Django and the gothic

Film/text Analysis: Django and the gothic

     Teresa Goddu provides us tools and well-developed explanations fundamental for understanding the American gothic literature. Before reading her point of view, I associated “gothic” with “dark”. But, at some point in her text, Goddu dissociate dark and gothic. According to her, gothic means popular, while dark means profound. Quite different ideas we have here…

It played in the movies, it won prices and it sure was popular, Django Unchained still corresponds to the gothic genre, although it could also be classified as a western drama.

To start off with, the link between the two materials analyzed that stood out the most was the separation between South and North. Teresa Goddu emphasized the fact that American gothic can be understood as a regional form rather than a national form. She explains that the South of America serves as the nation’s “other”. This way, it becomes contradictory from which the nation, as a whole, wants to be disassociated. In Django Unchained, the story compares the South and the North. Not just geographically but mostly based on their values and beliefs, leading to national myths. This social distinction in the movie reflects Goddu’s view on national gothic.

In order to explain my second point, I will quote our great gothic “connaisseur”;

“History invents the gothic, and in turn the gothic reinvents history.” This statement is just brilliant! Teresa compares gothic as a vicious cycle. The national fears come from our own history, and then authors find a way to extract those traumatic events from our unconscious and write a gothic tale. This gothic tale then becomes popular and brings the audience to realize and feel things that we didn't know were part of our identity. Then we write our history, and a gothic tale follows, vice-versa. B-RI-L-L-I-A-N-T!

The movie Django touches us by exposing the white humans cruelty with our black neighbours. Watching this movie, I was ashamed, I was ashamed of the twisted mentality of my ancestors. For the sake of the movie, facts and events were developed in a fictional cocoon. Black comedy and racism mixed together brought myself in the middle of…. a danse. At first, the humour was seducing me, the song was almost cheerful, for an instant, I felt proud. But then, when we dove deeper in the historical context, my head started spinning and I couldn’t follow the rhythm of the steps. I didn’t want to be a part of it, Django was dragging me in his danse macabre. I share Stephen King’s view on gothic literature. When, the author invites us to dance, we can’t refuse, because it looks appealing and shallow. Once they touch our subconscious and unconscious, it is scary and brings us to a dark place. Bur, I am very curious to know what makes us want to be scared and traumatized? What made me crave to watch the end of the movie, even this my ears were aggressed by whips and gun shots and “niggers”?

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