“Django Unchained” shows all the sadism and inhumanity and evil and barbarism of what some once called the peculiar institution of American slavery. “Django Unchained” repeats what others have said about the existence of slaves,”She is my property and I can do as I please with her. ”

The movie also shows the absurdity and ridiculousness and cruel silliness and vapid nature of white, wealthy slavery culture.

Some disclaimers are in order. I am a southerner. Like many southerners my forefathers and foremothers include the Scots-Irish, Chickasaw and Cherokee Native People, and African-Americans. I am fortunate and grateful that the family tree split relatively recently within the memory of the living. I am a movie philistine and as an art form I have no business reviewing any movie. And, generally, I hate Quentin Tarantino’s work. I hate his typical gratuitous violence and seeming love of gore. I hate his total rejection of any Hollywood responsibility for the violence in our society.

But in this case, Tarantino’s faults serve him, the movie, and the movie-goer well. Slavery was every bit as horrible and more so than this movie shows. To Tarantino’s credit, he tries in one movie to demonstrate in every way possible the total lack of humanity in slavery–from gang rape of “comfort women” to allowing dogs to rip a runaway to death, to forcing men to fight one another to death, to the intentional splitting of slave families, to the forced hatred of one’s race.

This last consequence of slavery may be its most enduring. Some of the most racist among us are the closest to the race they denigrate. I loved my mother. Her eyes reflected part of a heritage from Sierra Leone. But when she told me Big Mama wouldn’t let her own brother dismount his horse in her yard and enter her house because he was too dark and Big Mama was passing for white , my mother said one side of our people were Black Indians, just very dark Indians. We all know Strom Thurmond raped or had sex with his family’s Black housekeepers.

Almost as importantly, “Django Unchained” shows the ignorance and stupidity of white slave culture from Leonardo DiCaprio’s character of an incredibly sadistic plantation owner who likes to put on the airs of a Parisian gentleman and demands to be addressed as Monsieur but who speaks no French to the overseers whose sport and entertainment is sadism.

I will leave it to others to talk about the things reviewers are supposed to comment on. What is important here is the reflection of our nation’s past. As great Mississippi novelist William Faulkner said, “The past isn’t over. It isn’t even really past. ”

I don’t know if or when America will ever get beyond its slavery past and the racism that served as its foundation. Clearly the modern Republican Party gained its base in the South with year after year and election after election of blatant and sometimes coded racism. Huge elements of our nation’s entertainment and “news” culture still rely on racism to attract viewers and listeners–Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and many others.

Progress is possible and we are making progress, but progress requires constant vigilance not only of our culture but of our own hearts.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to Tarantino for making this gruesome movie and telling the truth.

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