How does Quentin Tarantino represent different cultures and
ethnic groups within his films?
Ethnicity
DJANGO
UNCHAINED
http://www.loneswing.com/is-django-unchained-racist/
Is “Django Unchained” inherently racist? Or is it just
western society’s insecurity with the negative connotations of that N word?
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/how-accurate-is-quentin-tarantinos-portrayal-of-slavery-in-django-unchained.html
“There are moments, however, when ironies cancel each other
out, and we’re left with a stark truth—at its most basic, this is an instance
in which a white director holds an obsequious black slave up for ridicule. The
use of this character as a comic foil seems essentially disrespectful to the
history of slavery.”
“A response to slavery—even a cowardly, dishonourable one
like what we witness with Stephen—highlights the depravity of the institution.
We’ve come a long way racially, but not so far that laughing at that character
shouldn’t be deeply disturbing.”
“The primary sin of “Django Unchained” is not the desire to
create an alternative history. It’s in the idea that an enslaved black man
willing to kill in order to protect those he loves could constitute one.”
http://minoritiesinthemedia.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/django-unchained-freedom-is-the-help-of-a-white-man-2/
Contains the views from black
people and feminist on the representation of black women in the film;
“I read several reviews which expressed disdain
for the revenge plot of the film. Others focused on feminist issues, pointing
out that, in real times of slavery, most female slaves did not have gallant
husbands to rescue them, but in fact had to escape on their own.”
“The idea of the history of slavery turned into
a Western action flick troubled me. More than that, I took issue with the
film’s representation of Black slaves, and their relationship with White men.
After researching this issue, I found many Black critics of the film seemed to
have a similar opinion.”
Also talks about how the slaves are represented,
and how they are depicted to be freed by “the benevolence of White men”
Talks about the representation of white men
too, most notably the KKK scene;
“As a work of fiction, the movie featured ridiculous scenes
like a group of white men, reminiscent of the KKK, arguing over the trivial
matter of the eye holes in their white hats. Tarantino included a prolonged
comedy sketch smack dab in the middle of his Western shootout. Why couldn’t he
have made Django a character who made his own decisions, rather than another
Black slave who simply followed the orders of a White man?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Du_wF9wUw
- Interview with Tarantino, giving his views on use of the racist slur “Nigger”
and about the depiction of slaves in American history.
KILL
BILL (VOL 1)
“And yet, fetishism can be a foul spectacle, and that is the
case with the character Tarantino created to dominate the second half of “Kill
Bill” — O-Ren Ishii — and the actress he selected to play that part — the
lamentable Lucy Liu. Ishii, as imagined by the director, is the petite, sexy
and ruthless queen of aSeijun Suzuki-inspired Japanese underground, and she is flanked by a pair
of petite, sexy and ruthless female lieutenants, and backed by an army of
identically dressed, anonymous Asian gangsters.”
“This
scenario is a ludicrous, racist and sexist conceit, and the Ishii role amounts
to nothing more than a hastily sketched compendium of Asian stereotypes. None
of them are blatantly insulting, but all of them are lazy and evince a complete
lack of insight and imagination…”
“I would gladly see it again, as my only real
reservation is the influence that this film will surely have on the character
of Asian representation in films going forward.”
Among the problematic associations suggested by “Kill Bill,” two
in particular stand out when considered in relation to the above history of
racist characterization of the Japanese. The first involves the
conspicuously collective, dehumanized, mass death of the Japanese “Crazy 88”
gang at the hands of a single, brightly clad, blonde Caucasian.
Film and cultural critic Armand White has described the death of
Vivica A. Fox’s character “Vernita Green” in “Kill Bill” as butchering by a
white woman that continues white supremacist patriarchal film
conventions.
Much the same could be said about the deaths of so many Japanese
characters, with the additional problematic that they wear masks and are
collectively labeled “crazy” (the “Crazy 88” gang) – devices reminiscent of
wartime notions of the Japanese as an undifferentiated mass of suicidally crazy
lesser beings. The solitary eagle scatters a pack of rats
Is it necessary to depict the head of the Tokyo yakuza as
half-American?
The prominence of non-Japanese in these key roles connotes
a certain powerlessness and possible cultural subjugation, while Liu’s “O-Ren
Ishii” also strays into the realm of the stereotyped “Dragon Lady” of
Orientalist myth with her sudden profanity and gratuitously immoderate
violence.
Contemporary theories of spectatorship emphasize reading
strategies rather than constructed meanings. “Kill Bill” may certainly
have been directed and produced as a visually beguiling homage to “grindhouse”
cinema, but that does not limit the permissible reading strategies
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