ONE STEP FURTHER Set in the antebellum era, the award-winning 2012 film Django U

Question

ONE STEP FURTHER Set in the antebellum era, the award-winning 2012 film Django Unchained fe tures a freed slave Jamie Foxx) who travels across the Deep South and Old West with a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) in order to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington) from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Like many of Quentin Tarantino's other films, Django Unchained elicited accolades and criticism. Many critics objected to the film's use of violence and racial epithets. But there was also controversy over the film's promotional prod- ucts-namely, action figures of the main characters in the film. Consider, for example, the following petition started by Brockton, Massachusetts, resident Geralyn Smith through the website www.change.org. both National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA): Stop the manufacture and sale of Django Unchained collector dolls These dolls, while based on fictional characters, are slaves and remind mary Black people of a painful past. This movie has no historical significance was made solely for entertainment value. I don't see how NECA can, m conscience, make a doll that represents a period in OUR history when Biu and in go Blacks

Explanation / Answer

The manufacturing of Django doll is an insult to the the historical pain of the black community, some of who still carries the echo of humiliation and abuses of slavery and racial abuse. For a white director to turn the topic of slavery into a profit making venture by manufacturing dolls around the theme, is a sheer mockery of the struggles of the black community and an subtle attempt to whitewash their history. Guardian(2013) reports, "The eight-inch-tall figurines, which include depictions of "house slave" Stephen (played by Samuel L Jackson in the film) and Jamie Foxx's Django, were on sale via Amazon and other sites priced at $39.99 per model.". This is epitome of how slavery is mocked and at the same time still being capitalised on, by the white directors and for the white directors .

The statement is premised on the factuality of slave trade that was started in America in 1619, when Dutch ship brought twenty African slaves ashore in Anerica (Jamestown). Throughout, the 17th and 18th centuries, the black slaves were forced to work in food staple fields, forced into cheap labour,stripped off their basic human rights and humiliated for the skin colour, in America. They are not allowed to educate themselves, with their behaviour and movements being under strict control of the white slave owners.Black women slaves were sexually exploited by white men, while rebellious slaves were raped (If women) and severely punished (if men). Hence, i would solely sign the petition based on the arguments made by petition creator , asit is based on facts and historical events, that reveal the brutality of slave ownaweships and trading. This doll, is therefore, a mockery of the suffering of the black community, whose ancestors had experienced this brutality first hand.

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