Kerry Washington Is Tarantino’s Broomhilda
Kerry Washington has been cast as Broomhilda in Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s slave movie starring Jamie Foxx.
Washington will play slave wife of Django (Jamie Foxx), who is freed by a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) and taught the tricks of the bounty-hunting trade.
It isn’t known when production will begin on Django Unchained, but it’s expected to hit theaters December 25th, 2012.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell co-star.
via IndieWire.com (posted prior to the news of Kerry’s casting)
Speaking of its blaxploitation influences… regarding the lead female character in this, named Broomhilda, Django’s slave wife, whom he’s separated from, and seeks. She’s the lead female in the film, but her part is limited to really just physicalities. She has the most screen time of any other woman in the film, which is why I call her the lead female character, but, really, there’s no Shosanna in this one, as there was in Inglorious Basterds. The black female “lead” here doesn’t get the same kind of dignified treatment that Tarantino gave Shosanna. Not even close. Yes, I know it’s a different time altogether, but, I’m sure he could have afforded Broomhilda some complexities, and maybe even made her a heroine in her own right.
There are some 4 or 5 scenes in which the she’s, shall we say, “exposed”… i.e. naked; and they felt gratuitous to me; 2 in which she’s raped by white men. When we first meet her, she’s on the auction block and asked to bare her breasts to potential buyers; later, she’s chased through a hotel, through hallways, and lobbies, etc, by a slave master, completely naked, after being woken up from sleep, with a whip across her naked body; and still later, she’s locked up naked in a steel box as punishment for trying to run away.
Yes, I’m sure these are all scenarios that very well likely could have played out at the time; HOWEVER, Tarantino could have opted to depict her in another light altogether, but instead chose this less flattering, exploitative one. If the intent here is to elicit sympathy for her, and, in turn, ensure that we hate her captors even more, justifying their eventual comeuppance, it certainly doesn’t. Not for me anyway – as someone who’s already familiar with the atrocities of slavery, and didn’t feel like I needed to see a character that’s really the female lead in the film, essentially exhibited almost like Saartje Baartman (aka the Hottentot Venus) was.
I’m betting Tarantino will likely get a well-endowed black actress to play the part, not-so unlike, as I already made comparisons to, the blaxploitation films of the 70s, the most famous female face (and body) of the era, Pam Grier.
Who exactly will take this particular role, I don’t know. It’s not the most glamorous, nor complex. Although, I’m sure there are a lot of actresses who’d gladly sign up for it.
