Django Unchained

                          "Mom, violence is temporary and unpredictable." 

 I recently saw a movie called Django Unchained because my teenagers outvoted me.   The movie begins in Texas just before the American Civil War. The plot involves a German-born bounty hunter who poses as a dentist.  The bounty hunter makes a deal with a black slave: freedom in exchange for help with the hunter's cash-for-killing enterprise.  After the winter hunt, they travel to the deep south where the bounty hunter helps his former slave obtain freedom for the former slave's wife.  In some ways, Django is a typical buddy story.    In other ways, it resembles a coming of age story in which we follow the adventures of a young person (in this case an ignorant slave) as he/she reaches maturity.  Although it has moments of surprisingly good wit, ultimately the body pile, gore and viciousness recommend this movie as a cartoon-like homage to violence.  

  I recall A Clockwork Orange, in which the question is posed about whether violence is a necessary protection against a too violent society.  This was the same question explored in the movie, Straw Dogs, where a mild-mannered Dustin Hoffman takes homicidal retribution against English bullies.  And interestingly enough, this is the argument  the National Rifle Association recently offered as its official reaction to the Newtown massacre.  While denouncing a culture of violence, the NRA proffered an armed citizenry - including gun totting teachers and principles - as an appropriate response to random acts of violence.  While we like our John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger action heroes to mow down the bad guys, societal problems require a bit more thought.