June 4, 2013
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Nothin’ Stays The Same
I watched Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained recently and while I loved the movie and thought it was probably one of his top five films, it also really made me think about America’s history with slavery. I’ve always been sensitive to slavery and always knew how awful it was, but to actually see it graphically depicted in a movie (even if it is just a movie) it is really an eye opener. Now warning here, I’m about to give away parts of the movie, so if you don’t want to know then you might want to skip most of this.
Now I would imagine that this is how it was back then, actually I would imagine that it might have even been worse than it was in the movie. While the whipping was certainly disturbing, it was more than just that. After all, I’ve seen other movies that whipped slaves and have heard the stories. But, it was once scene in particular that really left me feeling bad.
When Django first arrives at the plantation where his wife is a slave, he learns that she is being punished for running off. She is in something called “the box” which, is even worse than I’m about to describe. It is a metal box that is about a foot deep and is about I don’t know, seven feet long and three feet wide. They open it up and she is laying there completely naked and had been there for a day and was supposed to be there for another ten days. It was positively inhumane and even worse than somebody who has been put in solitary confinement in a prison.
While I don’t know if this is something that was real back then, it is not hard to imagine that such a punishment existed. I’ve always felt slavery was abhorrent and just about the worst thing ever perpetrated upon a people. But is it possible that it was even worse than I originally thought? All I know is that it makes me ashamed to be an American. And it makes me wonder what other types of inhumane treatment and injustices are still carried out around the world.
