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Near the end of Django Unchained the title character shoots several people from the balcony. They have (relatively) realistic knock back/falls from the shots; they fall down and move slightly back. He then shoots the main villain's sister, Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly. However her death is different.

She is thrown a very long way --much further than the others-- and is thrown back at an angle that isn't in line with the line-of-fire. These factors, plus the location she is alongside the design of the house allows her to fall dead outside what the camera can see.

As best as I can guess this has something to do with ratings being stricter for showing female deaths, but I'm not sure if this is an actual policy or just my imagination. Further, as this is an R rated movie it doesn't seem like that would be much of a concern. Alternatively, I was wondering if there was someone involved in production who didn't want to show a female corpse, but this seems flimsy as well.

I can't seem to find anything about this on Google, but Google's autocomplete does suggest "Why did Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly fly away" implying many other people have had the same question.

The question is: What motivated having the character Lara Candie-Fitzwilly thrown to such a degree/angle to conveniently remove her from the visible scene?

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  • Violence against women doesn't matter to the MPAA...
    – cde
    Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 5:00
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    My guess is that they didn't make a show of her death for purely dramatic reasons. Torturing/violently killing a woman could damage Django's positive image. Miss Lara is evil, but not really violent to anyone. Violence towards her is somewhat unjustified, that's why her death scene is as short as possible. Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 6:24
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    From my vague recollection, her (completely unrealistically) flying off like that was supposed to startle and even amuse us. Censorship didn't even cross my mind, and I doubt it crossed Tarantino's either.
    – Walt
    Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 7:06
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    Censorship wouldn't be an issue, as any fan of Slasher movies can attest. Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 10:59
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    I'm pretty sure it was just for the visual, and because she was more of major character than the mooks and warranted something a bit more spectacular. Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 13:37

1 Answer 1

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+100

The TV Tropes page for Django Unchained offers this explanation for the oddity of Lara's death scene:

That, of course, was a reference to the Spaghetti Western genre of old, of which this movie is based on. Deaths of women were usually less gory or not entirely shown.

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    Congratulations, this answer is the winner of the monthly answer challenge. Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 20:18
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    Is there a source for this? TV Tropes is a publicly editable site
    – Stevoisiak
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 19:52
  • Huh, my thought was simply that death was played for comedy because of the absurdity of its presentation.
    – ViggyNash
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 13:25

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