Spike Lee has a serious beef with Quentin Tarantino and Django Unchained, offering up the opinion that the film should never have been made. Spike claims the subject matter of slavery to be squarely off-limits to Tarantino (and, I suppose, anyone else for that matter) as fodder for an irreverent, humorous, and bloody western crafted like a work of classic exploitation cinema.
Does Lee have a point of any kind? He’s made this summary judgment about Django while refusing to see the film. This kind of negative campaigning against a movie is not new. Religious fundamentalists picketed The Last Temptation of Christ (and, like Lee, refused to watch the film); Claude Lanzmann doesn’t approve of Schindler’s List. We Ask Movie Irv to pass a judgment of his own:
Now that you’ve heard Irv’s verdict, let’s hear yours. Will there be anything but condemnation for Lee in the comments? We shall see.