Charley Brown Unchained: New Slaves

Man Cave 1.0

When we first meet Mr. Calvin Candie he is relaxing in his man cave just like millions of Americans on any given Sunday.  That 72" HD TV' + Surround Sound sure brings the action close, but nothing is as close to the action as the front row seats of Mr. Candie.  

It might seem wrong to compare Mr. Candie's choice of sport with that of the average American, but Quentin Tarantino doesn't seem to think so.  In fact, in Django Unchained, Tarantino is pretty explicit about his opinion of the similarities between the two, especially the industries surrounding them, and the dollars they earn on the running backs of their fellow man.

"Clues," Zina said, "I kept giving you clues.  But it was up to you to recognize me."

     Emmanuel said, "I did not know who I was for a time, and I did not know who you were.  Two mysteries confronted me, and they had a single answer."

     "Let's go look at the wolves," Zina said.  "They are such beautiful animals.  And we can ride the little train.  We can visit all the animals."

     "And let them free," Emmanuel said.

     "Yes," she said.  "And let them, all of them, free."

     "Will Egypt always exist?" he said.  "Will slavery always exist?"

     "Yes," Zina said.  "And so will we."

     

Philip K. Dick

"Are you ready for some Django?"  

"Like slavery, it's a flesh for cash business."

Dr. King Schultz

Quentin Tarantino makes it clear that the widespread brutality and exploitation in the industries of slavery and sports entertainment are one in the same.   Whether on the cotton field or on the football field, people are simply bought and sold, beaten and brutalized, and thrown away the minute they begin to lose their value.  And the few that make it up to the house….

Tarantino is suggesting that the American Dream has been replaced by America's Game, a paradigm of big-business that masquerades as entertainment.  A perfect blend of money, violence, and theater that functions as digital soma for the masses.  

"I must admit I'm at a bit of a quandary when it comes to you. On one hand I despise slavery, on the other hand I need your help. If you're not in a position to refuse, all the better. So for the time being I'm gonna make this slavery malarkey work to my benefit."

Dr. King Schultz

Be A Man

At the center of the film is Django Freeman, played by Jamie Foxx (played by Eric Marlon Bishop), who once played Willie Beamen, superstar quarterback of Any Given Sunday.  "Django" means "I awake" and seems to suggest the cognitive transformation at the center of this film.

When we first meet Freeman and Beamen, they are in the same predicament:  they work on fields (cotton / football), have owners (slave master / franchise owner), and are in chains (shackles / "1st and 10").   Beamen seemingly is in a much better situation than poor Django.  Sitting on the bench is one step away from the spotlight, but Django, despite being moved across Texas to a slave auction (football draft), is one step away from salvation.  That first step towards salvation arrives in the form of an ex-Nazi named Dr. King.


Schultz is played by Christoph Walz, who once won an Oscar portraying a Nazi.  "Dr. King" invokes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who helped liberate African-Americans from the inequalities of segregation, and by association, Martin Luther, the German monk, who liberated Catholics from indulgences.  Schultz may refer to Charles Schultz, creator of Charlie Brown. 

No longer asleep, Schultz has made peace with himself and his morality in this flesh for cash world.  He simply would "rather be a dick than a swallower."  This is made perfectly clear in the shot below, where Schultz' the bounty hunter explains the rules of the Game to Django from inside a glass cube, while the real Schultz sits comfortably outside of it.

Django's liberation begins with Schultz adopting the role of Director, putting Django into character, complete with costume.  In fact, Schultz will put Django into many characters along the way:  valet, Siegfried, a black slaver.

 

Prestige

 "I Own You Bitch"

What Schultz understands, what he will teach Django, is that real human life, what is best called reality, is closer to the mountains and dragons of myth than the streets and marketplaces of the machine.  The Dream trumps the Game any day.  Because of a life of slavery, this truth has been obscured for Django.  The unlikely relationship between Schultz and Django provides a chance for both men to return to reality.

Django:  Why you care what happens to me? Why you care if I find my wife?

Schultz:  Frankly, I've never given anybody their freedom before, and now that I have I feel vaguely responsible for you. Plus when a German meets a real-life Sigfried that's kind of a big deal. As a German I'm obliged to help you on your quest to rescue your beloved Brunhilde.

For the final act of this quest, Schultz and Django travel to the Cleopatra Club, masquerading as owner and agent, neophytes to the big business of the Mandingo fight game.  The two are welcomed in to a bizarre situation that only gets more bizarre.

Subtle

Tarantino completes the cube with a thinly veiled reference to Fred "The Hammer" Williamson.

Williamson played eight seasons in the NFL, and earned his nickname "The Hammer" because he used his forearm to deliver violent hits to the heads of opposing players. After finishing his NFL career, Williamson followed the lead of Jim Brown and took his talents to Hollywood.  One step forward, two steps back.

Two-Eyed Charley

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  When Charlie Brown plays football with Lucy, it is an explicit portrayal of insanity.  The only way to move forward is to wake up and stop trying to kick the football.  Turn off the TV.  Stop watching the Game.

Hear Here Part 2: It Is Shining

"A more perfect Logos" is what we are looking for.

We always say "the book is better than the film" because we are closer to the source, the Logos.   This is why we have only one Wizard of Oz book, but ten different filmed versions of it.

To make this more explicit, Danny figures out how to escape the nightmare by retracing his steps.  

Defending The Dream

Disorient the senses.  Meditate, intoxicate, abstain, or indulge. Explore the wider range of seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling.  New and unusual thoughts rise to the surface.  Discover new facets of creation, new facets of the creator.

Disorient the media.  Cut-up, juxtapose, reverse, mash-up.  Explore the wider application of sound, color, form, narrative.  New and unusual thoughts rise to the surface.  Discover new facets of the art, new facets of the artist.

The first time I disoriented the media was when someone suggested that I isolate the left stereo channel while listening to “Strawberry Fields Forever”.  It's a simple little trick, but worth it.

Lot Wizards

I discovered a new way to disorient the media thanks to those old-school wizards the Flaming Lips.  Zaireeka, released in 1997, included four separate CD's designed to all be played at the same time.  After the novelly of the project wore off, I was inspired to experiment with my own record collection.  I spent a few months playing more than one album at a time, sometimes three or four, to see if they merged into something more than just chaos.  I mean, what else are you gonna do with your Sven Väth CD’s?

It quickly dawned on me that DJ’s do this all the time, with more defined edits and more complex equipment.  But there was something  more organic, more archaic, this way.  Sure, more often than not the product of these experiments was pretty bad, but every now and then a certain synergy would take place that was oddly listenable.  These experiments were intriguing enough for me to finally go ahead and watch The Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon.

Even though I entered into Dark Side of the Rainbow with incredible doubt, the experience of watching Dark Side of the Rainbow blew me away.  Really, it changed the way I looked at everything.  There wasn't any specific moment that I really held onto, it was more the overall ebb and flow, as well as the opportunity to experience a film and album that I had seen and heard my whole life in a completely different way.  With just one viewing, both the album and the film transformed for me, but I wasn't exactly sure how.  No surprise, I soon began experimenting with combining other films and albums.

It Is Shining

Great art, regardless of form, delivers an undeniable excitement, and a distinct feeling of awe.  These different experiments helped me to recreate that initial excitement.  As a bonus, I was discovering details and themes that had otherwise escaped me.   All because of a few simple twists and turns from the norm.  Too much time on my hands, maybe, but fuck the critics, it worked.

Link

Over the last year, I have been experimenting with a new technique.  Instead of isolating the images of certain films, I have taken to isolating the audio of films, and listening to them as if they were audio-books.  This would have been incredibly difficult 25 years ago, but it is ridiculously easy today.  Simply download a film to an iPhone, put headphones on and the phone in your pocket, and walk outside your front door.  I'm sure this seems rather unexciting, and often times it can be.  But like any "book," it all depends on the "author".  I first got inspired to do this while walking through Lincoln Park Zoo.  I remembered that I had downloaded 2001: A Space Odyssey to my phone.  Up for a laugh, I fired it up.

It is incredible madness.  Especially high at the zoo.

A Clockwork Orange followed a few months later, which was a complete and total revelation.  It was as if I had never seen the movie before.  It just completely changed for me.

Then it dawned on me: eyes wide shut.

Until I listened on headphones, I wouldn't have considered Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick’s masterpiece.  But things change.  Why do we consider just the visual architecture of Kubrick's work?  His arrangement of sound is just as incredible, and when isolated, reveals deeper elements of his genius.

Wing Boss

At this point in my re-education of Stanley Kubrick, and of film in general,  I started feeling that my excitement wasn't in the realm of "discovery".  I wasn't revealing anything that wasn't there, and if I was simply late to the party, that was ok.  I just felt lucky enough to have found the doorway.

I considered booting up The Shining next, but decided instead to go with Dr. Strangelove.  I'm not sure why I avoided The Shining, maybe I was saving the best for last?  Anyways, Strangelove was an utter disappointment.  Meaning, it was...boring.  And the same thing with Lolita.  Nothing really grabbed me with these experiments.

And then I put off these experiments for months.  I'll say this, I never felt like this was something to do indoors.  Intuitively, it just seemed like something to do outside.  So fall turned to winter, and the lab was closed.

After staying inside for most of the winter,  I decided I needed to get outside for a walk.  To keep me company, I downloaded The Shining to the phone and stepped outside.  It was time.

The opening music began playing and it was as haunting as it ever was, but larger.  So large it felt like I might get devoured.  And it seemed to last an eternity.  Then I saw it.  I mean, I saw it man, it was crystal clear.  A green grassed playground, filled with children laughing and playing.  And a dog.  I mean, it was all just there.  For the life of me, I had never seen a playground in that movie before, ever.  I stood motionless in the middle of the sidewalk, intent on rewinding to restore my sanity, when the conversation between Danny and Wendy ruined everything.

          "Anyway, there's hardly anybody to play with around here."
       "Yeah I know." 

When I watched The Shining traditionally, like normal folk, I never saw the playground,  My ears might have picked up the sound, but I didn't see it, and it's impact on the conversation between Danny and Wendy was purely subconscious.  It was only when I removed the images and isolated the sound that I discovered the reality of this playground, the absolute sadness of it, and it's impact on the story.

Was the inclusion of this audio picked at random or was it intentionally placed?

 -What is a ghost?  Stephen said 

with tingling energy.

My Own Private Chapelizod

I pity your oldself I was used to.  Now a younger's there.  Try not to part.  Be happy dear ones!  May I be wrong!  For she'll be sweet for you as I was sweet when I came down out of me mother.

My great blue bedroom, the air so quiet, scarce a cloud.  

In peace and silence.  
I could have stayed up there for always only. 
It's something fails us.  

First we feel. 
Than we fall. 

 

And let her rain now if she likes.   Gently or strongly as she likes.  Anyway let her rain for my time is come.

  I done me best when I was let.  Thinking always if I go all goes.  A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me?  One in a thousand of years of the nights?  All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming loathed to me.  And I am loathing their little warm tricks.  And loathing their mean cosy turns.  And all the greedy gushes out through their small souls.  And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies.  How small it's all!  

And me letting on to myself always.  And lilting on all the time.  I thought you were all glittering with the noblest carriage.  

You're only a bumpkin.  I thought you the great in all things, in guilt and in glory.  You're but a puny.  Home!  My people were not their sort out beyond there so far as I can.  For all the bold and bad and bleary they are blamed, the seahags. 

No!  Nor for all our wild dances in all their wild din.  I can seen myself among them, allaniuvia pulchrabelled. How she was handsome, the wild Amazia, when she would seize to my other breast!  And what is she weird, haughty Niluna, that she will snatch from my ownest hair!  For 'tis they are the storms.  Ho hang!  Hang ho!  And the clash of our cries till we spring to be free.  Auravoles, they says, never heed of your name! 

But I'm loathing them that's here and all I loathe.  Loonely in me loneness.  For all their faults.  I am passing out.  O bitter ending!  I'll slip away before they're up.  They'll never see.  Nor know.  Nor miss me.

And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick 

and I rush, my only, into your arms. 

I see them rising!  Save me from those terrible prongs!  Two more. Onetwo moremens more.  So.  Avelaval.  My leaves have drifted from me.  All.  

But one clings still. 

I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff!  So soft this morning ours. Yes. 

Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair.

If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to wash-up.  Yes, did.  There's where.  First.  We pass through grass behush the bush to.  Whish!  A gull.  Gulls.  Far calls.  Coming, far!  End here.  Us then.  Finn, again!  Take. 

 Bussoftlhee, mememormee!  

Till thousendsthee.

Lps.  

The keys to.  Given!  A way a lone a last a loved a long the

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake