By Jelani Cobb from
The New Yorker
In early 2010, not long after the release of Quentin Tarantino’s
Second World War revenge epic, “Inglourious Basterds,” I began teaching a
course on American history at Moscow State University. When a Russian
friend asked me what I thought of the film I told him I loved the way
the director created an alternate history in order to make a larger
point about the universal nature of heroism. My friend and, as I later
learned, lots of other Russians took issue with the film for precisely
that reason. “Is this,” he asked, “how Americans really perceive World
War II?” In Russia, where the annual May 9th celebrations of the German
surrender dwarf those of the Fourth of July in this country, the
sacrifices that were crucial to defeating Hitler are a point of huge
national pride. The history department at the university features a
marble monument to hundreds of university students who died defending
the country. Because many Russians feel that the world—and particularly
the United States—has never properly recognized the scale of their
losses, they tend to see “Inglourious Basterds” not as a revenge fantasy
but as an attempt to further whitewash their role in Hitler’s demise.
The alternate history in “Inglourious Basterds” failed there because the
actual history had yet to be reconciled. The movie’s lines between
fantasy and the actual myopic perspectives on history were so hazy that
the audience wasn’t asked to suspend disbelief, they were asked to
suspend conscience. With “Django Unchained,” Tarantino’s tale of
vengeful ex-slave, what happened in Russia is happening here.
The theme of revenge permeates Tarantino’s
work. If the violence in his films seems gratuitous, it’s also deployed
as a kind of spiritual redemption. And if this dynamic is applicable
anywhere in American history, it’s on a slave plantation. Frederick
Douglass, in his slave narrative, traced his freedom not to the moment
when he escaped to the north but the moment in which he first struck an
overseer who attempted to whip him. Quentin Tarantino is the only
filmmaker who could pack theatres with multiracial audiences eager to
see a black hero murder a dizzying array of white slaveholders and
overseers. (And, in all fairness, it’s not likely that a black director
would’ve gotten a budget to even attempt such a thing.)
Read more:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/how-accurate-is-quentin-tarantinos-portrayal-of-slavery-in-django-unchained.html#ixzz2GvS6m8xw
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