How can Django unchained be viewed as a postmodern film?

How can Django unchained be viewed as a postmodern film?

Postmodernism is a concept in the arts and architecture, it represents a departure from modernism and is characterised by the self conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories. Frederick Jameson describes postmodernism as vacuous and trapped in a circular reference’ meaning it is empty and going around in circles, suggesting the idea that everything is a copy and nothing is original. 

In 1858 a bounty hunter named Schultz befriends a slave called Django and buys him as he needs his help to find three men, after they find these men Django wants to find his wife, Broomhilda, who along with him were sold separately for trying to escape their last owners house, Schultz offers to help him as long as Django stays with him to be his partner. They find out she was sold to a plantation in Mississippi. Fully knowing they cant just go in and demand to buy her, they have to come up with a plan so that the owner invites them into his home and they can save her. 

Django combines various characteristics of various film genres, one of them being a ‘western’ which is a film set in the wild west of america, a ‘spaghetti western’ which is a low budget western made in Italy, and ‘blaxploitation’ which is a film where black people are cast as stereotypical characters of the black community, this can be seen as some sort of postmodern ‘mash up’ which coincides with the Frederick Jameson's idea of circular referencing. This is not the only feature that makes the film a ‘mash up’, the actual name of the film and the the origins of it come from two other films that have been previously made, they are Django (1966) and Hercules unchained (1959), this has created what is known as a meta, which is a piece of creative work which refers to itself or to the conventions of its genre ‘self referential’, this was something done deliberately by the films director Quentin Tarantino who is famous for his postmodern style. 

Postmodernism is particularly hard to get your head around as it is a concept that you either believe in or don't believe in, you have to form your own opinion on it which is why it is difficult to define something as postmodern or not, the actual name of the concept ‘post modern’ does not make sense, post meaning after, and modern being the present tense, something can not be after modern, it just doesn't work. 

Compared to other ‘western’ films the film is very unconventional, one particularly unconventional part of it is the music and soundtrack, the music does not fit well at all with the type of film it is, however in a way it does work as well, the one that stood out for me was hip hop artist Rick ross, this song did not suit the type of film at all and would clearly not have been in any original ‘western’ films, they also have Italian opera style ballads, so the range of music is very wide. This again is done deliberately by Tarantino, to add a comical element to his work, it adds to his ‘historical deafness’, historical deafness is our society’s lack of understanding of many historical events, due to us not actually being there so we rely on information from other people, who get it from others, etc etc, and in reality many of these things may have been exaggerated or not happened at all, the wild west is a great example of this, as many people are thought to get shot all the time, as shown in many films, and particularly Django, however obviously this is not true, as western films are made for our entertainment so clearly things must be exaggerated to create dramatic effect.