March 13, 2013
django unchained is the help
So why is a tale about a manumitted slave/homicidal black gunslinger more palatable to a contemporary leftoid sensibility than either a similarly cartoonish one about black maids and their white employers or one that thematizes Lincoln’s effort to push the Thirteenth Amendment through the House of Representatives? The answer is, to quote the saccharine 1970s ballad, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings.” Wiener’s juxtapositions reflect the political common sense that gives pride of place to demonstrations of respect for the “voices” of the oppressed and recognition of their suffering, agency, and accomplishments. That common sense informs the proposition that providing inspiration has social or political significance. But it equally shapes the generic human-interest “message” of films like The Help that represent injustice as an issue of human relations—the alchemy that promises to reconcile social justice and capitalist class power as a win/win for everyone by means of attitude adjustments and deepened mutual understanding.more from Adolph Reed, Jr. at nonsite here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 08:05 AM | Permalink
Comments
That is the silliest thing I have read in a while. "It’s as if Jim Crow had nothing to do with cheap labor and slavery had nothing to do with making slave owners rich." The film is pretty dang explicit about how rich the slave owners are. And the article just goes downhill from there.
The fundamental difference between "The Help" and "Django Unchained" is that "The Help" preens as A Film of Great Social & Political Import. "Django" has no such pretensions.
Posted by: Anderson | Mar 13, 2013 11:26:43 AM
Terrible, terrible piece. "American popular culture has once again failed to live up to my demands that it be a relentless Marxist analysis! Why isn't all human cultural production edifying socialist realism, rather than these obnoxious films that require a sense of humor and the ability to understand irony?"
Also, TLDR.
Posted by: Corwin | Mar 14, 2013 4:15:56 PM
The problem I had with Django Unchained was aesthetic not ideological.
Mixing tragic and comedic elements can work, but, for me, not in this case. There is nothing compatible with comedy about a scene in which a slave is torn apart by dogs.
I realise Tarantino is playing with genres, tastes and stereotypes, and being ironic, but the emotional taste left in the mouth by this movie makes you wonder if Tarantino has Asperger's Syndrome. Not that I have anything against people with that condition.
Posted by: Uebel | Mar 14, 2013 8:24:07 PM
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