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Comment by Clint Rosemond on January 16, 2013 at 12:35pm

Hey Eddie:  Hope this comment doesn't get posted along with all of the comments/opinions about Django being made by the professional commentators.  I just wanted to weigh in with thanks to you for this media effort called Leimert Park Beat.  You stay current, have a broad outreach and all in all make a very strong contribution to the ongoing effort to keep LP/LPVillage viable and moving forward.  Your residence is a clear demonstration of your commitment and interest.  Keep up the good work.  Clint

Comment by enhager on January 4, 2013 at 2:49pm

Thanks to Genius Bastard for pointing out this New Yorker article by Jelani Cobb to help me articulate my deeper problems with the movie -

"Django’s true nemesis is not the slaveholder who subjects Hildy to cruel punishments but Stephen, the house slave devoutly allied with the slaveholder. The central conflict is not between an ex-slave and a slaver but between two archetypes—the militant and the sellout. But in creating Stephen, Tarantino necessarily trafficked in the stereotypes he was ostensibly responding to. Samuel L. Jackson plays Stephen’s overblown insouciance and anachronistic mf-bombs to great comedic effect. There are moments, however, when ironies cancel each other out, and we’re left with a stark truth—at its most basic, this is an instance in which a white director holds an obsequious black slave up for ridicule. The use of this character as a comic foil seems essentially disrespectful to the history of slavery. Oppression, almost by definition, is a set of circumstances that bring out the worst in most people. A response to slavery—even a cowardly, dishonorable one like what we witness with Stephen—highlights the depravity of the institution. We’ve come a long way racially, but not so far that laughing at that character shouldn’t be deeply disturbing."

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/how-accurate-...