Nearly 150 years after the Civil War American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino believes that slavery still exists in the United States.
On Tuesday night, Tarantino appeared on the Canadian television talk show “George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight“ to discuss his upcoming film Django Unchained. On the show, he said he believes the United States’ “War on Drugs” and the consequential imprisonment of black men perpetuates slavery in present day society.
Tarantino said of the “mass incarcerations” of black men in the United States: “It’s just slavery through and through, and it’s just the same fear of the black male that existed back in the 1800s.”
Later in the interview he compared a scene from Django Unchained to the United States prison system. Tarantino explained, “You know the scenes that we have in the slave town, the slave auction town, where they’re moving back and forth. Well, that looks like standing in the top tier of a prison system and watching the things go down.”
Tarantino also said he believes that, “Literally all the reasons that they have for keeping [the war on drugs and the mass incarcerations] going are all the same reasons they had for keeping slavery going after the whole world had pretty much decided that it was immoral.” He defined the prison system as an “industry” that many powerful people make money off of, thus, the individuals benefiting from the “industry” will lose money when “these black people [are] let loose.”
Tarantino is obviously not shy about sharing his views on racism, slavery and violence, even if it brings him criticism.
Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson. It is set right before the Civil War. Foxx plays a freed slave who faces a violent plantation owner on his quest to find and free his wife. The movie opens in theaters on Christmas.
(h/t The Hollywood Reporter.)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6dX7Zhw9LU]
