Django Unchained and the sad decay of genteel etiquette

The American interpretation of slave management was a brutally violent enterprise. The facade of civility was exactly that - a pathetic attempt to cover, to sanitize, the pall of violence that hung over daily life.
 
Django Unchained did a great job of capturing the awkward frailties of trying to be genteel and, at the same time, so cruel. Both Don Johnson as Big Daddy, and Leonardo Di Caprio as Calvin Candie, very deftly captured the nuances of the internal conflict.

Tara McPherson characterizes the practices of  "southern hospitality" as a 

"masquerade designed to cover up deficiencies in southern culture, such as slavery, discrimination and poverty. "

"Contemporary fascinations with the "grandeur" of the Old South depend on a certain sense of decorum, and this genteel mise-en-scene of southernness is constructed via a carefully manipulated stage set of moonlight, magnolias, and manners. White southerners frequently stress the importance of keeping up appearances; for example, in her Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South, popular writer Shirley Abbot describes the "natural theatricality" inherent in southern hospitality. It requires "a talent for taking on a special role in a comedy of manners that will apparently run forever, no matter how transparent its characters and aims" (106). This maintenance of an aura of tranquility despite a certain degree of transparency suggests that southern hospitality is a performance, a masquerade, an agreed-on social fiction, albeit a powerful one with material effects a talent for taking on a special role in a comedy of manners that will apparently run forever, no matter how transparent its characters and aims...this maintains an aura of tranquility despite a certain degree of transparency suggests that southern hospitality is a performance, a masquerade, an agreed-on social fiction, albeit a powerful one with material effects."  Tara McPherson, Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South (2003), p. 150.

Big Daddy's mannerisms when Shultz and Django first present themselves are a curious spectacle indeed; he seems almost a fuddy-duddy... later, when responding to the killing of the Brittle brothers, he handles his rifle with a casual, strong familiarity that shows his frontier strength has not fully abated - he is of the house, but from the field, rough-come-refined, rugged-come-delicate. His fuddy-duddiness is theatrical, a performance, social fiction.

The scene when the Candiland house slaves are setting the table for dinner, the detail of the place settings, showcases the sense of control that is imposed upon all who hold a station/role in big house order. Yet, at the same time, the privilege of inheritance is shown thin when Calvin lets Stephen ask the Dentist the meaning of a word he does not know either. He is not educated, he is not cultured (as is reinforced when discussing the author of The Three Musketeers), he is just a product of the times, a man with no identity beyond being a 3rd generation plantation owner - he is as much a slave of the times as his slaves.

In some respects, watching Django Unchained is a little like watching Mad Men, in that we, the audience, know change is coming, know that that way of life is imminently going to end...but the characters do not. They think and act as though their way of life will continue indefinitely, as Stephen with his dying breath yells "There will always be a Candiland" before the dynamite erases the big house.

They just assumed that skills they had for the day would be sufficient for tomorrow. Hence the awkwardness, the genteel facade that showed the strain of insufficiency, as the times begin to change and they are simply not equipped or prepared for the new realities.