Django Unchained And The Generic Conventions
Genre – Django: Unchained & the Generic Conventions of Western
Genre is a way to categorize films based on their narrative, visual, and thematic tropes. Categorizing films in this way can be useful to producers, allowing them to label their films with a certain genre, making it easier for them to market to their chosen target audience. Vice-versa, it is extremely useful to audiences who choose a film based on its genre, having assurance that the film will contain the themes and tropes they’re expecting. The Western film genre stole the limelight of American cinema during the 1930s with films such as The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh, 1930, USA) and Billy the Kid (King Vidor, 1930, USA). The Western reigned as the staple of American cinema even up …show more content…
I used to describe ‘Pulp Fiction’ as a rock n’ roll spaghetti western with the surf music standing in for Ennio Morricone. I don’t know if ‘Django’ is a western proper. It’s a southern. I’m playing Western stories in the genre, but with a southern backdrop”. The idea that Django: Unchained is a ‘Southern’ and not a Western is explained by the film’s focus on slavery, something that the South fought to keep during the American Civil War. Mary Ann Mcdonald Carolan says in her book, The Transatlantic Gazze: Italian Cinema, that Django: Unchained’s focus on slavery as a political issue mirrors the radical neo-realist messages put across by the Italian directors involved within the upsurge of the Spaghetti Western[5], meaning that Tarantino’s Django: Unchained holds many similar elements to that of a traditional Spaghetti Western. However, although Spaghetti and American Westerns did explore the theme of slavery and race, the fact that the lead protagonist of Django is a black slave is unique. It exposes the film to being categorized as a slave or period drama, yet Tarantino manages to overload the film with the tropes from both the Western genre and Spaghetti Western sub-genre, making the film more suitably categorized to
Genre is a way to categorize films based on their narrative, visual, and thematic tropes. Categorizing films in this way can be useful to producers, allowing them to label their films with a certain genre, making it easier for them to market to their chosen target audience. Vice-versa, it is extremely useful to audiences who choose a film based on its genre, having assurance that the film will contain the themes and tropes they’re expecting. The Western film genre stole the limelight of American cinema during the 1930s with films such as The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh, 1930, USA) and Billy the Kid (King Vidor, 1930, USA). The Western reigned as the staple of American cinema even up …show more content…
I used to describe ‘Pulp Fiction’ as a rock n’ roll spaghetti western with the surf music standing in for Ennio Morricone. I don’t know if ‘Django’ is a western proper. It’s a southern. I’m playing Western stories in the genre, but with a southern backdrop”. The idea that Django: Unchained is a ‘Southern’ and not a Western is explained by the film’s focus on slavery, something that the South fought to keep during the American Civil War. Mary Ann Mcdonald Carolan says in her book, The Transatlantic Gazze: Italian Cinema, that Django: Unchained’s focus on slavery as a political issue mirrors the radical neo-realist messages put across by the Italian directors involved within the upsurge of the Spaghetti Western[5], meaning that Tarantino’s Django: Unchained holds many similar elements to that of a traditional Spaghetti Western. However, although Spaghetti and American Westerns did explore the theme of slavery and race, the fact that the lead protagonist of Django is a black slave is unique. It exposes the film to being categorized as a slave or period drama, yet Tarantino manages to overload the film with the tropes from both the Western genre and Spaghetti Western sub-genre, making the film more suitably categorized to