Taylor Hill/Getty Images; ANDREW COOPER

“Django Unchained,” which hit theaters on Christmas Day, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson. It follows Jamie Foxx as a freed slave who works with a bounty hunter to fight the slave owners who captured his wife. Despite the success of the Quentin Tarantino movie by critics, Filmmaker Spike Lee has outwardly spoken against the newly released film for its portrayal of slavery.

In an interview with VibeTV, Lee told them, “I can’t speak on it ’cause I’m not gonna see it”. He went on to say, “All I’m going to say is that it’s disrespectful to my ancestors. That’s just me…I’m not speaking on behalf of anybody else.” His statement sparked a lively debate, which he himself, engaged in- weighing in and retweeting comments on Saturday evening.

Spike Lee, whose latest film “Red Hook Summer” deals with race and class in the South Brooklyn neighborhood, said he has no plans to see “Django Unchained”. He went on about his dissatisfaction on Twitter, writing, “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.”

In a separate interview with Vibe, Jamie Foxx, who plays Django, informed that Lee told said at the BET Awards in September that he would not speak out about the film. “You know Spike, he’ll let you have it whether it’s good, bad or ugly,” Foxx told the magazine. “And he said, ‘I’m not going to say anything bad about this film. It looks like y’all are getting it.’ ”

This isn’t the first time Lee has taken issue with Tarantino’s films, especially when it comes to the use of a racial epithet that is used myriad times in Django and appeared frequently in Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown.

Written by: Lexine Emille