Tarantino's Django Unchained explores the freeing of a black slave named Django by a white bounty hunter known as Dr. Schultz.
Bell Hook's theory of the black gaze describes an overwhelming desire to look. Whilst black people always realised that mass media maintained white supremacy, presenting white people as the dominant and black people as the inferior.
A spectator may take on a negotiated reading of the film by adapting to the black gaze. For example, we may see alignment with the other black characters rather than the protagonist Django. In the film, Django is freed however, we do not gain any sense of brotherhood or motivation to free other slaves, instead it is as though once freed Django is part of the white dominant culture and continues to oppress other black slaves himself. Instead, one may take on a negotiated reading of the film and therefore align with Dr. Schultz due to his sense of brotherhood.
However, if a spectator was to adapt to the black gaze, one may align more so with the black female characters. bell hooks argued that in cinema there are no positive representations of black women, they are either presented as a portrayal of the white woman, a female slave or as a laughable character. This is evident throughout Django Unchained. For example, the character Bertina is presented as the laughable caricature. We see that she is spoken down to and lacks intelligence in comparison to other black women.
We also see Sheba, who is treated as a white woman who wears expensive clothing and lives in the luxury of Candy's home.
Firstly, we see Broomhilda, Django's wife being from a white German background and therefore associating her with the dominant white culture and dislocating her from the black culture.
We then see Bertina, who acts as a characterture for the black culture, used as a mock by the white culture.
