‘Django Unchained’ action figures spark call for national boycott by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network
‘Selling this doll is highly offensive to our ancestors and the African American community,’ Rev. K.W. Tulloss, NAC’s president in Los Angeles, told the Daily News.
By Nancy Dillon / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network called for a national boycott Tuesday of action figures based on the controversial and blood-soaked slavery revenge flick “Django Unchained.” A 10-doll assortment of characters from the film was going for $299 on Amazon Tuesday.
“Selling this doll is highly offensive to our ancestors and the African American community,” Rev. K.W. Tulloss, NAC’s president in Los Angeles, told the Daily News. “The movie is for adults, but these are action figures that appeal to children. We don’t want other individuals to utilize them for their entertainment, to make a mockery of slavery.”
Tulloss said he hadn’t seen Quentin Tarantino’s movie but heard it was “very good.” Fellow activist Najee Ali from Project Islamic Hope spoke alongside Tulloss in Los Angeles Tuesday and said he’s seen “Django” two times already.
“I actually enjoyed the movie, but we cannot support this type of commercialization,” Ali said. “I don’t seen any dolls representing Hitler that came from Tarantino’s (Holocaust movie ‘Inglourious Basterds’)…I don’t see them making dolls of Holocaust survivors who are bald and starving in concentration camps.”
Neither doll manufacturer National Entertainment Collectibles Association nor licensing partner The Weinstein Company, the film studio behind “Django,” offered immediate comment on the controversy.
The new doll collection includes 8-inch action figures for Jamie Foxx’s lead character Django and his on-screen wife Broomhilda.
The call for boycott came after “Do The Right Thing” director Spike Lee said he considered the new movie insulting.
“American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them,” he wrote on Twitter ahead of the film’s Christmas release.
Speaking in Berlin on Tuesday, Tarantino defended his latest work saying the brutal abuse he portrayed pales in comparison to what slaves actually endured.
“The truth, or the reality, was a thousand times worse than what I showed,” he told reporters ahead of the film’s launch in Germany.
His “Django” is a modern mash-up that borrows heavily from the spaghetti western and blaxploitation genres, critics say.
Foxx plays a slave-turned-bounty hunter who sets out to rescue his wife from a venal Mississippi plantation owner, played by DiCaprio.
The cast also includes Kerry Washington, Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson.
Many have compared it to “Inglorious Bastards,” which was highly controversial as well. That movie garnered eight Oscar nominations.
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