Quentin-questionable-Tarantino
January 23, 2013 in Black history, black men, exoticism, film, Hollywood, racism, sexism, slavery, Slider, violence against women
The arrogance of Quentin Tarantino is truly astonishing. Last night I finally watched the video shared with our email list by Black Feminist, Selina Nwulu. In the interview with channel 4′s Krishan Guru-Murthy Tarantino, without a hint of sarcasm, states that ‘I am responsible for people talking about slavery in America in a way that they have not in 30 years.’ WOW! Wow, WOW!
What can we take from that? Well, that Tarantino knows very little about what black people actually talk about. In his world we spend all day long mindlessly babbling the same expletives ‘n***er’ ‘motherfucker,’ ‘fuck,’ ‘sheeeet.’ Pushed on a subject he does not want to discuss, the possible links between violence on film and in the real world, he replies that he is not a ‘slave’ and a ‘monkey’ and Guru-Murthy is not his ‘master’. Thank you Quentin for using slavery as a metaphor to deflect an unwanted and difficult question. No diminishing going on there, clearly!
To add insult to injury, he goes on to messianically assert that the primary aim of the movie was to give ‘black American males a western hero that could actually be empowering.’ Forget historical facts like the Stono and Nat Turner slave rebellions.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFh-EssMC1M&w=560&h=315]
Presumably there is nothing to give black women when it comes to this subject. When it is pointed out to him that the violence in this film includes rape, he looks bemused and quickly replies there is no rape in his slave movie. Yet Tarantino is banking on an audience whose collective understanding is that rape was a commonplace occurrence in the lives of slave women. Arguably, the very premise of the film, wronged husband seeking to rescue enslaved wife, hinges on the very fact that Django wants to save her ‘honour’. The rape of the black woman is really only important as an index of the damage done to the black man’s sense of honour and respect. Obviously the systematic rape of black women by white men is not interesting or nearly enough of a big deal. Rather it is the suggested insult to black masculinity that rape signifies is what is most important here for Tarantino.
It is unsurprising then that Tatantino fails to recognise the insulting nature of his sexist and racist shoot with Nichole Galicia for W 
Magazine. The shot plays on the trope of the white master’s ability to doubly abuse black women’s bodies. His silk Hugh Hefner imitation dressing gown suggests wealth and the acquisitive clutch of the (taboo) black booty, domination. Lest this framing of Tarantino appear too unnerving in that it tacitly plays on rape as an all too common fact of slavery, the naked (vulnerable) black woman is made to look sexually seductive, confident and happy with her lot. Nichole’s look wordlessly (how apt!) repeats the old racist saying ‘the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.’
I have not seen the film, nor will I waste the very precious hours of lifetime I have further enriching idiots like Quentin. He has, clearly, disappeared so far up his own ass hole he can’t quite understand that as a white man the freedom of his ‘artistic imagination’ should be sensitive to the very deep hurt his treatment of slavery has caused.
So, there we have it, another white massa/messiah come to save us from our collective ignorance.
by Lola Okolosie
Helen Dixon said on January 23, 2013
I totally agree! Great article.
Helen
blackfeminists said on January 23, 2013
Thank you Helen, it’s nice when that happens
fileremos said on January 24, 2013
thanks for your expressing with better words than i could come up with what i have been thinking. and really all this tarantino violence porn is quite limiting and in a word boring.
Zzzzzzzzz said on January 24, 2013
Yet another idiot insulting a film they haven’t seen.
blackfeminists said on January 24, 2013
@zzzzz This ‘idiot’, if you read the actual piece, clearly hasn’t said whether or not they think the movie is good or bad. The focus is Tarantino’s performance in the interview and the photo shoot. Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions! The irony.
Matt said on January 24, 2013
All my thumbs up. greetings from germany
blackfeminists said on January 24, 2013
Greetings!
film scientist said on January 25, 2013
That´s a very poor argument, as your focus is missing context. You really should watch the film, it would really help to correct some prejudices.
film scientist said on January 25, 2013
i am sorry. This was the wong place for my reply. Nevertheless, I am curious about further discussions concerning this film!
blackfeminists said on January 25, 2013
That is in your opinion. As I have said, I will not be watching the film based on the ways in which Tarantino discusses the subject and the photoshoot.
onigorom said on January 25, 2013
a) Do the concepts of irony, satire, over-identification, grotesque etc. ever occur to you in this context? Art has the freedom to be sexist and racist, if it liberates us from sexism and racism. Simple as that. What the artist says or does is secondary. Otherwise nobody would listen to Wagner or read Ezra Pound etc.
b) You claim a language of reality, realism. Rewrite your text in Tarantino-style to understand the difference. You are also using a ‘style’, despite being the objective speaker of truth, when you refer to historical events. You are right, but that’s all you are.
c) Also, you should take into account that Tarantino’s interviewer didn’t do a great job – quite the opposite, and probably I would have reacted like Tarantino when confronted again with stupid cliche questions regards movie & real violence – no matter what skin colour the interviewer had (I assume that is an aspect of the rage).
Tarantino – both in his art and his life – looks at the world from a college boy / nerd point of view, and gives a non-realist perspective on serious historical real subject matter. In film this approach is rare (see e.g. Lubitsch). If Tarantino behaves like a master, let him be master. Who wants to be master anyway? Who gets enraged by this in fact accepts his mastership. It is an act, nothing else. And nobody as yet can know whether the Tarantino Situation helps the discourse or not.
Lola Okolosie said on January 25, 2013
@onigorom a) You say that ‘Art has the freedom to be sexist and racist, if it liberates us from sexism and racism’, I sadly, do not have the luxury of experiencing racism and sexism as artistic expression, they are a daily feature of my existence. Your Barthesian direction may well apply if the piece I had written was focused on the film itself, it was not. My criticisms of Tarantino are primarily based on the words from his interview.
b) As a black woman, your Derridean notion of truth as effusive and merely a ‘style’ is your philosophical position. We could look at the piece from this position and argue, ad infinitum about how ‘objective’ one can ever truly be. But as far as I am concerned, I need to voice the truth of my position, as someone who, unlike Tarantino, is not a lauded white man!
c) The point of any journalist when they have such a ‘controversial’ and ‘fiery’ interviewee such as Tarantino is famous for, is to push their buttons. They can choose to do this in the most erudite or banal ways possible, but the end goal is the same, to make them give something of themselves up they weren’t initial intending to. What is telling about Tarantino’s reply is that he chooses to adopt the language of the master/slave, recasting himself as a victim. This is abhorrent to me when the context of the situation is so far from what he claims. He is the person holding the position of power and it is troubling to me that he finds it so easy to use slavery as a quick metaphor for something so trivial as not wanting to answer a banal question. My ancestors were slaves. It is not something I can take so blithely and I am offended when I see others do so.
Your statement “If Tarantino behaves like a master, let him be master. Who wants to be master anyway? Who gets enraged by this in fact accepts his mastership” strikes me as nonsensical. To follow your argument, in order to show my strength I have to adopt a position of passivity (in order to not invest mastership) and not voice my sense of anger at the language Tarantino chooses to use in the interview and indeed, the photoshoot. Ridiculous!
Matt said on January 26, 2013
Hi thanks for an interesting and informative post! I think I agree with many of your points you have made but I would urge you not to judge Tarantino on the interview (or any interview) and photo alone. The media love to simplify and sensationalise, and often a seemingly self-determining person like a film-maker is pressured and coerced by others (e.g. producers). I would also urge you to watch Jackie Brown, which I would say is Tarantino’s best film and the one where he seems to have had the greatest creative freedom. Great article, look forward to reading more!
Tommy Cipolaro said on January 27, 2013
This movie was liberating.. Even if Tarantino sounds like an arrogant asshole every time he talks (probably because he is, and an egomaniac as well… Who wouldn’t be? if they had a resume like his?). If you are so offended by the concept of Django, then I would have to assume you were equally offended by Inglourious Basterds or Kill Bill, all three films dealing with people who have been oppressed, tortured, raped, murdered, etc. Even though Django is meant to be “entertaining”, it was so well done that I almost cried a couple times.. Kind of like Les Miserables provoked tears, it’s a beautiful story that gets you emotionally invested in important characters with real feelings! Let the man make a film without tearing him apart! He obviously worked very very hard on it.. It is the best film he’s ever made, and his next film will be on a totally different topic.. It will probably offend you on a different level, but the concept of this movie obviously hit close to home. I wish you had analyzed it from a different perspective, because like I originally stated: This was one of the most liberating and satisfying films I’ve ever seen… and it is mainly because the unjust racist/misogynistic scum bags get exactly what they deserved!!