Django Unchained: A Black-Centered Superhero and Unchained Audiences

Critical discussion of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) centers around two related sets of questions. The first set concerns the representation of blackness on the screen and the gaze as racialized. The second set has been centered on questions of historical accuracy and the political implications of a historical cinema that thematizes slavery. This article argues, developing the insights of others such as Litheko Modisane, Tsitsi Jaji, and Manthia Diawara, that audiences are not enchained by a director’s vision, but are creative and resistant in their responses to film. For this reason it is possible to theorize Jamie Foxx’s Django as a black-centered superhero, if a certain audience is convened for the screening. This audience-centered response liberates viewers, in the United States and elsewhere, from the limitations imposed by a director’s vision and enables discussions of black-centered identities.