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.”
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc47.2005/KillBill/text.html
However, I argue that Tarantino’s deliberate use of borrowed imagery
from Asian martial arts films is far from unique.
All
of this is fertile ground for any filmmaker looking for shortcuts to character
description. In fact many of these elements—culturally specific practices, the
exploits of legendary figures and secret techniques in particular—largely
define the “martial arts” action film sub-genre.
In
this same way, the inter-film borrowing Quentin Tarantino has become so famous
for is not unique to him alone. In fact, as Warshow’s idea of connoisseurship
suggests, it is the very nature of genre films to rely on—and then
tweak—established conventions. It should come as no surprise then that the
primary aesthetic of Tarantino’s homage to martial arts films, Kill
Bill, is playful borrowing.
Nearly everything in Kill Bill operates in part
as homage to other films. For instance, the opening credit sequence and music
evoke memories of Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brother’s films of the 1970s.
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