 An entire issue of the academic journal <unk> was devoted to Django Unchained : " Django Unchained and the Global Western , " featuring scholars who contextualize Tarantino 's film as a classic " western . " Dana Phillips writes : " Tarantino ’ s film is immensely entertaining , not despite but because it is so very audacious — even , at times , downright lurid , thanks to its treatment of slavery , race relations , and that staple of the Western , violence . No doubt these are matters that another director would have handled more delicately , and with less stylistic excess , than Tarantino , who has never been bashful . Another director also would have been less willing to proclaim his film the first in a new genre , the “ Southern . ” 
