Once Upon a Time in the South

Quentin Tarantino's films are not just about characters and events. They are movies about other movies, drawing on Tarantino's broad familiarity with films of various genres, countries and time periods. Django Unchained is, among other things, a tribute to “spaghetti westerns,” and I love it in part because I'm a fan of that genre. (The Django Unchained entry on the Internet Movie Data Base contains a list of “connections” between it and previous films. It is incomplete.)

There were over 600 westerns made in Europe in the '60s and '70s, with mostly Italian casts and crews and Spanish locations. They differ fundamentally from American westerns in style and ideology. Stylistic differences include self-consciously artistic photography, crisp editing used to expand or compress time, and the stirring musical scores of Ennio Morricone and his imitators. Ideological differences include a greater willingness to address political themes, usually from a socialist perspective. (Some critics mistakenly claim that European westerns are more violent than the American variety. It's true that they usually have a higher body count, but the geysers of blood in Django Unchained are actually copied from American films such as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969).)

One of the most internationally successful Italian westerns was Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966). Because the name was not copyrighted, it spawned over 30 “sequels,” the best being Django, Kill! and Django the Bastard, which was remade (without attribution) by Clint Eastwood as High Plains Drifter. Here's the Django Unchained trailer. The man who asks Django (Jamie Foxx) his name is the Italian actor Franco Nero, star of the original Django.

The opening title of Django Unchained says “1858—Two years before the Civil War.” Some people have assumed this was a blooper, but my interpretation is that Tarantino was warning us not to expect what follows to be literally true. But fiction can sometimes come closer to the abstract truth than an accurate presentation of historical events. I believe Django Unchained is a more accurate retelling of the end of slavery than Lincoln. Lincoln portrays African-Americans as passive beneficiaries of the actions of a white saviors. While Django clearly benefits from the help of “Dr. King” Schultz (Christoph Waltz), Tarantino's hero is a black gunslinger whose goal is to free his wife, and who frees other slaves along the way.

A major part of the appeal of Django Unchained is that Django takes violent revenge on his oppressors, which is why it is claimed that only a white director could have made this film. (Black director Spike Lee's most radical film was Bamboozled, which is about media portrayal of blacks. You haven't seen it? Surprise! It was buried by the studio that produced it.) We could argue about whether Tarantino was able to make this film because he is white or because he has a proven track record of success. It is clear that the Weinstein Company thought they could raise their middle finger to the South and still make money on this film. They were right.

There is one thing that makes me uncomfortable about Django Unchained—its relentlessly negative depiction of white Southerners of all social classes as outrageously prejudiced scumbags who treat black people with sadistic cruelty. Don't get me wrong. I believe this portrayal is basically true. I don't question Tarantino's claim that he could have filmed even more graphic real incidents of torture. It's also true that regional differences in racial attitudes still exist, and that they are the basis of the Republicans' Southern strategy that has poisoned our political culture for the last 50 years.

However, this portrayal of Southern whites not-so-subtly suggests that slavery was a result of white people hating black people. This is a compositional fallacy, and is no more true than it would be to claim that the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003 because Americans hated Iraqis. It is misleading in two important ways.

• As implied by the theory of cognitive dissonance, dislike of African-Americans is more likely to be an effect of slavery than its cause. If you are going to treat human beings as property, you have to convince yourself that they deserve to suffer. You have to dehumanize them.

• It obscures the fact that the primary motive for slavery was economic. Slavery was as important part of the U. S. economy. It made the South the richest and most powerful region in the country. The brutality and torture portrayed in Django Unchained were intended primarily to ensure that production was not disrupted, which would have been bad for business.

Can Tarantino be blamed for not delivering an economic history lesson? Probably not. Interpersonal conflict is easier to portray in films than structural inequality, and audiences can be counted on to find it more interesting. In fact, it's hard to think of many films that have convincingly educated us about the deeper social and economic structures that automatically influence our behavior.

Enjoy!

Appendix

Like all film genres, spaghetti westerns include a few great films, many good ones, a majority that are mediocre, and some that are really bad. (Some of them were made so cheaply and quickly that they lack even the most basic continuity.) Most of the 600+ spaghetti westerns are not available on DVD in this country. Here are a dozen of them (actually 14) that you can probably find and should check out if you get a chance.

1. The Big Gundown (1966)--director, Sergio Sollima; actors, Lee Van Cleef, Tomas Milian.
2. A Bullet For the General (1966)--d. Damiano Damiani; Gian Maria Volonte, Lou Castel, Martine Beswick, Klaus Kinski.
3. Companeros (1970)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Jack Palance.
4. Django (1966)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Franco Nero.
5. Django, Kill! (If You Live, Shoot) (1967)--d. Giulio Questi; Tomas Milian.
6. The Dollars Trilogy—d. Sergio Leone [A Fistful of Dollars (1964)--Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volonte; For a Few Dollars More (1965)--Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonte; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)--Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach.]
7. Face to Face (1967)--d. Sergio Sollima—Gian Maria Volonte, Tomas Milian.
8. The Great Silence (1968)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski.
9. The Mercenary [aka, A Professsional Gun] (1968)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Franco Nero, Tony Musante, Jack Palance.
10. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)--d. Sergio Leone; Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards.
11. The Price of Power (1969)--d. Tonino Valerii; Giuliano Gemma.
12. Requiescant [aka, Kill and Pray] (1967)--d. Carlo Lizzani; Lou Castel, Mark Damon, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

For what it's worth, probably nothing, Once Upon a Time in the West is my all-time favorite film.