I have read with trepidation reviews, commentaries and critiques of recent Hollywood films on American slavery. One trend stands tall. The plethora of criticisms directed towards the character, Broomhilda von Shaft (played by Kerry Washington) in Django Unchained, and the praise lavished on Patsey (even without a last name, and played by Lupita Nyong’o) in 12 Years a Slave, cannot but distract from the import and insight of these two films.
Critics, and many Black feminist theoreticians, in public and in academic circles, have compared both films to great effect ever since 12 Years a Slave begun trudging along America’s once slave-owned plantations, scattered across the nation, to reach theaters everywhere.
Some of the comparisons are warranted. In light of both roles being female, the academic exercise in pointing out the specificity of the roles, the differences and the similarities are inevitable, and can largely be entertaining. But it stays a true academic bickering because nothing has been gleaned for reckoning.
Broomhilda von Shaft in Django Unchained has been described as a woman lacking in complexity and charisma; and as an object of apathy and sympathy, and perhaps the most scathing reading of her character is that she was a body prop for sexual objectification that is entirely rooted in a patriarchal gaze.
Conveniently, these critics side step a similar portrayal of Patsey (throughout her rape scenes) and ignore an uncomfortable scene in the beginning of 12 Years a Slave when a female slave, she remains nameless, forced Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to an unkindly masturbation aboard a slave ship.
This is the film some black feminists have raised to the Holy Grail of a ‘rounded black female’ portraiture on film?
Some dilettantes have even totally crossed oceans of boundary between film and television and have bust out with verbose conviction that director Quentin Tarantino should have utilized Kerry Washington more, because of her prowess as Olivia Pope or lack thereof in the TV show that Scandal is.
The Scandal gladiators seem to have been truly frustrated by her role in Django Unchained and continue to insist that she deserved more in the film. They claim Tarantino reduced a vigorous role model in Olivia Pope to a damsel in distress in Broomhilda.
That argument underscores the reality that some Black feminists live in and the world in which Scandal gladiators have come to inhabit. To address their concern would be tantamount to a lack of judgment and a similar lack of perspective towards a film that harbors layers of pure wisdom and supreme entertainment.
The character of Broomhilda von Shaft however deserves elucidation.
Django Unchained portrays Broomhilda as a beautiful woman searching for love but trapped in the middle of a violent story. Her silence is symptomatic of the horror she perceives and director Quentin Tarantino did not take that at face value. Her words, however few and far between, reverberated across the film; her screams, shrieks, trembles, posture, lacerations, and tears echoed much more havoc than small minds could comprehend.
Broomhilda was portrayed a human being who resisted at every turn her status as a slave and as property – a thing. Furthermore, she has an opportunity to love just as deeply as any human being. That could only be suggestive of her conscious awareness of her self worth.
Patriarchal and sexist debates aside, heroes are sometimes needed, especially when surrounded by plantations upon plantations of villains. Why not the love of Broomhilda’s life – Django?
Because there are moments in life, history, and in folklore – for example, in the German original myth of Brünnhilde itself – where the rhetoric of protection and savior are much needed and appreciated.
It is only appropriate to invoke such a savior. The quest for male and female savior figures throughout the expanse of the barbarity of American slavery was not uncommon. That said, the fact that Django risks everything to free his beloved is nothing short of a pure intoxication and admiration.
And the moment he, instead of a rapist-murderer-enslaver, enters that cabin to take Broomhilda away, any sincere human should be struck with relief. Deep respite! And not because Broomhilda wasn’t a fighter – she was and stayed alive – but because she needed help making an exit from evil, in the same way Django (played by Jamie Foxx) himself needed that help from Dr. King Shultz (played by Christoph Waltz).
Survivors of violence can only wish for such a moment—for love to arrive before violence crashes them. What? Do black feminists want Cinderella to figure it out all by her lonesome and save herself? Or Sleeping Beauty to kiss herself?
For black feminists to typically problematize the narrative of protection in Django Unchained as a savior trope functioning as middle class patriarchal control, is vehemently fanciful. If anything at all, Broomhilda’s captivity should push us into re-imagining Django not as a knight, in shining armor and male savior trope, but as a representation of fugitive justice.
This can only be a source of hope for the oppressed and the disenfranchised. And the oppressed cannot give a hoot about which color help comes in, or the gender of a savior? Take a cursory look at Barack Obama – a hope and a help that is still trudging along the dirty racist roads that span across modern America.
To purport that Django Unchained is six of one, and 12 Years a Slave half a dozen of it, is truly an exercise in futility. Django Unchained is what it is – a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western – and 12 Years a Slave on the other hand, is based on a memoir by Solomon Northup, a free black resident of New York State kidnapped into slavery in the Deep South in 1841.
The two cannot be any more different and any feminist comparison of Broomhilda and Patsey is incendiary at best. Hence, without splitting hairs, the difference in genre between Django Unchained and 12 Years a Slave alone should halt the buck on such a debate.
These two movies belong first to different genres, and second to two different perspectives. If Black feminists wish for their kind of a ‘more-rounded’ perspective on black women during American Slavery films to materialize, it lies not in insulting director Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in direct proportion to gloating over Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave.
Rather, it lies in fighting for an equal share of Hollywood’s pie, or perhaps supporting enough black women directors to go to Hollywood or form a new industry. Enough already.
