Analyzing Evil: Stephen From Django Unchained

hello everyone and welcome to the 61st episode of analyzing evil featuring steven from django unchained the real brains behind the candyland plantation stephen is perhaps the most heinous and memorable example of an uncle tom to ever appear in cinema an intelligent and opportunistic man who has no qualms about betraying his fellow man in order to get ahead in life in this video we'll cover the authenticity of this character and then move on to take a look at every detail of this devious monster from his deceptively feeble mannerisms to the subtleties of his speech and actions that make steven a far more threatening villain than his supposed master could ever hope to be but before we get into steven let's talk about our sponsor for this video star trek fleet command star trek fleet command is a story driven game set in the star trek galaxy one where you can interact with all your favorite characters ranging from the original series all the way to the jj abrams films it features real 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video now without further ado let's begin let's start by briefly covering the history of house slaves now there's varying accounts of the authenticity of the claim that house slaves acted in much the same way as stephen stephen enjoys quite the cushy lifestyle as calvin's number two and the veracity of his comfortable existence has some truth to it as house slaves without a doubt enjoyed a better standard of living when compared to their field-bound brethren but regardless they were still slaves and the work they had to perform in the house while better in comparison to laboring in the fields was still work and along with having to perform all the menial and degrading tasks that needed to be performed in a large household they were required to be on call 24 7 to serve the needs of their masters as far as the relationship between the two enmity did exist and how slaves were often looked at by field slaves as privileged stuck up and traitorous being that they were much closer to their oppressive masters but here's the thing the world we live in is hardly cut and dry and it's not as if there were a universal rule that house slaves lived by in all likelihood some house slaves were much like steven others were as hateful and resentful of their masters as any other slave and others still were somewhere in between it's even been said that house slaves were far more treacherous to their masters as house slaves had access to all the resources available to their masters and despite what calvin says when he ponders why slaves don't turn on their masters house slaves were much more likely to deceive their masters and even kill them considering that they were much more well informed about their private lives and thus their weaknesses and vulnerabilities so as far as how historically accurate the character of stephen is i'd say that most house slaves in his position were a mixture between his severity and a more compassionate soul but it's also likely that there were indeed a few house slaves who were as terrible as steven but they were the exception not the rule and with that out of the way let's move on and talk about this exceptional exception that is stephen stephen was in all likelihood born on candyland as django points out that stephen has been at candyland for 76 years if he wasn't he's definitely been there since he was young and how and when he started serving in the big house is a mystery perhaps he was the son of one of the existing house slaves like old ben or maybe he sucked up to the candy family so well for so long that he earned his position of comfort the latter may be just as true as the former because above all stephen is an intelligent man and an intelligent man would be well aware of how best to afford himself a better position in the world by expertly utilizing the hand he was dealt whether born a house slave or not i'm sure steven either realized or was taught early on that the surest way to living a good life as a slave was to be as friendly and subservient to his master as he possibly could be now that's a good way to start and i'm sure stephen was quite amiable when engaging with calvin's father and grandfather but the best way to ensure that you're given an important position in a person's life is to shape their opinion of you when they're young which stephen undoubtedly did with calvin growing up on a plantation surrounded by slaves and his own family i'm sure that aside from his sister and the few children he met on trips to town or who came to his home there weren't too many people that calvin could have called a friend when he was a child enter stephen a man who would perhaps play with calvin give him sweets and spend time with him when his parents busy lives prevented them from seeing their son thus stephen's hand in raising young calvin cemented him in calvin's mind as a friend as well as a pseudo-father figure as children who are raised by household servants often find themselves becoming attached to the people who care for them alongside their parents and over the years as his parents and other impactful servants passed away calvin found himself relying on one person more and more as time passed his mentor friend and near family member stephen which brings us to the events of the film where we find that stephen is far more friendly with calvin than you would expect a slave to be when we're first introduced to stephen and he begins speaking to calvin he starts by joking with him in an almost offensive manner telling calvin that he missed him about as much as he misses a rock in his shoe a remark that would have surely gotten any other person who dared to give lip to calvin in such a way immediately killed or tortured but not stephen he exudes a confidence in the presence of his masters that can only come from a man who's 100 sure that his position in this world is one of incredible value to keep this position stephen has crafted for himself several different masks suited to different occasions in front of the general public he displays subservience acting as a well-trained yet witty fool his aged and crippled appearance disarming people with his display of average intelligence and harmlessness we see this side of stephen any time he's in calvin's presence in front of people where he banters back and forth with his master and acts as his yes man as we see when he repeats anything calvin says to reaffirm his position when he laughs at his jokes and when he acquiesces to any request that calvin makes that is after a healthy dose of snide retorts when stephen is dealing with his charge the other slaves of the big house we find him to be a much different man we do see him joking in the kitchen before entering the dining room in one scene but as we can see with hildy he has no reservations about sending the slaves that serve under him to be tortured or imprisoned and his position as calvin's lap dog ensures that his threats carry a lot of weight behind them to the point where hildy expresses the terror she feels when he's intimidating her part of which comes from his menacing presence and the other part from the fact that everything that stephen says is backed up by calvin then there's the side of steven that nobody gets to see besides calvin and some of the other high ranking white people of the candyland plantation and of course those few who pay close attention to his mannerisms stephen is incredibly perceptive and the best example of this keen perception of his is given to us during the dinner party scene when laura first remarks that hildy has eyes for django nobody pays any mind to that statement save for stephen in this moment steven sees the distress in hildy and the moment of unrest in django physical indicators that one might take for momentary embarrassment at the revelation of one's affection for another person but for stephen a man who has lived and thrived in this harsh world of human bondage by learning the ins and outs of the human soul he knows that there's almost always something to be gained by watching the movements a person may not even know they've made so stephen accuses hildi of having a relationship with jango and though she lies again from her shoddy defense of her position steven knows that there's more to be gained from this hunch so he baits django into revealing his true emotions albeit only for a moment but a moment as we've seen already is all steven needs and with his confirmation of their relationship he covertly advises calvin to meet him in the library to reveal to him this information now here steven proves that he's definitely the brains of candyland as calvin didn't even have the inkling that he was being had and stephen proceeds to not only tell him of this deception but of the doctor's plan which stephen has worked out beautifully with just one suspicion now again throughout this endeavor stephen proves to be far more intelligent than his master but how how is a household slave who was in all likelihood banned from receiving an education more intelligent than his master well steven worked to earn an education in the shadows years and years of observation have educated him through sheer desire to improve his station in the treacherous world he lived in from teaching himself to read in the vast family library in his free time to listening to the children of the house being educated to being present when important conversations on worldly matters were being held in the house stephen little by little earned the knowledge that he currently has calvin on the other hand earned nothing everything was handed to calvin his house his clothes his food his servants everything that calvin candy has was given to him and what does calvin candy do with what he's been given he plays he watches mandingo fights he hangs out at social clubs he hosts dinner parties he drinks and smokes and lives the life of a hedonist not so much as bothering to glance at the books in his library while calvin played steven worked and he worked so hard for so long that he managed to climb his way to the top of the hierarchy in candyland making himself its de facto leader as calvin deferred much of the day-to-day menial tasks needed to run candyland effectively to his right-hand man now what's interesting about steven is that his friendship with and love for calvin and his family isn't a ruse if it were anyone else you might think that stephen was simply showing this affection to his masters to better deceive them but no at some point stephen decided that his fellow slaves mattered very little to him who were they but more unfortunate souls like himself with nothing to offer him with the candy family stephen was somebody he wasn't just a household slave he was a friend a near family member and arguably the most important man in their entire operation it's no wonder then that stephen would come to know true affection for these people and there's no better evidence for this fact than the moment that calvin candy dies rushing to his side as his body falls to the floor stephen is utterly distraught as the man he loved more than anyone in the world falls into darkness his sobs echoing over gunfire as despair overtakes his entire being the boy he'd helped raise the man he'd guided into his position the friend whose company he had come to enjoy more than anything else in the world was gone now django may not have killed calvin but steven had hated him the moment he had rode up to candyland on his horse a gaze of utter hatred emanating from his eyes as he watched this man defying the system he had come to enjoy and again though he didn't kill calvin stephen knows he was the driving force behind dr schultz coming to candyland in the first place and for that stephen marks jango as the uppity man who had taken everything from him and thus deserved to die during the shootout that followed calvin's death steven assumes the role of leader that he had served from the shadows for so many years ordering the white plantation workers to stop shooting so he can strike a deal with django after showing a bit of integrity when he tells jango that hildy won't be harmed if he gives himself up and squeezing some satisfaction from jango's surrender by making him repeat his acquiescence to his demands we next find stephen confronting a strung up jango in a barn here he saves jango from mutilation only to damn him to servitude in a brutal mining company here we see steven once again expressing his intelligence and the influence he has over the rest of the candyland operation by telling jango that laura finally had the idea to send him to this mining company only after he'd repeated it several times he states to jango that the reason he did this was because any torture that they could inflict upon django at candyland would be too good for him even letting billy crash cut off his sensitive parts would only result in him bleeding out in a few minutes making the retribution that steven seeks far too swift this is where stephen reveals two things one of which had been prevalent to a certain extent already that being his sadism and second how much horror he's overseen during his tenure at candyland he thoroughly enjoys the thought of django being tormented at the laquint dickey mining company explaining to jango his fate in detail with a cold satisfaction that shows his utter hatred for this man and desire for revenge and while regaling jango with his fate he muses about the horrid things that they do at candyland to misbehave slaves explaining this to django as casually as one might talk about the weather satisfying his need to torment django before he sends him off to his horrid fate however this fate was not meant to last and django returns to exact his own revenge upon these people who would see him and his wife put in perpetual bondage and torment and in these last moments stephen reveals one last thing to us that even his crippled appearance was nothing but a carefully crafted deception as when he's the last man standing he drops his cane and walks towards django without so much as a stutter showing us just how far steven was willing to go in order to worm his way into the good graces of his masters here as defiant and obstinate as ever stephen dies a painful death cursing django and vowing that he would be brought to justice in the name of candyland and at this end who was stephen he was a slave born just as unfortunate as the rest but through his misfortune this keen young man found that he could manipulate his way into becoming an important man one whose value would assure for himself a comfortable position in this world of horrors he was intelligent condescending rude and cruel adopting the thoughts and beliefs of his oppressors and putting them into practice with zeletry becoming a man so fervently on the side of his masters that he molded himself into a more brutal and heinous representation of the institution they propped up on the one hand it's hard to blame a person for attempting to better their lives when they're thrust into such a horrible situation but on the other is the fact that stephen didn't just wash clothes and scrub floors to get ahead he acted as a glorified slaver standing witness to countless beatings mutilations and killings and who knows he may have even participated in some of these barbaric acts himself when it comes down to it stephen is no better than his masters and he's perhaps even worse than they a man whose soul has been infected with the rot of racism hatred and brutality one who stands before us as one of the most sickeningly disgusting examples of evil thank you all for tuning in to this episode of analyzing evil and i hope you've enjoyed what are your thoughts on stephen did i miss anything let me know down below and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured in a future episode while you're at it if you like this video hit that thumbs up button and make sure to subscribe if you haven't already a big thank you to all of my subscribers and to my patrons and a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen now join the channel's discord server and reddit to interact with myself and the community and follow me on the social media platforms listed below to keep up with the channel as always thanks for watching and i'll be seeing you soon [Music]

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 908,357

Keywords: Tarantino, Django, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Evil, Villain, Analysis

Id: 6ZsUhJpmMjo

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/OminousWolf24]

This video was superbly accurate to every detail.

[u/muck2]

Great video! I'm not sure why you felt the need to address the reality of Stephen's loyalties, though.

Repulsive though it may seem to us, the turning of the oppressed against their own at the behest or due to the influence of their oppressors is as well-documented as it is understood.

Dehumanising systems often create hierarchies of oppression and make their victims complicit in order to better control their subjects; also, collaboration is for some victims a way to release their pent-up aggression and frustration.

For example, allied prisoners-of-war held by Japan reported that Korean guards (who were forcefully drafted into the Japanese army) could be more cruel to them than the Japanese.

Or take the Holocaust. Some of the most prolific mass murderers in Nazi service on the Eastern Front were not German but local men from what is now Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the Baltic States, collaborating with the Nazis in the hope of furthering their own ends.

That's humanity for you.