Django Unchained . . . Or, American Violence We Need

Between going to the beach and doing homework, this weekend I saw "Django Unchained," Quentin Tarantino's obsequy to spaghetti westerns, and an odd critique of American slavery.  I say odd because though the movie is a revenge thriller of the usual variety, Tarantino phrases it within the mythos of the American south.  That is, while one would normally expect to see a lone gunman wandering the west in search of redemption, Django is a gunman in search of his wife in the American south, particularly Mississippi.  Discovering she has been sold to a plantation owner who specializes in the buying and selling of fighting slaves (think dog-fights but with black men).  Since it is a revenge flick, everything you'd expect to happen, happens.

But it takes an odd course to get there.  From the trailers, it is obvious that Django allies himself with Christopher Waltz as a bounty hunter.  The buddy-cop theme is played to perfection, without the slapstick we'd normally expect.  Instead, we're offered a discrete rumination on the horror of slavery, the perverse peculiarity of this American institution, and the ridiculous contradictions inherent in the system. 

Despite all that, I thought it was a good movie.  A bit on the bloody side, with the Tarantino-esque ridiculousness of the whole thing, but it felt visceral and thrilling and downright amoral.  Slavery was the obvious bad guy, with various minor bad guys along the way.  The moral lever was tilted toward Django the entire time and despite killing men in cold blood, we were meant to assuage our collective guilt with the assurance that they were slave traders and guilty enough to deserve death. 

Nevertheless, I thought it was a good movie, and I would quickly recommend it.

Wonder Woman and the Ubermensch

I was chatting recently with my Residence Director, a black woman who identifies as bi-sexual, about why Hollywood will never make a movie about Storm, the X-Man of African descent.  Basically, it boiled down to the fact that she's black, and she's a she.  Hollywood wouldn't dare make a movie with a female protagonist who isn't also white.  But it got me thinking as I consider all the hype around proposed Wonder Woman movies.

First of all, the original storyline for Wonder Woman would just have to be scrapped.  The whole Amazonian thing is kind of weird.  As Ubermensch Jeff Clayton has observed: "Wonder Woman was originally conceived as some 1940's male bondage-fetishist's fantasy of what a feminist hero should be like."  The updated storyline has some interesting twists, essentially tying Wonder Woman to Greek mythology in a way that is both satisfying and more-or-less consistent with our idea of Wonder Woman.

Intriguingly, though, Wonder Woman, though originating in a place that is definitely not white America, or any other Anglo-Saxony sort of place, is depicted as full on white.  I just have a hard time imagining that the people who read comic books are also the people who would freak out if someone with a skin color other than white was the main character.  

So maybe there is hope for a Storm movie; we just have to pave the way.

The Gift . . . Or, More Awesome Sci-Fi

Movies this good make me wonder just what writers and producers in Hollywood spend all their time up to.  It's so rich and spare and well-developed that I can't believe I don't see this on my TV every night.

I'd Watch This . . . Or, Star Wars That's Cool

So, it's not often that I get excited about Star Wars anymore.  I'm interested to see what Disney has to offer, but I'm not excited.  This short anime by a fan makes me feel the same visceral pleasure that I experienced during my teens for all things Star Wars.  If Disney could reproduce this, I'd watch it.