Quentin Tarantino

The article “Royal with cheese Quentin Tarantino and the blood-letting of culture was written by Matt Freeman, a freelance film journalist who is also a Master of Arts film and television student. He also writes for Film Journal International, Total Film and GoreZone.

The article was written and first published in “MediaMagazine 35, February 2011: The ‘Culture’ issue”

‘High’ culture is traditionally associated with the refined and well-educated; it is elitism of the highest order.

Even today we continue to separate ‘art’ of all forms into high and low, whether this is distinguishing musical theatre from opera or blockbuster rom-com from arthouse short

In today’s culture, it seems, very few aspects of contemporary art – be it cinema, television, visual art or music – remain quite so clear cut

The Tarantino film is both B-movie exploitation and art cinema – or rather, neither of these.

The Tarantino style blends elements from different genres, different artistic movements, and different periods with absolute abandon.

This aspect is evident in his wide range of influences, spanning the 1970s Blaxploitation flick to the novelistic structure of classic literature. In Pulp Fiction (1994), with the iconic Jack Rabbit Slim restaurant sequence between Vincent and Mia, for example, Tarantino makes a visual use of the novelty diner where all of the staff are knowingly impersonating iconic figures of 1950s pop culture, inviting comparison between the scene itself and the film’s entire diegetic world, where various influences come together in a vibrant new playground. 

Tarantino movies continue to attract high-minded critical attention on account of their postmodernism, rather that in spite of it.

As blogger and author Stephen Tully Dierks writes when addressing this dilemma: ‘even if you’re rebelling against your parents’ ideas, it’s hard to leave them completely behind’. However, he fails to consider just how radical a figure such as Quentin Tarantino has been in effectively blurring the line between high and low culture, merging the two into one package which, whether progressive or not, imagines all forms of artistic culture – be it high, low, or nobrow – as umbrella terms of yesteryear which now all belong under the recognition of just one classification: pop culture.

Indeed, a film-maker such as Tarantino can be seen as a figure who is not degrading, but reclaiming culture. 

On the contrary, films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Kill Bill (2003/2004) and Inglourious Basterds (2009) can be seen to emphasise the human element – these are films which deal explicitly with human themes of guilt, forgiveness and redemption

And despite the often eye-popping depiction of violence in Tarantino’s works – a debate which should be saved for another article – the director is at heart a moralist, framing his tales around the dual necessities of forgiveness and punishment. That’s the American aesthetic of popular culture, and Quentin Tarantino is one of its most articulate and thoughtful voices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQh4YRw9H8

I chose this article as it shows how Quentin Tarantino gives a good insight to the different cultures that he decides to use within his films, and how his films are both of high culture and low culture.