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>>Did I say QT intentionally outlined racist plot points?
>
>well that's the impression i got from the whole black wife
>white wife thing above
That could be latent, it could be intentional, it could be anything. That was an observation without a conclusion.
>
> No, I
>>don't think anything he does is intentionally racist. That's
>>what everyone is saying here. He's trying to be cool, to be
>>provocative, to evoke his blaxploitation heroes. But he's
>not
>>giving his liberal use of slurs even a second thought.
>That's
>>where the question lies.
>>
>
>it's strange how you keep saying 'second thought'
>more mind reading
>do you just mean he does it frequently?
No, as in he has been quoted as saying he doesn't give using the N-word liberally a second thought.
>>I'm not sure where you got that I condone racial slurs in
>acts
>>of violence, or whatever that point was you made. I don't
>>condone QT's repeated use of making characters racist for no
>>reason. If it's a movie about racists, or a character's
>being
>>racist is important to our understanding of the character?
>>Fine. But show me in Reservoir Dogs, or Pulp Fiction, or
>Death
>>Proof, where the racism is revealing anything about
>>character.
>>
>
>that's what i'm saying, to bring race into it you've got to
>make it American History X or something?
>cannot possibly touch on racism in a NON-PIVOTAL everyday
>situation, same way he touches on violence, sex, drugs and a
>dozen other things?
>what does Vincent taking drugs tell us about his character?
>that he's a drug user
>what does Mr Blonde cutting someone's ear tell you about his
>character? that's he's violent
>see a pattern here?
>and you know what, however casual or incidental those topics
>seemed to the films, there's still things they tell you about
>drugs or violence themselves, if you care to look
But see, using drugs is important to the film. Violence is important to the film. You just cited two perfect examples of character revealing important things about the plot, the character, and what QT is trying to do. The racism does the opposite of this.
>>Also, I'm not sure where you got that I brought the cart
>>before the horse in examining criticism of QT's racist
>>dialogue, something not brought up (I'd imagine) in his DVDs
>>and screenplays. Would you prefer I ignore the multiple
>>critics that have written about this, when it's the very
>topic
>>of my paper?
>>
>
>not ignore them, but that angle is like 'ok QT said the n word
>300 times...', and using that as a starting point, 'should he
>be allowed?', when a better starting point would be the essays
>'why does he use the word' and from their determining if it's
>sensitive of insensitive
You misinterpreted. Just because I showed you my title first doesn't mean I didn't start with an objective view. And after doing lots of research, I've found that he doesn't really use the word for anything deeper, so it must be casual, just to spice up the sleazy characters, or as throwbacks to the blaxploitation films he loves. THAT is where the question "should he be allowed?" comes into play.
>>I really am trying to engage in debate here, but your
>>rebuttals seem to infer things about my intentions or my
>>findings that I haven't laid out anywhere in this post.
>
>well maybe i did 'infer'
>i don't want to engage and talk about this all night
>my position is that the scripts are quite aware of 'race
>matters' and it's not used for 'shock value' or anything or
>even just for characterization (as if that's not enough in
>itself), but for deeper thematic development
You JUST said that it's NOT anything deeper up two paragraphs ago. You said it's simply to show something about character, it doesn't have to be anything big. Now you say it's for deep thematic development.
>
>example:
>scene in True Romance with the sicilians speech
>one interpretation: the guy is about to die, and for some
>reason QT decides to use his last words up on an irrelevant
>speech of disgusting racism, just for kicks
>
>better interpretation: the guy is facing torture from mafioso
>thugs who want to find his son, he knows he cannot escape but
>if he can use their latent racism to incite enough anger,
>maybe they will kill him in rage before he breaks under
>torture. so in this case racism works to the disadvantage of
>the racist, and in the speech the hypocrisy of their whole
>position is exposed, as well as how deeply ingrained in their
>psyche race its
>
>if you didn't closely think about the situation in the scene
>and the characters and outcome and plot ramifications, you
>could miss that completely and just be like 'oh, quentin using
>racial slurs again'
But see, that's one of the ONLY examples where you can say it's used for a justified purposes. It's when you look at all of the other unjustified examples (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Death Proof) that make critics go back and second-guess that scene. It's about looking at every instance, and then seeing the forest for the trees.
I think that you're going in with a set conclusion in your head, that QT must have chosen everything very intentionally. I'm a big QT fan actually. I love Jackie Brown, I like Pulp Fiction, I think his work is at least always interesting if not very good. But when your style is nearly entirely based on homages/throwbacks to various styles, who's to say that he didn't think of every single ramification? You can say I'm speculating that he ignored the ramifications of all his racial slurs, but it could also be that you're speculating that he didn't ignore them. We simply don't know, that's why we write these papers. But if you step back objectively and look at QT not as "Quentin Tarantino, Filmmaker Extraordinaire" but as a guy who's made some films, you might see a bit of sloppiness and blurriness around this particular issue. My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
My beer TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeertravelguide
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