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My Son, The Cultural Critic
So this is a self-indulgent, proud father kind of thing, but what the hey. Two anecdotes about my nine-year-old son’s critical acumen. — My son was talking to a friend about the movie “Brave.” My son...
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“The Infernal Ride”
In his 1996 study Manhood in America: A Cultural History, Michael Kimmel describes the invention of the cowboy, a “mythic creation” with origins in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper; this creature of...
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What Americans Know
I finally saw Django Unchained, which I think is probably one of Tarantino’s weaker efforts — down there with the Kill Bill films. It’s certainly well made, and there are lots of interesting moments...
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Snowball’s Chance in Hell: Django Unchained
The entire Django Unchained roundtable is here. __________________ Along with Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained forms something of a diptych for Tarantino insofar as both are revenge fantasies set...
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Quentin Tarantino’s Slave on the Road; or, Josiah Henson Unchained
The entire Django Unchained roundtable is here. _____________ Antebellum fugitive slaves were criminals according to the laws of their day. Their labor, their bodies, and any future that they might...
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Django vs. Lincoln
The entire roundtable on Django Unchained is here. ____________________ I made the odd choice to see both Django Unchained and Lincoln during the same evening, which made for an interesting resonance...
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Django, Southside
Movie theater, South Side of Chicago: photo by Russell Lee, April 1941, from this site. So there’s been some discussion in comments on various bits of our Django Unchained roundtable about how...
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Django: Back to Basics
Coming in at the tail end of the Django Unchained roundtable, it transpires that I’ve already shared a lot of my thoughts about Django in comments. In this post, then, I’ll mainly be expanding on...
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The Eternal Frontier
The index to the entire Joss Whedon roundtable is here. _________ The 2002 space Western Firefly is part of a long and grand tradition of Hollywood whitewashing. Although set in the distant future,...
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