This past weekend I watched Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. The movie depicts the struggles of a freed slave - Django - to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. While watching the movie, I couldn't help but compare it to Beloved. One thematic difference I noticed between the works centered around the agency of black women. In Beloved, Toni Morrison develops the theme that black women possess significant agency, even through the most difficult situations. Two of the novel's main characters - Sethe and Baby Suggs - demonstrate this theme. Sethe, through grueling circumstances, escapes to the north by herself. After settling in the north, Sethe maintains/provides for a stable family-life as a single parent. After being freed by Halle, Baby Suggs cultivates a sense of community (especially spiritually) among blacks living around Cincinnati. Baby Suggs is depicted as a very generous character. Baby Suggs helped anyone and everyone, even when she herself was in need.
In stark contrast to the identities of these characters, Broomhilda in Django Unchained is presented as a character without agency - an object to be acted on by others. Slaveowners abuse her. She is caught attempting to escape from the plantation multiple times. Perhaps most critically, Broomhilda compromises Django's attempt to rescue her. In this way, Django Unchained denies black women any responsibility in determining their own future. They are presented as entirely dominated individuals.
Yes, I would have to agree with this. I also watched Django this weekend and they do not portray the women in the movie the same as in Beloved. Sethe saved herself from slavery but in the movie Django was the one doing all the saving. Django wife is pushed and beat around like Sethe but there is something different about the two. The wife in Django is like a damsel in distress but Sethe builds a life for herself and her family. She doesn't need to be saved by a man as she explains to Paul D.
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