I don’t know about you, but a movie featuring mildly thought out black female slave characters who are repeatedly raped at a club for white slave owners is not my idea of a great film. I don’t want to see a female slave raped in front of her husband. I don’t want to see her tortured and degraded…or locked in a cage naked. OH and I’m not too keen about this content combined with a whole lot of other blaxploitation style slave torture (Whippings, beatings, etc).
What am I talking about? Django Unchained. The upcoming Quentin Tarantino film set to be released in Dec 2012 that black women need to start protesting now. I mean really!! We need to get on this, SIS. (I’m not going to even start on how I’m not for this movie coming out the month after Obama wins…again. Let’s be real, no black person will want to see this if he loses either.) Remember when Disney tried to give the first Black Princess the name “Maddy” (Too close to Mammy)? Yep, WE got that changed and that wasn’t as bad as this.
Some sistas are ready to organize: “If all goes as the leaked script has planned for this “comedy”, audiences will get to see the character “Broomhilda”, an enslaved Black woman, naked for almost her entire time on screen, flashing her breasts on a slave auction block, and graphically raped – repeatedly – throughout the movie, at least 4 or 5 times, by individual and groups of white men. It’s also reported that this character is degraded in other ways throughout the movie, like being doused in mud, locked in a cage, and raped in front of her husband. Supposedly, all in good fun. And judging from Tarantino’s history of extremely graphic and offensive imagery in his past “comedic” works such as “Pulp Fiction”, the imagery used to degrade Black women in this so-called “comedy” will not be lighthearted fare. ” (Stop The Media Smear Campaign Against Black Women)
The script leaked and the reviews are all over the internet from those who have seen it. Sure, Sure, a script can change and this one should if what I’m reading is correct. Jamie Fox, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kerry Washington have been named as potential actors interested (Here is a list of the roles in the movie). I don’t think they would sign on to something as terrible as what I’ve read, but you never know. The economy is bad. Hell, Jamie did star in “Booty Call”. He’s apparently up for the lead role. Funny thing, people who’ve read the script are saying that the lead is not the “Mandigo”/Nat Turner role people think it’s going to be. He’s playing second fiddle most of the film to a German bounty hunter who takes him under his wing. Think of Tommy Lee Jones working with Will Smith’s character in Men in Black…but make Will a slave. Yeah, something like that. A slave revolt/retribution movie with a white male lead as the star. That’s Hollywood.
Shadow and Act says: “I’ve Read Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” Script, And, Well, It’s Not Nat Turner’s Revolt…”
“Speaking of its blaxploitation influences… regarding the lead female character in this, named Broomhilda, Django’s slave wife, whom he’s separated from, and seeks. She’s the lead female in the film, but her part is limited to really just physicalities. She has the most screen time of any other woman in the film, which is why I call her the lead female character, but, really, there’s no Shosanna in this one, as there was in Inglorious Basterds. The black female “lead” here doesn’t get the same kind of dignified treatment that Tarantino gave Shosanna. Not even close. Yes, I know it’s a different time altogether, but, I’m sure he could have afforded Broomhilda some complexities, and maybe even made her a heroine in her own right.
There are some 4 or 5 scenes in which the she’s, shall we say, “exposed”… i.e. naked; and they felt gratuitous to me; 2 in which she’s raped by white men. When we first meet her, she’s on the auction block and asked to bare her breasts to potential buyers; later, she’s chased through a hotel, through hallways, and lobbies, etc, by a slave master, completely naked, after being woken up from sleep, with a whip across her naked body; and still later, she’s locked up naked in a steel box as punishment for trying to run away. Yes, I’m sure these are all scenarios that very well likely could have played out at the time; however, Tarantino could have opted to depict her in another light altogether, but instead chose this less flattering, exploitative one.”
I feel a campaign a-brewing to get the makers of this flick to scrap some of that exploitative sexual violence towards black women. Oh and I’m sure that people (Spike Lee) will be mad about use of the N-word. It will be Roots all over again for some of you, since it’s a period piece. If people thought there were a lot of N-words thrown around in “Jackie Brown” or “Pulp Fiction”, they haven’t seen anything yet.
I hope the script is a dry run because the concept his potential. Hey, I’m up for a slaves vs. masters revenge movie. Sure Quentin, show or all the brutality and violence. Put it in people’s faces. However, historical accuracy doesn’t call for this level of sexual violence against black women. It’s not funny. It’s in bad taste.
