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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Let A Bitch Talk!


I saw Django last night and enjoyed it....the use of the N-word was not, in my opinion, overused. I'm pretty sure in 1858 the N-word was used on the regular. I enjoyed the movie, the comedy, the visual presentation, and the fact that the BlackMan was the regular old CowboySavetheDayHero and the LoveHero!

My only issue is that the beautiful, talented Kerry Washington wasn't able to 'talk.' Django ‘saw’ her plenty of times throughout the movie in flashbacks and ‘saw’ is the key word. At one point she said something in a voice-over like: My name is Broomhilda – WTF? I felt like I was watching a video of a fashion shoot whenever Django had a vision/memory of Broomhilda who was always walking along the road smiling and waving at him. All the apparitions were visually beautiful and maybe a tool to show us how Django saw his woman – beautiful, clean, and pure juxtaposed to the reality of a slave life that was cruel, dirty and unforgiving. I get it but if I saw one more pretty vision of her in that film I felt like I was going to scream. Thank God Kerry, the actress, is talented and is able to convey a lot with her facial expressions. But her non-verbal skills did not prevent me from saying more than once (in my head): "Let A Bitch Talk!"

This morning when I woke one of my first thoughts was, "Let A Bitch Talk!" I couldn’t believe that Kerry’s Broomhilda, wife of Django, barely talked in the movie. I would like to see the movie again so I can actually count the number of words but I’m going to go with the number my film companion supplied when I asked, “Did Kerry say twenty words in that movie?” and he replied, “No more than thirty tops.” So thirty is the magic number. No more than thirty words were uttered by the object of Django’s love and motivation for his journey from slave to hero. Okay…..

Don’t get me wrong I am so happy to finally see a BlackMan Hero who can fire a gun and love his woman with no shame but dayum Let A Bitch Talk. Django and Broomhilda’s love would have been so much better if we heard them talk about how they loved without any guarantees that they would be able to grow old together since all slaves were at the mercy of the slave-owner and whichever way the wind was blowing any particular day.

I know it was Django’s story – guns blazing, his manhood being unveiled throughout the film, blah, blah I get all that but this BlackMan was on a mission because of his love for his woman, a love that drove him to ride into dangerous situations to get her back and get back to her and we never hear a full length conversation in her voice – oops I’m sorry she did have a conversation with Django’s bounty hunter partner, Dr. Schultz played by Christoph Waltz, but they spoke in German…yes German. The lengthiest conversation Broomhilda had was with a white man in a foreign language. Okay….

Hilde is supposed to be a determined and smart Woman who has run away from her slave masters on two occasions and we are supposed to believe she doesn’t have words. Quentin couldn’t have written one scene where Hilde’s smarts were on display? If a love-talk or love-sex scene couldn’t have been written between Hilde & Django, then a toe-to-toe scene between Hilde and Samuel Jackson’s character Stephen, the treacherous-crab-in-a-barrel valet/slave, would have been something to see and more importantly ‘hear.’ Instead we get the lovely Broomhilda reacting in a terrified voice to treacherous Stephen instead of interacting with him. If only she had verbally fought back we would have been able to see Hilde’s essence in action.

Now I do realize that there may have been scenes like the ones I described and they ended on up the cutting-room floor but something tells me those scenes were probably never written nor filmed but I could be wrong. Quentin wrote and directed a really good film but ‘he’ wrote and directed it. To get the black female perspective/voice/essence I do believe black women need to be writing more stories. I’m not saying that men can’t write women’s roles because they can but to get authentic black, female characters with depth maybe we let some real black, female writers, write those characters. And maybe we don’t call films with women in the lead roles ‘chick flicks’ since we don’t call films with male leads ‘dick flicks.’

And instead of waiting for Hollywood to properly depict black women more people who have the means need to put up money so films with strong black, female leads can be made and then shown at film festivals, on cable and network television. Just a thought, after all thinking outside the box could make a difference and Let A Bitch Talk!

Until next time I hope this post has been Tasty & Informative like Cupcakes & Travel Magazines~