When I initially heard that Quentin Tarantino was making a pre-Civil War western centered around slavery, I cringed, thinking back on some of his gory films such as Kill Bill and Grindhouse. I felt that such a horrific genocidal event as slavery should not be exploited as an excuse to revel in mayhem and violence. However, I had seen Inglourious Basterds and felt that his approach to the Holocaust was measured and respectful, while still creative in imagining what if Hitler had been assassinated, by Jews, during the war. I adopted a wait and see approach. As the cast was announced, I grew more interested – Jaime Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo Di Caprio, Don Johnson and Kerry Washington. Then there was mention of rape scenes and I grew apprehensive again.

Last month, Kerry Washington, knee deep into an amazing year with the success of her hit TV show, Scandal, began doing press to promote Django. She discussed her decision to take the role of a slave – that the story of Broomhilda, a German-speaking slave, was quite unique. Broomhilda was basically a damsel in distress, as opposed to the strong black woman. I too couldn’t recall any mainstream movies featuring a black woman who needed rescuing; every film that came to mind either contained a white woman or a black child. Now I was really curious. I re-watched Inglourious Basterds a few days later and decided to see the film.

I crept into the theater at the last minute, once the lights were already down. The opening credits rolled as a group of male slaves, in chains, trodded across a rocky landscape, the bare backs of many displaying the heinous scars of whippings. I clenched my jaw and dabbed at my eyes. This was going to be tough.

Two hours and thirty minutes later, as the closing credits began, I was disappointed. Disappointed that the movie was over. It was truly an amazing experience and one of the best films of the year.

I tend to gravitate to media that are exposes on society. For example, I consider the Wire to be the greatest TV series of all time, because over the course of five seasons, in painstaking detail, the show laid bare everything so wrong in American society, from the all-too obvious drug and gang warfare destroying urban landscapes, to the increasing levels of social class (working class whites and wealthy politicians) that make such carnage possible, either through greed, ineptitude or indifference.

What Quentin Tarantino does in Django is thoroughly dismantle every crevice of White (and Black) society that  perpetuated slavery before the civil war. From junk science that indicated blacks were genetically inferior, to intellectually and economically inferior whites who needed someone to feel better than, to the blacks who had somewhat close relationships with their masters and enjoyed tormenting other slaves (not necessary along mulatto/non-mulatto lines), to wealthy whites who desperately wished to imitate European nobility. And he doesn’t shun the horrors of slavery either in an effort to make the movie “more comfortable” to watch. Disturbing practices such as death by castration or animal mauling, neck restraints, branding, “hot boxes,” slave sex trafficking and mandingo fighting are all noted in the movie.