Ambivalent Screens: Quentin Tarantino and the Power of Vision

This article presents Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds as a 'masterpiece' of meta-cinema that satirizes its audience(s) directly. The particular focus is how Tarantino creates and leverages a network of analogical relations and/or resonances to reflect and/or fold spectators back upon themselves and make us (the viewing audience) the butt or (Private) 'Butz' of his joke. This article also argues that Tarantino attacks and manipulates the viewer's sensibilities and perceptions with a view to affording them a shock of recognition − exposing audiences to their enjoyment (and, by extension , complicity in the co-production) of on-screen violence and their willingness to be manipulated by the director into a position that parallels that of the in-film Nazi audience − and, thereby enabling spectators to see themselves and their relations to film more clearly.

This provocative and unique anthology analyzes Quentin Tarantino's controversial Inglourious Basterds in the contexts of cinema, cultural, gender, and historical studies. The film and its ideology is dissected by a range of scholars and writers who take on the director's manipulation of metacinema, Nazisploitation, ethnic stereotyping, gender roles, allohistoricism, geopolitics, philosophy, language, and memory. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/quentin-tarantinos-inglourious-basterds-9781441138217/#sthash.FQQ9artA.dpuf

2012

"Quentin Tarantino’s latest violent masterpiece Inglourious Basterds has been well yet critically received. Many reviewers have pointed out that the film is morally ambivalent the least because of the aesthetics of violence and the revised version of Europe’s darkest years of the twentieth century. Others, however, perceive it as a much needed and refreshing film - despite or precisely because Tarantino makes obvious the webs of violence. This article suggests that violence is a deliberate and important means for Inglourious Basterds to work. To fully appreciate the multilayered message of the film, an alternative reading of its aesthetics of violence is necessary: one that focuses on Tarantino’s defiant and bold (yet intentional) use of various forms of violence to brilliantly orchestrate (or manipulate) the viewers’ emotions and bodily senses. He stages violence as spectacle, but the way he uses violence is always also more than a spectacle: it serves as irritation—or better interruption—of audience perception, audience experience, and audience expectations. Instead of offering a cathartic moment or happy ending, Tarantino, in fact, refuses to offer catharsis and thus opens up a space for reflection and trans- formation."

2021

In his historical movies, Quentin Tarantino rereads and rewrites three critical moments of the American past. An interesting strategy he uses is that of introducing different imaginary artifacts into the narration: a film-within-the-film (The Pride of a Nation) in Inglorious Basterds (2009), KKK hoods in Django Unchained (2012), and the Viking crucifix in The Hateful Eight (2015). This article aims at investigating how such a transmedia adaptation of these fictitious elements, from the scripts into the movies, defines three ekphrastic sections that overturn the relationship between truth and falsehood. This process can be analyzed in light of Michele Cometa's theory about the connection between literature and visuality; in the critic's understanding, the ekphrasis of a real artifact represents a falsification of the work itself, due to the fact that during the adaptation it is in some way altered. Conversely, the ekphrasis of a fictional artifact can be interpreted as a vali...

Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

This book examines a set of theoretical perspectives that critically engage with the notion of postmodernism, investigating whether this concept is still useful to approach contemporary cinema. This question is explored through a discussion of the films written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, largely regarded as the epitome of postmodern cinema and considered here as theoretical contributions in their own right. Each chapter first presents key ideas proposed by a specific theorist and then puts them in conversation with Tarantino’s films. Jacques Rancière’s theory of art is used to reject postmodernism’s claims about the ‘death’ of the aesthetic image in contemporary cinema. Fredric Jameson’s and Slavoj Žižek’s dialectical thinking is mobilized to challenge simplistic, ideological readings of postmodern cinema in general, and Tarantino’s films in particular. Finally, the direct influence of Carol Clover’s psychoanalytical approach to the horror genre on Tarantino’s work is discussed to prove the director’s specific contribution to a theoretical understanding of contemporary film aesthetics.

2011

The relationship between film and philosophy has become a topic of intense intellectual interest. But how should we understand this relationship? Can philosophy renew our understanding of film? Can film challenge or even transform how we understand philosophy? New Philosophies of Film explores these questions in relation to both analytic and Continental philosophies of film, arguing that the best way to overcome the mutual antagonism between these approaches is by constructing a more pluralist film-philosophy grounded in detailed engagement with particular films and filmmakers. Sinnerbrink not only provides lucid critical analyses of the exciting developments and contentious debates in the new philosophies of film, but also showcases how a pluralist film-philosophy works in the case of three challenging contemporary filmmakers: Terrence Malick, David Lynch, and Lars von Trier. Table of Contents Preface \ Introduction: Why Did Philosophy Go To The Movies? \ Part I: The Analytic-Cognitivist Turn \ 1. The Empire Strikes Back: Critiques of “Grand Theory" \ 2. The Rules of the Game: New Ontologies of Film \ 3. Adaptation: Philosophical Approaches to Narrative \ Part II: From Cognitivism to Film Philosophy \ 4. Cognitivism Goes to the Movies \ 5. Bande à part: Deleuze and Cavell as Film-Philosophers \ 6. Scenes from a Marriage: Film as Philosophy \ Part III: Cinematic Thinking \ 7. Hollywood in Trouble: David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE \ 8. ‘Chaos Reigns’: Anti-cognitivism in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist \ 9. Song of the Earth: Cinematic Romanticism in Malick’s The New World \ Coda: ‘The Six Most Beautiful Minutes in the History of Cinema’\ Bibliography \ Filmography \ Index. Reviews: Reviewed by Jason M. Wirth in Notre Dame Philosophy Reviews (November 2012): http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/35702-new-philosophies-of-film-thinking-images/ Reviewed by Deborah Knight in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol 70, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 401-403. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01531_5.x/abstract [DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01531_5.x] Reviewed by Adam Melinn in Philosophy in Review, vol. 32, no. 5 (2012): 428-430 http://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/pir/article/view/11591 Reviewed by Jane Stadler in the British Journal of Aesthetics: http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/07/31/aesthj.ays025.extract" "Both an excellent introduction and an original contribution to the field, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images covers a large range of theoretical positions with impressive adroitness. By offering incisive philosophical analyses alongside brilliant film readings, Sinnerbrink achieves that rare thing, a true marriage of the abstract and the concrete that will be of huge value to scholars and students alike." Professor John Mullarkey, Kingston University, London, UK "Robert Sinnerbrink’s New Philosophies of Film is a captivating, challenging, smart, and highly readable exploration of the aesthetic encounter between cinema and philosophy. As an introduction to the recent philosophical turn in film studies, the book offers a rich and insightful critical perspective on many influential developments in film theory such as cognitivism. As a contribution to the emerging field of philosophical engagement with film New Philosophies of Film shows that films can do more than just illustrate or serve as metaphors for philosophical ideas. Films are philosophically valuable in themselves insofar as they can engage in philosophizing as ‘thinking agents’. Furthermore, films can invite us to invest in them philosophically, to meet them in dialogue as philosophical discussion partners. This idea comes alive in Sinnerbrink’s exceptionally vivid examples, in which he analyzes the philosophical-aesthetic receptivity to the work of such filmmakers such as David Lynch, Lars von Trier and Terrence Malick. This book is a ‘must read’ not only for philosophers and film scholars, but also for anyone seriously enthusiastic about cinema." Tarja Laine, Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. "New Philosophies of Film is an ambitious attempt to overcome the Analytic-Continental divide in theorizing about film and to develop a new understanding of the relationship between film and philosophy. Beginning with a critical overview of recent developments in the philosophy of film and ending with interpretations that present film as a new mode of thinking, this book breaks new ground and will have to be reckoned with by anyone interested in film and philosophy." Thomas E Wartenberg, Professor of Philosophy, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA."""

paper presented as part of the panel "Lost Causes, Pending Cases: Film Theories of Historicity" at conference "Urban Mediations" of the Network for European Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, june 24, 2010

Film Criticism, 2012