Author Topic: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards  (Read 5536 times)

ArmenianScientist

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #20 on: January 03, 2013, 09:45:15 PM »
SPOILERS for Inglourious Basterds obviously. And i guess for Django as well at the very end of the post.

In short, our hate of Nazis is justified. Their hate of Jews isn't. So the audience is not being hypocritical when they cheer for the Nazis demise. If Tarantino was making the argument, we would of seen one good Nazi or a Nazi that did a good thing or a turn. Hammersmarck was a spy so she does not count.

Pretty sure not everybody in the theater participated in killing Jews. The basterds may have got Hitler and Goebbels, but they also killed a bunch of innocent people who may not have been too supportive of the Nazi cause. That scene is both exhilarating for seeing Hitler getting his brain blown to bits and horrifying because your seeing innocent people about to be burned alive.  Tarantino is having his cake and eating it to. He's allowing the audience to indulge in a revenge fantasy, while also critiquing the audience's blood-lust by showing the consequences of retributive violence taken to a logical extreme.


That's just splitting hairs. Sure, maybe not all of them did kill Jews, but they all supported it. I would argue that the degree to which they supported it is irrelevant. Why else would they be there?

But does that mean they all deserved to die in such a horrifying way?

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #21 on: January 03, 2013, 10:57:11 PM »
Rephrasing the question: do Nazis and Nazi supporters deserve to die during World War 2 in Germany occupied Francey? Yes.

The "how they die" is irrelevant.

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #22 on: January 03, 2013, 11:00:08 PM »
But the greater question of whether or not we should cheer when depictions of them die on screen right after they are shown cheering at a depiction of one of their own killing US soldiers is the real thing going on here. We're talking about movies and the power of them. QT understands how powerful they are, that's why the last fourth of the movie takes place in one.
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ArmenianScientist

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #24 on: January 03, 2013, 11:53:59 PM »
Rephrasing the question: do Nazis and Nazi supporters deserve to die during World War 2 in Germany occupied Francey? Yes.

The "how they die" is irrelevant.

They could have just killed Hitler and various members of the high command. That in and of itself would likely have ended the war. Instead they chose to burn everyone in that theater (including themselves) alive. Tarantino means to provoke some uneasiness in the audience by making the theater fire and gun-down such a terrifying event.

Here's an interesting passage by Steve Boone from his great essay on Django and Basterds that I just stumbled upon.

Quote from: Steve Boone
The massacre of mostly civilian moviegoers in Basterds was uncomfortable even before the Colorado Dark Knight shootings; we could recognize ourselves in those doomed Nazi sympathizers and appeasers. We are the good citizens who sit by when our government and corporate elite commit crimes that we believe won't touch us, up until the moment the chickens come home to roost. The insurgent heroes in Basterds and Django don't discriminate much between active combatants and their abettors—a quality that resonates in all directions, at modern-day terrorists, soldiers, CIA torturers, tribal warlords and regional militia. A scene where freed slave Django argues with his bounty hunter mentor, King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), over the prospect of sniping a wanted man in front of that man's son, might as well be between two Defense Department employees pondering the morality of extrajudicial killings by aerial drone. Their view of the man pushing a plow on his quiet farm even resembles the kind of perspective drones and attack helicopters get on their Eastern prey.

But the greater question of whether or not we should cheer when depictions of them die on screen right after they are shown cheering at a depiction of one of their own killing US soldiers is the real thing going on here. We're talking about movies and the power of them. QT understands how powerful they are, that's why the last fourth of the movie takes place in one.

That's what we're talking about in a roundabout way. I think Tarantino is provoking us to question whether we should be cheering the Basterds' exploits. Totoro thinks Tarantino only wants to the audience to revel in the murder of nazis. (if I'm getting that right)

EDIT: Thanks for the link, Junior.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2013, 03:55:11 AM by ArmenianScientist »

verbALs

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #25 on: January 04, 2013, 03:33:32 AM »
Quote from: Steve Boone
The massacre of mostly civilian moviegoers in Basterds was uncomfortable even before the Colorado Dark Knight shootings; we could recognize ourselves in those doomed Nazi sympathizers and appeasers. We are the good citizens who sit by when our government and corporate elite commit crimes that we believe won't touch us, up until the moment the chickens come home to roost. The insurgent heroes in Basterds and Django don't discriminate much between active combatants and their abettors—a quality that resonates in all directions, at modern-day terrorists, soldiers, CIA torturers, tribal warlords and regional militia. A scene where freed slave Django argues with his bounty hunter mentor, King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), over the prospect of sniping a wanted man in front of that man's son, might as well be between two Defense Department employees pondering the morality of extrajudicial killings by aerial drone. Their view of the man pushing a plow on his quiet farm even resembles the kind of perspective drones and attack helicopters get on their Eastern prey.

Your quote there is such a horrible piece of polemical writing; taking the conclusions of an extreme piece of film-making and pushing it as far as it will go until it stretches and breaks. Do you actually believe;

a) a connection between the Nazi cinema shooting and the real-life Batman one? or

b) sniping in a blaxploitation film and the use of drones in a modern war?

There's a scene in Saving Private Ryan where the sniper defends a position, picking off the German assault team. Can you imagine your writer making similar claims for Spielberg that he does for Tarantino. The scenes are similar, certainly from a military point of view- since that's what snipers are supposed to do.

In fact, this piece of writing doesn't have much to do with what is on film at all, it has that dry, airless academic feel of too much time sitting in a room, musing over every gap allowed by a film-maker; making vague connections in his films. The bigger and vaguer the gaps, the more extreme the conclusions that can be made. Poor film-making making vague big connections leaving critics the space to write essays.

Since your link doesn't work I can't even see, contextually, what this mystery writer's larger point is. However, making intellectual arguments using the material of a Tarantino exploitation movie, has the sickly feel of a box of matches brought too close to a box of fireworks.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2013, 03:35:10 AM by verbALs »
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ArmenianScientist

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #26 on: January 04, 2013, 03:55:51 AM »
Is it all that difficult to type "Steve Boone Django Unchained" into google? I fixed the link. It's an indiewire piece.

verbALs

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #27 on: January 04, 2013, 04:31:00 AM »
To clarify, I'm not really the target audience for this type of writing, but I thought you might like to know your link wasn't working.
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ArmenianScientist

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #28 on: January 04, 2013, 05:12:47 AM »
There's a scene in Saving Private Ryan where the sniper defends a position, picking off the German assault team. Can you imagine your writer making similar claims for Spielberg that he does for Tarantino. The scenes are similar, certainly from a military point of view- since that's what snipers are supposed to do.

There's a difference between sniping to defend one's position in a battle-field, and assassinating a man in front of his child. There is no "military point of view" in Django , because Shultz and Django are merely hit-men who have a choice of whether or not to kill this man. They are also debating the morality of such a shooting, unlike the sniper in Saving Private Ryan, who must kill enemies to survive.

With regards to your other comments, I can't really argue against you, because you're basically saying "Boone is reading too much into silly Tarantino exploitation films." It's the same "Tarantino makes movies for juvenile boys" argument that I see over and over. Plenty of smart critics acknowledge the interesting ideological underpinnings behind QT's films. I don't see how being reductive advances the conversation at all.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2013, 05:16:06 AM by ArmenianScientist »

verbALs

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Re: #427: Django Unchained / Edward Burns / Blaxploitation Awards
« Reply #29 on: January 04, 2013, 05:44:11 AM »
No, I'm saying Tarantino in this area of wider, higher issues is entirely vague, which is allowing that Tarantino isn't just enjoying himself, and these other wider issues are solely in the minds of those who enjoy, or get paid for the purpose of, drawing points like this out of his films. My point was that;

Quote
The bigger and vaguer the gaps, the more extreme the conclusions that can be made. Poor film-making making vague big connections leaving critics the space to write essays.

I'll make a real wild assertion because I didn't realise I was being too subtle when I wrote that before;

Quote
smart critics
is an oxymoron. An academic approach to films like this, is like a guy on the moon talking about the weather on earth because of what he can see of cloud formations; too remote, too much space for wild assumptions. The bigger the better it seems.

In that sense Adam and Josh aren't "smart critics"...oh dear I'm digging a hole now. They make their own assertions based on what they see in a grounded manner. It's when people start quoting left, right and centre, instead of using their own words to make a point, that the hairs on the back of my neck go straight up. Hope that clarifies matters.
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