The American wild West on the cinema screen is an iconic and globally influential part of film and popular culture. The rugged cowboy heroism sweats the narrative of manifest destiny and makes every young boy yearn for a Red Ryder BB Gun. But the Western as a cinema genre is inherently intertwined with deeply problematic racial and gendered oppression and violence. Most Western films feature a principal conflict between a white, male hero facing off against a savage group of Native Americans or Mexican bandits. Watch this short clip detailing the consequences of perpetuating the cowboy myth on the Native American population:
This video makes clear that the western genre overtly relies on racial conflict and violence as the central plot device and the genre shamelessly villianizes Native American people for the purpose of glorifying white western conquest.
Since popular opinion on the subject of the genocide of Native American people has generally and slowly shifted to a position of “that was a bad thing” in the past thirty years, the western film enterprise needed to find a new angle. This article in The Atlantic analyzes the trend of “revisionist” Westerns as American film directors grapple with the contradictions of our nation’s morally dubious history and the optimistic heroism of a cowboy character. Michael Agresta writes in this article:
“For a century plus, we have relied on Westerns to teach us our history and reflect our current politics and our place in the world. We can ill afford to lose that mirror now, especially just because we don’t like what we see staring back at us.”
Enter: Django. A hero that subverts this racialized genre. Quentin Tarantino’s film Django Unchained is about a freed slave who partners with a bounty hunter to kill wanted men, exact revenge, and rescue and free his wife. The artistic splendor of this film relies heavily on the ways Tarantino sets up a traditional Western scene or narrative and subverts it in ways that are political, shocking, comedic, or uncomfortable. The score to this film is one of they key ways the audience can engage with this historical commentary. One clear example of music defining the boundaries of the paradigm and the exception is in the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdM9vrCbow
The first minute of the trailer features the Jonny Cash song “Ain’t No Grave” that fits our expectations about wild west Americana. The mood of the song is enhanced by the added sound effects of a hawk crying overhead, the wind whistling, and a horse whinnying. This use of sound in the score is consistent with Ennio Morricone’s writing for famous spaghetti Westerns. Listen to this clip for a reminder of a tune you’re probably familiar with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1PfrmCGFnk
Ennio Morricone, in fact, wrote several original pieces for the score to Django Unchained, which is a detail that creates consistency with the aesthetic paradigms of the Western genre. This sense of consistency breaks about one minute into the trailer for Django, when a funky classic from James Brown, “The Payback” underscores the advertisement for Django’s complicated, free, and heroic character.
In this next clip we can hear the familiar trumpet fanfare of a heroic, Morricone style Western soundtrack. In this scene, the music establishes the connection to the genre traditions while the action subverts the historical narrative as Django whips a white slaver and his bounty hunter friend kills another in an evocative scene in a cotton field.
Content warning: the following clips from Django Unchained gratuitously use the word “n***er”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45V4fdoeMiE
In contrast with this use of familiar Western style music to ground the action in the context of the genre, the following clip uses distinctly different music by Rick Ross to underline the way Django is walking a complicated line between empowered and constrained. The next scene doesn’t necessarily portray Django as heroic, but rather as grappling with his position in society and the role he is occupying while in the company of white slave owners. The central conflict in this clip is over the social power of the word “n***er”. I think the use of the song “100 Black Coffins”, which Rick Ross wrote for this film, underscores this element of personal racialized conflict and reminds the audience that even though Django is the hero, he must constantly fight for his autonomy among white men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFfDPc0JY38
This song by Rick Ross and a few other featured songs by John Legend and the aforementioned James Brown song conspicuously stick out in this film because they are a major anachronism in an otherwise fairly linear and stylistically consistent movie. Therefore, I credit the juxtaposition of familiar Western tropes with racially charged divergences from the genre as a key element that makes this film so successful at reclaiming the American narrative.
As the Atlantic article informed us, Westerns have long been a reflection of American politics and ideals. Django Unchained is an important film because it reflects a mainstream acknowledgement of the deeply flawed racial oppression in American history, culture, and media. And, while including a James Brown song in a movie where black men are eaten by dogs is really not a great victory for the equality of mankind, it is a small victory against the inherently racist whitewashed history and art culture of America.