反正寫也寫了不潑白不潑

Part I - The Hegemony, Cultural Analysis

Django Unchained is the latest film by Quentin Tarantino, confronting controversial topics such as slavery and racism. It receives predominantly positive reviews while is also a source of contention and controversy for others.
For any film to achieve critical success, it must be something universally recognizable so that the critics are able to interpret them in largely similar fashions and draw predictable conclusions. The hegemony here is seen as the relationship between the film crew, the critics and the audience. Most of the audience are unconsciously heavily controlled by the reviews from the critics because they are considered 「the authority」 in film critiques. However, the power of the critics is only considerably effective when they say the same thing. This phenomenon is a powerful manifestation of the concept of hegemony since the critics always aspire to be the embodiment of the dominant culture, and the films want to be reflected as such. In Django Unchained, this is seen largely through violence. Our media is overwhelmingly violent. Violence is a constant theme in numerous TV shows, movies and news and should be considered a dominant ideology in the success of media productions. The popularity of Quentin Tarantino movies is for the most part, a result of his use of violence. If we truly examine his immensely popular Kill Bill movies, they are nothing more than killing people for revenge. It is exactly the brilliance of violence in those films make the audience and critics alike applaud. Django Unchained does not fail to live up to its premise of violence. Almost in every scene, people are being shot and brutally killed. The chaotic shooting following the death of Monsieur Candie is hardly even surprising since the audience does not anticipate Django and the doctor to leave Candyland peacefully in a Quentin Tarantino film. The massive final explosion scene is an even more audacious proof that ultimately this film is a celebration of graphic violence. The juxtaposition of a delighted Django and the burning house behind him speaks more than anything else ---- Tarantino wants the audience to be thrilled by the brutal destruction of Candyland. Quentin Tarantino himself, as an innocent slave transporter in this film, is exploded to pieces in a completely extravagant fashion. Such a magnificent display of violence is not only recurrent in Tarantino movies, but almost everywhere else. A calm and confident man walking away from a background of explosion and destruction with fire burning is arguably one of the iconic scenes of Hollywood cinema. Critics call it a 「pure movie enjoyment」(Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress), 「very entertaining crowdpleaser」(Jonathan Crocker, Little White Lies), etc. Clearly, the theme of violence is again brilliantly used here, reaffirming the audience of the satisfying experience they get from a typical Tarantino film.
However, critical success is not achieved by simply reaffirming the dominant ideology. Critics also look for the incorporation of 「residual ideology」 and the advent of 「emergent ideology」. Here, Quentin does an impressive job reinventing the classic Spaghetti Western genre. The genre is comprised of films made by Italians set in the American West and generally focuses on characters seeking to make money, killing people in their ways. The bounty hunter here is a clear embodiment of this Spaghetti Western ideology here and this film is considered a modern revival of the genre. Another notable residual element here is the blaxploitation films which feature black characters as anti-heroes living up to the white stereotypes about black people. One notable scene of the mandingo fight is inspired by the blaxploitation film Mandingo. The incorporation of these two genres is a even greater delight for critics. Tom Charity of CNN compliments Tarantino for 「tak[ing] two defunct, disreputable genres, dust[ing] them off and mash[ing] them together」.[1]
Its emergent ideology is seen as its direct confrontation with race. This film is not trying to be colorblind at all. Instead, it creates this confrontation between black and white that some people find hard to adjust to. While Spike Lee finds the movie disrespectful to his ancestors, some others find the wiping out of white people as promoting white people as evil. However, we should recognize the subversiveness of this movie as few have been able to put such a degree of brutality and violence in relation to slavery. The irony here not only comes with the ultra-violence, but is also seen in the ridiculous practice of mandingo fighting and the sexually objectified female slaves. The film, while not aspiring to be historically accurate, certainly manages to be provocative, followed by a decent amount of controversy. Jamie Foxx says it the best, 「Django Unchained is supposed to make you angry」.[2]
To conclude, under the hegemonic model, this film relies first and foremost, on the dominant culture, its premise of violence to draw people in, then it presents the audience and the critics with a revival and mash-up of 60s and 70s genres of Spaghetti Western and Blaxploitation as residual elements and a controversial and subversive depiction of slavery as emergent elements. It aims at reappropriating slavery through the pleasure brought by the use of violence and we can see from its critical and commercial success that the techniques used here are indeed effective.

Part II - Economic and Business Analysis

Under the corporate media culture, every film released by those major studios is made for profits. Certain films take advantage of the popularity of its source material, which can be a book, a stage play, a video game, or most commonly, a past successful film. The major blockbusters each year usually come from this category and give Hollywood enough reasons to keep producing sequels and film adaptations. Other original films must go an extra mile in their marketing effort, with those of exceptional qualities hoping to generate enough awards season buzz as a way to gain tremendous publicity.
Django Unchained is gaining ground on both of these categories. First, it is a Quentin Tarantino film, a director with huge past hits as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds. His consistent success is a result of his brilliancy in the use of twisted plots with a combination of intense violence. Thus in order to live up to this hype, Django Unchained must provide something equal. They duly did so. The plot revolves mainly on two quests, the killing of Brittle Brothers and the purchasing of Broomhilda, each resulting in liberation of slaves (mainly Django and his wife) and brutal deaths of the others (mainly white characters). The film also features recognizable stars such as Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. 傑克森. Notably, Christoph Waltz had huge success with his role in Tarantino’s previous film Inglourious Basterds, winning multiple awards including the Oscar, thus making their second collaboration highly anticipated. Indeed, he is again nominated for Oscar and has won the Golden Globe already, ensuring more future collaborations to come. All these star power give the movie an exciting mass appeal before its actual release. However, since it is an original movie that the audience has no pre-established familiarity with its story, it needs to be marketed properly to generate the buzz it needs.
The awards season is a coveted period in the movie industry each year for some underdogs to suddenly come out as one of the most popular movies of the year. The Hurt Locker, for instance, a practically unknown title before the awards season, achieved such a surprising commercial success that there was a shortage on film prints after it won the the Oscar for Best Picture. Django Unchained definitely wants to capture the awards season buzz to live up to the success of Inglourious Basterds three years ago and for the sake of Tarantino’s reputation considering the success of his future releases. It was released on Christmas day, right in the middle of the awards season when the critics and the Academy are busy picking their nominations. If we take a look at this year’s nine nominees for Best Picture, all except for one were released in the US after October. It is critical to put the film right onto the table of the Academy to gain enough attention and consideration if it is not adequately recognized.
Furthermore, while an action-packed film is satisfying enough for the audience, such as Tarantino’s previous Kill Bill series, it is not enough for the critics to put it on the awards agenda. That is why Tarantino, after dealing with the Nazis in Basterds, has to mix racism and slavery into this movie’s premise. As I have discussed above, his refreshing use of residual and emergent ideologies ascertains the movie’s numerous nominations during this year’s awards season. The work put into making this movie a critical success is now reflected at the box office when it is now the highest-grossing Quentin Tarantino movie and third highest-grossing Western movie of all time.
It is crucial to point out here that this film is distributed by the Weinstein Company, which is not considered one of the media giants. It is an independent film studio, not owned by any of the 「Big Six」 media conglomerates and not owning any other media firms except for a book publisher either. Weinstein is renowned for its distribution of high quality motion pictures. While commercially a far cry from any of the six major Hollywood studios, it constantly takes the spotlight during the awards season. For instance, its films The 阿提斯t and The King’s Speech won the last two years』 Oscar for Best Picture. After years of development, Weinstein is now more commercially successful than ever based on its celebrated reputation. For this year, Django Unchained, along with Silver Linings Playbook, again puts Weinstein as the frontrunner of the show. It seems that while the 「Big Six」 studios in Hollywood, under the control of their giant parent companies, are supplied with an endless line of sequels, prequels and adaptations, independent studios like Weinstein can find its own way to success through genuinely made films. The film festivals around the world give these films their own stage regardless of their commercial values and this is the contemporary counterforce of hyper-commercialism.
Django Unchained, in a highly commercialized film industry, seeks to capture the best of both worlds. It relies on star power to give it an audience appeal, but also on a studio like Weinstein to help it create its awards season presence. And in this way, original films can thrive amongst a mass of blockbuster sequels.

Notes:
[1]:http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/24/showbiz/movies/django-unchained-review/index.html
[2]:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/17/jamie-foxx-django-unchained-angry