Tarantino's Blaxploitation Films

Tarantino grew up in a poor multi-racial neighborhood in Los Angeles where a size-able portion of the community was dominated by art and created and consumed by African-Americans. In his childhood, he watched Blaxploitation films like Shaft, Mandingo, and his personal favorite Foxy Brown; he also enjoyed Soul Train and the 70s music African-Americans were playing at that time. Growing up in a dominant African American culture has helped sculpture Tarantino taste in music, characters, and stories he installs in his movies. One would expect that his depiction of African-Americans in his movies would be based of his personal experiences and his studies of the Blaxploitation films. In his Blaxploitation films, like Jackie Brown and Django Unchained, there are some similar traits both Jackie and Django share. The main characters in Tarantino’s Blaxploitation films have the following traits: calm, cool, manipulative, strategic, fearless, and persuasive. In Jackie Brown, Jim Smith from Sundance points out that Jackie plays ‘Street Life’ while the sequence of her putting one person over everyone else …show more content…
Salon’s Eric Deggans describes Django as a “Superhero” in his article, “Tarantino is the baddest black filmmaker working today”. “Django is able to talk himself out of most situations, as he does with the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company employees” Deggans states in his article showing how persuasive and how a fast talking trickster Django in which is impressive considering Django is an African-American slave in the 19th century. Deggans sums up how black characters in Tarantino films are portrayed; “Tarantino’s black characters may be flawed, but they are also powerful, smart, human and effective without the approval or enabling of white characters, a rarity for big Hollywood