[quote=“Politzania, post:139, topic:645150”]
[ul]
[li]King Schultz - naming him Schwartz would have been too obvious? QT went with King, tho (MLK?)[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Remember, too: the gunslinger’s name is Doctor King.
I never bought that tooth on top of his wagon. Just looked totally anachronistic.
I took it as Tarantino’s little homage to the exploitation film Mandingo. Which if you haven’t seen it…well…you probably shouldn’t. But as an indictment of the ugliness of slavery it makes Django Unchained look tame. All in the most skin-crawlingest exploitative fashion ever.
Good article from Slate on whether “Mandingo fighting” was real.
Yeah, I didn’t think so. These aren’t roosters – a $1000 investment in a slave is not something you’d toss away for your amusement.
I thought about that as well. It did seem off, unless Schultz had an amazing faith in Django’s abilities.
I couldn’t tell from the movie, was mandingo fighting presented as purely for amusement or was gambling involved? Potential gambling profits would change the equation (not saying it actually happened, but if had I’m sure gambling would have been creating the market).
Trailer here, at the site called Trailers from Hell with commentary which confirms this in the most loquacious form possible. (“If you’re a fan of appalling, offensive, and terribly racist films, it’s actually sort of hilariously entertaining — in the most repulsive way possible.”)
That sort of makes me want to see it, except for the, you know, the appalling and racist part.
And it was directed by the guy who brought us Soylent Green!
I don’t think there’s ever been a sport that didn’t have gambling involved. But in this case, the owner is risking more than the bet on the match – he’s risking his investment in the player, too.
Yes, but that’s true of plenty of competitions and forms of gambling.
If you lose a bet on a football game, they don’t also disband the team and sell off all their equipment.
The single slave fight in the film happened to be to the death. There’s no reason to think it was so every time. Candie himself says he expects five fights of his slaves. That’s clearly not five straight wins, because he discusses (at length) how his number two and three fighters compare to his champion. The implication is that they aren’t undefeated in my view.
I would also expect that (in this fictional world of his) that fights normally have an audience greater than just the two owners. The fight in the film seemed to be a private affair. My point being that the gambling action would typically be sufficient to cover any losses.
Neither would mandingo fighting if you’re good enough to win most of the time and have enough money to cover short term losses and the ability to buy another slave.
People do stupid stuff with their money all the time. And there are plenty of competitions that carry significant risk of completely losing the investment in what is used for competition.
I’m not at all saying that mandingo fighting happened, just that “it would be potentially pretty expensive” doesn’t strike me as a very good reason why it didn’t.
Two updates:
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There are now action figures: http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/08/16413384-django-unchained-action-figures-go-on-sale-stir-up-controversy?lite
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Seeing that one of them is the character Butch - Candie’s enforcer - reminded me to check and confirm something I suspected: James Remar plays two roles - one of the Speck brothers at the beginning, and also Butch. Curious.
That’s not unheard of for Tarantino. Michael Parks and Gordon Liu both had multiple parts in the Kill Bill movies.
I was so disappointed when I found out this movie wasn’t about Django Reinhardt. I was expecting a grittier version of “Sweet and Lowdown”.
I always laugh at these “controversies” over toys being made of unkid friendly properties. Those “toys” aren’t for kids or even marketed to kids. They are for adult collectors. And they are dolls of characters, the whole film critic’s point about toys of slaves and slaveholders somehow being “wrong” seems like a personal failure on his part to understand the difference between reality and fantasy.
Knowing Tarantino does recast it didn’t strike me as odd… the fact that Django reacted to the resemblance seemed like something would come of it.
Jumping back to the dolls, it would be cool if Butch came with an alternate set of clothes to turn him into the Speck character from the opening.
Did Stephen say he kind of considers himself white? Ebert(who is kind of known for being wrong sometimes) seems to think so, but I don’t remember the moment in the movie.
Ebert was injured and did not review the movie normally. He said in his blog review today:
The whole article is quite well written, so I imagine I just missed it.
What did Stephen say and in what scene was it?
As I interpret Ebert, Stephen made his choice known through actions, not words. He’s thrown in his lot with the whites who own him.
I saw the movie over the weekend. A lot I wished to say has been said. I enjoyed it. It was entertaining. The funny bits were funny, the dramatic moments were tense. The acting was pretty good, especially the two leads.
As explained, the plan was a con. You tell the guy you want to buy the farm, for a rediculous price. He has to take you seriously because the price is so good. During negotiations, you mention how much you like that certain horse over there. It’s a minor thing. Now you agree on some ridiculous price for the farm, but you won’t buy it on the spot - you need the lawyers to look it over, etc, ad nauseum. But we’ve agreed in principle. Oh by the way, that horse I like, just as an aside, why not let me buy that from you? Sure, I’ll throw in a bit extra, just because. It’s worth $200? I’ll throw in $300, since I like it. Sure. Okay, let me take the horse, and I’ll go get with my lawyer and we’ll see you in a week. Ta ta. [Exits stage left, taking horse, never to be seen again.]
You get the horse, you pay a fair or slightly high price, but you don’t have to spend the ridiculous amount of money you threw up for the whole farm. Now if you really want to smooth things out, there’s any number of reasons a real estate deal can go south before the actual sale, so if you have to retain good feelings, you can find a legitimate reason for the sale to fail and yet you have acquired the horse.
Now was there a reason he had to use that con? Well, Candie is a dick enough (and most of the people working for him would likely be that way too) that he wouldn’t sell Brunhilda to him if he knew she was Django’s wife. That would tickle Candie’s power fetish. So straight up request is out. The idea that you want to purchase a German-speaking slave - that has some merit, but how would he have learned about that? It shouldn’t be that common knowledge, should it? I mean Schultz was a savvy talker and very easily could have made that “fact” come out in casual conversation, but he needed a reason to have a casual conversation with Candie. Thus the need for the ruse, to get himself an audience and an excuse for his German heritage to come into the conversation.
Could another, less complicated ploy have worked? Maybe. But Schultz seems to be the kind of guy who creates these master scenarios to accomplish what he wants. It’s what he does. And it almost worked. Even after everything with south and they plan got called, he was willing to hand over the money and they could have walked off the plantation. He almost pulled it off even with getting caught. But he couldn’t let Candie off, had to put down Candie one last time, had to somehow keep himself better, and Candie’s insistance that they be made equals did him in.
That wasn’t “blackface”. Yeah, they darkened his face, and gave him white hair, and made him look like an 80 year old decrepit. That’s what movies do - make up actors to play the role. In this case, Stephen was supposed to be more dark-skinned, closer to pure African roots. Samuel L. Jackson described it as “fresh off the boat”.
Schultz was just trying to have that conversation and kept getting interrupted, so you missed it because it hadn’t quite happened. He was bringing up how happy he was hearing his native tongue and how intrigued he was, so he was thinking how nice it would be to have her as his slave, would Candie sell her to him? And Candie probably would have, both to smooth over the big slave sale, and because she was apparently some trouble, what with having tried to run off, that getting rid of her wouldn’t be a bad thing. Except Stephen entered the room and pulled Candie aside. And then when Candie came back and Schultz started the conversation again, Candie interrupted him with the conversation on phrenology and the skull.
It was truly an impulse move on his part. He just broke and had to shoot. If he had had a plan, he would have used his second shot on the guy with the shotgun. But he wasn’t the well-planned out bounty hunter of his previous exploits, he was reacting emotionally.
I got confused by that too. I didn’t see who the black slaves were that were shot, and thought for a moment it was Stephen.
I think you are spot on. The deal was done, Candie had bested him. Schultz was too enraged and had to get in a dig. That shamed Candie, put something in Schultz’s win column, so then he had to have the handshake to pull Schultz back down.
Yes, well-played. You could see Stephen was an old hand and playing the man behind the throne. The way he was comfortable telling Candie to step out and see him, sitting and sharing a drink and smoke with Candie behind closed doors, the way he guided and directed Ms. Laura to take the action he wanted and she think it was her idea. Crafty bugger.
I was reflecting on that. Consider that up until he met Django, he was a one-man bounty hunter. Consider the effort to capture and transport a live person. Feed him, keep him from running away or killing you in your sleep. Now consider that he often went after multiple people. How much easier to just shoot them, and then haul their carcasses? Yes, they’re a little harder to move, but much easier to keep from escaping or killing you. But he did seem to go out of his way to kill rather than offer the option of surrender.
I totally pegged on that.
Nah, just a foppish genteel Southerner.
She was his widowed sister.
You mean like dogfighting? Dammit, my best dog!
I spotted that.
I don’t recall him ever saying it. He just was the epitome of the black house slave chief who bossed around the other slaves. His sitting there in the chair sharing a smoke and a drink with Candie said it nonverbally.