Tarantino and his crew are manipulative asses -- and some Black folk will do anything for fame and fortune

Django Unchained dolls (Courtesy of NECA)

I'd been going back-and-forth about whether I even wanted to see this damned movie, but after seeing this tasteless madness first thing this morning --  Slaves For Sale: “Django Unchained” Action Figures Released -- I won't bother.

And I won't even waste another breath on the Three Inkspots amid the Lily Whites pictured above (it is to them that I alluded, in the second part of the title -- 'nuf said).  I went over to read more about this new, "slave auction" at the source piece here.  I just wanted to see how much of a huge fool Tarantino had made of them and, those of us whose cash he'd already pocketed.  As it turns out -- pret-t-t-y damned huge:

Academy Award-winner Quentin Tarantino is laughing all the way to the bank this week. The controversial film auteur and his longtime studio chief-partner Harvey Weinstein took a gamble on transforming the atrocities of American slavery into comedic, action-packed entertainment. And the new movie, Django Unchained, which opened Christmas day, bested the glitzy Les Miserables at the box office with numbers indicating that the flick could do as well as, or maybe even better than Tarantino’s top-grossers Inglourious Basterds ($120 million) and Pulp Fiction ($107 million). (emphasis mine)

And surprise, surprise -- these "Let's play slavery" action figures were always going to be part of the plan.  Per the piece:

Last fall, the National Entertainment Collectibles Association, Inc. (NECA), in tandem with the Weinstein Company, announced a full line of consumer products based on characters from the movie. First up are pose-able eight-inch action figures with tailored clothing, weaponry, and accessories in the likeness of characters played by Foxx, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Remar and Christoph Waltz. The dolls are currently on sale via Amazon.com. (emphasis mine)

Y'all can intellectualize until the cows come home about Tarantino's "artistic brilliance" (just so you can feel all hegemonic and shit) -- but I won't join you.  This is an insult to Black folk plain and simple.  Too bad so many of us don't realize it.

And how come he never rolled-out any Hitler/Nazi action figures, or Jews in the ghettos or the ovens action figures from his Inglorious Basterds piece of "art?"  Please!  This man just shined up some shit and called it gold, and Black folk just jumped in line for his gold rush! {smmfh}

"When you look at Roots, nothing about it rings true in the storytelling, and none of the performances ring true for me either,” Tarantino told The Daily Beast’s Allison Samuels. “I didn’t see it when it first came on, but when I did I couldn’t get over how oversimplified they made everything about that time. It didn’t move me because it claimed to be something it wasn’t.”

Oh, so now, he's "the authority" on telling our story.{smdh}  Reading his utterly, self-serving comments above, I'm reminded of something the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie said at a TED conference:

"It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think of the power structures of the world and it is "nkali," it's a noun that loosely translates to -- "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories, too are defined, by the principal of "nkali." How they are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told -- are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person but to make it the definitive story of that person." (emphasis mine)

Instead of racing to your keyboards to collect you some of this "awesome Negrobilia," (tongue planted firmly in cheek here) from Amazon, you might be better served in the long-run, trying to figure out how to get you some damned "nkali" -- and stop letting these white folk define who you are!

Spike sure was right.

Chatting with Sis. Carolyn in the comments made me think of this powerful, young sister and how what she had to say here, was so apropos to this topic:



Related:
- Freedom Rider: A Real Life Django
- A Few Thoughts on Django Unchained
- Quentin Tarantino: Slave Profiteer
- 5 Quick Points Against Django Unchained, Because It’s Not Worth 6.
- Civil War hero Robert Smalls seized the opportunity to be free