, there is a Disney-like, Kumbaya feel to the series which has resulted in the series still being respected but not ageing well.

...

So I’m going to stop beating around the bush and start cutting to the chase. A lot of this criticism from the elite black folks toward Tarantino just stinks and doesn’t add up. It stinks of an us-and-them culture that has developed within the black community.

We will celebrate and defend the achievements of our brothers and sisters that excel in typically white fields, such as Tiger Woods (before the long-ass-cue of white (mostly porn star) women came out of the... erm...woods), the Williams sisters and (Saint)President Barack Obama. And rightly so. But god forbid white folks excelling in traditionally black arena’s – that’s culture stealing, right? You won’t Elvis us again.

In a nutshell, Travis and co wouldn’t have any problems if Django Unchained was made by a black man. I truly believe that – I don’t care how much they say otherwise. There would be no talk of history jacking or of not knowing what is QT’s heart – there would be quite acceptance.

Like I’ve already said, I’ve watched Roots many times and I’ve read the book and what people fail to mention about these seminal pieces of work is that their historical authenticity have been questioned. Also, X is one of my favourite films of all time and Malcolm X’s biography is one of the first books I ever fell in love with, yet both of these work’s historical accuracy has been questioned (go and read Manning Marble’s excellent biography, Malcolm X: A Life of ReInvention). Yet in the case of all of these works, their authors were damn right ambiguous of whether they considered their books/film a piece of historical recounting or whether they should be viewed as piece of fiction. Should I, as a black man, be offended by that?

Well, I’m not.

I take the point that Tavis makes that Hollywood has thrown shade at black film makers and it’s hard for a black director to get a black film made – but I fail to see why this is the fault of Quentin Tarantino.

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Bullshit is bullshit, regardless of the skin colour of the person serving out that bulldung.

If you don’t think that a white director has the right to tell a black story in the way it’s told in Django, then fine, say just that, but don’t bullshit the people you claim to be speak for.

                                     @chocoteddyfilms

Django: Tarantino's Flawed but Important Masterpiece

Django Unchained isn’t one of Tarantino’s best films – it’s not even close. That’s not to say that it is a bad film – it’s a very good film.

Django suffers from the same problems Inglorious Basterds – it’s simply far too long. It’s at least 45 minutes too long. This long running time isn’t at all justified as it takes what starts off as a funny, snappy and gut-wrenching movie, into a stale and almost boring affair. This problem isn’t just a Tarantino problem, over indulgence and the lack of editing has been creeping into Hollywood lately (Dark Knight Rises, anyone?).

For my money, Django Unchained is Tarantino’s most important film. I’d go further than that, for me, it’s the most important black film since Boyz n the Hood. It has started a debate about race without the usual violence that proceeds such a debate. I have seen people start off talking about Django and the conversation divert to deeper darker questions about race and the legacy of the slave trade, which, to my mind, is a fantastic achievement.  

Both Django and Boyz speak to an anger that I personally feel about the subject of race and the slave trade that most films on the subject don’t even touch.

Although Django has the same Tarantino humour, beneath it's skin, this film is uncompromisingly angry. While I was watching it, I had to remind myself that this blisteringly angry film was written and directed by the painfully white Tarantino.

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When I was in junior school, I got called a nigger in the playground by a white kid. The only reason I paid it any mind is because of the “ohhs” that followed the insult and the laughter that rose up afterwards. I remember telling my dad about it and asking him what the word, nigger, means and he simply explained that it was a “naughty word for a black person”. This story keeps haunting me the older I get because I can never remember him reporting it to the teachers afterwards. That explanation is all I had.

The next time I heard that word was on a Puff Daddy and Mase single and in a totally different context. Through hiphop I quickly realised that nigger, or nigga, didn’t always have to be “naughty”, sometimes it was cool.

So, me and my best friend started a hiphop group and I personally tried to use that word in our songs as much as I could – I didn’t care if my rhymes didn’t make any sense. Funnily enough, we preformed these songs in school and no one but our parents batted an eyelid.

This did bite us though. It seemed like we were getting called niggers in every class and I lost count of how many times I got told to go back to my own country. I’m not saying that I was an angel, I wasn’t, I probably started many of these fights, but when the nigger bomb dropped that was it. It was a conversation stopper. It left a mushroom cloud of “ohhs” and laughter.

I think about this stuff because I didn’t realise how angry I was about it until I watched Django. I’m angry at my dad for not properly explaining to me what nigger meant. I’m angry at my teachers for not stopping me using the word. I’m angry at myself for using the word like I did and letting other black faces use it in front of me and while addressing me. Most of all, I am angry at every single white face that called me a blacky, gollywog, nigger and told me to go back to my own country.

I still get people asking me why we (I’m guessing they mean black people) have such a chip on our shoulders. And every single black history month I get asked why the month should even exist and why there isn’t a white history month.

What hurts the most is the fact that I am certain these experiences are not exclusive to me. I know so many other black friends and family members that have gone through similar and worse.

I don’t think my generation (white or black) fully understand the history behind the word nigger – I truly don’t. I don't think a single person who called me a nigger in school is a racist, I just think they were young, dumb and didn't fully understand what they were saying. I grew up thinking the word nigger was reclaimed in some way and how it was now an exclusive luxury, only to be used by black people. But I watch the way nigger is used in Django Unchained and realise what an idiot I’ve been. That word is a potent type of venom that can never be cleaned.

I laugh that in almost every review of Django, the number of times nigger is used is a debatable matter. Can anyone actually argue that no one in those times would have used the word that often? It’s not the amount it gets used but the way nigger gets used that trips me out. It’s an everyday word used so carefree but with a hint of disgust by the white characters in the movie. And the black characters use it to remind themselves of their place. Can anyone truly argue that this didn’t happen?

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People complain that Django is a cartoon that pokes fun at a serious subject. Well, the only cartoonish violence in this film is when damage is being done to white characters (and they're all racist white folks). There is nothing cartoonish about watching a woman being dragged from a hole she spent days in; There is nothing Bugs Bunny-ish about watching two black men fight until one finishes the other with a hammer, all to amuse a rich white guy. What is cartoonish about watching dogs rip a runaway slave to pieces? What cartoon have you seen where a husband humiliates himself and pleads with his owner  to save his wife from being savagely whipped? Can you actually argue that these things didn’t happen in America before the civil war?

Too much of the violence in this film felt too real to me. More real than any other Tarantino film I’ve seen. This is what happened to niggers.

And this film was made by the very white Tarantino. And people actually have the brass ones to call him racist.

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Django reminded me of the reasons why I love and believe movies are so important. It’s one thing being able to read about something, it’s another seeing it with your own eyes. No matter how much I read about slavery and the horrific things that happened to Africans kidnapped from their home, none of them words had as much impact on me as watching this overly long and flawed movie.

Django Week: 17th - 19th April

I’m a huge fan of Spike Lee. In fact, fan is an understatement - I consider him a hero. To top it off, he’s an Arsenal fan. I say this to make it clear that I get no pleasure out of saying anything negative about the man.

But his criticism of Django is straight up bullshit.

Tarantino is Like Nas

There’s this bloke on Twitter who supports the same team as me and happens to be a very good writer. Over the weekend he wrote about a sporting moment I will never forget, but as an intro to his story he wrote the following:

“I’ve always felt that Quentin Tarantino doesn’t so much make great films as make great scenes. The kind that get the heart pumping; saturated as they are with wit and drama. Large parts of his movies are actually plodding pastiche padded out with some swears and a bit of the old ultra-violence. But with the rising inflection of Samuel L. Jackson’s voice, the opening chords from an old Steeler’s Wheel number striking up or the sway of Pam Grier’s hips, a powerful spectacle occurs that hangs the whole film together.” (http://soccerwithoutlimits.com/arsenal-lehmann-villareal/17481/#mrcAdJCZjsm17HoM.99)

I get it, this is only Tim’s(@LittleDutchVA) opinion – but I’ve heard this argument before. It has started to get louder ever since Inglorious came out. An argument which I feel is hugely unfair.

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On one level, Tim is absolutely right. Quentin makes films which are broken down into episodic sections, usually arranged in an unchronological fashion. It’s a bloody great unoriginal gimmick. In most cases these episodes are dripping with laugh out loud humour, intrigue, tension - and the element that everyone concentrates on – violence.

My point is this: If every episode is great, doesn’t that make the film as whole great?
 …

I think Tarantino is suffering from what I call the Illmatic disorder. Illmatic was the first album released by the rapper Nas. Now, Illmatic is widely considered to be iconic and a game changer in rap music. Every rap album after Illmatic, sounded like Illmatic. 

Unfortunately for Nas, everything he did afterward was compared to his awe inspiring debut. No matter how good the music he releases gets, it never seems to be as perfect as Illmatic.

Tarantino is suffering the same fate as Nas.
 …

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are mammoth films. Unfortunately for Tarantino, his films after Dogs and Fiction were not as fresh, and this has giving detractors an opening to criticise him. [Note that the word fresh was used, not good]

And it’s obvious that Tarantino knows this, hence the change of tact in his last films. QT is starting to dampen down (he hasn’t quite abandoned it) on his gimmick and so his films have started to go soft in the middle because of this. The genius in his scenes is still there, but he seems to overindulge a little more than he used to; that Inglorious scene in the Nazi bar is a prime example.
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Tarantino will always divide opinion. So, essentially, this article is pointless. Most people reading this have already made up their minds about the man and that’s fine. But I do think that people have stopped judging Tarantino’s work on their own merits. His new work is constantly being compared to his past – and this conflict is starting to show. 

Django and Inglorious are both, in my opinion, fearless and brilliant. Both are flawed but, again in my opinion, are very important films. I hope QT doesn't lose his fearlessness - I hope he carries on trying to break taboos.

I Wanted to Write About Django, But I Ended Up Writing About a Pimp

This is not Jamie Foxx

I wanted my second film post to be about Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and how I think it's the most important black film of my generation.

But, I've only seen Unchained once and I don't fancy breaking a blog rule so early on. So instead I’m going to write about a film which I had Django like feelings for.

Hustle and Flow.

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Did you know that Three 6 Mafia won an Oscar for their song “It’s hard out here for a pimp”? Not only did they win an Oscar, they performed the track at the ceremony --- in front of people --- probably in front of Morgan Freeman. I'm just going to leave that thought, and the below video, out there.

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I’m one of those idiots who consider themselves a hip-hop head. To be honest with you, I don’t even know what that means, all I know is that I am a big fan of rap music and consume a lot of what hip hop culture has to offer.

To put it another way, I bought a pair of Beats by Dre headphones for 3 reasons: It had Dr Dre’s name on them and I am a big fan girl of his; It’s the closest I am ever going to get to Detox; The headphones actually sound alright. The reasons are actually in that order – sound quality last. £300. Feel free to insult me, I deserve it.

At 19, I was just starting university and I remember bemoaning the lack of great modern hip-hop films (for me, "BoyZ in the Hood" was the last one). Then Hustle and Flow came along. I absolutely loved it.

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Craig Brewer’s Hustle and Flow is about a low down dirty pimp’s struggle to becoming a (local) rap star.

If you asked a 19 year old Teddybear why he loved Hustle and Flow, he’d tell you pretty much the same as what a 26 year old Teddybear would. The film has a brilliant cast. Terrance Howard’s pimp, DJay, is a wonderfully repulsive, yet venerable character; Taraji Henson is absolutely sensational as the pregnant prostitute, Shug; Anthony Anderson’s Kay embodies a black man's frustration better than Djay himself. Bluntly put, in 2005, Hustle and Flow was the hip-hop movie I was looking for and with a majority black cast that deserved every plaudit it got and more (Note: the white actors in this film are pretty damn great as well).

The story is well executed. Craig Brewer doesn't put a foot wrong in the movie. You can also tell that the director has a damn good understanding of hip-hop cooked up in the American south.   

Make no mistake, this is a very good film.

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The issue I have with it now is entirely my own. It’s aged badly on me. Now when I watch, instead of nodding to the beats or rooting for DJay as he stomps the living day lights out of Ludacris, I sit there awkward and cringing. I know this is unfair on the movie, and I am about to be even more unfair.

Hustle and Flow reminds me of a time when I wanted to be a rapper. I wanted the same things that DJay wanted. I guess what I am trying to say is that I am embarrassed that I related so closely to a horribly abusive character like DJay.

As stupid as this sounds, Hustle and Flow reminds me of the pre-Obama era; a time when most young black men would laugh at you and quote 2-Pac if you told them they could be/ or there would be a black president. This film reminds me of a time when success was being a rapper or an athlete and when it was cool to call women “bitches” or “hoes” – damn it, I did it myself during my ill-fated career as a hardcore rapper (don't kid yourself, I can still spit). This film paints a clear, negative but fair picture of the young black man in 2005 – not just the disfranchised young black man.

I know that is nit picking and I should just shut the F up and enjoy the movie – but – this movie is bloody important for black cinema. Successful black movies are rare. Three 6 Mafia won an Oscar for crying out loud.

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Hustle and Flow is why I’m trying to tamper my opinion over Django Unchained, a film that I am wild about. Django is clearly an important film, it is also clearly a hip-hop film and for me the film tries to paint a positive picture of the black man.

I just don’t know if this film will age on me like Hustle and Flow.