Beloved, by Toni Morison, and
Django Unchained, by Quentin Tarantino, display the pain, scarring, and separation
of slavery. The two productions, Beloved and Django, tell very different
stories. However the underlying issue of slavery does the same thing for both
works. These two works use slavery to create a very believable and real,
graphic sense of stress and horror. Although these works use rather disturbing
images, the brutality in history creates “ moments where this convex history
works brilliantly, like when Tarantino depicts the K.K.K. a decade prior to its
actual formation in order to thoroughly ridicule its members’ (literally)
veiled racism.” As stated by The Networker Movie review.
Django, an ex-slave, motivated by
the brutality of his memories of brutal slavery and his longing for his slave
wife which he has been separated from, even with his freedom, feels incomplete
and separate from hos love. Sethe, a former slave, has experienced the loss of
her husband, her friends, family, and most importantly, her own children. Because
of these losses, Sethe searches for completion in the form of temporary joy,
the idea of a family, and even love. Meanwhile, Django searches for his love on
a journey of ruthless revenge as he travels throughout major plantations as an
undercover bounty hunter who is very capable and willing to kill. These two characters,
therefore, are motivated by the constricts and brutal boundaries of separation and
incompletion that slavery has placed on them.
Both characters long for a sense of
love that they once had. Sethe’s love
for her deceased husband, murdered children, and missing family members drives Sethe
to accept characters like Paul D, an old friend, directly into her life as a
potential lover. Meanwhile, Sethe accepts Beloved, and extremely mysterious and
powerful ghost of Sethe’s dead offspring, directly into her home. The decisions
made by Sethe are nevertheless strange and questionable. However, her decisions
come only from her terribly large void of depression. Many events and factors
including Sethe’s intercourse with Paul D, Sethe’s automatic acceptance of
Beloved as her own, and Sethe’s rare bliss during her ice skating and carnival
escapades, indicate that Sethe’s desperation for fulfillment causes her to
accept any sign of happiness of completion into her own life. Django works more
brutally, perhaps, and more linearly than Sethe in filling his incomplete void.
While Sethe takes bits and pieces of people in order to fill the missing
aspects of her life, Django tracks Broomhilda (his wife) through his work as a
bounty hunter and ruthlessly plows through people in his way. Sethe’s scattered
past and widespread devastation caused by slavery leads her to widespread insecurity
and many various miseries. Django, however, misses one person and one person
only.
What these two characters share the
most is the extent of their sacrifice for those they love. Sethe kills her
children rather than having them experience slavery. Django voluntarily puts
himself in front of brutal, racist tortures in order to feel closer to finding
his wife. Beloved allows herself to starve for the idea of making her children’s
ghost happier. Django kills a hilarious amount of twisted racists just to secure
his love. And both have horrible scars to remember their stories by.
To read more about the Newyorker's take on the inclusoon of brutal torture images in populare media, search the following link: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/tarantino-unchained
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