Life is a stereotype of a life is a stereotype of a life is a stereotype of a life...........

Do you really think a movie made by the man who made "Pulp Fiction" will diminish the aforementioned 150 year anniversary.

You don't have much faith in people's ability to take anything that man does with a pinch of salt. Possibly great entertainment and a great advertisement for the firearms industry, but not a downer in the way you espouse.

It would be like a gay man getting upset at "La Cage Aux Folles" PALEASE.

Did we see the same movie, Kellie?

"the film is filled with a number of caricatures that beg to be deconstructed."

I'm Italian American -- ever see The Godfather, The Sopranos...?

Yes, the film has "characters". Do you think Candie's pathetic phrenology demonstration at the dinner table was enlightening to any in the audience who had never heard such justification for imprisonment, slavery and murder?

"Not a single black character is complicated or multi-dimensional" -- really?
How "dimensional" is one supposed to appear when Mandingo fighting or coiled naked in the hotbox for weeks? How "dimensional" is someone seen begging for his wife not to be killed for trying to escape inhumanity at its worst?

You clearly had nothing functionally to do with the '50s or '60s heroic challenges to what even Lincoln at one time accepted via the Fugitive Slave Act.

How many folks in our audiences do you think knew about the hotbox at most every plantation? How many knew of the conjugal shed, where masters went for pleasure or to breed new slaves from the already-enslaved women. they fancied?

Tarantino has done, in one crazy-ass movie, what Gone with the Wind or PBS never even attempted -- educate whites on what was really done to stolen African humans, both by slave owner and slave sellers.

Then there's the absurd critique of Waltz' character having said to Django: "I feel responsible for you.” upon which you comment: "Almost instantly, Django is infantilised, inspired by the German story of a princess in need of rescue."

Now who's raising ethnic jabs, Kellie? And, "infantilized" (excuse my US English) -- really? A human, enslaved, driven to walk chained across our country, has knowledge valued by another, so that person saves his life, gives him freedom and training to match any white, and seeing the result a success would not say he feels "responsible" for that newly-capable person? Really? Tarantino should not have asked Waltz to show realization that he'd both freed another and given that person knowledge & training that could also get him killed -- that realization would not come out of any trainer's mind as a feeling of grave responsibility?

Have your parents ever said they felt "responsible" for you? Did that "infantilize" you?

Then, finally, there's

Tarantino "also perpetuates the same old stereotypes of black men as characters to be feared, not loved. Django is only out for himself and his girl. He is not an abolitionist. He is not political. He does not free slaves."

Really? The slave, torn apart by dogs in front of all, simply because he didn't want to engage in the sadistically genteel tradition of parlor fighting to the death, was a perpetuation of the myth that all "black men" are to be feared? Django didn't "free" slaves? Candie's were certainly freed by him, spectacularly. How do you know what he did in the story's sequel?
;]
But, the most surprisingly irresponsible comment you made, Kellie, was:

Django "is not an abolitionist. He is not political. He does not free slaves."

Django is a slave before the movie starts and until Waltz frees him. He could never have been an "Abolitionist".

F. Douglas (black) didn't help John Brown (white), with his fatal attack on the armory that actually got things moving for black Americans. Does that mean Frederick Douglass wasn't an effective abolitionist? You know he long lamented his holding back. Only a few abolitionists did the heavy lifting that got so many Americans killed, but freed us all from the absurd theatrical fiction of southern plantation life dependent on human slaves.

If anyone has done something to educate us all, it's Quentin. If anyone did things to effectively help all Americans, black & white, out of slavery's evil Kabuki play, it was Mary Lincoln. Remember, Lincoln did not run on freeing slaves. Lincoln signed the Fugitive Slave Act that effectively made all our country slave territory.

Remember, that Lincoln also supported exporting all blacks to some country of their own. It was Mary Lincoln who threatened Abraham so clearly and effectively that he followed through with the Emancipation Proclamation and completion of the Civil War -- the worst we've ever experienced, anywhere.

This piece''s finale is as absurd as any, relating to any abused ethnicity>

"Yet if filmmakers still cannot tell the story of black people as real people with agency, and without the aid of white superiority, "

How pompous. How devious.

As a 'white' made from many Euro/Brit immigrant ethnicities, I never felt the hurts that pure Irish, pure Polish, pure Japanese, pure Chinese, African and more, experienced in my country, but this movie, flowing from Tarantino's crazy mind, makes abundantly clear to anyone that:

a) black people were and are real

b) there never was reason to believe in white superiority

c) African Americans, blacks, whatever, can succeed without white aid

and d) that the picayune nature of the Old South's addiction to slavery simply exposed the fact that there are humans able to be inhumane, whether white or black, and very few writers have the guts to expose its racist calumny, even as it persists today.

That last is an important lesson for anyone, anywhere. Che buono Tarantino.

Gee and here I was thinking this may be another escapist movie full of the usual Tarrantino blood & guts.

But apparently it's a metaphor for black/white stereotypes.

Perhaps I should take another look at Adam Sandler's movies to see where I missed the psychological interplay and in-depth analysis of modern society.

Lighten up Madame. This is Sergio Leone meets Monty Python, not an earnest thesis on slavery. The Klan scene with the hoods is one of the funniest I've seen since Mel Brook's farting cowboys

Whoa!! Ms Jackson is dead on. Time and time again, the white saviour is whipped out on screen and it's a tired Hollywood cliche'.
To some, it may just very well be pure Tarantino escapism and we do know he loves a good stereotype or two. The problem is, that to others it isn't just escapism, it's reinforcement of the same old coloured oppression.
Articles such as the one written by Ms jackson above, NEED to be written and you can take from it what you like, but it doesn't mean that her points aren't valid. I can't help but wonder that if the movie strictly portrayed black hero vs white villain whether the same commenters would be arguing for 'pure escpaist movie going' or may hold a different opinion.
Look at The Blind Side. I will admit to never seeing it because it was marketed as white saviour helps poor black boy. Look at who got nominated for this film. If the nominations of honours for acting are anything to go by, it is quite evident that Hollywood is still plagued by white privilege.
I would argue that the point of this conversation article is to higlight this privilege, and regardless of whether people are capable of realising this themselves or not, it's about highlighting the bigger picture.