Introduction
The films I will be discussing about in this essay are all about race or have a high representation about race. They are; Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012), Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2010), Wind River (Taylor Sheridan, 2017) & Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017). The only one that isn’t high on issues with race is Wind River. I chose this for a reason, since all films have a heavy issue with race I decided to pick something that lightens it a bit, just to show the contrast. The film has no discrimination but heavy use of Native Indians. Django Unchained is a historic film about slavery, Get Out and Wind River will count as contemporary. The essay will be structured into little sections, one for each film. Starting with Django. The reasons why I chose both of my own movies is because one is a little heavy on racism and the other isn’t. I want to see if there is any huge difference.
Django Unchained
Django Unchained is a film about slavery in 1858, about a slave who becomes free and changes through-out the film. It has heavy representation of both black and white people while also having both representation of genders. Black people are treated as slaves and inferior to the white people who act superior, they own black people and treat them worse than animals. Although, there are certain black people in this film that almost have the same privilege, let’s take Samuel L Jackson’s role for example, the character is black but acts like a white male to the other black people, whom are slaves but Leonardo’s character is on top of him and he listens to him, he’s sort of in-between.
The film has the alvarado theory in which they make certain characters made for a purpose, wether they’re dangerous, pitied, exotic or humouress. The film definitely has dangerous and pitied from scenes of all white people thinking black people are dangerous, like the scene of Django riding through town on a horse and everyone is looking at him weirdly and then from our eyes we see to pity them, we feel sorry for them and glad that this isn’t a thing now.
The role of Django changes through-out the film, at first he’s this weak slave who can’t defend himself, cold, lost and slaved. The film uses a spotlight lighting effect to show how bad his feet look when they are chained and barefoot, it makes us feel pity for him. The chain suggests us that he is of course been captured and slaved and walking many miles barefoot in the freezing cold. Once he gets free, he becomes more confident, wears better clothes. This is clear to see when Django hunts down the Shaffer brothers, he walks into the ranch in a bright blue outfit with upbeat music in the background. This shows that he has become more powerful than he has ever been and this is shown in the camera being lowered down to show that he is taller and that people are looking up to him. As he continues, he starts to think he’s better than the slaves, starts mocking them, until he realises that he met his counterpart, Samuel’s role who foreshadows that it could be him in the future and how he’s acting, he then starts to realise then and becomes humble.
There’s a lot of codes of conventions, some are as plain as they can be, from white people showing to be racist, etc. Blood to show that it’s violent. These are both connotation and denotation. There is decoding theory in Samuel L Jackson’s character in which makes the audience think about his story since it’s so weird and confuses audiences. A scene at the start where Django riding through town and the camera was on the balcony, then showing his head passing through a noose, which implies that that’s what people want to do to him and that black people were almost always hanged. This is classed as symbolism and also a connotation as he is in danger in this town. This is also polysemy as the scene has many different meanings.
In Candyland, it’s a mix between black people being treated poor or well. Most black people there are slaves who are whipped, beaten, etc. Then you have some black people who are maids who just clean the house, you again have Samuel’s role who acts like a white person. One character is called Broomhilda, Django’s wife. She is dressed in nice clothes and is sent to guest’s room for sex but doesn’t have a choice and has to serve the white male.
The film is set a few years before the civil war, which was done to stop slavery, which happened. Reference here for backup; “https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/american-civil-war-history” Source is reliable as it is from History.com, a secure website.
Four Lions
Four Lions is about four extremist Muslim men trying to become suicide bombers. The film’s approach is that they are stupid and silly, basically taking the mick out of them. They are shown this way because it is making humour of a bad thing, but to also show that these extremists are actually stupid and don’t think about situations where people can be severely hurt but only care for themselves.
The film’s representation on race and culture can go one of two ways, one being that they do have a good representation of Muslim culture as there are plenty of other Muslims in the film acting like normal human beings, not doing anything extremist wise, just playing football in the park, going to social clubs and praying in their house. The other can be that they are assuming all Muslim people are suicide bombers but that isn’t true. It’s just a film about Muslim suicide bombers who 3 of 4 are actually Muslim. There is one white main character who has been radicalised and gets annoyed when the other members speak in their language that he doesn’t understand. But, he believes his faith is better than all of them as that’s how he’s portrayed in the movie. He wants to blow up a mosque full of Muslims because he’s white. The other members, who are Muslims definitely don’t want to do that as they will not go to heaven for taking one of them.
They make out the main character. Omar, as a really likable character, he has a wife and a kid and he acts normal around them and his wife seems okay with him being a suicide bomber which is confusing. But that is what suicide bombers truly believe, if they go out like that then they will go to heaven so that’s probably why the wife seems okay with it.
The film talks about events that have happened in the past decade of it happening. They speak about the London bombings in 2005 and speak about 911 from 2001.
References to back these events up;
“https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33253598” This is about he Suicide Bombings in London 2005, source is reliable as it is from the BBC.
“http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/the_september_11th_terrorist_attacks” This is about the event of 911 that happened in 2001. Again the source is reliable since it is from the BBC, a respected news outlet in the UK.
Wind River –
Wind River is a film about recent times set around an Indian reservation in Wyoming. This is a common issue within these types of areas because of the lack of law and open areas. The film show’s their culture, their behaviour and overall just what some people do. A girl who was found dead in the snow, died from frostbite but also was raped and beaten mystery needed to be solved.
The film of course has many different representations of race/ethnicity or culture. All of the main cast apart from three people are Native American. One of those are very familiar with the location and has even raised a family of his own there while the other one is from Los Vegas as part of the FBI and is not familiar with their culture and goes into the crime scene with normal clothes and could possibly die as the weather is deadly snow. These show as connotations as she’s clueless and unfamiliar by people.
The film often show’s off culture and interests by showing the audience all the decorations around the house, from statues and pictures of native people on horses to cool designs and even how they dress, their hair and how they speak their own slang.
There are loads of wide shots showing off the vast open areas showing barely any civilisation unlike most countries white people would be living in.
I think this film has some sort of reverse alvarado theory. In which in this case means the white people in this film are actually made out to be dangerous perhaps. There’s a scene where the main characters go visit the girl’s brother who refer to the girl’s boyfriend as a “cracker”. This could show that the people in this land don’t approve or like most white people as they find them dangerous, which brings us up to the murderers. Who were all white and are acting all dangerous and are using this place to take advantage of as they are feared of perhaps.
Get Out –
This film is about a man who has a girlfriend as is meeting her parents, but is scared that they might be racist. He goes to their house and realises that there are all weird things happening, from all black caretakers that are acting weird and the parents also acting strange. He then finds out that they have been taking black people, doing surgery on them to switch over their brains to the black people because they believe that their bodies are more advanced than theirs,
One scene in the film is when they are on their way to the girl’s parent’s house and they get pulled over by a cop, the girl automatically assumes that he got pulled because he is black and then starts to argue with the cop. This shows hidden meanings that people assume that she’s not racist and hides the true meaning that is shown at the end.
Another little hidden meaning I saw on a YouTube video which can be active audience theory is that when they get into the house, the parents show the man around, they walk into the kitchen and then talks about the basement. They say “you wouldn’t want to go down there, there’s black mould everywhere.’ And in the YouTube video it is the director answering questions about the film and they ask him about that quote referring the black mould as the people they use for hollow moulds for use when ready. He said “Yeah, that’s what I meant, I did that….” in a sarcastic tone as he didn’t really mean it like that. This this is good audience theory as it makes the audience decode everything.
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBvcngHRTFg&t=533s” The part starts at 6:38 and is posted by Vanity Fair on the 1st of December 2017.
From all the information I found on this essay, I found that always using stereotypes is not a good thing, it only works in certain situations and I won’t be doing that in my work as it doesn’t introduce anything positive.
Harvard Referencing –
Django Unchained (2012) Directed by Tarantino, Distributed by The Weinstein Company
Four Lions (2010) Directed by Morris, Distributed by Optimum Releasing
Wind River (2017) Directed by Sheridan, Distributed by The Weinstein Company
Get Out (2017) Directed by Peele, Distributed by Universal Pictures
TV and Film Production 