Django Unchained

What is violence? We typically speak about it as the forceful harm of a human caused by another human. Tellingly, however, we do not view violence as an absolute evil. Self-defense for instance can be justifiable for non-pacifists – and the pacifist who relents to violence ad hoc does not believe in the value of life-itself, making them predictably a minority in the audience.

Violence seems to be a simple solution to every human problem. Yet every human problem is fundamentally one of human action. This paradoxically is one that arrives at violence. In other words, violence is seen as a solution to violence, in the logic of most people’s morality.

Mr. Tarantino is renowned for his study of violence in film, in which he uses it self-righteously. All problems are solved with fittest morals, which necessarily are possessed by the most violent. It is not strange to look at every one of his protagonists as merely a successful violent tyrant – what escapes the viewership in our captivation of the gore rained down is the actual virtue of any of the characters seen on film. They all lack any.

In this sense, Mr. Tarantino is the most genius postmodern filmmaker of our time. The ad absurdum of relativism is in a world, and a society, with the Nietzschean ubermensch revealed naively - to those unsophisticated in the appreciation of Nietzsche’s meditation – at his logical end: might makes right.

This is not to say Mr. Tarantino agrees with the morality he depicts. But it is alarming to see the adoration of the “glory” he convenes upon. His worlds are inevitably self-destructive. This includes destroying a southern pre-Civil War plantation.

We possess the premise that slavery is evil, as an indication that the retribution a former slave has upon the white folk who view him a sub-human is justified. And agreeably, for the majority of the film, we see someone using violence within the norms of society – it is at least “tolerable”. But soon the postmodern ubermensch that Mr. Tarantino adores screams out, and turns the film onto itself, with absolutely nothing accomplished.

This may seem peculiar. Does Django not achieve his ends? Simple-mindedly, yes he does. Yet wisely, we see the evanescence of his success: in the path of his destructiveness elicits an immune response from the environment which tries to preserve order and harmony.

Thus, clear black-and-white violent “justice” – solving human problems begot by human action - reveals the difficulties in human morality, and the question on the justification of brute murder Django conducts. It actually solves nothing, yet provides the illusion of virtue to an audience which lacks no sense of it - true virtuosity does not laugh at the execution of a white woman whose only participation in slavery is in being incubated in southern society, and is instead gloriously appalled at the humanity of Django.

Grade: B+