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16 • Bay Area Reporter • January 3-9, 2013
Behaving badly in Tarantino land by David Lamble
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t’s 1858 in Django Unchained, two years before the first shot will be fired in the Civil War, and an itinerate bounty hunter posing as a traveling dentist (Christoph Waltz) rescues a slave, Django (Jamie Foxx), from a gang of ruthless slave-traders. “What do you like about the bounty business?” “You kill white folk, and get paid for it.” “How would you like to partner with me through the winter?” “Why do you want to help me?” “As a German, I would like to help a real-life Siegfried rescue his Brunhilde.” The two strike up a unique bond, aiming to make money and free Django’s German-speaking wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from the clutches of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the cruel master of Mississippi’s Candyland plantation. “So what is the point of having a nigger who speaks German if you can’t wheel her out for a German guest?” Candie is a brutally comic turn from DiCaprio, allowing him perhaps to finally shed the pretty-boy aura of Titanic, and maybe notch that elusive Oscar. Candie is also director Quentin Tarantino’s way of both accurately depicting and sending up America’s original sin. A perverse sequel to his Nazihunting provocation Inglourious Basterds, Django is pure torture for the politically pious, but mother’s milk to everyone else. One of Django’s greatest guilty
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Jamie Foxx as the title character in Django Unchained.
pleasures is one of the best bad-ass black/white buddy pairings ever, as Waltz’s bounty hunter/dentist – the sight of the swinging tooth sign over his wagon is one of the picture’s great sight-gags – is able to lay it on the line to Foxx’s Django. Django uses his newly acquired status as an emancipated slave to really put it to Calvin Candie with his sadistic slave-fighting “mandingo” exhibitions. Here, Waltz’s King Schultz cautions Django that his gamesmanship may upset their efforts to free Broomhilde. “He didn’t call her by name, but
she’s a young lady with marks on her back, who speaks German. Now, while it’s not wise to assume, in this instance I think it’s pretty safe – the point being, don’t get so carried away with your retribution that you lose sight of why we’re here.” “You think I lost sight of that?” “Yes, I do! Stop antagonizing Candie!” “I’m not antagonizing, I’m intriguing him.” “You’re increasing the abuse of these poor slaves.” “I will call the man who had me kill another man in front of his
son, and he didn’t bat an eye. Remember that? So that’s what I’m doing – I’m getting dirty.” As Django gets really dirty preparing for a third-act apocalypse, we sense Tarantino’s announced aim to give African Americans who felt cheated by the sentimental ending of Roots (spare the white man his just desserts) their full cinema payback. And while Django works as a hilarious send-up of what many of us had previously considered pretty cheesy subgenres – spaghetti Westerns and grade-Z Asian martial arts dust-ups – it genuinely deals with a lot of issues that more traditionally respectable filmmakers have pointedly dodged forever. Consider Samuel L. Jackson’s character, a thorn in the side of correctness as the chief house servant who in some ways is more committed to the worst excesses of slavery than his master Candie. Jackson, who performed with equal brilliance as Tarantino’s terminal force of nature in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, here becomes the equivalent of the movie’s Count Dracula: Broomhilde will not be safe as long as this creature lives. Jackson, like Waltz, has fully mastered the poetry of Tarantino’s big speeches. It’s been widely noted that Django Unchained has more than a hundred invocations of that pesky “n-word,” the most since Richard Pryor – Live in Concert. Those who truly relished Tarantino’s breakout hit Pulp Fiction recall the moment when he wrote himself the blank check – the freedom to say what he pleased – that he’s since
Fine art 2013
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present a major retrospective of the work of Garry Winogrand, a street photographer and chronicler of American life influenced by the likes of Robert Frank, Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson. The first comprehensive exhibition the artist has had in a quarter-century includes over 300 images (Mar. 9-June 2). In another notable transition, the Exploratorium, after 43 years at the Palace of Fine Arts, moves to its new home at Pier 15, where it can spread out in its campus-like setting on San Francisco Bay. It’s slated to open its doors April 17. We’ll see what the future holds for them, SFMOMA and the rest of us, as well as the Contemporary Jewish Museum and FAMSF, which, as of this writing, do not have permanent directors in place. Although there are plenty of exhibitions to choose from and some true standouts like the Asian’s exciting Terracotta Warriors show opening at the end of February, this year, at least so far, is shaping up to be one of the least thrilling in recent memory. I sincerely hope to be proven wrong. Check out some of what’s in store below and judge for yourself. GLBT History Museum Migrating Archives: LGBT Delegates from Other Collections illuminates queer lives in a dozen different nations with materials that combine art and history. Institutions based in Italy, Australia, Belgium, South Africa, the Philippines, Hungary, England, the U.S. and others participated in the show, each contributing videos, photographs, artifacts and documents representing the experiences of one or two individuals, some famous, others anonymous. (Opens Feb. 1) Contemporary Jewish Museum Kehinde Wiley - The World Stage: Israel A young African-American artist exploring diasporas, cultural hybrids and identity, Wiley trolled Israel’s discos, malls, bars and sport-
Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, SF
Los Angeles, 1964, gelatin silver print by Garry Winogrand, collection SFMOMA, gift of Jeffrey Fraenkel.
ing events for the subjects of these 18 portraits of men from diverse cultural backgrounds – Ethiopian Jews, Jewish and Arab Israelis – impacted by hip-hop culture. (Feb. 14-May 27); Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg Nostalgia for and preoccupation with Ginsberg and the band of happy warriors of the Beat Generation abides. In over 80 photographs here with personalized captions penned by the poet, Ginsberg captures the lads – William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac – who were his co-conspirators and close companions during the high times of those rebel days. (May 23-Sept. 9) Berkeley Art Museum Silence, inspired by the late provocateur and “chance operations” guru John Cage, celebrates the centenary of the composer’s birth with a show that considers the absence of sound as a subject and point of departure for cinema and contemporary art. It includes works by an eclectic group: Joseph Beuys, Stan Brakhage, Marcel Duchamp, Nat Dorsky, Rene Magritte, Maya Deren, Warhol and Rauschenberg, among others. (Jan. 30-April 28); the final performances of San Francisco choreographer
Anna Halprin’s 1965 piece Parades and Changes are staged in conjunction with a display of scores, and documentation of the history of dance. (Feb.15-April 21); Yang Fudong The dreamlike films, installations and painterly photography by the meteoric star of contemporary Chinese art express the anxieties, ambivalence and disconnection of a fast-changing materialistic society. (mid-Aug. through Dec.) OMCA Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu Though fragments of Hung Liu’s seductive body of work have surfaced over the years at Bay Area venues, this show is the first comprehensive survey of the prominent Chinese-born, Oakland-based painter, whose primary subjects are the mutable nature of memory and the arduous history of China, especially the hardships endured by women. The show features an array of paintings, personal photos and private sketchbooks with examples of art produced before the artist moved to the U.S. (Mar. 16June 30) De Young Rembrandt’s Century Who can resist Rembrandt? Not I. This selection of etchings by the 17thcentury painter, which demonstrates his mastery of printmaking, along
Courtesy Asian Art Museum
Armed Kneeling Archer from China’s Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor’s Legacy, coming to the Asian Art Museum.
with engravings, ink drawings and watercolors by his predecessors and acolytes, runs concurrently with Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis, a rarely seen collection from The Hague’s gem-like repository of artworks from the Golden Age. (Jan. 26-June 2); Eye Level in Iraq: Photographs by Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson is comprised of pictures from the front taken by a pair of experienced photojournalists working outside of the military “embed” program. Their images depict the impact and aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. (Feb. 9-June 16) The Asian Art Museum launches its 10th anniversary in the Civic Center location transformed by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, who died late last year, with China’s Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor’s Legacy. China has lent 10 statues – the maximum allowed outside the country – of the 8,000 discovered so far in an ancient tomb, as well as 120 objects excavated from the vast necropolis. The astonishing archaeological find in 1974 unearthed a literal legion of eerily life-like, life-
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cashed in Django. That moment was the film’s infamous “Dead Nigger Storage” episode, in which Tarantino’s white househusband character invoked the previously taboo epithet, in the process immunizing his talented multi-racial cast if the stunt were to backfire. A generation before, Mel Brooks had performed a similar reverseminstrel show, daring for that time, wherein the white folks in his Blazing Saddles frontier town were so nasty to the suave black marshal (Cleavon Little) that it seemed as if the “n-word” might lose some of its terrible sting. A lot of us were wrong in predicting an early end to the worst of American Apartheid. The very existence and, yes, necessity of Django Unchained shows how very wrong we were. In my 2012 Top Films list, I deliberately paired Lincoln with Django. In effect, Tarantino imagines a pre-Civil War revolt of emancipated blacks that’s the equivalent to the climax of his Inglourious Basterds: blow up the Nazis in the theater. Director Spike Lee has reportedly denounced Django while simultaneously asserting he’ll never see it, a sad tactic for such a smart artist. While turf and artistic ego issues can explain Lee’s stance, for the rest of us Tarantino’s outrageously brilliant caper – a fitting response to D.W. Griffith’s wretched, rancid brilliance in Birth of a Nation – is a loose-cannon Best Picture pick, with bows to Mel Brooks, Richard Wagner, Mark Twain, Sergio Leone, and such deliciously trashy potboilers as Mandingo.t
size soldiers, chariots and horses. Like the Egyptian pharaohs, the first emperor was obsessed with immortality and with proving that, yes, you can take it with you. (Feb. 22-May 27); In the Moment: Japanese Art from the Larry Ellison Collection demonstrates that million-dollar catamarans are not the Oracle mogul’s sole interest. The exhibition of Ellison’s holdings coincides with the America’s Cup races in the summer (June 28-Sept. 22); The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia Uncovered in 1879 at Babylon, and dating back to 539 BCE, the Cylinder, which appears to encourage human rights and freedom of religion in the Persian Empire, is considered one of the great surviving relics of the ancient world. (Aug. 9-Sept. 20) Cantor Arts Center The Jameel Prize: Art Inspired by the Islamic Tradition, which illustrates how artists and designers translate historic traditions into contemporary art (through Mar. 10), is a major show, but some smaller exhibitions also merit attention, like one showcasing 24 works by that ubiquitous appropriator, Andy Warhol. More Than Fifteen Minutes: Andy Warhol and Celebrity displays prints, drawings, and Polaroid photographs of Mao Tse Tung, Mick Jagger, and other famous mugs (Feb. 20-June 30), while Inspired by Temptation: Odilon Redon and Saint Anthony presents three lithographic albums by the great French symbolist, inspired by Flaubert’s 1874 novel about a third-century monk who retreats to the desert to contemplate God, and is visited by demons and erotic visions instead (July 30-Oct. 20); and in the fall, look forward to Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, an important exhibition from the formidable African-American artist who takes up gender, race and class in American society, without flinching. (Oct. 16Jan. 5, 2014) San Jose Museum of Art has two See page 17 >>