„Setting down his basin, the Negro searched among the razors, as for the sharpest, and having found it, gave it an additional edge by expertly stropping it on the firm, smooth, oily skin of his open palm; he then made a gesture as if to begin, but midway stood suspended for an instant, one hand elevating the razor, the other professionally dabbling among the bubbling suds on the Spaniard’s lank neck. Not unaffected by the close sight of the gleaming steel, Don Benito nervously shuddered, his usual ghastliness was heightened by the lather, which lather, again, was intensified in its hue by the sootiness of the Negro’s body. Altogether the scene was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the two thus postured, could he resist the vagary, that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white, a man at the block. But this was one of those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best regulated mind is not free.” [Herman Melville - Benito Cereno (1855)]
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This is Ben. He's a old Joe that lived around here for a long time. And I do mean a long damn time. Well Ben here took care of my daddy and my daddy's daddy, till he up and keeled over one day. Old Ben took care of me. Growing up the son of a huge plantation owner in Mississippi puts a white man in contact with a whole lot of black faces. I spent my whole life here right here in Candieland, surrounded by black faces. And seeing them every day, day in day out, I only had one question. Why don't they kill us? Now right out there on that porch three times a week for fifty years, old Ben here would shave my daddy with a straight razor. Now if I was old Ben, I would have cut my daddy's goddamn throat, and it wouldn't have taken me no fifty years to do it neither. But he never did. Why not? You see, the science of analogy is crucial to understanding the separation about two species. In the skull of the African here, the area associated with submissiveness is larger than any human or other sub-human species on planet Earth. If you examine this piece of skull here, you'll notice three distinct dimples. Here, here and here. Now if I was holding a skull of a... of an Isaac Newton or Galileo, these three dimples would be in the area of the skull most associated with creativity. But this is the skull of old Ben, and in the skull of old Ben unburdened by genes, these three dimples exist in the area of the skull most associated with servility. Now bright boy, I will admit you are pretty clever. But if I took this hammer here and I bashed it in your skull, you would have the same three dimples in the same place as old Ben. Hey! Now lay your palms flat on the table top! If you lift those palms off that turtle shell table top, Mr. Pooch is gonna let loose with both barrels of that sawed off! There have been a lot of lies said around this dinner table here tonight, but that you can believe!” (Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie in Django Unchained, dir. Quentin Tarantino/2012)