Blood in Movies: Creating mood for DJANGO UNCHAINED

I started watching DJANGO UNCHAINED tonight and something occurred to me about how we interpret and react to violence in film: it's all about how they treat the blood.  This had never occurred to me before, because I had never seen a film like DJANGO.  When it comes to blood, DJANGO UNCHAINED is like two completely separate movies meant to illicit two very different reactions from the audience.  Tarantino has essentially created a film which compares and contrasts how the treatment of violence (symbolized by the blood)  effects an audience's reaction to violence in film.

WARNING!!!  The scenes below contain violence and spoilers!!!!  Watch only if you have seen DJANGO UNCHAINED and want to examine how Tarantino films violence.

Scene 1

Mandingo fight - Tarantino doesn't pull any punches with showing the desperation and brutality of the fighters (and the men who want them to fight) and makes sure that the audience is repulsed by the display of not only the fighters, but of the men who are watching them fight.  The blood is used sparingly, but looks so realistic that we as an audience are empathetic to the plight of the slaves forced to fight for their lives because their anguish and the damage they inflict on each other doesn't "look fake."  There are no sprays of gore, just two men covered in blood, fighting each other in an attempt not to shed any more blood themselves.

Scene 2

The Shootout - This scene is the complete opposite in both tone and blood consistency.  Look at how Tarantino sprays blood from bullet hits like the human body was a pressurized blood cannon.  The violence here is supposed to elicit a cathartic effect from the audience.  We have seen these men fight slaves to the death and beat women.  We have listened to them espouse their insane world views at length.  We want revenge.

There are many more examples within DJANGO of how Tarantino conducts the audience's emotional reaction as if he were leading an orchestra.  He is a master showman at the top of his form and he wants us to see the brutality of slavery (by using realistic violence and blood) and to cheer as the slave drivers are killed by Django (by turning humans into blood bags filled with explosives).  Even after all these years Tarantino has something new to show us if we are willing to go along for his crazy self-referential ride.  Thank you, Mr. Tarantino.