A few months ago, I finally watched 'The Hateful
Eight', Quentin Tarantino's latest movie.
Not one of his best, but I couldn't help but
notice the similarities it had with his first
movie.
In many ways it felt like he has come full
circle, and that started me thinking about
his career until now.
Especially since Tarantino is arguably the
greatest director of postmodern cinema, and
I've been trying to explain postmodernism
to my viewers.
I made one video about postmodernism in philosophy,
now it's time to make one about postmodernism
in art.
Moreover, when an artist becomes popular,
it means that they are touching a nerve, expressing
a new sensibility.
The power of art is that it can say the things
that our rationality is incapable of uttering
yet, things that we feel to be true even if
we don't have the concepts to explain it.
So I am going to provide a retrospective of
Quentin Tarantino's career, and through it
I am going to ask: what does his art tell
us about our time?
I should note that I never explored Tarantino's
art before, so this video is not going to
be an in depth analysis.
It will be more of a review on how his movies
connect to today's culture, and how they reflect
it.
Because of that, we shall begin with another
retrospective.
The genre that Tarantino usually works in
is the crime movie, a genre that has a long
and illuminating history in Hollywood cinema.
So let's begin by doing a very brief review
of the history of this genre.
Again, it's not going to be detailed.
I'm talking fast, fast, fast.
Just what we need as a necessary background.
Crime stories, of course, are an important
part of American folklore.
As the American pop industry was beginning
to take shape in the late 19th century, some
of its biggest folk heroes were the outlaws
of the Wild West, like Billy the Kid or Jesses
James.
They were feared and reviled, but they were
also seen as representing the unbound and
daredevil American spirit.
The period that we call the Wild West ended
around the 1890s, and this is also the decade
when people started to make motion pictures.
One of the earliest motion pictures to have
a narrative was 'The Great Train Robbery',
from 1903, that depicts a train robbery in
the Wild West.
As the American movie industry came to be
in the next two decades, the western became
one its main staples, and the outlaws were
central figures.
In the 1920s, the age of prohibition, a new
folk hero was born: the gangster, the outlaw
of the urban landscape.
And in the thirties, that led to the rise
of a new movie genre: the gangster flick.
Starting from 'Little Caesar', in 1931, gangster
flicks were one of the main features of the
decade.
This was also the time when Hollywood started
to feel the sword of censorship hanging over
its head, and created the Hays Code, a form
of self-censorship that limited what could
be said and shown in film.
The violence in gangster movies had to therefore
be justified, so they usually opened with
a disclaimer, that pointed out the social
value of discussing the gangster problem,
and declared that this was the intent behind
the making of the movie.
This tells us a lot about the Modern Age.
The Modern Age, which, following a common
practice, I define as beginning in the late
18th century, was characterized by the idea
that Man needs to grow and mature, and reach
his full potential, and then he will be able
to create a perfect society.
Now when I say "Man", I mean humankind, but
the Modern thinkers referred to it as "Man",
because the idea was that humankind has universal
traits, which are shared by everyone.
Every man is an individual with a unique side,
particular only to him, but every man also
has a side that he shares with everyone else.
Once we figure out what the universal side
of Man is, we will be able to create a society
based on it, and then we will have a perfect
Utopia, in which every individual will be
able to freely express his unique side.
Now, that means that every individual expresses
the universal side of Man in some way, so
if we want to learn and figure out what Man
is, we should explore all types of humans.
And that includes the criminal.
Actually, Modern thought saw the criminal
as a particularly educational specimen.
By studying what it was that made him go bad,
we can learn a lot about the nature of Man.
The thirties gangster flicks were usually
written from a superior point of view, where
the viewer knows exactly why the gangster
is doing what he's doing, and why he is going
to fail.
Of course, every movie had its own theory.
Those that were written by left-wing screenwriters
tended to blame society for the hero going
bad, and the implication was that if society
would be structured right, there would be
no criminals.
Those that were written from a right-wing
point of view, tended to place the blame on
the sinful nature of Man, and the implication
was that only strong law enforcement can create
a good society.
But the people who went to see these movies
did not do it for their educational value,
and the creators knew it.
The urban gangster, much like the prairie
outlaw that preceded him, was a folk hero.
The gangsters were those who provided the
public with booze during prohibition, displaying
the old renegade American spirit.
The hero of the gangster flick was always
a gutsy and capable individualist, who outsmarts
the law and his gangster rivals time after
time, and does it with style.
Through him, the viewers could vicariously
live out their own anti-social fantasies,
reveling in his victories, right up to the
inevitable tragic end.
These movies may have pretended to speak to
an enlightened crowd, which manifests the
mature and sociable side of Man, but they
knew that they were actually catering to the
anti-social traits that are part of all of
us.
As the decade bore on, the heady days of the
roaring twenties receded into memory, and
the gangsters lost their aura.
Crime movies had to find another source of
material, and they found it in American pulp
fiction.
The cheap pulp novels did not have to deal
with the lofty ideals of modern thinking,
and could instead dwell on the seedy side
of life.
The urban crime novels focused on tough men
who were operating by their own individual
code, moving in a world where the distinctions
between good and bad weren't that clear.
The protagonists were often private detectives,
who were on the right side of the law, but
not part of the system.
Thus, they could still be an individualist
hero, without being a criminal.
This was just the kind of hero that the consciousness
of the time was looking for.
The effects of the great depression were being
felt all around, and confidence in the modern
dream diminished.
Capitalism and democracy didn't seem so great
anymore, and were challenged by Communism
and Fascism.
The existentialist philosophy that came from
Europe refuted the ideas at the basis of utopian
thinking, claimed that there is no grand solution
to the puzzle of Man, and focused on the individual
trying to create a meaningful existence for
himself, within a meaningless world.
Meanwhile, psychoanalytic thinking was also
beginning to infiltrate our collective consciousness,
presenting the idea that Man isn't as rational
as we thought, and that he has an irrational
side that cannot be overcome.
These ideas found their way into German cinema,
which developed techniques to represent the
dark and irrational sides of Man on screen,
resulting in what is known as German expressionism.
And as the German directors started to flee
from the Nazis and immigrate to Hollywood,
they brought these techniques into American
cinema.
By the early forties, all of these influences
came together to form a new genre, which was
later dubbed film noir.
Film noir movies were always black and white,
but there were many shades of grey.
The world of film noir was a harsh urban landscape
populated by shady people, with no absolute
good and bad.
The motives of the characters weren't always
clear, and they were driven by irrational
desires, fears and prejudices.
Criminals would still get what was coming
to them, but there was no feeling that society
became any better as a result.
We were all still stuck in this dark world.
The era of film noir was between 1944 and
1955, in the aftermath of WWII and the ensuing
of the cold war.
But the American consciousness was shifting
during those years.
The late forties were still harsh, but the
fifties brought an age of affluence, and new
found confidence in the American way of life.
The atrocities committed by fascists and communists
helped to solve the existential crisis of
the 30s and 40s, as they showed that liberal
democracy is by far the best way to go.
After the war, the US emerged as the sole
leader of the free world, and saw itself as
the model of the best society.
Having defeated the Nazi evil, it believed
it could eradicate all of its inner evils
as well, and create a perfect society.
A consensus between left and right was achieved,
bringing together capitalism and socialism,
and everyone was expected to conform to this
consensus.
If late forties film noir portrayed the individual
as the hero, in the beginning of the fifties
it increasingly began to show individualism
as the cause of the hero's failure.
Meanwhile, the stature of psychology was elevated
in American culture, and in Hollywood movies
of the time it is portrayed as an exact science.
And so, even though it was accepted that Man
has an irrational side, it was once again
believed that human rationality can completely
understand it and control it.
The belief that we are marching towards the
perfect society, and that the American way
is what will get us there, was stronger than
ever.
Cinema, in the meantime, started to perceive
itself more seriously, as an art form.
Hollywood, in the fifties, started to create
heavier dramas, dealing with political, social
and psychological issues in a more educated
and nuanced way.
As the spirit of the time saw America as the
society that will lead us to the perfect world,
Hollywood moved away from gangster flicks
and went back to the basis of movie Americana,
back to the westerns.
The legendary outlaws and lawmen of the Wild
West now became manifestations of the different
facets of Man, participating in a drama that
explored the nature of Man and society.
The makings of the perfect society were already
there, in the early days of America.
We only need to find the right mix.
The fifties did see the rise of a new genre
of urban crime films, and that was the heist
movie.
Although many of the best heist movies of
the fifties and sixties actually came from
moviemakers working outside of Hollywood.
Maybe it was because these films actually
undermined the Modern belief that Man can
devise a perfect world.
The main story of the heist movie is a highly
clever and elaborate plan to pull off an impossible
robbery, but despite the plan being perfect,
the heroes always failed, due to the psychologically
imperfect nature of Man, or simply due to
some random bad luck.
While Hollywood was dreaming of a perfect
society, these movies where there to remind
us that Man is incapable of perfection.
Another thing that happened in the fifties
was the rise of youth culture, the first generation
of teenagers that had its own consciousness,
distinctly different from that of the adults.
In hindsight, it was a different consciousness
from the Modern consciousness, and I call
it the Pop consciousness.
Driven mainly by the new mediums of television
and rock'n'roll music, this generation developed
a new consciousness that no longer enslaves
itself to the march for a perfect society,
because the society we have is good enough.
Instead, it focuses on how to find joy in
the here and now, extract the most from every
historical moment.
We know that nothing good lasts forever, but
that's ok – we enjoy it as long as it's
good, and then we move on to the next exciting
thing.
This new consciousness was responsible for
the opening of a wide generational gap, and,
as usual in such cases, society reacted to
it with fear.
Rock'n'roll was blamed for corrupting the
youth, and some crime movies of the time focused
on juvenile delinquents.
But by the sixties, the new consciousness
was beginning to establish itself.
The sixties, in Hollywood, marked the death
of the old studio system, in which the studios
were in control of every part of the moviemaking
process.
The end of the decade witnessed the rise of
a generation of new directors that regarded
themselves as artists, and wanted their movies
to express their own personal vision.
One of the movies that symbolized this spirit
was Bonnie and Clyde, released in 1967, which
heralded a new era in crime movies.
In the next few years, the legendary outlaws
of the past would be depicted as pop culture
icons, people who broke out of the modern
system and lived an exciting existence for
a while, until the very last moment.
They were part of the rebellious spirit of
the time.
Of course, not everyone internalized the change.
Many youngsters were still stuck in the Modern
frame of mind, and understood the rebellious
spirit of the sixties as heralding a revolution
that will bring Utopia right away.
A Marxist spirit took over the academies,
and led to a lot of violence.
But the Marxist Utopia didn't materialize,
and the failure made many people lose faith
in the Modern dream.
The early seventies saw the return of film
noir, with incredibly dark movies that usually
ended with evil triumphing over good, suggesting
that we are heading not towards Utopia, but
rather in the other direction.
With the shattering of the Modern consciousness,
came the realization that there was something
wrong about the concept of Man.
It defined Man in Western European terms,
thus giving advantage to white people.
It also disadvantaged women, because it placed
them in the role of the companion.
In reaction, pop culture started to pay more
attention to group identity, and to helping
other groups have their say.
In Modern consciousness, the enlightened position
was that we are all basically the same, and
the cultural differences are something that
we need to overcome.
Therefore, Hollywood movies would not mention
the ethnicity of the characters.
A white American actor could represent any
person of any ethnicity.
The seventies brought change, and movies actually
wanted to celebrate the different ethnicities
in America.
A young generation of Italian-American directors
made movies about Italian gangsters, and brought
Italian-American culture to the big screen.
As befitting Italian cultural artifacts, these
movies were quite tragic in nature, something
that can't be said about the African-American
version of the crime movie, the so-called
blaxploitaion films.
These films revolved around the harsh realities
of the black ghettos, and sometimes dealt
with serious themes, but mostly they were
violent fantasies that subverted the conventions
of the gangster movies, in that the criminal
almost always got away with it.
The hero of a blaxploitaion movie was a badass
individualist, who would manage to outsmart
his black rivals, and eventually defeat the
white man as well.
These movies were aimed at black crowds, and
seldom watched by the white public.
By the end of the seventies, the left-wing
academics finally realized that Marx was wrong,
and also that the entire Modern paradigm no
longer holds sway.
They talked about the collapse of the Modern
grand narrative, the narrative of Man progressing
towards perfection, and defined it as the
postmodern condition, where there is no longer
a grand narrative that unites us all.
American politics, however, were not quite
ready to give up on the Utopian dream.
With the fall of the left-wing version, the
right offered a version of its own, claiming
that capitalism and hyper-individualism will
create the perfect society.
The eighties were all about the individual,
working within the capitalist system to achieve
success, overcoming the obstacles that collectivism
put in their way.
Criminals were often shown as individualists
who are beating the system.
They're not bad people, just people who were
dealt a bad hand and are trying to make the
best of it.
On the other hand, they could be shown as
people who are trying to game the capitalist
system in evil ways, in which case they must
be brought down.
And that is what made the eighties the greatest
decade for police movies.
But the postmodern condition began to infiltrate
Hollywood as well.
In the eighties, the Coen Brothers already
began to make movies that subverted the expectations
of the viewer, going in directions that defied
the Modern conventions of storytelling.
The audience was tired of seeing the same
old story about how enlightened society manages
to work out its differences, and wanted other
narratives.
The Coen Brothers worked in many genres and
subverted them all, but their favorite was
always the crime movie.
Focusing on heroes living outside of conformed
society enabled them to take the story in
lots of unexpected directions.
Another director that went against the grain
in that decade was David Lynch.
In his 1985 movie Blue Velvet, one of the
heroes is a woman who gets sadistically brutalized
and raped, but is shown to actually enjoy
it.
Critics accused Lynch that he is promoting
the idea that all women want to be raped,
but he replied: "no, it's just this woman".
His critics were still thinking in Modern
terms, in which every character reveals something
about the universal nature of Man.
Lynch was already thinking in postmodernist
terms, in which there is no universal human
nature.
His movies featured freaky and bizarre people,
celebrating the diversity of the human race.
And, since these types usually live on the
outskirts of society, they were mostly crime
movies.
In the nineties, postmodernist cinema took
over.
The two changes we mentioned – telling original
stories instead of the same old story about
progress towards enlightenment, and celebrating
the diversity of human character instead of
showing everyone as facets of the universal
Man – became constant features.
As a result, the nineties were, by far, the
greatest decade for crime movies.
There were other reasons that helped.
The capitalist bonanza of the eighties collapsed,
leaving a world full of people who were hungry
for financial success, but living in recession.
And with that, the realization finally sank
in that we are not heading towards a perfect
world, which means that crime will always
be part of our life.
This opened up the field for many dramas that
asked how to deal with crime as a constant
feature of society.
All of that ensured that there would be great
and rich content for crime movies.
But to truly become the greatest decade for
crime movies, the nineties needed something
more.
Great art is not just about content, it is
also about form, that matches this content.
It is about style.
And when it came to giving style to this new
crime cinema, there was one movie director
that towered above the rest.
Quentin Tarantino was born in Tennessee in
1963, and displayed enthusiasm for movies
from a very early age, setting him on course
to becoming an actor, a screenwriter and a
director.
He became part of the industry in the eighties,
but we are going to ignore the things he did
in that decade, including this appearance
on the Golden Girls.
In the late eighties, he was working in a
video store, watching movies every day, and
was developing an idea for an independently
produced crime thriller.
Eventually, with the help of veteran actor
Harvey Keitel, he managed to raise the money
to finance it, and a cast of talented young
actors.
Being such a movie buff, the script he was
writing was made of bits and pieces of other
movies, put together to create something new,
a kind of hip-hop approach that would characterize
all of his later movies as well.
In 1992, he released his first feature film,
Reservoir Dogs.
Nothing could have prepared the world for
this movie.
It is actually just a little story about a
heist gone wrong, nothing we haven't seen
in movies countless times before, but the
way in which it is told was original and shocking.
Being a low budget independent flick, it takes
place almost entirely in one place, in real
time, without a lot of action actually happening
on screen, but the style makes it seem like
there is nonstop action.
Two hallmarks of the Tarantino style hit you
right away.
First is the nonlinear way in which the story
is told, the second is the extremely graphic,
yet highly aestheticized, way in which violence
is depicted.
With those two elements, Tarantino keeps us
extremely unnerved, as he unravels a tale
of unraveling.
We are in the aftermath of a botched robbery,
and along with the characters, we are trying
to piece together the details of what happened.
The criminals don't know each other, having
been put together by a crime boss for this
particular job, but they know that there's
a rat in their midst.
As they, and us, try to figure out who it
is, suspicions and suspense rise, eventually
ending in a bloodbath.
This is the image of human society that Tarantino
portrays for us.
Not a congregation of individuals who are
all connected because they are different facets
of universal Man, but disconnected agents
who are trying to get along.
And they are not individuals, either: we don't
know their names, as they all have code names
based on colors, and they don't represent
organic and whole beings, but are made up
of disconnected memories.
The backbone of the story is the friendship
between Mr. White and Mr. Orange, but we eventually
find out that this bond was formed for rather
spurious reasons.
Nevertheless, it becomes so strong that to
maintain it, Mr. White is willing to turn
on much deeper and longer relationships, with
no rational reason behind it.
Human society, in short, is depicted as held
together by arbitrary ties, which can be quite
easily severed.
Another glaring attribute shown by the characters
in the movie is their lack of empathy to other
people, their utter disregard for human life.
In the Modern Age, the idea was that we are
all part of the same humanity, marching together
towards our common goal, so we should care
for each other.
With the collapse of this idea, Tarantino
shows us a world in which empathy does not
exist.
However, we need to remember that characters
in a postmodernist movie are not meant to
represent all of humanity.
A common theme in Quentin's movies is the
idea that there exists a certain type of people
who are born with no empathy, and with lust
for murder.
Or, as he calls them, natural born killers.
This was also the title of a movie directed
by Oliver Stone, which Tarantino wrote the
story for, and came out in 1994.
This type of people is what most of his movies
will revolve around.
Oliver Stone wasn't really the right director
to direct a Tarantino written movie, but the
movie did add to his notoriety, and helped
create a buzz for his second feature, coming
out later in 94.
Now a Hollywood director with a budget and
cast to create the movie he wanted to make,
he could display his full prowess, and the
result was one of the most game-changing movies
of all time.
Pulp Fiction contains all of the themes that
we've met already: the nonlinear storytelling,
the graphic violence, the disregard for human
life.
But it adds more, in both content and style.
First of all, in its treatment of dialogue.
In the movies of the Modern Age, dialogues
had two clear purposes: either to advance
the plot, or to say something about the themes
and messages that the film was trying to convey.
Preferably both.
Every word had to have a subtext, related
to the overall piece, and if it didn't, it
was considered a flaw.
Modern thought, in general, was dismissive
of everyday talk.
The early 20th century philosopher Martin
Heidegger called it prattle, and claimed that
we only do it to avoid having to deal with
existential questions.
But in pop consciousness, everyday life is
to be lived for its own sake, not in the service
of some other existence.
Our everyday talk is actually an enjoyable
thing, one of the things that give life its
flavor.
Tarantino wanted his dialogue to reflect the
way people actually talk in real life, and
the challenge in this case is to do it without
boring the viewers.
You have to write dialogue that isn't germane
to the plot yet still captivating, and this
is where Tarantino revealed himself as the
grandmaster of postmodern cinema.
We see glimpses of it in Reservoir Dogs, but
in Pulp Fiction he displays his full talent.
The movie showed that you can have an entire
conversation about prosaic things like hamburgers,
and still hold the viewer's attention for
several minutes.
And, within all this seemingly mundane talk,
also include elements that advance the plot.
In 1994, this type of dialogue writing was
completely fresh and stimulating.
This is reflected in the visuals as well.
Tarantino's movies contain a lot of close-ups
of hamburgers and other types of food and
drink, with no real connection to the plot.
This is how our mind works: not in a linear
way, but jumping from mundane things to existential
problems.
Once he lulls you into the dialogue and distracts
you with shots of food, Tarantino will suddenly
present a turn, in which it switches at once
into matters of life and death.
A recurring shot in his movies is close-ups
on people's faces as they open up things,
and find something inside that is about to
change the situation, and we see the look
on their face in this moment of turn.
Life, Tarantino shows us, is not ruled by
a narrative.
It is just a haphazard collection of events,
some of them major, which come in a random
order.
Another recurring shot that we see first in
this movie, and then in subsequent movies,
is close-ups on women's feet.
This is obviously meant to symbolize how in
the postmodern world we are not going anywhere,
so we have taken off our shoes and put our
feet up… emm, yeah.
Anyway, that conversation in the beginning
about how giving a woman a foot-massage is
almost the same as eating her pussy sure gets
another dimension now, doesn't it?
Just like in Reservoir Dogs, we see how much
we are ruled by our irrational side, putting
the lie to the Modern belief that Man's rational
side can win.
Many of the choices made by the characters
have no rational explanation.
Butch risks his life to obtain a watch that
is his most prized possession, even though
this watch seems to have brought nothing but
bad luck to his family.
Jules suddenly decides to leave the life of
crime, just because a lucky freak occurrence
makes him believe he was touched by God, even
though it is shortly followed by a freak occurrence
of really bad luck.
Butch wants to kill Marcellus, but when they
are faced with a common enemy, he goes out
of his way to save his life.
And lest we think it's just the characters
on screen, the movie shows us that we are
the same way.
In the first part we identify with Vincent,
even though he's a criminal.
Then we identify with Butch as he runs away
from Vincent, and when they face each other,
we become confused.
At that moment, Tarantino makes us face our
own irrational choice making.
Like the previous movie, this too ends in
a Mexican standoff, but this time they don't
all shoot each other.
It is a more optimistic ending, which comes
as a result of the moral awakening of Jules.
He is helped in this awakening by a Bible
verse, Ezekiel 25:17, which he used to recite
before he killed people, but now he ponders
on the meaning of the words, and it makes
him reevaluate his ways.
So it seems that Tarantino offers us a way
out from this immoral world: the Bible does
what it is supposed to do, and leads a soul
to salvation.
There's just one little problem, though.
This verse is not Ezekiel 25:17.
It is nowhere to be found in Ezekiel 25.
It is not from Ezekiel at all.
It is not even from the Bible.
It is actually taken from a 1970s martial
arts film.
Jules thinks he is reciting the Bible, but
he is just remembering something he once saw
in the movies.
The spirituality of the characters in Tarantino's
movies does not draw from the Bible.
It draws from pop culture.
The name of the movie already hints at this
spirituality.
Pulp fiction is considered synonymous with
lowbrow fiction, which doesn't deal with noble
ideals or displays high artistic merits.
But, exactly because of that, it wasn't bound
to Modern ideals, and could allow for the
sensibilities of pop consciousness to develop,
the consciousness that now has taken over.
Our existence within a pop world is punctuated
in a scene in the movie where we find ourselves
in a fifties style diner.
The fifties were the starting point of the
rock'n'roll generation, of the youth rebellion
that created the post-war pop explosion.
In the seventies and eighties, many movies
went back to the period from the mid-fifties
to the early sixties, trying to relive that
spirit of creating a new world.
By the nineties, however, this story too started
to feel tired, and movies that were about
rock'n'roll rebellion were highly self-aware
and ironic.
Pulp Fiction takes place in the world created
in the fifties, but shows it crumbling.
The soundtrack tells the same story.
The rock'n'roll revolution of the fifties
soon found its way into movies, feeding their
soundtrack with lots of original pop music,
rivaling the music that dominated soundtracks
until then, which was mostly made by composers
working in the classical tradition.
This process culminated in the eighties, when
most movies had a soundtrack written by a
current pop act.
By the nineties, however, the musical scene
was no longer dominated by classic rock'n'roll,
and was taken over by newer styles, originating
in punk, metal, hip-hop, disco and electronica.
The characters in Tarantino's first three
movies don't connect to these new styles,
but rather listen to songs from the sixties
and seventies, which by then were oldies that
belonged to a time gone by.
The soundtrack of Pulp Fiction contains no
original tunes, only classics from the past,
intensifying the feeling that we are watching
a dying world.
The first director to systematically use older
music in his movies was Stanley Kubrick, who
started doing it in the 1960s.
Kubrick claimed that there is no way that
contemporary soundtrack composers could rival
the great composers of the past, so he used
the classics for his soundtracks.
He specified, however, that this only applies
to classical music, not to pop music.
Well, by the mid-nineties, this applied to
pop music as well, as it was passed its prime.
Tarantino, like Kubrick, excavates the history
of music for his soundtracks, but he does
it with pop, not classical music.
After Tarantino, this would be done by many
other Hollywood directors.
This theme of the death of the old world is
explored more thoroughly in Tarantino's next
movie, Jackie Brown from 1997.
We meet all the themes we've met before in
this movie as well, but with none of the glamour
that Pulp Fiction gives them.
Instead, it is a movie about people who are
in the middle of their life, people who never
made it but are still dreaming of scoring
big, and they are trying to cope with the
fact that they are growing old.
The gangster here is a smalltime arms dealer,
and everything about his world is lame, fake
and sad.
We are witnessing the death throes of the
culture that ruled since the fifties, and
it is told by evoking one of the genres that
were part of that culture, the blaxploitaion
movie.
As I already mentioned, the seventies blaxploitaion
movies were aimed at black audiences.
But, just like with every other artifact of
black-American pop culture in the 20th century,
there were white youngsters who were drawn
to it.
Black culture appealed to whites because in
many ways it was more liberated.
Blacks, being the "other" of American society,
were not expected to behave according to the
values of its highly puritan culture, and
could do things that would ruin the reputation
of a white person.
For white liberals, they were role models,
providing cultural artifacts that, once appropriated
and given a white interpretation, had a liberating
cultural effect.
The blaxploitaion movies were low-budget and
quite poorly made, but they provided hyper
individualism, hyper realism, hyper violence
and hyper sexuality.
Tarantino, the movie buff, absorbed the first
three into his style, and was now ready to
pay homage to this genre, by bringing elements
of it into his new film.
One of the things that typified the blaxploitaion
films was the female characters.
At a time when white women were only beginning
to throw away the old conservative norms,
blaxploitaion chicks were individualistic
and tough, and didn't hesitate to use their
sexuality as a weapon.
And there was one female blaxploitaion star
that stood above the rest.
Armed with a killer afro, tons of attitude,
and the greatest pair of breasts in cinema
history, Pam Grier was the embodiment of a
badass chick.
But when the blaxploitaion era came to an
end in the late seventies, her career sank
into obscurity.
Until Tarantino came and offered her the lead
in his new movie.
The movie Jackie Brown is based on an Elmore
Leonard novel called Rum Punch, whose heroine
is called Jackie Burke.
The movie changes her surname to Brown, probably
a reference to Grier's most famous role, Foxy
Brown – thus tying the story to the blaxploitaion
genre.
Here, Grier plays a stewardess in her mid-forties,
no longer foxy but still fine, but living
a rather failed life.
She gets caught between the gangsters and
the authorities, and devises a clever heist
to fool both of them and run away with the
money.
The movie actually has a fairytale ending,
uncharacteristic of Tarantino.
It's probably one of the reasons why it is
among his least celebrated works.
But the fact that the black woman comes out
on top was very much in the spirit of the
time.
American pop culture, up until the nineties,
was dominated by the exchange between black
and white boys.
This exchange brought the rise of many new
ecstatic experiences, which became the basis
for musical subcultures, and other joyful
subcultures.
By the mid-nineties, as we've discussed, it
felt like this cultural vein has run dry.
When it came to girls, however, it felt like
there were still places to go, new freedoms
to explore and conquer.
By the late nineties, women increasingly became
the main protagonists in movies and TV shows.
Jackie Brown was part of that wave, but mostly,
of course, it was about younger women.
Action movies, in particular, were taken over
by a new type of female hero: ass-kicking,
cool, sexually liberated, and strong.
It was all very celebratory and optimistic,
promising a future of full gender equality,
and harmony between the genders.
It was fun and exciting for a while, but by
2003, Tarantino was ready to come back from
a six year hiatus, to show us the dark side
of this dream.
The movie Kill Bill is four hours long, compelling
Tarantino to split it into two movies, with
volume 2 coming six months after volume 1.
The premise seems at first to be a parody
of 'Charlie's Angels', one of the movies that
expressed the celebratory spirit of the time,
but it is actually closer to Fox Force Five,
the TV show that Uma Thurman's Pulp Fiction
character was supposed to star in.
The show, as it is described in Pulp Fiction,
is an obvious dig by Tarantino at the attempts
of Hollywood to become more ethnically diverse,
as it stars five women of different ethnicities.
We are told that it never went into production,
but in Kill Bill, Uma Thurman actually gets
to be a former member of such a group, who
is now on a revenge mission to kill them all.
The first fight we see is against the black
chick, and we still feel like we are in Tarantino's
world, revolving around white and black Americans.
But then the movie spreads out, both geographically
and stylistically, and we find ourselves in
styles that did not originate in Hollywood:
Japanese anime, Asian martial arts movies,
and spaghetti westerns.
This is a new pop culture.
Although we see that the collective consciousness
is still informed mainly by American pop,
it is not that dominant anymore.
When Bill mentions his favorite seventies
soul record, the younger Beatrix doesn't know
what he's talking about – her musical taste
is different.
In the 21st century, mainly thanks to online
proliferation, our ears opened up to music
from other countries, and the soundtrack of
Kill Bill contains many numbers that don't
come from Anglo-American pop.
In the past, all characters in Hollywood movies
used to speak English and be played by American
actors, no matter their nationality.
It was mainly because the movies were aimed
at American audiences, and because English
is our universal language, but also it reflected
the Modern humanist belief that we are all
part of the same humanity and cultural differences
don't matter.
In Kill Bill, characters speak in their native
tongue, and also know other languages.
It is a new world, a global society.
The character of O-Ren represents this new
global society, being a woman of Chinese-Japanese-American
decent, who nevertheless becomes the boss
of the Yakuza.
Kill Bill is similarly a female dominated
mix of Chinese-Japanese-American action movie
traditions, coming to set new rules for action
movies.
Hollywood, as a whole, was beginning to adapt
to the global market, and this was one of
the movies that led the way.
The theme of decay, which we met in Jackie
Brown, exists in this movie as well, but there's
one important difference: here, it is just
the men.
Kill Bill is not about criminals but about
assassins, but almost all of the male characters
are retired fighters, living rather paltry
lives, reminiscing on their past glories.
The female characters, in contrast, are younger,
and they are superior to men in every way,
including physical abilities.
The men are associated with the old dying
world.
The women are usurping them.
It is basically a feminist movie.
The main character's name is unknown to us
for a long time, and instead she is known
by names that are given to her by men: Black
Mamba, the Bride, Yellow Haired Warrior, and
Kiddo, which we are led to believe is another
nickname.
Only after she's presumably dead and buried,
do we hear her real name, Beatrix Kiddo.
It's as if she had to claw her way out of
the grave that men made for her, to gain control
over her identity.
This is basically how feminists regard the
feminist struggle, and they claim that once
women gain control over their identity, it
will lead to a better and more harmonious
world.
But the picture that Tarantino shows us isn't
that rosy.
There is something lurking beneath this feminist
heroism, something a lot more vengeful.
Kill Bill is a revenge story, carried out
by the hero against the villains.
But the real villain here is not Bill and
his gang of vipers.
It is men.
This movie is like a fantasy out of the mind
of a man hating radical feminist.
The men are not just losers, they are embodiments
of every negative male stereotype: childish,
lazy, cruel, possessive, authoritarian, racist,
misogynistic, rapey and pedophilic.
Our yellow haired warrior is there to get
revenge on them, to satisfy the violent fantasies
of every woman who has ever been wronged by
a man.
The cinematography makes sure that we realize
that it is a fantasy, not a realistic depiction
of our world, as if to make us understand
that this is a movie about the subconscious
of our time, and the dark things that are
inhabiting it.
But, in case we think that the world will
become a better place if women get to rule
it, the film destroys that hope as well.
Black Mamba and her female peers are all natural
born killers, and as Bill tells us in the
end, she cannot escape this nature.
We actually see a scene towards the end that
suggests that maybe it isn't like that, when
Beatrix finds out that she is pregnant, and
that leads to the peaceful resolution to a
Mexican standoff between her and another female
assassin.
So motherhood, it seems, can change the nature
of our killer.
But then we recall Tarantino's nonlinear style,
and we remember that in the beginning of the
movie, we saw a scene that takes place at
a later date, and in which Beatrix refuses
to spare the life of a mother.
In other words, there was no moral transformation,
no progress.
The movie has a happy ending in which she
is reunited with her four-year-old daughter,
but we are also told that this daughter already
displayed signs of being a natural born killer
herself.
The matriarchy is just as bad as the patriarchy.
Nor does the new global society herald a better
world.
The new feminism, so-called intersectional
feminism, which began to rise in the nineties,
doesn't just blame men for oppressing women.
The patriarchy, as they describe it, is specifically
run by white men, who are oppressing not just
women but also other ethnicities.
The movie seems at first to be on the same
page with intersectional feminism, as the
main villain is Bill, who is a white man.
But as the story unfolds, we learn that Bill's
mentors were Mexican, Chinese and Japanese
men, and that they came from cultures much
crueler than today's white culture.
This world will not become a better place
if ruled by other ethnicities.
Kill Bill begins the period of revenge movies
in Tarantino's work.
Quentin is half-Italian, after all, and revenge
stories are a time-honored Italian tradition.
But there is something special about his stories.
As always, we have a story of heroes taking
revenge on villains, but the subtext is satisfying
the revenge fantasies of one group of people
against another group of people.
So, in a way, it is a return to modern cinema,
where the characters are representatives of
a universal theme.
But it is a very ironic return.
The heroes, the ones doing the revenge, are
different in every movie.
But the villain is always the same: white
men.
And so, the movies become a statement about
the growing hatred towards white men in today's
society.
Tarantino's next movie was Death Proof, from
2007.
This is a homage to the exploitation movies
of the 1970s, and especially to the theatres
that used to show them, known as grindhouse
theatres.
Again, we see Tarantino's love for the seedier
side of pop culture, that side that doesn't
have any pretensions but just wants to satisfy
our base instincts, but in that, it sometimes
succeeds in teaching us something about ourselves.
Since the grindhouse theatres tended to provide
double features, this movie was also released
as a double feature, back-to-back with Robert
Rodriguez's Planet Terror.
The entire package was simply named Grindhouse,
and both directors try to remake the experience,
including intentionally making it bad quality.
Rodriguez goes for the classics, and makes
a zombie horror movie.
But Tarantino sticks to his own themes, and
gives us another female revenge fantasy.
The movie seems to be inspired mainly by the
bad girl movies of the sixties and seventies,
movies about women who were wild and sexy,
with a knack to get into trouble.
These movies were mildly erotic, and we get
mild erotica in Death Proof as well, but since
it's Tarantino, we don't get tits and ass,
we get feet.
Lots and lots of feet.
The villain is a psychotic killer, who expresses
his lust for women by brutally murdering them.
He also has a foot fetish, so this might be
Tarantino dealing with his own dark side.
While I was writing this, Uma Thurman came
out with a story of how she was permanently
injured in a car accident during the shooting
of Kill Bill, because Tarantino made her drive
a defective car.
The murder of the Pam character is reminiscent
of that, and could be Tarantino processing
his own feeling of guilt.
One stylistic change that we see in this movie
is a departure from the nonlinear storytelling.
Here, and in the next two movies, we are seeing
a mostly straightforward revenge story.
The first half of the movie gets us to hate
the psycho who murders a bunch of pretty girls,
the second part is dedicated to the revenge,
as he runs into a bunch of girls that fight
back.
But again, we are not really seeing a great
tale of woman's liberation.
The three avenging girls are themselves pretty
nasty, and while they are busy getting their
revenge, they leave the fourth at the mercy
of another man.
As I said, during that period Tarantino ditches
the nonlinear narrative style.
But that doesn't mean that he is done messing
with time.
In his next movie, instead of manipulating
the chronology of his own story, he messes
with something much bigger: history itself.
Inglorious Basterds is yet another movie that
casts white men as the villain, and this time
it's the epitome of evil white men: the Nazis.
The story takes place during World War Two,
mainly in the last year of the war.
Again, for the fourth movie in a row, we see
women as the victors, as it is two separate
plans hatched by two women that end up destroying
the Nazis.
But the main heroes of this revenge story
are not women, but another group: the Jews.
Of course, the Jews never got revenge against
the Nazis during the war.
After the war they did manage to hunt down
some Nazis, but there was never a satisfactory
moment of payback.
Inglorious Basterds aims to fix that.
The movie begins with a very realistic scene,
in which Nazis hunt down and kill a Jewish
family, but then it gradually gets further
and further away from reality, ending up in
completely rewriting history, and allowing
the Jews to be the ones who bring down the
Third Reich.
What seems like a realistic movie at first,
becomes a total revenge fantasy.
But there is another process going on.
While the story is completely fictional, there
is one subject on which it is very careful
to get all the facts straight: cinema.
The more the plot gets fantastic, the more
we are introduced to the world of moviemaking
in the thirties and forties, until we find
ourselves in a movie theatre, where the climax
of the fantasy unfolds.
This is a movie about movies, and it makes
sure we become aware of it.
Even the soundtrack is comprised solely of
music that was written for other movies.
It's as if the world of cinema replaces actual
history, attempting to rewrite it, to satisfy
through art the payback fantasy that never
happened in reality.
It is not just a movie about cinema.
It's a movie about the magical power of cinema.
But did it work?
Well, I heard from some Jews that they got
a lot of satisfaction watching this movie.
It didn't do it for me, though.
I just enjoyed watching Jews being assholes,
something you rarely see in a Hollywood movie.
But the fact that it did for others shows
how much people are capable of immersing themselves
in fiction, and the power of cinema, as the
ultimate multimedia art, to achieve the greatest
immersion.
And I think that this is exactly what Tarantino
wanted to prove.
But he manipulates us in other ways as well.
The Jews here are hardly good guys.
The basterds are not righteous heroes, they
are another instance of Tarantino's psychotic
killers.
They make no distinction between Nazis and
regular German soldiers, and basically treat
Germans the way the Nazis treated the Jews:
refusing to acknowledge their humanity.
The image of Hitler, sitting in a movie theatre
and laughing maniacally at the image of American
soldiers being butchered on screen, is a mirror
image to those of us who unreservedly enjoy
the cruelty displayed towards Germans in this
movie.
The basterds are led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine,
who hails from Tennessee, from the same county
Tarantino was born in.
He also has Indian blood, another thing he
shares with the director, suggesting that
in a way he is a projection of Tarantino himself.
It's as though Tarantino is the gentile who
is leading the Jews to unleash their unresolved
vengeful feelings.
Raine relies on his ancestry to borrow the
brutal tactics of the Indians and use them
against the Germans, making his Jewish soldiers
regress into a savage state.
Once again we see this motif of civilized
Western culture being taken over by the barbaric
customs of other cultures.
It also casts the Germans in the role of cowboys
and the Jews in the role of Indians, serving
to make the symbolism of the movie even more
confusing.
All of this discussion actually connects to
another strand of postmodernist thought.
For Marxist thinkers, those who are still
trapped in the Modern paradigm and believe
that we are on our way to a Communist Utopia,
postmodernism is just a new stage of capitalism.
One of the things that typify this stage,
they argue, is that the products created by
culture no longer just mask true reality,
but replace it.
In the past, art tried to capture a certain
truth that governs history or reality.
Now, artistic products are what they call
a simulacrum: an artifact that pretends to
be a simulation of truth, but is actually
not simulating anything except perhaps other
artifacts.
And, in the postmodern age, this simulacrum
is what is being perceived as reality.
A good example is Jules quoting what he thinks
is a Bible verse, when in fact it's a line
from a movie.
Inglorious Basterds, a movie that pretends
to be historical but actually invents a history
while copying from other war movies, seems
to extend the simulacrum to encompass an entire
film.
And the fact that some people get vengeful
satisfaction from it, as if this is what really
happened, proves the point about postmodernism.
For a non-Marxist like myself, however, this
theory is laughable.
Especially since the so-called "truth" that
Marxists want art to represent is based on
nothing but a wild Utopian fantasy.
Their enslavement to this fantasy detaches
Marxists from everyday reality, and that is
why they have no understanding of pop culture,
and what its cultural artifacts represent.
Tarantino does not think that his movie is
just a simulacrum.
He is trying to tell us something about reality,
and obviously believes cinema is the best
medium to do so.
So what is it that he is trying to show?
Well, unlike the Marxists, who regard every
moment in time as part of a historical progress
towards Utopia, pop is not interested in any
historical process.
Pop dwells in the now, believing it is the
only reality there is, and tries to express
the spirit of the time and make the most out
of it.
One of the main ways to do so is to liberate
something that is repressed in contemporary
culture, and turn the energy being liberated
into ecstatic and joyful art.
For decades, identity was one of the main
sources of this process, as attributes that
weren't part of the straight white male identity,
and thus not represented in Modern culture,
broke through and expressed themselves through
aesthetic means.
But by the late 2000s, there was nothing more
left to liberate.
Nothing, except the residual feelings of resentment
and hate.
In the past, the dominance of white men was
justified by the rationality of the time.
By now, that rationality has been so fundamentally
transformed that it's hard for us to understand
those times, understand how groups of people
could have been treated in such ways.
And so, many people feel outrage when they
look back at this history, and Tarantino uses
this angry energy to make pop artifacts.
Inglorious Basterds doesn't try to represent
history.
It tries to represent the spirit of the moment,
a spirit of vengefulness because of this history,
and use that spirit to make a thrilling movie.
Another theme is, once again, the meeting
between American pop culture and other cultures.
But here it is more complicated.
The film takes place in Europe, the home of
Modern culture, and is set in what was still
the Modern Age.
The European characters are more sophisticated,
and can usually speak several languages.
The Americans, on the other hand, can't pass
for anything but American even if their lives
depend on it.
Nevertheless, it is the Americans that win,
both militarily and culturally, and English
is shown to be the more important language.
Not knowing English brings calamity on Shoshanna's
family at the beginning of the movie.
By the end of the movie, she learns some English,
and that is the language that she uses for
her payback speech.
English is our universal language, and Hollywood
played a big part in making it so, assisting
in the triumph of American pop over European
modernism.
But now, we are in the global pop culture
we saw in Kill Bill, and the American cultural
autism might become a problem.
The movie shows us again and again how important
it is for your own survival to be familiar
with other cultures, hinting that we need
to adapt if we want to survive.
When I first saw this movie, I didn't enjoy
it very much.
The fact that it started off as realistic,
and then got more and more unreal as it went
on, threw me off.
On second viewing, however, it became my favorite
Tarantino movie, and it remained so ever since,
mainly because of the characters.
Tarantino's characters are always delightfully
eccentric, but this movie has the best ensemble.
Above all, of course, is Hans Landa, the perfect
Tarantino villain.
Landa is like the human personification of
a Tarantino movie, charming his victims with
dialogue about mundane things, serving them
tasty food, making them comfortable, and then
unleashing his full psychotic cruelty.
Only Tarantino could have conceived such a
character, and Christoph Waltz, in his Oscar
winning performance, gives us one of the most
memorable movie villains of all time.
Inglorious Basterds also marks a shift in
Tarantino's work, from movies that happen
in the present, to period pieces.
This is a World War Two movie, but there are
elements of the western in it.
The western, as we've mentioned, is a genre
that artists often use when they want to discuss
the nature and spirit of America, and this
is the direction Tarantino was going in, as
would be fully displayed in his next movie.
However, the genre he pays homage to is not
the traditional Hollywood western.
It is the spaghetti western.
The spaghetti western is a genre that was
born in the sixties, when Italian directors
appropriated the Hollywood western and made
it their own way.
While fifties Hollywood aspired to turn the
western into a serious drama genre, in which
the inherent problems of American society
would be played out, the Italian directors
used it to present a cynical view of America.
They took westerns back to basics, aware that
most viewers were there not to learn some
moral lessons, but to enjoy watching people
unscrupulously killing other people.
Serious directors like Sergio Leone did it
to make a statement about the brutal nature
of American society, but most spaghetti westerns
were just offering gratification.
The biggest folk hero to come out of this
genre was Django, first seen in the 1966 movie
by that name, a movie that at the time was
considered one of the most violent films ever
made.
Practically every single character in the
movie, save the hero and his girl, ends up
dead.
We can see why Tarantino would like it.
This is a recurring pattern that we see with
Tarantino: the genres that he loves are violent
genres like martial arts movies, blaxploitaion
films and spaghetti westerns.
These genres are not just violent.
They are pulp genres, genres that generally
offer gratification without any deeper messages.
But Tarantino, with his dark view of human
nature, evidently sees these movies as containing
truths that more respectable genres dare not
utter.
By elevating these genres and making art out
of them, he uses them to convey these truths
in a deeper way.
In that, he is a true pop artist.
In Django Unchained, he appropriates this
hero of spaghetti westerns, and uses him to
add to the folklore of the Wild West, presenting
a folk hero it never had before: the black
gunman.
And through his story, he could add another
chapter to his own trademark cinema of revenge.
In many ways, Django Unchained repeats the
formula of Inglorious Basterds.
Once again it is a revenge fantasy, carried
against evil white men of the past.
This time, however, he gets closer to home,
dealing with the dark side of America's history.
And again, while we do get a brutally realistic
depiction of some of the atrocities of slavery,
the story is a complete fiction.
There's no figure in history that Django is
based on.
He comes to us straight out of the history
of cinema, out of the spaghetti western.
The film even features a cameo appearance
by Franco Nero, who played the original Django.
Here he is playing Amerigo Vespessi, a name
that reminds us that it was the Italians who
discovered America.
Now, what do the Italian westerns reveal to
us about America?
Americans, as depicted in the movie, care
only about one thing: money.
This is a staple of spaghetti westerns: they
portray the soul of America as made of nickels
and dimes, a place where people can even get
paid for killing other people.
Django Unchained continues this tradition,
with its two bounty hunter protagonists.
But it adds the dimension of slavery, of people
being bought and sold for money.
You don't see that much in the spaghetti westerns,
as the issue of slavery was too controversial
for that time.
But now, Tarantino evidently felt that just
like with the Holocaust, moviegoers are ready
for this subject to get his special treatment.
The heroes of spaghetti westerns were usually
different from the people around them, in
that their actions were driven by something
more than money, mainly by love or revenge.
In Django Unchained, the black hero is driven
by love, but through his story he also gratifies
the revenge fantasies which some black people
still possess today.
In an ironic reversal, while Inglorious Basterds
featured an American helping Jews get their
revenge on Germans, here it is a German who
helps the black get his revenge on Americans.
Germans, since the 1940s, were the perennial
bad guys in Hollywood movies.
It's as if every German, even if they weren't
a Nazi, were doomed to forever have a swastika
branded on their forehead.
But here, Tarantino turns it around on his
American audience, showing them a German protagonist
who is more humane and sophisticated than
the brutish Americans.
Dr. Shultz begins the movie as a cynical man
who has no qualms about killing a father in
front of his son, if there is cash to be made.
But his acquaintance with Django awakens his
righteous side, and he helps him in his quest.
What helps his moral awakening is that he
recognizes Django as a modern Siegfried, the
Norse mythology hero who went on a quest to
save his beloved Brunhilde.
He tells Django the story, describing it as
a famous German folk tale, but actually, the
version he is telling is taken from the opera
Siegfried, by Richard Wagner.
So we see that even in the 19th century, people's
minds were shaped mainly by the popular culture
of the time.
The only problem with that is that this opera
was first staged in the 1870s, after slavery
in the US was abolished.
But anachronism is not really a problem in
a movie like Django Unchained.
Just like we saw in the previous movies, Tarantino
shows us that the common tendency to cast
white men as the villains is way too simplistic.
The movie mentions the fact that there were
black slavers, and the main villain of the
story is not a white man at all, but a black
man named Stephen.
Stephen is what Django calls a head house
nigger – I'm not sure that title actually
existed in reality - and according to Django,
it is almost as low as a black slaver.
Stephen is loyal to his white masters, so
loyal that he internalized their racist worldview
and believes in it more than them.
As a result, he is a lot crueler than them
when dealing with other slaves.
What's particularly sinister about Stephen
is that he is playing a character.
He is acting out the stereotype of the clownish
black man, who is happy to entertain white
people with his goofy and charming manners,
gratifying their belief that he is simpler
than them.
Even after slavery had ended, there were many
black entertainers who acted that way, and
the more defiant African-Americans accused
them of degrading themselves, and degrading
black folks in general.
But some scholars were more forgiving, and
argued that this was a mask, which blacks
wore so that they could keep their real selves
hidden from the white world, free from oppression.
Stephen is indeed wearing a mask, but when
he reveals his true self, it turns out to
be not of a proud black man, but of a dutiful
slave, who embraces his servitude.
Even though he is a lot more intelligent than
his white masters, he uses this intelligence
to betray his black brothers and sisters,
to maintain the ruling order in which he has
power over them.
Yet another brilliantly original Tarantino
villain, reminding us that there are always
evil people on the oppressed side as well.
One of the questions that the movie asks is
why didn't the slaves rebel more, why did
the vast majority of them remain docile?
And the answer that Tarantino seems to give
is that this is human nature, that most people
humbly accept their lot in life.
Only one in ten thousand is a man like Django,
who fights back.
But Django is not some great emancipator.
He is just another natural born killer.
Django Unchained does not give us hope that
humanity can transcend its darker sides and
create a better world.
At the end of the movie, Django and his girl
are alive and free and happy, but it's hard
to see them surviving long.
2012, the year in which the movie was released,
was the time when I realized that group identity
was no longer a source of liberation.
For decades, pop culture drew energy from
liberating aspects that were associated with
groups that were otherized and suppressed
in Western society.
It was fun to take part in the liberating
process and find ways to enjoy previously
forbidden fruits, and you also knew that in
the process, you are helping minority groups
achieve equality.
But Django Unchained was the swan song of
this period.
In a year when the first black US President
was re-elected for a second term, when the
voters in three states decided to legalize
gay marriage, one could no longer claim that
American society otherizes and oppresses ethnic
or sexual minorities.
It was time to move on and look for other
energy sources.
But as pop culture moved on, it left identity
politics in the hands of another force.
The neo-Marxists, kicked to the sideline by
postmodernism and pop culture, latched on
to group identity as a way to make a comeback.
For years they were working in the shadows,
infusing their hateful negativity into what
pop culture made happy and positive.
And now, they were ready to come to the fore.
Marxism views society very differently from
the way pop culture experiences it.
In pop, the idea is that we are all part of
the same society, and we are all being repressed
in some ways.
By the process of cultural exchange and appropriation,
we are helping each other liberate ourselves,
finding new joys and freedoms, and also equalizing
the field so everyone has the ability to pursue
happiness.
The Marxists, on the other hand, view society
as a battle between a dominating class and
an oppressed class.
They are not for cultural exchange that creates
an ever-growing social harmony and cohesion,
but for sharpening the differences between
the classes, aiming at a revolution that will
overthrow the dominant class and bring a Utopian
society where no one is repressed.
After failing to get the working class to
revolt, they turned to group identity, and
managed to convince some individuals that
they are oppressed because of their identity,
that they are victims of a patriarchy of straight
white men.
Thus, they brought back the language of social
disharmony and hate.
But this new version of neo-Marxism is a sneaky
one, and uses rhetorical techniques to disguise
its radical views.
This is what is known as the regressive left.
The regressive left is an anti-liberal movement
that masquerades as liberal, and it manages
to fool a lot of liberals into supporting
it.
Back in late 2015, it seemed that Tarantino
was fooled as well, as he made some statements
supporting Black Lives Matter, a group that
pretends to be liberal, when most of its leaders
actually espouse the destruction of the liberal
system.
Shortly after, his new movie came out and
got a lukewarm reception, so I didn't bother
to go see it.
But recently I watched it, and I realized
that Tarantino, once again, made a movie that
is very much reflective of the spirit of the
time.
The Hateful Eight is yet another western,
but of a much smaller scope and with a small
cast.
And yet, this time it doesn't feel like Tarantino
is just telling us a story about a group of
natural born killers, but actually trying
to provide a microcosm of American society.
It begins with two bounty hunters, one white
and one black, just like in Django Unchained.
So it starts out feeling like a continuation
of the previous movie.
But while the previous movie took place mainly
in the sunny fields of springtime Mississippi,
this time we find ourselves in the snowy mountains
of wintertime Wyoming.
And while the previous movie took place in
the age of slavery, this time we are a few
years after the civil war, after emancipation.
Has America become any better?
No, not really.
As our heroes get snowed in by a blizzard,
and take refuge in an isolated roadside cabin,
we find ourselves back in the world of Reservoir
Dogs, closed in one place with a group of
people who don't know each other.
And we are back to the nonlinear style of
storytelling, as we are trying to figure out,
along with our heroes, who among them is not
who he claims to be, who is plotting to murder
them.
We have come full circle.
But there are also differences from Reservoir
Dogs.
There, the characters had no identity, and
recognized each other only by assigned colors.
Here, they recognize each other by their group
identity, and what we see is that these different
groups hate each other.
Whites, blacks and Mexicans, men and women,
northerners and southerners, all hate each
other's guts.
Temporary alliances are formed, based on mutual
hostility to a third party, but they break
up shortly after.
The nature of America, as described in this
movie, is of a place where the melting pot
doesn't work, where there can never be social
harmony.
And while in Reservoir Dogs there was actually
one character who managed to get away, in
The Hateful Eight no one makes it out alive.
The number eight also rings a bell.
There were eight criminals involved in the
heist in Reservoir Dogs, and there seem to
be eight main characters in this movie.
Although, when the smoke clears and the final
body count is tallied, we realize that there
were more than eight hateful people in that
cabin.
The name of the movie is actually a reference
to Tarantino's own work, and a damning one.
This is his eighth movie, and the title seems
like an admission that they all contributed
to the hateful atmosphere that was built up
in America.
He was giving aesthetic form to the vengeful
undercurrents of American society, but now
these undercurrents have burst their way to
the surface.
His previous two movies ended up with the
house of the evil white men being exploded
and burned to the ground.
America is a house that was initially built
by white men, who later allowed others to
come in and take part in the project.
If the American project is doomed, as The
Hateful Eight seems to suggest, it is partly
because it allowed identity politics to be
transformed into hatred towards white men,
and eventually hatred to the entire project.
In the last scene, on their dying bed, the
two remaining characters take solace in a
letter by President Abraham Lincoln, which
talks about how there is still work to be
done, but we are on the right path to creating
a just society.
Except that they both know that the letter
is actually a forgery.
The idea of progress, the movie seems to be
telling us, is nothing but a fantasy, a simulacrum
that we hold on to even though we know it
is not true.
His previous seven already made us doubt the
idea of progress, but here it's not just that
we are not progressing, it is that we are
hurtling towards destruction, and the illusion
of progress is blinding us to it.
The Hateful Eight, then, is a tragic movie.
But while other tragedies usually leave us
with the feeling that life will still go on,
The Hateful Eight provides no glimmer of hope
for the future.
Pop culture usually doesn't do tragedies.
This is one of the main differences between
pop and high culture: while the latter holds
tragedy in higher regard than comedy, seeing
it as a better representative of the human
condition, pop regards comedy as the more
truthful form.
The Modern Age produced many great tragedies,
and that is mainly because of the belief that
this world is a miserable world, and misery
will stop only if we achieve Utopia.
The constant failure to bring Utopia led to
a tragic perception of life.
But pop perceives this world as basically
good, with some bad mixed in it.
It is true that nothing good lasts, that everything
falls, but there is always something new that
is good, so there is no reason to treat the
fall as a tragedy.
So, in the worldview of pop, the art that
best captures the human condition is comedy,
with some tragic elements blended into the
mix.
Reservoir Dogs was a tragedy, with some comic
elements.
Tarantino's subsequent films, on the other
hand, were comedies with tragic elements.
His revenge movies, in particular, were very
enjoyable and satisfying, with the bad guys
getting what's coming to them in the most
spectacular fashion.
But with The Hateful Eight, we are back to
tragedy with comic elements, signifying an
end to this period.
In the pop frame of mind, this is not a big
problem: we just close the book on that period,
and move the new thing.
But there is always the nagging fear that
a day will come when the Pop Age itself will
come to an end, when the fun existence we
are living in will fall, and be replaced by
a tragic existence.
The Hateful Eight feels like doom.
Just like Reservoir Dogs signified the end
of the Modern Age, The Hateful Eight feels
like it is heralding the end of the Pop Age.
With such a dark outlook, one wonders where
Tarantino can go from here.
Reportedly, he is currently working on a movie
revolving around the figure of Charles Manson.
It shows that he is still fascinated by natural
born killers, but we'll have to wait and see
what new insights he can bring.
Will it be another movie about how America
is doomed, or can he bring back some optimism?
Meanwhile, there have been some changes in
his personal life.
Recently he got engaged – to an Israeli
woman, actually.
Let's check her out… not bad!
I actually know people who know her personally,
and I am told that she's very sweet.
The two met when Quentin came to Israel for
the premier of Inglorious Basterds in 2009,
and it should be noted that in the two movies
he made since, there have not been any close-ups
of women's feet.
Draw your own conclusions.
What's funnier for an Israeli is the realization
of who else Quentin is going to be related
to now.
His new intended father in law was a big pop
star in the seventies and eighties, with all
the ridiculous trappings of a glam rocker.
Then he became a bit of a joke, and today
he is a cult figure in Israel – kind of
like our David Hasselhoff.
The thought that Quentin Tarantino is going
to call him father is hilarious.
Anyway, in Tarantino's next film, expect a
scene like this.
Let's get back down to today's reality.
As I was working on this video, Tarantino
became a target for social justice warriors,
and they are trying to bring him down.
One of the scary things about the regressive
left is how it is trying to control art.
While liberals believe that art should be
offensive, because then it makes us face our
own sensitivities and weaknesses and deal
with them, regressive leftists believe that
art should be used to shape the minds of the
public according to what they perceive to
be the correct values.
They currently exert considerable amount of
influence on Hollywood, and have a visible
detrimental effect on the art of moviemaking.
Tarantino is one of the artists who are fighting
back, and I'm hoping that he will focus more
on this problem in his future movies.
However, there is a big question whether cinema
is even capable of leading this fight anymore,
or has its moment passed.
A medium is vital only as long as there is
dialogue between its artistic side and its
populist side.
Tarantino is an example of an artist who makes
uncompromising art, and still manages to appeal
to the masses.
Only a medium that has such artists can have
a cultural effect – once its artists lose
their popular appeal, it becomes a bubble
that has almost no effect on general culture.
Cinema was such a medium for the past hundred
years, but it feels like its glory days have
passed.
We are almost at the end of this decade, and
it's hard to think of a director that came
out of it whose films were both popular and
great art.
So when you go see a Tarantino movie, remember
that we could be seeing one of the last of
the great directors.
Cherish it while it lasts.
