Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

[Mr Sausage]

See above: Django and Basterds are just movies. They're not rooted in any moral or historical truth beyond their vague times and places. They're, in every sense of the word, JUST MOVIES. When we're talking about 'true stories,' 'ripped from the headlines' films, or sticky situations involving representing hateful attitudes or stereotypes onscreen, that's not only a different ballpark - it's a different sport.

This an extremely unsophisticated way to think about these things. In fact it borders on not thinking about them at all.

[warren oates]

That was why I mentioned that your reaction depends a lot on where you see it- I myself was kind of grossed out when I watched it at the theater and the audience was whooping it up at every act of cruelty, but watching it at home the whole thing had a different effect. Honestly, though, it seems more reasonable to implicate the audiences enjoyment of violence when it's violence that real audiences enjoy- there's a weird finger wagging quality to the Haneke to me, which springs from the fact that nobody wants to see what he's going after them for wanting to see.

Especially not anybody who would have actively sought out the film in the first place specifically because it was made by Michael Haneke. He's claimed in the past that both Funny Games films are meant as correctives to the sort of genre fare they flirt with and at first may seem to be. But that's only if you're going to see the films blind and wishing for the emptiest kind of horror movie kicks like from a degree zero bit of torture porn.

About Tarantino: For me the violence in Django is actually more measured, practical and personal than in Inglorious Basterds. Not that it wouldn't be justified, but Django isn't lashing out against all of Slavery as practice/idea/institution. He's defending himself and exacting revenge on specific slavers who wronged him and their accomplices. There's no generic captured slave-driver like that German soldier in IG who unluckily stumbles across the heroes and there's no ultimate Hitler-like leader of the baddies who also represents an ideology. Though maybe these choices in part are about the way the Western genre's concerns with justice have shaped the story.

If Tarantino made a film about Iraqi civilians tracking down and torturing George W. Bush, I'd be against it because, while it fits this mold in theory, it's a representation of something that could actually happen.

I can't say that I share mfunk's absolute prohibition against violent politically charged revenge fantasies just because they might actually happen. A novel like Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint -- both a left-wing revenge fantasy about assassinating Bush and an attempt to talk someone out of it going through with it -- while not the writer's best work, is substantially different in its intentions from something like, say, The Turner Diaries, a fictional work that features no living public figures but was published with the express intent of inspiring real world bloodshed, which it did when Timothy McVeigh read it and followed its example. The Baker book, on the other hand, goes a long way toward showing how personal failures and individual desperation can lock into a hyper-partisan mindset until the extreme pursuit/defense of one's ideals verges on negating them. A cautionary tale that lets off a lot of liberal steam by way of illustrating how someone might become a terrorist vs. the other book's unquestioning and thinly veiled how-to instructional. Two fictions with entirely different notions of their ethical responsibility to the real world and their status as make-believe.

[Zot!]

The violence isn't any worse in IB than his previous films, it's the distasteful pandering to a specific groups revenge fantasy against another group. If his point is that he can make retroactive flag-waving propaganda, then mission accomplished. If this kind of blind nationalism wasn't still alive and well, I would say it is a quaint joke (though still a weak movie). As it stands it is a cruel reminder of what is still an ongoing concern. Again, Django may be more enlightened than this simple generalization.

[mfunk9786]

See above: Django and Basterds are just movies. They're not rooted in any moral or historical truth beyond their vague times and places. They're, in every sense of the word, JUST MOVIES. When we're talking about 'true stories,' 'ripped from the headlines' films, or sticky situations involving representing hateful attitudes or stereotypes onscreen, that's not only a different ballpark - it's a different sport.

This an extremely unsophisticated way to think about these things. In fact it borders on not thinking about them at all.

Okay, I wasn't thinking. I've realized the error of my ways and am now humorless and judgemental w/r/t violent entertainment and won't allow myself to enjoy it at face value again. Thanks for fixing that for me.

[Mr Sausage]

See above: Django and Basterds are just movies. They're not rooted in any moral or historical truth beyond their vague times and places. They're, in every sense of the word, JUST MOVIES. When we're talking about 'true stories,' 'ripped from the headlines' films, or sticky situations involving representing hateful attitudes or stereotypes onscreen, that's not only a different ballpark - it's a different sport.

This an extremely unsophisticated way to think about these things. In fact it borders on not thinking about them at all.

Okay, I wasn't thinking. I've realized the error of my ways and am now humorless and judgemental w/r/t violent entertainment and won't allow myself to enjoy it at face value again. Thanks for fixing that for me.

Everyone has their pet logical fallacy. Yours is the fallacy of the excluded middle. You've used it twice now in this thread.

I'm still waiting for you to explain how conceptual systems like morality cannot or should not be applied to conceptual modes like ideas and imagined or invented scenarios. Thinkers and philosophers have been doing that for centuries; moral philosophy is based on it. But perhaps if they had been privy to your groundbreaking "it's only a movie!" argument, they may have changed their minds.

[mfunk9786]

I'm still waiting for you not to talk to me like you're my pompous college professor who's trolling me for a reason to justify an extra credit point.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm still waiting for you not to talk to me like you're my pompous college professor who's trolling me for a reason to justify an extra credit point.

If I changed my tone of voice, would this make any difference as to whether my arguments were right or not?

If not, you can continue to be angry and sarcastic, and I can continue to talk like however you think I am talking.

[mfunk9786]

You are a delight.

[Mr Sausage]

You are a delight.

True, I can't say I came here to make you like me. But neither did I come here to make petty personal comments.

This is a forum in which people take film seriously as a genuine art form. The idea that film should be treated as less than that, which your argument implies, flies in the face of what we're on this forum to do. Many members of this forum have excellent senses of humour, and yet they are still able to treat film with real seriousness and real thought, and do not buy the idea that it's "just", ie. merely, anything. You'll also find that these members don't talk about subjects they know very little about with the utmost self-confidence, and then become aggressive and personal when they are challenged on a subject.

If you want to have a serious discussion about whether morality applies to fictional narratives, I am all for that. But I am not interested in any more of what you've just given me above.

[mfunk9786]

I could either spend my morning exhaustively typing paragraph after paragraph trying to clarify what anyone who isn't being deliberately pithy can see clearly in my statement of "It's just a movie." - that I don't mean to diminish it, but I meant the expression in the context of what bearing the violence within the film has within real life and how these films are different than dead-serious historical pieces. I could continue to elaborate and elaborate on that and try to justify myself to someone who doesn't agree with and doesn't want to hear what I have to say anyway, and wants to continue to hear what he wants to hear in what I've got to say because it suits his desire to push back and push back over and over.

Or I could just tell you to go scratch.

[Mr Sausage]

You don't mean to diminish movies, and yet that's precisely what you are doing. "It's just a movie" is a reductionist statement. It always has been. It's always used to explain what movies, as a whole, are not, and why certain types of higher thinking shouldn't be applied to them. This is what you are saying, and if you don't intend to say that, you ought to drop this argument.

It makes no difference if a movie is a dead-serious historical piece or not. Why would the movie's seriousness or lack thereof have any bearing on the amount of moral quality it has? That does not follow. Something's moral quality is not based on its seriousness. You have not yet shown any reason why other people should feel this is so. The best you can do is throw your hands in the air and insist "it's just a movie." I agree that Tarantino's violence isn't immoral, but that has nothing to do with its seriousness or historicity.

Further, you haven't acknowledged the point that the exact thing you claim shouldn't be treated using morals or ethics--invented scenarios that could never be true and aren't meant to be--are the very thing used in ethics classes, ethics papers, and ethical experiments to determine rightness and wrongness. Indeed, "would it be ethical for the Jews to commit atrocities against the nazis as punishment for the holocaust?" is probably an actual ethical thought experiment somewhere. And whether this idea is treated seriously or not is irrelevant: it is an idea, so it is in the realm of ethics and morality. So either the history of western ethical thought is wrong, or you are.

That's interesting that you'd tell me I don't want to listen: so far, matrixschmatrix, knives, domino, and hearthesilence, ie. some of our best members, have been trying to get you to see the other sides of this issue and you've been entirely obdurate to that. If I had those guys all telling me I was missing something, I for sure would stop and really consider if I had actually thought this stuff through. I really don't think you have.

[mfunk9786]

Believe me, it's keeping me up at night. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can hardly breathe - knowing I'm being met with your disapproval is tearing me apart.

[Mr Sausage]

Can't think, either, apparently.

[mfunk9786]

Nope! My life is in ribbons thanks to you.

[L. Braun]

EDIT: I'm with you, Sausage, when it comes to films that put living, real people (or groups) in harm's way, even in the form of a fantasy scenario, in order to solely exploit the id of the viewer. As I said, if Tarantino made a current-day revenge fantasy about, I'll give another U.S. government example, Tea Party voters hunting down President Obama - that's morally repugnant to me because of the actual stakes involved.

Are you sure?

Well, I'm happy to report that this film gets a lot more right than it gets wrong. It meanders and moves along slowly, sure - but Goldthwait is so goddamn good at getting his parodies pitch perfect (in less capable hands, much like with World's Greatest Dad, this would be the ultimate cringe-fest) that the first act of the film (and any time the characters have the television on) feels more like documentary than spoof. The film as a whole is a bit more of a softball than I was expecting (all the big setpieces are in the trailer), but the performances of Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr (who is a dead ringer for a young Christina Ricci with every ounce of the raw talent) are worth your time. There are more moments of insight and fantastical wish fulfillment in this film than in most. If it was just a two minute short with Murray's rant about pedophilia in the thrift clothing shop alone, I'd call God Bless America a bona-fide success - consider the other hour and a half a bonus!

There's even a scene in GOD BLESS AMERICA where the protagonists shoot Tea Party protesters from a balcony...

Perhaps what you mean to say is that putting "real groups in harm's way" is morally repugnant to you only when you don't happen to agree with the targets.

[mfunk9786]

God Bless America does not take itself seriously for a millisecond, nor does it expect the audience to. Though I am pretty blown away to have pulled in a lurker who decided to search my post history, yikes

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Perhaps Adrian Martin can help us at this moment. It may have been linked before, but it seems on-point at this juncture.

This exchange between Mr. Sausage and mfunk9786 actually reminds me of a similar retreat found in Tarantino's more confrontational interviews and that (conveniently enough) can be seen frequently in internet forums that put a premium on "ooo, snap" comments: namely, the "it's-just-a-joke/-good-fun" defense. Humor is a devastating vehicle for sublimated rage and contempt, to which most posters here can probably attest--"devastating" because very few victims are boorish/brave enough to call people out on the actual sentiments lying behind it (so they feel compelled to suck it up and endure it like any victim of a bully), while baldly contemptuous statements are immediately decried (usually with commensurate contempt, except couched in humor or sarcasm, of course).

I would say the trouble with both retreats is that, in most cases, it's neither intended as fun nor as a joke (nor as just a movie) by the very person who would use this defense. We are a pretty bloodthirsty bunch (myself included) and the only way we can reconcile our own nastiness with the umbrage we like to take with others' sexist, homophobic, violent remarks in general is to fold our own nastiness in humor, so that we can say, in the event that we are called out, "Lighten up. It's just a joke." I feel like it's a case of us not being able to bear saying, "Right now, I feel like I want to kill you. Like most people, I won't, of course. But I'm having a really gruesome fantasy right now. It feels really good and really icky at the same time." If Tarantino had made a film that really grappled with this vicarious thrill rather than shut down and get all huffy when someone suggests there might be some very real nastiness embedded in a Jewish revenge fantasy, then there might be something a little less pornographic about his violence. But it is pornographic as it stands, and I'll just have to admit that I like pornography sometimes!

For those people who can't stand violence on film (often those, like my partner, who have experienced major forms of it firsthand), there is something monstrous about this temptation, but that only means that experience has made one uncomfortable around it, not that the temptation itself is necessarily deplorable or amoral. And she is nonetheless guilty of some of the more callow forms of anger-couched-in-sarcasm which, frankly, I find just as violent as a slasher film. But I'm guilty of that shit, too, and this, at least, is consoling. Also, I come from a neighborhood where being humiliated is worse than losing an eye, and I can tell you that, wherever you find an underserved community, you'll find this attitude. To say with awesome imperious contempt, "You are so benighted that you believe your mom's reputation is worth a bullet," is a sign of always having had support from family, friends, and a wallet. The less you have to lose, the more words matter.

I know it seems like I'm drifting radically between violence on film and humor as violence, but I guess I link them both in the sense they are equally sublimations of mean-spirited intentions, and sublimations are often felt as deeply as actual physical violence.

Having said all that, humor is certainly one step better than pretending, like fucking Jan Wahl, that you are simply, blissfully, morally free of all bloodthirsty temptations. Humor is at least a surreptitious signifier of our nastiness.

[L. Braun]

Though I am pretty blown away to have pulled in a lurker who decided to search my post history, yikes

Yikes indeed. Except that wasn't what I did. Having recently seen GOD BLESS AMERICA, your comment about the Tea Party reminded me of it, so I went to check out that thread to see what kind of reactions you and others might have had to the film.

God Bless America does not take itself seriously for a millisecond, nor does it expect the audience to.

But your argument was that you would find it morally reprehensible if a film about "real people (or groups) in harm's way" used "the form of a fantasy scenario in order to ... exploit the id of the viewer." Which is exactly what GOD BLESS AMERICA does. I wasn't trying to say that the film is or isn't immoral, only that a.) your reasoning was contradictory, or b.) you didn't actually feel how you thought you would when your hypothetical scenario was encased by a film you enjoyed.

[criterion10]

A rave review for the film from Brad Brevet over at Rope of Silicon.

[Kellen]

How does Django rank with QT's previous efforts?

[knives]

I'd say it at the very least is near his best.

[warren oates]

For me it's more in the middle. Some of his best work, some of his worst. And the whole doesn't hang together as satisfyingly as it did for me in other films.

[mfunk9786]

It's his best, as far as I'm concerned - tops the Kill Bill films, which I didn't know was possible.

[Michael]

There is NO way that Tarantino could top Pulp Fiction, truly an untouchable masterpiece. I haven't seen Django Unchained yet but I would be surprised if it's better than PF.

[mfunk9786]

It's better than Pulp Fiction. Honestly, I think the Kill Bill films are somewhat better than Pulp Fiction too, but maybe that's just me