rejection of the confederate flag. it was a massive blockbuster and a best picture nominee (meaning a lot of people saw it), and it was the first film i can think of to unapologetically portray the antebellum south for the morally repulsive institution that it was. everyone agrees that slavery is wrong, but to see the slave-owning south presented for the first time like nazi super-villains to a society that had mostly gotten "gone with the wind" type sympathetic portrayals, if not outright "heroic in defeat" worship-- it had to be jarring for a lot of people.

so to go from that notion that QT planted in our collective conscience to what happened in charleston, suddenly something about this one was different and we knew almost immediately what needed to be done-- in a way we couldn't agree on for the previous 150 years. i said at the time that django was one of the most incredible political statements ever put on film. the dots from that to our recent nationwide pang of conscience-- where statues, memorials, and symbols that have stood for a century or more are now being taken down-- aren't difficult to connect.