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Po Mo Lesson 12 “Inglorious Bastards”

Po mo lesson 12 inglorious bastards

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Page 1: Po mo lesson 12 inglorious bastards

Po Mo Lesson 12“Inglorious Bastards”

Page 3: Po mo lesson 12 inglorious bastards

What type of film is it?

• Is the film a grotesque postmodernist reconstruction of military operations at the end of WWII?

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Inspiration / Reference to other texts.

• Inspired by “Inglorious Basterds” (1977) – an Italian war film directed by Enzo Castellari.

• This film was in turn inspired by “The Dirty Dozen” (Aldrich 1967).

• To what extent is this postmodern film ‘original’ if it reworks earlier films.

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Postmodern because of the film score?

• The score (and the intertextual references) remind the audience they are watching a ‘fairy tale’.

• The audience being constantly reminded this is not reality and a film with in a film.

• Tarentino, has used several different scores in the film such as David Bowie’s ‘Cat People’ (1982). This music is postmodern because the sound tracks are from a different era to the film’s setting.

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Postmodern because …………

• The film mixes genres.

• The “Basterds” 'scalp' the people they kill.

• Scalping is a feature of western films not WW2 ones.

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Intertextuality

• The dialogue contains references to another cult Italian director (Antonio Margheriti).

• There are other references to German cinema of the 1930s and 40s.

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Mix of genres

• A European art-house film?

• A revenge crowd-pleaser?

• A slap in the face to self-serious cinema?

• An uncompromising thriller?

• A joyous slice of entertainment?

• A Leone-style western?

• A men-on-a-mission throwback?

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Mix of genres – the western!

• Tarantino’s ‘Basterds’ scalp like the Apache Indians.

• The film music reinforces this association by citing music from the brutal spaghetti westerns whose score was composed by EnnioMorricone.

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Postmodern references to other films.

• The pram scene in ‘Nation’s Pride’ (a film within ‘Inglorious Basterds’) is an intertextual reference to the Odessa Steps sequence in ‘Battleship Potemkin’.

• NB ‘Inglorious Basterds’ can be considered postmodern because it contains a ‘film within a film’.

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Postmodern because ……….

• The film starts with ‘Once upon a time’ which is how a fairytale starts.

• The film ends in a forest. A happy ending?

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Postmodern films are self-reflexive

• They never let the audience ‘suspend disbelief’ in the traditional way.

• The film is ‘peppered’ with distancing devices most famously associated with Goddard.

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A ‘Self-reflexive’ Film.

• Tarantino mocks self-serious period films through a barrage of devices to distance viewers.

• Where a film like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” does everything it can to get the audience to suspend disbelief, ‘Inglourious Basterds’ prefers a self-aware (self reflexive) approach.

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Postmodern because …………

• in the first scene, where the Colonel goes to the house with the Jews under the floorboards, the audience notice that the backdrops are painted.

• Not reality!

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“IB” is self-reflexive ………

• Tarentino reveals the set to the audience. When Shoshanna is preparing herself for the Nazi film night at the cinema, the set is revealed by an overhead camera shot.

• The camera follows Shoshanna across the set and over a door frame which is visible.

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Constant reminders the “I B” is not ‘real’. The film is ‘self reflexive’.

• Bizarre titles and freeze frames intentionally shatter the film's tone and play for laughs.

• Brad Pitt talks in a funny accent.

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A ‘Self-reflexive’ Film.

• Tarantino sprinkles his story with randomly-timed Samuel L. Jackson narration, David Bowie interludes, and other self-conscious devices to distance us from what is happening on screen.

• Like Godard, he wants us to know we're watching a movie. Unlike Godard, he actually cares to entertain. Tarantino wants to bring postmodern filmmaking to a wide audience.

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No reality in Postmodernism.

• The postmodern ‘media-scape’ is a matter of superficial surfaces.

• Postmodern texts are a zone in which signs can function without having to be plugged into ‘reality’ - the authentic realm of existence.

• NB Beaudrillard – “Gulf War”.

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Jameson

• This critic of postmodernism would not like this film?

• Why?

• He fears that postmodernism leads to a lack of historical reality.

• He is concerned that pastiche is a ‘dead end’.

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Jameson

• Fredric Jameson said that pastiche is a "dead language."

• Postmodernists have ruined the form itself by depriving it of any historicity.

• With no political or historical content, pastiche cannot effectively satirize anything.

• The result is what Jameson calls "blank parody," a mere gesture of satire too hollow to properly skewer anything.

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No reality

• Jameson would criticise the film as being a ‘phantom of authenticity which always ends up just short of reality’.

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Jameson -Historical Problem.

• Is there a problem with the postmodernist, playful, pseudo-historical reconstruction of the end of the WWII?

• Tarantino provokes us with the fictitious possibility of ending the war by killing Hitler, Goebbels, Bormann and Göring in a film (“all the rotten eggs in one basket”).

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Images and Reality.

• Postmodern theorists argue, in a society inundated with images, The Truth and The Image become indiscernible.

• It's all "real" if you can convince people it's real. Whether it is or not doesn’t matter.

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Jameson – the superficiality of historical representations in postmodernism.

• The Nazi, as a stock character, has effectively been stripped of his historical context and been transformed into an all-purpose villain, a vessel into which any artist can pour his desired message.

• The American soldier is perfectly interchangeable with The Cowboy: tough, handsome, and courageously fighting for any number of specific kinds of patriotism and honour.

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No historical reality.

• Tarantino partially modelled the film after Sergio Leone's western epics. By the time A Fistful of Dollars came out in 1964, the historical reality of the American West had long been erased by cinematic lies.

• Leone's westerns were exaggerations and parodies of the same ‘mythologization’ found in other films of the western genre and have as little to do with the actual settling of the frontier as ‘InglouriousBasterds’ does with the actual Nazi occupation of France.

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Postmodern because …………

• The film starts with ‘Once Upon a Time' and is split into ‘chapters’ -this implies it is a fairy tale and is all ‘made up’.

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Postmodern because …………

• … there is a split screen of a man trying to get a nitrate film onto a bus.

• This split screen is a modern filmic device and disorientates the viewer. It is out of place in a war film.

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Key Point

• “Inglourious Basterds” positions viewers as spectators of history as a comic book.

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Morality and Postmodernism

• Is the film controversial because it lacks the ‘moral high ground’ of most WWII films?

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No historical reality regarding…….

• The clothing and hair styles.

• Although Aldo and his gang were: dragged across a dirty floor, been in a fight and had bags over their heads, their clothing and hair styles remained unrealistically clean.

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A controversial thought!

• The target of ‘IB' isn't the Nazis, the Holocaust, or any of the other actual people involved.

• The target is the post war film audiences in Europe and America whose fondness for action and cheap drama reduced World War II to a shallow, unthinking film genre.

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Is the film controversial because it deals with serious ‘taboo’ issues?• Should top level officers of conquered armies, who committed

massive war crimes against civilians, be allowed to have arranged conditional surrenders?

• Should they be eternally branded? Tarantino’s bad Jewish ‘Basterds’ carve Nazi swastikas on the forehead.

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Jameson – the superficiality of historical representations in postmodernism.

• Tarantino's versions of these characters are purposely disconnected from their historical counterparts.

• They are caricatures, freed from the prisons of historical accuracy, morality, and realism, able to run amok in Tarantino's ‘hyperreality’.

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Postmodern – no consequences.

• Where are the audience positioned with regard to moral responsibility?

• Is everything in ‘quotation marks’ in this film?

• Does this relieve the audience of moral responsibility?

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Postmodern Music Score.

• In a war film you would expect to find old fashioned music from the era of the film’s setting (or new music that mimics the older style).

• However, in ‘IB’ Tarantino uses modern music - e.g. a David Bowie song when Shosanna is doing her hair and makeup.

•Also, Tarentino uses music from spaghetti westerns – a deliberate mixing of genres.

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Controversial questions. Why do we watch films like this?

• Is ‘Inglorious Basterds’ too brutal to enjoy without a sadistic streak?

• Has Tarantino tapped into the undercurrent of sadomasochistic glee responsible for the continued popularity of World War II movies?

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Postmodern because …………

• We are reminded it is a film and not reality.

• In the scene where we see Shoshanna walking around her cinema, it turns into a ‘birds eye’ view. The audience see that it is all just a set and not a real building. A deliberate removal of authenticity.

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A Step too Far?

• Different directors dish out different levels of wanton Nazi slaughter, but only Tarantino has the audacity to unload a clip of machine gun ammunition into Hitler's face and turn it into a pile of hamburger meat with a toothbrush moustache.

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A controversial moral problem?

• Is there a problem in having a brilliant, intelligent, eloquent, polyglot, charming and well-mannered mass murderer in the character of the SS-colonel Hans Landa?

• Is there a problem that he represents some very famous Nazi monsters who managed to escape from justice (e.g. Mengele)?

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Interesting Last Thoughts.

• ‘Inglourious Basterds’ is a postmodern movie about the importance of images in society.

• In almost every scene, characters broadcast images and conceal true aspects of their real selves. They lie, exaggerate, and hide in the name of escaping death (if on the defensive) or spreading fear (if on the offensive).

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Interesting Last Thoughts

• Some characters, like Goebbels, use visual media to propagate myths about themselves and their enemies. Others, like Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine, take a viral approach. They roam the woods, terrorizing Nazis, and leaving survivors to speak of the horrors.

• Both share the same goals: rallying supporters and scaring enemies. At its core, ‘Inglourious Basterds’ unfolds like a murderous PR battle.

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Hugo Chavez and the Power of Simulacra

• Hugo Chavez became President of Venezuela. He focused on implementing socialist reforms. He helped the poor in the country by providing health care and free education. The USA saw him as a Communist threat because he put up the price of oil and their media waged a campaign against him.

• On 11 April 2002 the ‘right wing’, wealthy, business, pro USA elite tried to replace Chavez. During the coup guns were fired, and violence ensued involving both pro- and anti-Chávez supporters, the police, and the army. Twenty people were killed. The USA manipulated the media to make it look as though Chavez was the villain. The USA news replayed this simulacra of reality to convince the US public Chavez was their enemy.

• “The War on Democracy” John Pilger 2007.