Spike Lee Hates Django Unchained, Has Not Seen Django Unchained

01/03/2013 12:00 pm by

django unchained Spike Lee Hates Django Unchained, Has Not Seen Django Unchained

Best movie of 2012? I’d go with Django Unchained. It’s basically every movie Quentin Tarantino‘s ever made + Blazing Saddles. Gory, at times unsettling, and at times uproariously funny, Django is both a crowd-pleasing revenge flick and a scathing look at the inhumanity of white Southerners in the 1800′s.

It’s about slavery. As such, the N-word gets used. A lot.

This did not sit well with director Spike Lee. Prior to the film’s release, Lee tweeted his displeasure with the movie that he hadn’t seen:

Screen shot 2013 01 03 at 6.33.10 AM Spike Lee Hates Django Unchained, Has Not Seen Django Unchained

Lee has a history of chastising Tarantino for using the n-word, going back to Jackie Brown. When that film was released, Lee called out Tarantino for “excessive use” of the word. Lee, who made the movies Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X, and Miracle at St. Anna, which all featured racist white people and even some black people using the n-word (but that’s totally different. Why? Because it just is), has been roundly chided by other filmmakers and actors for his stance on Django. Jamie Foxx, Samuel L. Jackson and others have responded publicly, saying that since the movie takes place in the South in the 1800′s, and the main character is a freed slave who is trying to rescue his slave wife from slaveowners, it is to be expected that slavery will be depicted in the movie (and it is, in pretty nauseating detail) and that the n-word will be thrown about (and it is, and SPOILER ALERT pretty much everyone who says it gets blown away by Django).

Lee also objects to the movie’s use of American slavery as a plot point. Lee, who directed Inside Man - a genre film about a Jewish family who seeks vengeance against a group of Nazi-sympathizing bankers…you know what? This is making me tired. In a related story, my daughter hates Brussels sprouts even though he’s never tried them. Also, she likes My Little Pony but thinks that the Care Bears are stupid.

SIGH.

So what do you think about this whole mess? Does Lee have a point, or is he being unreasonable?

Source

Share
pin it button Spike Lee Hates Django Unchained, Has Not Seen Django Unchained
About Jason Avant

Jason presides over a vast blogging empire that includes DadCentric and his personal site, Pet Cobra. When he's not blogging, he can be found surfing or skateboarding or just gazing out his window, muttering incoherently about someone or something named Rosebud.

Filed Under: Best Of MamaPop, Celebrities Say The Darndest Things, Internet, Movies, Popular, Twitter Drama Tagged With: , , , ,


From Our Partners

  • http://twitter.com/Anne_Hogan Anne Hogan

    I Mostly Think I Can’t Take Him Seriously If He Insists On Capitalizing Every Word In His Tweets.

    • http://twitter.com/highlyirritable Jeni M

      And also talks like a telegram. Full Stop.

  • Sueblob

    My feeling, as a Certified White Person, is that white people have no business questioning any way black people feel about slavery or depictions thereof, especially depictions by white people. I’m willing to admit that, had my family been used as human livestock, raped, beaten, burned and killed for 400 years, my level of emotionality in discussing slavery might be a little high. I think white people are best off shutting up and listening for a while.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635682430 Jason Avant

      I tend to agree, but I also think that Lee’s opinion of this particular film is uninformed, since he hasn’t seen it. There’s no sugarcoating of the white Antebellum South in the movie, no Rhetts or Scarletts; Tarantino shows some pretty awful stuff, and his feelings about practitioners of slavery are crystal clear. He did a lengthy interview with The Root’s Henry Louis Gates about the movie; it’s a great read: http://www.theroot.com/views/tarantino-unchained-part-2-n-word?wpisrc=obinsite

  • Christine

    I also hate brussel sprouts (without trying them) and I’m 27 (going on 4).

    • http://www.facebook.com/traceygaughranperez Tracey Gaughran-Perez

      I approve this message. “Little balls of hell” – THAT.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635682430 Jason Avant

        Shred, em, saute’ them with bacon, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and a pinch or two of sugar.

        • http://www.facebook.com/traceygaughranperez Tracey Gaughran-Perez

          My parents forced me to eat them in my younger years, and now I have some kind of psychological/mental aversion that reason can’t cut through. Though I appreciate the effort. :)

          • sumosez

            Never cared for them as a kid. As an adult, I figured it was time to put on my big boy pants and eat some damn brussel sprouts because my tastes had changed and they were probably fine, right? Wrong. They are bitter little balls of gas-inducing bitterness. And if you’re telling people they are good when mixed with bacon, vinegar, and sugar, that just telegraphs that they must start out tasting like crap because what vegetable wouldn’t taste better with bacon, vinegar and sugar? I mean, if the first step to make something edible has to be “add meat-candy” then that’s a red flag.

  • Mike

    I’m a big fan of both Tarrantino and Spike Lee as filmmakers, and I too enjoyed Django Unchained, but like Suebob I feel uncomfortable – as a white dude – criticizing Spike Lee for reacting as he did. His experiences in life as a black man undoubtedly mean that he looks at this situation through a different lens than us.

    I also think it is a bit strange Tarrantino used the word so much in the film when, according to the admittedly small research I did, the n-word wasn’t commonly used until the late 19th century. Of course, Q is really more concerned with making a pastiche of 70s era Blaxsploitation films, so the use of the word is perhaps more fitting for that than a truthful depiction of US history. And I can see that is upsetting to Spike – or any African American – when dealing with such a sensitive subject.

    Lastly, I don’t think the Inside Man comparison works entirely. That film was written by Russell Gewitz, who is Jewish. Spike directed his work. Quentin wrote Django, and is responsible for the words and visuals/presentation.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635682430 Jason Avant

      I guess I have to question the idea that certain topics – slavery, race relations, the Holocaust – should be verboten to artists who don’t have an ethnic or even personal connection to them. Spielberg took on slavery and Southern racism in two movies, “Amistad” and “The Color Purple”; Oliver Stone looked at the Vietnam War and it’s aftermath through the eyes of a Vietnamese woman in “Heaven and Earth”; Roland Jaffe’s “The Killing Fields” was a pretty unflinching look at the Pol Pot genocide. All three directors were white guys; should they not have made those films? Now, “Django” is what it is – a shoutout to 70′s blaxploitation films and Sergio Leone Westerns, and is in no way Tarantino’s attempt to make a definitive “slavery movie”. In the same way, “Inglourious Basterds” wasn’t QT’s attempt at one-upping “Saving Private Ryan” – in fact, they’re both very similar, revenge fantasy flicks that both exaggerate two of the greatest examples of modern evil for melodramatic purposes. And in doing so, he avoids nuance or even what some would call revisionist sympathy for his Nazis and slavers – they’re evil motherfuckers, and they get what’s coming to ‘em.

      • Mike

        I don’t think there is a problem with artists making films that they aren’t ethnically or personally connected to, but there should probably be some reverence in the telling. For Tarrantino to take such a serious and painful part of African-American history and use it to tell a typical Tarrantino film with nods to blaxsploitation, Spaghetti Westerns, revenge flicks, and his usual quirky soundtrack (while playing loose with history), probably isn’t going to sit well with a lot of African Americans. Just because the hero is an African American doesn’t mean he gets a free pass to do whatever he likes. I can see the reaction being “Where the hell does this white guy get off treating our history so irreverently?” Personally, I think it is an often wildly creative film and very daring, but Q had to have known it was going to ruffle feathers.

        Back to your original point though, I think the anachronistic use of the n-word is problematic, and a big part of Spike’s problem with it.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635682430 Jason Avant

          There’s nothing anachronistic about his use of this horrific word. In the U.S., it dates back to around 1620; John Rolfe used it to describe African slaves shipped to Virginia. It was used throughout the 1800′s, especially in the South; the movie takes place in 1858, shortly before the Civil War. It’s been an ugly part of the American lexicon for a while.

          • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635682430 Jason Avant

            And I’d really recommend you read the interview I linked to in my comment to Sueblob below.

  • the grumbles

    So Spike Lee obviously has a history of disliking Tarantino and blah blah blah, but for what it’s worth I wont see Django either and I’m 98% comfortable saying I wouldn’t like it because, rascism issues aside, I think Tarantino is an obnoxious asshole. end of opinion.

  • Greg Barbera

    Spike Lee is a kook.

  • FreshConrete

    I think everyone is over reacting, especially Spike Lee. People are going around trying to solve racism, So what the movie has the N word? Black People Say it, Whit people say it, if we had rainbow colored people they would say it too. Point is, there will always be racist/racism, the sooner we stop trying to solve how people think and start dealing with what they are allowed to do the better.

  • Bryan Foreman

    I, too, think everyone is overreacting. Brussels sprouts aren’t that bad.

  • Davi

    I’m black and thought Django was an awesome movie. Spike lee made one good movie: Malcom X. He’s just a bitter black man. The tyler perry franchise is awesome too.