Special from the Tri-State Defender
(NNPA) — Legendary social activist, comedian and author, Dick Gregory, has weighed in on the controversial Quentin Tarantino film, Django Unchained, and he did so in explosive fashion.
In an interview posted to YouTube, Gregory says that the movie spoke to him in ways that no film had in all his years on earth. He then calls out director Spike Lee for criticizing a film that he’s never seen, saying that if anyone has created movies that are disrespectful to our ancestors, it’s Lee himself:
“I’ve seen Django Unchained 12 times. Never in the history of Hollywood, have they ever made anything that freed the inside of me—the inside of me. I’m 80-years-old, I saw cowboy movies, wasn’t no Black folks in cowboy movies. I’m looking at a western, plus a love story. To those of you all that see it, you’ll never see a love story about a Black man and a Black woman where it wasn’t some foul sex and foul language, huh. And Spike Lee can’t appreciate that. The little thug ain’t even seen the movie. He’s acting like he White.
“So it must be something personal. And all them Black entertainers that know Spike Lee, how you gone attack this man and don’t be attacking them…and then say everyone’s a fool but me. [Talking about] ‘it offended my ancestors,’ but when you did She’s Got To Have It and some of those other thug movies you did…you took Malcolm X and put a Zoot suit on him…did that offend your ancestors, punk?
“It’s a game, man. So whatever he’s mad about is something that happened way, way a long ago. Thank God it didn’t work [to stop the movie from being successful].”
When the interviewer asks Gregory if he has a problem with Tarantino’s excessive use of the word ‘n*gger,’ he said that he absolutely did not and that no other culture insists on the white-washing of their painful past in this country like Black people:
“We talking about history, man. It happened. Nigger happened.”
Gregory goes on to talk about the history of “the dozens,” slave rebellion and racism in Hollywood.
