Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino 9780292772373

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Race on the QT

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​R ace on the QT Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino

Adilifu Nama

University of Texas Press   Austin

Copyright © 2015 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2015 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-­7819 http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-­form ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging Data Nama, Adilifu.  Race on the QT : blackness and the films of Quentin Tarantino / by Adilifu Nama. — First edition.   pages cm  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-0-292-76814-7 (cl. : alk. paper)  ISBN 978-0-292-77236-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Tarantino, Quentin—Criticism and interpretation. 2. African Americans in motion pictures. I. Title.  PN1998.3.T358N36 2014  791.4302'33092—dc23 2014026611 doi:10.7560/768147

For Tamu, Sprout, Zam-­Z am, and Wah-­da-­da

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 13 Chapter 2. Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 39 Chapter 3. Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2,

and Death Proof 67 Chapter 4. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 93 Coda  121

Notes 135 Bibliography 147 Index 155

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Acknowledgments

I must give thanks to various people who have contributed to the completion of this project. Former students Maya Haddad and Courtney Cowings happily took on the task of preliminary grunt work rounding up articles, and Lauren Frazier helped me navigate the technological maze of Loyola Marymount University. Special recognition goes to Jim Burr, my sponsoring editor at the University of Texas Press. He is an editor with imagination and willingness to explore and break new ground. I can say for the record that my previous books have posed a challenge to conventional notions of scholarship regarding their topics and the style of writing. This book is no different in those regards. But JB was down and that has made all the difference. In addition, Leslie Tingle was invaluable as my copy editor. A quick shout-­out to Fede at The Ohio State University. Big thanks to Professor Charles E. Swanson, who is one of the most earnest peers I know. He always had an open door, and when called on he answered without hesitation. Charles hooked me up with Elida “Elli” Portillo, a cinematographer who became my go-­to person for technical film matters that facilitated the completion of the book. Most important, I must acknowledge my family for truly having my back when my sunshine turns to rain and my rain to sunshine. They are my rainbow. Thank you Tamu, Nia, and Nizam. My love, your love, our love is eternal.

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Race on the QT

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Introduction

Don’t let the pigmentation fool you: it is a state of mind. —­Q uentin Tarantino on being black 1

For just over two decades, Quentin Tarantino has provided audiences with films that are simultaneously thrilling, compelling, successful, and, quite often, offensive. The Tarantino tongue-­in-­cheek style is a mash-­up of lurid violence, shocking body horror, and belligerent racial politics where whites nonchalantly articulate the n-­word. Interracial relationships abound, and abundant and seemingly crude images of black criminality are the norm. Despite the range of critical and popular responses to the body of Tarantino’s work, he is possibly the most iconic Hollywood film director of our time. Moreover, adoring fans and ambivalent critics alike have displayed a nearly neurotic need to decode Quentin Tarantino as an American pop-­culture icon.2 Consequently, the mantle of “Hollywood film director” is an inadequate and flimsy expression for who Tarantino really is as a person. Those unwilling to accept conventional Hollywood bylines and biographical narratives turn to his films for intriguing insights into the curious personality that is Quentin Tarantino. Cinematic scavengers explore Tarantino’s films to piece together patterns and uncover clues that reveal not only his filmic formula for success but also his interior psychological makeup. Accordingly, Tarantino films are not merely cinematic excursions through odd worlds replete with violence and enchanting dialogue; they do double duty as a Rorschach test for exposing the “real” Quentin Tarantino hidden beneath the auteur veneer. What do his films say then? Certainly Tarantino is a fetishist. His self-­indulgent proclivity to

2 Race on the QT

focus our/his gaze on pedicured toes and barefoot female actresses contributes to making him appear as merely another strange dude in a long list of peculiar “creative types” the dream factory has historically employed. If this is the clearest conclusion such fixations dictate, then Tarantino is just a modern-­day version of eccentric Hollywood directors like Howard Hughes, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Russ Myers, David Lynch, Tim Burton, Sam Peckinpah, John Milius, and Melvin Van Peebles, whose excesses and idiosyncrasies make for personas that periodically rival the films or genres they have come to define. Given this backdrop and Tarantino’s oddball persona, he is indeed in good company. But such an assessment is too glib and generic; Tarantino demands a more exacting analysis. Certainly, Tarantino’s rock-­star status is not just a function of his personality or the quality of his films. Yet, a more socially critical analysis of Tarantino is just as problematic. When critics, fans, and detractors insist on distilling Tarantino down to a more specific categorization, the calculations are quite irregular. Genius. Savant. Saint. Sinner. Outsider. Hollywood royalty. Racist. All of these categories are used to encompass the complexity of Tarantino, but none of these labels are adequate for accurately defining the hyperactive man with the gift for gab. Despite the inherent shortcomings of these tags, the notion of Tarantino as a racist is the most compelling, disturbing, perplexing, controversial, and in many ways, the most unjustifiable of all the labels that have dogged him. Why? Because it suggests that Tarantino’s films are also racially toxic and what he says in their defense is evidence of his personal racial animus.3 Across various interviews regarding his films, Tarantino has said such things as, “I grew up surrounded by black culture . . . It is the culture I identify with . . . [W]e have a lot of people inside of us, and one of the ones inside me is black . . .”;4 “When Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy do their stand-­up acts and say ‘nigger,’ you’re never offended because they’re ‘niggers.’ You know the context it’s coming from . . .”;5 “I just don’t feel the whole white guilt and pussyfooting around race issues . . .”;6 and “I like booties. Let’s just say, I have a black male sexuality.”7 Admittedly, Tarantino, like his films, chronically blurts out in polite company statements that are extremely problematic even when delivered in private. Consequently, there is an uncomfortable and often awkward frankness associated with Tarantino and virtually all of his films when it comes to race vis-­à-­vis blackness.8 Moreover, such off-­ the-­cuff commentary offers supporting evidence that Tarantino has a

Introduction 3

warped notion of black racial formation in America, a perspective that evokes the worst in the racial imaginations of the white audiences that view and enjoy his films. In this sense, Tarantino is a figure of extreme interest because of the controversy he engenders around race. Even trade industry publications such as the Hollywood Reporter have noted that, “Beginning in earnest with a monologue by the director himself in Pulp Fiction, in which he says ‘n-----­’ repeatedly, he has displayed a propensity for including the term in his films that is unmatched among white directors.”9 But for me, examining Tarantino for his racist tendencies is too reductive an analysis and too easy a solution for not engaging the cinematic representations of race in America that are his films. Stopping Tarantino from making another film or stigmatizing him to such an extent that his career is ended will not dispel racism as ideology or practice. Moreover, blaming the director or writer for the anxiety around race that films stir in the viewer or critic is a convenient intellectual evasion. A more challenging approach is deconstructing why and how Tarantino’s films resonate with established and emerging discourses concerning race in America. Such an approach is more concerned with engaging the range of cultural work his films represent regarding race relations in society, not mere authorial intent that reductively translates the racial discourse and racial meaning across his work as a function of a series of oddball personality quirks. Accordingly, Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino confronts the racial frankness in Tarantino’s films and not the man himself. Rather than explore the inner machinations and racial motivations of Quentin Tarantino, this book is committed to critically examining what Tarantino’s filmic body of work has said and is saying about race in America cinematically, symbolically, metaphorically, literally, impolitely, cynically, sarcastically, crudely, controversially, and brilliantly. On the surface, Tarantino’s fanboy sensibility for 1970s Blaxploitation films appears to inform his representation of blackness and the inclusion of black folk in his films.10 Hence, his filmic choices are reasonably assumed to be functions of personal tastes (or lack thereof).11 But a closer examination reveals that context, rather than a fondness for a specific genre or eccentric proclivities, also accounts for the racial elements that permeate Tarantino’s films and the racial discord they often express and evoke. One only need look to the halcyon days of the Hollywood film industry during the 1970s to find a source for the racial topicality found

4 Race on the QT

in Tarantino’s films. Conventional readings of Tarantino place Blaxploitation cinema as the taproot for the revenge and subversive racial motifs in his films, rather than the insurgent (or auteur) cinema that emerged in Hollywood during the 1970s. Before the shift to blockbuster films as the driving economic model, and concurrent with this insurgent cinema, was the faddish success of Blaxploitation cinema. Blaxploitation became a quick means to infuse a floundering Hollywood studio system with cash as the dream factory was forced to retool and revamp what types of films were profitable and popular.12 As an unexpected result, there emerged a collection of gritty American films that spoke to the cultural, political, sexual, and racial zeitgeist of the early 1970s beyond the Black Nationalist and militant pop politics of Blaxploitation, a paradigm imitated following the success of Melvin Van Peebles’ film sensation Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). The Liberation of L.B. Jones (William Wyler, 1970), The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971), Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin, 1971), Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973), Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973), and Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974) are a small sample of films from the early 1970s that are emblematic of the racial candor woven into the works of the period. Such films foregrounded casual racism by whites, or at the least did not avoid it as an ongoing presence in American society. Even cinematic classics such as Francis Ford Coppola’s The God­ father (1972) were intimately involved in the cultural politics of race in 1970s America. Although the film harkened back to the 1940s and 1950s, the racial politics it presented spoke to the relevancy of race in 1970s America in the wake of Black Power militancy and cultural nationalism. Take for example the racist soliloquy of Don Zaluchi (Louis Guss) when Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) calls for a meeting amongst the heads of the five mafia families to salvage his criminal empire. As the dons weigh the pros and cons of selling heroin, Don Zaluchi announces his support for drug distribution with this caveat: I also don’t believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn’t do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, “I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing.” So they can’t resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don’t want it near schools! I don’t want it sold to children! That’s an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.

Introduction 5

Rather than being viewed as an example of how Coppola held disparaging beliefs about “the dark people” of America, dialogue such as this enhanced the aura of authenticity regarding conspiratorial backroom negotiations when profit and power are divvied up among white organized crime elites. In this case, criminal endeavors are informed not merely by greed and avarice but by a perverted racial morality whereby blacks are viewed as expendable and therefore the perfect target market for addictive and debilitating drugs that are presumed to have no real moral or social cost.13 When viewed against the concurrent, rising fast and fading even faster Blaxploitation film fad that presented virtually all white characters as racist automatons, Don Zaluchi’s edict appears devoid of artifice and sounds like an elegant explanation of how and why real black communities were overrun by drug dealers and addicts both then and now. By and large, the Hollywood film industry’s candid display of Ameri­ can racial politics is best understood as a product of the heightened awareness and topicality of black and white race relations during the early to mid 1970s. In a film like The Godfather, racial politics were expressed by allusions to casual racism circulating in the smoky back rooms of white organized crime syndicates. In a film like The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon, 1973), the depiction of a violent black response to rampant white racism fulfilled fantasies of overthrowing the U.S. government, similar to the vivid predictions made by Malcolm X’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech (1964) and promised by black militants such as H. Rap Brown.14 Arguably, Martin Scorsese is the only director from that intrepid period of American cinema who continues weaving a racial subtext into his films. Case in point, Scorsese’s film The Departed (2006) begins with a narrative monologue that has the main antagonist, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), proclaim: I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying—­we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-­breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn’t get a fucking job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. That’s what the niggers don’t realize. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it’s this—­no one gives it to you. You have to take it.

Certainly, the above comments boldly define the beliefs and motivations of a disturbing character. But more important, Costello’s com-

6 Race on the QT

ments also reveal a series of assumptions and arguments concerning the cultural politics of race in America, past and present. In terms of the bygone racial politics of Boston, Costello’s comments symbolize the deep-­seated ideological racism that plagued Boston and rose to the surface with the violent school-­busing crisis of the mid 1970s. Arguably, one of the most controversial and divisive developments concerning access to quality education emerged during the mid 1970s with “forced busing” to ensure school integration. The backlash to black integration of the Boston Unified School District included violent protests by working class whites.15 Against this historical backdrop, Costello’s seemingly random film narration sets the stage for a politically and racially relevant reading of how The Departed integrates racial tension, and how the Protestant work ethic, opportunity, and luck are signaled as scarce resources for black folks. At a broader, ideological level, Costello’s comments can be read as a thinly veiled rebuke of white liberal public policy and as a refutation of academic explanations for the economic and social disenfranchisement experienced today by a disproportionate number of black folk in the American social order. Costello’s claims buttress conservative arguments that black youth who fail to achieve are symptomatic of a lack of personal motivation and drive, and, in a phrase, that they suffer from a “welfare mentality.” Costello’s perverted version of the white, middle-­class work ethic fuses religion, politics, and racial biases so that economic, cultural, and environmental conditions such as housing discrimination, poor schools, lack of male role models, and limited exposure to positive reinforcement become nonfactors for determining black success. Ultimately, in this sense, The Departed is not merely a film about double-­crosses and divided loyalties, but is a cinematic reminder of the central place that race occupies in a major northern city and U.S. society. Tarantino continues this aesthetic tradition born of the insurgent cinema of the 1970s by articulating racial anxieties circulating in American society. Any discussions concerning Tarantino’s filmic influences must wholly dialogue not just with Blaxploitation but with the totality of the New Hollywood cinema of the 1970s. New Hollywood cinema radically rejected the studio-­dominated western and musical film productions of the 1920s to mid 1960s in favor of taboo subject matter, more realistic violence, and political topicality with films like Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967), In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks, 1967), Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any­ more (Scorsese, 1974), Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), One Flew

Introduction 7

Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975), Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976), Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977), The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978), and Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979). Consequently, despite Tarantino’s seemingly anachronistic articulation of racial dynamics, he is drawing from an established and venerated filmic tradition. Tarantino’s inclusion of racial animus in his films is similar to what William Friedkin did with The French Connection (1971), Brian De Palma with Sisters (1973), Francis Ford Coppola with The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), Martin Scorsese with Taxi Driver (1976), and Paul Schrader with Blue Collar (1978). Nevertheless, Tarantino’s version of racial sensibility is often jarring and easily courts criticism as misplaced, ill conceived, and out-­of-­touch given his status as a white male. Instead, conventional wisdom dictates that Spike Lee is unquestionably American cinema’s most skilled (and accepted) racial provocateur for our present era. To Lee’s credit, no other modern-­day director has successfully used race as a topical source to generate publicity, garner cultural clout, and make contradictory polemical statements about race in America. A quick thematic inventory of Spike Lee’s films makes the point strikingly evident: School Daze (1988) addresses the insecurity and animosity between dark- and light-­color complexions amongst African Americans; Do the Right Thing (1989) taps racial prejudice and white police brutality as its central focus; Jungle Fever (1991) is a diatribe against interracial intimacy between black men and white women; Malcolm X (1992) is a cinematic tribute to America’s most trenchant and charismatic race critic; Get On the Bus (1996) is a racial road-­trip movie to the Million Man March; Four Little Girls (1997) is a thoughtful but awkwardly detailed documentary of Southern white racial terrorism against blacks during the civil rights movement; Bamboozled (2000) is a jumbled satire for and against contemporary black minstrels in the media; and Miracle at St. Anna (2008) is a film dedicated to recuperating the role and stature of black World War II soldiers. All of these films individually display flashes of brilliance in documenting the trails and tribulations of being black in America. Yet, as a whole, in spite of a prolific body of work, there is a strain of disingenuousness coursing just beneath the surface of too many of Lee’s films. In this regard, the racial issues examined in many of Lee’s films appear as a gimmick. Films such as School Daze, Jungle Fever, and Get On the Bus use racial discord as a slick distraction to package and promote films that have weak or underdeveloped plots and inconsis-

8 Race on the QT

tent acting; they display little internal logic, present meandering storylines, and chronically showcase student film-­school tricks. Without a doubt Spike Lee, at his best, is the Oscar Micheaux of our era, a pioneering black director whose bread and butter is the race film. At his worst, Lee comes perilously close to indulging in racial hucksterism. Consequently, across the bulk of Lee’s filmic work hot-­button racial issues are used more like agitprop to support a series of mediocre titles. The cultural upshot is that in-­group racial orientation does not necessarily provide a director with ability or insight when it comes to articulating racial politics in America, a point dreadfully underscored by black directors such as Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels, whose films make Spike Lee look like Ingmar Bergman in comparison. In contrast, white film directors such as John Sayles with Brother from Another Planet (1984), Matewan (1986), Lone Star (1996), and Honey­ dripper (2007), and Norman Jewison with In the Heat of the Night (1967), A Soldier’s Story (1984), and The Hurricane (1999) are accomplished filmmakers who have provocatively tackled and integrated racial issues across their bodies of work. But while Sayles and Jewison have periodically taken race to task, Tarantino is a white director who makes race a sharp cornerstone in all his films. In this sense, Tarantino demands more than a cursory conversation about race, given how all his films have included black folk of various styles, temperaments, and motivations. In other words, Tarantino films are very much about race even though the type of paint-­by-­numbers racial thematic found in Spike Lee’s films or the garish racial sociology found in the film Precious (Lee Daniels, 2009) is absent. Consequently—­and counter-­ intuitively—­Tarantino’s films are more likely to implicate us as viewers in the wrongheadedness and seductive irrationality of racism in ways the often ham-­fisted Spike Lee fails to dictate and Lee Daniels neglects to achieve in the contrived and squeaky melodrama The Butler (2013). This is not to say Tarantino is all finesse. The repetitive use of the n-­word as an everyday utterance in Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997) or a character’s matter-­of-­fact comparison between a giant ape and African Americans in Inglourious Basterds (2009) irritate like fingernails clawing against a chalkboard. In this regard, Tarantino appears intent on making the audiences squirm to the sounds of America’s racial proclivities past and present. But for many critics and scholars, the aforementioned examples are merely more evidence of Tarantino’s presumably racist perspective. For example, critic Sean Tierney views Tarantino through the prism of white studies, examining him in terms

Introduction 9

of his star personae and public rhetoric, and unabashedly proclaims that the filmmaker is an active advocate of the very racism Tarantino is a critic of.16 By focusing on Tarantino the personality, however, Tierney for the most part bypasses the body of work for which Tarantino became famous in the first place. In contrast, the caustic film critic Armond White takes Tarantino to task for what he shows on screen. White views Tarantino as expressing racial hostility vis-­à-­vis the racist utterances of his various characters, particularly with the frequent use of the n-­word in a non-­salutary manner.17 He basically views Tarantino as a derivative director who revels in the worst aspects of Blaxploitation film, producing pop sleaze without the politics. White’s racial analysis is too brittle and facile for my liking. Without getting into the dubious merits of an argument concerning the constructive power of the n-­word and Tarantino’s inability to deploy the term in a useful manner, I believe White’s type of criticisms reflect a rather reductive approach to investigating race as it relates to Tarantino’s films. Instead, the use of the n-­word across Tarantino’s films also functions as a transgressive reminder and marker of the real racial animosity that circulates throughout American society, not just in the mind of one white Hollywood film director. Not all voices of racial reason share such a strident characterization of Tarantino’s work. The widely published cultural critic and racial gadfly Stanley Crouch has written a couple of extended essays on the merit of Tarantino’s work as a metaphoric treatise on racial miscegenation and, ultimately, cultural diffusion and hybridity.18 His essay “Blues in More Than One Color” in particular is a well-­written celebration of the Tarantino filmic touch. Crouch even goes so far to compare Tarantino with Ralph Ellison, one of the few authors who can claim the rarified status of writing “the great American novel,” with his racial tome Invisible Man (1952). As talented as Crouch is as a cultural critic, his film studies technique comes across as cloyingly labored. Like a John Coltrane solo that is virtually divorced from its original compelling melody, sounding more like an exercise in extended improvising, Crouch often muddles his points by engaging in extended intellectual riffing on topics near and dear to his heart but not quite germane to black racial formation. Most important, Crouch skimps on framing Tarantino’s films in terms of other films. This lack of cinematic engagement severely hampers any explanation of how QT’s body of work is situated filmically and obscures what type of conclusions are articulated in relationship to race and American cinema. The result is a colorful but

10 Race on the QT

convoluted rumination on Tarantino’s films from Reservoir Dogs (1992) through Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) that devotes too much time to describing narratives and plot points of the various films and affords little time to making meaningful connections between the characters, scenarios, and outcomes connected to real racial issues and dynamics operating in American cinema, society, and culture. Nevertheless, Crouch’s notable contrarian viewpoint serves as a counterweight to various hackneyed claims that Tarantino is a racist. For Crouch (and I agree with him on this), Tarantino is a complex screenwriter and director who questions America’s traditional notions of race, ethnicity, and gender. Certainly much has been made of the reality that Tarantino’s filmic corpus is chockfull of references, homages, similarities, plagiarism, and allusions to other films, both obscure and well known, that are characteristic of the Tarantino style. This postmodern pastiche, however, only makes sense when viewed in relation with—­and, periodically, against—­a broader cultural and social discourse concerning race in America. Thus, reductively translating the racial politics of Tarantino’s films as primarily homages to Blaxploitation cinema is too narrow an analysis. Similarly, any fruitful discussion of race in Tarantino’s work that goes beyond name-­calling and kneejerk claims of race-­baiting must view his work in relationship to broader and ongoing racial discourses circulating in American society. Rather than start from the unspoken supposition that the director is a sinner/saint or bog down the analysis of Tarantino’s films with notions of positive or negative stereotypes, my approach in this book is quite straightforward. I frame and then deconstruct Tarantino’s film work as a form of referential cultural production in dialogue with historical and concurrent racial anxieties in American society. Accordingly, the style I have adopted for this project is cultural criticism within a film studies framework that self-­consciously refrains from the jargonistic overkill of most academic writing and the promotional puffery of a celebrity exposé. By reading and deconstructing the racial dynamics woven into Reservoir Dogs, True Romance (1993), Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained (2012) in relationship to the cultural politics of race in America, I argue that Tarantino’s films reveal a dialogical expression of race, particularly around the articulation of blackness. Consequently, the eclectic fusion of cultural criticism and film analysis in this book is less concerned with authorial intent and more focused on the symbolic and cultural meaning

Introduction 11

individual films create and engage as racial representations, ideology, American cultural politics, pop culture, and U.S. race relations. In chapter one, Reservoir Dogs is examined in terms of how the film subversively states, restates, and revolves around blackness as a marginal and excluded identity in the face of an “old boy network” where whiteness is privileged. True Romance is examined in light of the ways race is coded and the manner in which white racial purity is articulated and critiqued. In particular, the crisis of white masculinity is examined in relationship to shifting and encroaching notions of blackness informed by the pop cultural trends of the period. In chapter two, I examine how Pulp Fiction constructs white masculinity even as it spectacularly and disturbingly alludes to the stifling, sadomasochistic impulse present in white supremacy as idea and practice. Moreover, the film is deconstructed as a racial fairytale, highlighting the racial import of key vignettes. For Jackie Brown, I analyze the ways in which the film embraces and exhibits multiple tensions of race, class, and gender. The film’s title character highlights limited racial- and gender-­based economic opportunity, and the character of Robbie Ordell explores the pathology of black overcompensation and self-­hatred. Chapter three takes on the action-­drama mash-­ups Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and Death Proof. I examine how the Kill Bill films engage race, in this case the fetishization of Asian iconography and culture, in a manner that is both problematic and progressively subversive. The films are considered for the many ways they attempt to negotiate issues around “yellow face” in American cinema and mark the threshold of and boundaries between homage and racial appropriation in the form of a white protagonist as a martial arts master. With Death Proof I examine how race and gender are used to affirm Amazonian black sexuality and signify resistance to white male hegemony as objectification. Black gender politics are mapped around the violence and sexuality of the female protagonists. Chapter four examines Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. The former is discussed as a racial/ethnic diatribe that symbolically and literally attacks white supremacy as an institution and personal practice. The film employs various visual signifiers and adopts specific racial rhetoric as a means to comment on American racism as a system of exploitation related to Nazism. Finally, I offer Django Un­ chained as a continuation of Tarantino’s highly provocative critique of race relations in America, one that destabilizes American history and the mythological constructs of black enslavement in American pop culture. The depiction of black enslavement in American cinema

12 Race on the QT

is explored along with the common aesthetic representations that filmmakers often employ to portray the horror of black racial oppression. I argue that Django Unchained is most appropriately characterized as a Gothic horror film rather than a spaghetti western. Many fans, as well as critics, have insisted on focusing on Tarantino’s use of violence, and they reductively attribute his inclusion of black actors and racial issues as homage to the Blaxploitation film of the 1970s. Others interpret the films as revealing some warped racial prejudice lurking deep in Tarantino’s subconscious. Instead, I argue that the overall result, for better or worse, is a body of work that ideologically engages the cultural politics of race in America, but this engagement is either uncritically lauded, carelessly overlooked, or roundly criticized because of prejudices attributed to the director. As counter-­intuitive as it may appear, when it comes to the body of Tarantino’s films, the radical racial politics coursing through them is hidden in plain sight and very much on the quiet, or as I prefer, the QT. Consequently, the title of this book, Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino is more than a play on words. It is also an exercise in providing a more explicit examination of the racial import lurking beneath the surface of Tarantino’s films. Upon first viewing, the violence and prolific profanity found in the films of Quentin Tarantino threaten to overwhelm the racial commentary woven throughout the body of his work. A deeper and sustained reading, however, reveals a subversive racial milieu layered with cultural and ideological concepts that are greater than the sum of their parts. Accordingly, Tarantino’s films are not merely movies that entertain; they symbolize racial anxieties circulating throughout American society. Such observations are not automatically evident just by examining QT films for negative or positive representations of black people, black life, or black culture. Beneath a veneer of interwoven plotlines depicting profane violence and death are critical considerations of real and imaginary elements of blackness in America. The films engage long-­standing racial discourses and hint at emerging trends. The following chapters may not definitively settle debates surrounding Tarantino’s personal racial politics, but they will reveal more accurate insights and conclusions concerning the weaknesses and strengths of the racial rhetoric and representations found in his films.

Chapter 1

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance

It’s always best to start at the beginning. —­Glenda the Good Witch, The Wizard of Oz (1939)

In 1991, five Los Angeles police officers were surreptitiously videotaped beating a black motorist after a car chase. The videotape was subsequently shown on a local news outlet, and shortly afterward the image of Rodney King being hit repeatedly with batons became a ubiquitous representation seared into the collective consciousness of a nation. The brutality of those recorded images inflamed various segments of the polyglot communities of color throughout Los Angeles, but it was not until a year later, when a jury acquitted the officers who beat King, that the fury found expression. In the wake of the verdict, anger and indignation fueled fires that were set throughout Los Angeles and persisted over several days. The “LA riots” had the city ablaze, and roughly five months after one of the most devastating, racially driven civil disturbances in American history, Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­ voir Dogs (1992) débuted. Given that Reservoir Dogs liberally sampled from a Hong Kong action flick (fatefully titled City on Fire [Ringo Lam, 1987]) that was set in Los Angeles and included blatant scenes of white racial prejudice, Tarantino’s first film, about a botched bank robbery, conveyed a great degree of synchronicity.1 Against the searing racial, political, and cultural backdrops of the riots, Reservoir Dogs crackled with energy and made Tarantino a hot commodity poised to become an iconic director. Reservoir Dogs is a refreshing, dialogue-­heavy heist-­gone-­wrong film that gives an obnoxious thumb-­in-­the-­eye to Hollywood cinematic conventions. With its loopy storyline that jumps back and forth in time and the oddball casting of a young Steve Buscemi as a hard-

14 Race on the QT

ened bank heist sideman, Reservoir Dogs emerged as a notable counterpoint to the timid and corny aesthetic sensibility coursing through much of early 1990s American pop culture. Emblematic of the pedestrian popular entertainment of the period were television shows like Baywatch (1989–­1999), with its hegemonic idealization of whiteness, Seinfeld (1989–­1998) with its ultrawhite rendering of New York City, and the bizarrely bourgeois The Fresh Prince of Bel-­Air (1990–­1996). Pop-­punk music groups like Green Day, Blink 182, and Limp Bizkit produced radio-­friendly songs that no longer sonically railed against commercialism with atonal and shrill music. Ultimately, the pop culture of the period was a littered landscape of niche marketing and fragmented genres all competing for the suburban youth dollar. Reservoir Dogs, with its fractured narrative and sure-­footed, expletive-­laced reimagining of American gangsters, appeared as a strident critique of the milquetoast mainstream pop culture of the early 1990s. Before Reser­ voir Dogs would become integral to a growing refashioning and infatuation with pulp criminality, though, the harbinger of this transformation in pop culture was happening not in film but in music. Arguably, Niggas With Attitudes aka N.W.A’s sonic ode to the street thug, Straight Outta Compton (1988) kick-­started the pulp gangsta rap phenomenon and upped the ante for audiences’ tolerance of hardcore street profanity and depictions of raw violence. Hip-­hop grew out of the black-­and-­brown miasma of the South Bronx, a culture and music that were in response to Lyndon Johnson’s failed War on Poverty, Richard Nixon’s benign neglect, and Jimmy Carter’s failed leadership.2 The gangsta rap of Los Angeles was spawned in the 1980s against the national backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s political indifference to race and local Los Angeles Police Department chief Darrel Gates’ hardnosed paramilitary law enforcement tactics. Gates’ approach coarsened the antagonisms between the “thin blue line” and communities of color in Los Angeles, a sentiment fully expressed in N.W.A’s leave-­nothing-­ to-­the-­imagination rebel song, “Fuck tha Police.” Soon after the release of Straight Outta Compton, with its emphasis on inner-­city everyday gang life, street-­level gangsterism became a source of entertainment, intrigue, and fashion which took off as a cultural phenomenon. By the mid 1990s gangsta rap had quickly moved from the margins to the American mainstream where the alchemy of marketing, consumerism, and American youth culture coalesced to create pop gangsterism. Gangsta rap records like Dr. Dre’s The Chronic (1992) went triple-­ platinum; films like John Singelton’s Boyz n the Hood (1991), the Hughes

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 15

Brothers’ Menace II Society (1993), and Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way (1993) found popular audiences; and the extraordinary popularity of the video game series Grand Theft Auto (1997) affirmed the new genre was more than a passing fad and that it held potential for reaping moneymaking success. Cinematically, sonically, and digitally, American pop culture clearly communicated, “Gangsters make the world go round.” Reservoir Dogs is a hybrid articulation of this growing gangster aesthetic with its hyperbolic narratives of violence and unabashed masculine posturing.3 In other words, Reservoir Dogs is the visual analogue of the type of hypermasculinity and extravagant violence rapped about on top of 1970s funk samples. Reservoir Dogs even uses funky seventies music as its soundtrack, a formula that was also prevalent in hip-­hop and was popularly referred to as G-­funk during the early 1990s, whereby rappers layered vivid tales of violence and black nihilism on top of buttery baselines and the harmonious sound of synthesizers. Reservoir Dogs also opts for the dissonance inherent in gangsta rap by combining raw depictions of mutilation and torture with music. The voiceover for “K-­Billy’s Super Sounds of the Seventies” radio show introduces the 1970s pop song “Stuck in the Middle with You” as a bound police officer is tortured and has his ear sliced off by a psychopathic hood. Along with gruesome acts of violence, Reservoir Dogs also explores notions of loyalty and the problematic aspects of honor amongst thieves.4 Of course, having high-­minded premises grafted to seedy settings and deplorable acts of violence would become a signature feature of the Tarantino touch in future films. On top of shocking viewers with unseemly violence and disturbing depictions of mutilation set to bubbly pop music, the examples of racial cultural politics peppered throughout the film also make Reservoir Dogs a seminal film. Admittedly, even in retrospect, Reservoir Dogs appears primarily concerned with showing copious amounts of blood and guts. But beyond offering an updated version of America’s splatter-­film past, Reservoir Dogs engages American racial politics and provocatively toys with black racial references that suggest the filmmaker’s interest in having characters express a racial—­if not racist—­perspective. Not surprisingly, Reservoir Dogs articulates such sentiments in an often offensive and abrasive manner. Just as torment and violence are crudely spliced with existential angst, the obscene and off-­putting racial language found in various exchanges between white characters offers critical ideological implications about race in American society. For example, when it comes to offensive dialogue, the opening of

16 Race on the QT

Reservoir Dogs offers a jarring introduction. The film begins with extremely boorish banter around a restaurant table with Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino) waxing idiotic about whether or not the sexual symbolism of Madonna’s decade-­defining pop song “Like a Virgin” (1984) is a “size queen’s” anthem about liking large penises. Mr. Brown’s contention is deliberated among several other white men gathered around the table, a motley cast of criminals, bagmen, and enforcers. Buried in the back-­in-­forth dialogue over the merits of Mr. Brown’s argument are the questionable comments of crime boss Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) when he mumbles to himself about finding a black address book in a jacket he has not “worn in a coon’s age.” One could reasonably assume that Cabot’s “coon” comment denotes some archaic folk reference to the passage of a great deal of time and its relationship to an actual raccoon. Racially speaking, though, his inflammatory statement rivals Mr. Brown’s sexual vulgarity. A “coon” is an established racial slur and its visual analogue is the caricature of a black person as comically lazy, verbally befuddled, and vulgarly ignorant.5 Moreover, given the fact that all the members of the diamond heist crew are white, Cabot’s racially tinged comment brings into stark relief the absence of any black crooks at the table. Given this context, Cabot’s “coon” comment is charged with racial undertones. Although Cabot’s “racial” comment is delivered as an absent-­minded throwaway line, it foreshadows a litany of racial name-­calling throughout the rest of the film that explicitly degrades African Americans. Consequently, Cabot’s comments foreshadow how racial prejudice is woven into the everyday attitudes and beliefs articulated in the film. A subsequent flashback signals the purposeful exclusion of “blackness” from Cabot’s crime syndicate and subversively indicates the priority given to white racial homogeneity within the diamond heist crew. The film follows six crooks, men who are all strangers to each other, hired by Cabot to carry out a diamond robbery. They all use false names to protect their identities in case any of them are caught by law enforcement after the heist. Identities are assigned to the various heist men using color-­specific code names. The crew consists of Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), and Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi). Immediately after being given the name “Mr. Pink” by Cabot, Mr. Pink declares his dissatisfaction with that color as his alias. He advocates that he be “Mr. Black.” A vigorous argument ensues,

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 17

which concludes with Cabot declaring that no one will be “Mr. Black” because everyone on the last job wanted that name as their alias and it became a source of hostility and violent confrontation. Here the absence of blackness is not arbitrary; the broader ideological implications suggest blackness is a disruptive presence that warrants marginalization. But blackness is literally barred within this racially homogenous group of men, a point signaled verbally with the racially disparaging language directed at black people and signaled visually with the character of Holdaway (Robert Brooks). As the only black person in Reservoir Dogs, Holdaway’s solitary figure is a visual counterpoint to the myriad group shots of the exclusively white heist crew, a point visually underscored by a series of juxtapositions that show Holdaway in stark contrast to Cabot and his crew. From the deserted rooftop of a building, to the center aisle of an abandoned and graffiti scrawled amphitheater, to a restaurant scene where he sits alone in a large booth, Holdaway is often shown alone in open spaces, whereas the diamond heist crew are constantly shown as part of a group occupying cramped quarters. On the surface, this optic framing displaces Holdaway to the margins of the film and diminishes his agency in the narrative. Ironically, the black detective Holdaway is the film’s most marginal figure, but he is the ideological center of Reser­ voir Dogs’s racial politics. The film’s primary focus appears to be the strange, tension-­filled relationship between Mr. White/Larry (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Orange/Freddy (Tim Roth) as they move from associates, to savior and saved, to executioner and executed. Unquestionably, the emotional drama of the film revolves around this pair. Mr. White is the staunch defender of Mr. Orange as a stand-­up guy, not the undercover cop that the audience knows he is and the remaining criminals begin to suspect he might be. As it stands, Freddy, the inexperienced, unsteady, naïve but talentedly deceptive undercover cop compels the attention of the audience as the central force in the film. A deeper look, however, reveals that Freddy is really a cipher for Holdaway. Freddy is only able to walk among the hardened and vicious heist men he is assigned to deceive because of Holdaway’s precise tutelage about the mannerisms and mindset he must master in order to convince real cons he is one of them, a point communicated in a series of flashbacks. The stage is set for black racial dynamics to emerge as a central element in the film, a setup indicated by the first “Holdaway flashback” which shows Holdaway sitting at a restaurant booth as Freddy saunters up to take a seat.

18 Race on the QT

Detective Holdaway (Randy Brooks) plots his takedown of Cabot’s crime syndicate with Freddy in Reservoir Dogs.

Holdaway is dressed like a member of Mao Tse-­tung’s Red Guard—­in camouflage attire. He wears a cap with a five-­pointed red star prominently placed front and center. Emblazoned on the front of his red t-­shirt is the image of Che Guevara’s face. In this odd getup, Holdaway signifies an urban guerilla planning the overthrow of a corrupt and racist capitalist regime. What the revolutionary getup suggests, Holdaway’s actions clearly convey. He is a formidable tactician and the principal architect for bringing down Cabot’s crime organization, a point clearly telegraphed by his verbal rebuke of Freddy for holding an informant in high regard for supplying a cover story that checks out with Cabot. In the most unapologetic manner, Holdaway informs Freddy that his “Long Beach Mike” informant is a crummy fink who does not deserve any praise for his referral. Holdaway further establishes his superior training and his significance in molding Freddy into an effective undercover agent by demanding that Freddy memorize the details of a fictitious chain of events called the “commode story.” Holdaway provides Freddy a monologue several pages long about possessing a significant stash of marijuana on his person while using the restroom as several police officers with a police dog talk shop and he calmly goes about his business. Ultimately, the “commode story” is what seals the deal for convincing Cabot’s criminal crew that Freddy is a hardboiled felon and suitable crook for their impending diamond heist. The slight smirk that Holdaway shows after asking Freddy, “You use the commode story?” not only signals the covert delight that Holdaway holds in duping Cabot, it also suggests Holdaway is a cold, calculating law enforcement professional intent on bringing down Cabot’s syndicate. Consequently,

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 19

the only on-­screen black character in Reservoir Dogs “is the central causal agent of the film’s narrative and is able to play masterfully with changing and constructed identities of the underworld . . .”6 Of course, the nonlinear narrative and Holdaway’s significant off-­ screen presence work to displace the centrality of his character to the narrative. Despite this distortion, Holdaway, not Mr. Orange, is the ruthless mastermind of the film. Admittedly, Freddy/Mr. Orange possesses several qualities that might make him appear to be the architect of Cabot’s demise. Freddy’s “fresh face” works as a built-­in alibi as to why the more seasoned thieves (and Cabot’s off-­screen subordinates) have not come in contact with him as a criminal, making Freddy a compelling candidate for infiltrating Cabot’s crime empire. Freddy’s youth also explains his appeal for recruitment as an undercover cop. Yet if a black candidate (or for that matter a woman) possessed the same fresh face, the minority agent could not expect any real consideration as an undercover agent for this particular job, a point constantly emphasized by the crude racial banter, chronic use of the n-­word, and misogynistic tone articulated toward women by Cabot and his men. Hence, even though Holdaway is a street-­savvy, experienced undercover cop who knows the ins and outs of enhancing one’s cover, he could never infiltrate Cabot’s organization. In this sense, race—­or more specifically, racism—­is the driving undercurrent of Reservoir Dogs. Racism dictates that Freddy, the naïve and not-­so-­sure-­footed undercover cop, is the central figure of the film, but not its catalyst. Rather Holdaway is the principal force operating in the film, which makes him the solitary brain that brings down Cabot’s organization.7 Holdaway must take advantage of the one particular quality that makes Freddy an ideal candidate to effectively infiltrate Cabot’s inner crime circle—­he’s a white male. Holdaway is a powerful signifier of black racial retribution given the racist nature of Cabot’s crime empire and the men who work for him. In addition, Holdaway functions as a symbolic counterweight to various racist assumptions and derisions directed at black people in the film, a point brought into striking relief when Mr. Pink racializes what it means to act like a professional. Mr. Pink must defuse a tense scene in which Mr. White and Mr. Blonde confront one another about who botched the diamond heist. Mr. Pink frantically intervenes in Mr. White’s and Mr. Blonde’s alternating displays of exaggerated male posturing, empty insults, and threats of physical violence. He deescalates the volatile situation by declaring, “Am I the only professional?

20 Race on the QT

Fucking guys are acting like a bunch of fucking niggers, you want to be niggers, huh? They’re just like you two—­always fighting and always saying they’re gonna kill each other. . . .” On one hand, Mr. Pink’s refrain about professionalism shows that “Pink is the voice of reason and common sense. He is the one who tries to keep the robbers from turning on one another and he rightfully surmises that the robbery was compromised from the very beginning.”8 On the other hand, Mr. Pink’s comments belittle black competency and establish black behavior as highly emotional, impulsive, immature, needlessly violent, and self-­ destructive. Against this rhetorical backdrop stands Holdaway, the only black professional in the film, who is a radical critique of the racial one-­liners that characterize blacks as inferior and unprofessional.9 In direct contrast to Mr. Pink’s racist edicts about blacks and professionalism, Holdaway is a cold and calculating—­even Machiavellian—­law enforcement professional who has concocted this plan to take down Cabot’s organization. White professionalism is an overarching theme and ethos that circulates throughout the film. Without a doubt, Cabot, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink, and Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) are unabashed racists, but they are also men of respect, power, authority, and professionalism. In fact, their “dress code” (virtually identical business suits, white shirts, and black ties) blatantly signals a type of professional conformity typically associated with traditional corporate attire. Moreover, the corporate sensibility their clothes suggests is clearly telegraphed by a heated debate over the logic of tipping a waitress in which statistics concerning gender and wage elasticity figure large. By showing these men having such a debate, the film dramatically underscores the point that this set of criminal operatives and decision makers are more than a bunch of white bigots or crude criminals thrown together by happenstance. Cabot’s crooks symbolize the tensions at work in American corporate capitalism and demonstrate how calculating business logic is infused with and operates alongside gender discrimination and racial animosity. Reservoir Dogs does more than express racial hostility, however. The film frankly demonstrates a white racial prejudice that exists not as an overt act of social victimization but as an everyday sensibility and attitude that shapes and informs the contours of white masculine entitlement in contest with gendered or racialized identity. In particular, the connection between white masculine entitlement and racism in Reservoir Dogs is dramatically highlighted when Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega visits Cabot’s office after serving a five-­year prison

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 21

Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) engage in economic banter concerning the value of tipping waitresses in Reservoir Dogs.

term. Before Vega arrives, Cabot is shown ensconced in an imposing corner office dispensing financial advice on the phone while sitting in a leather chair behind a large desk framed by bright white elephant tusks. The visual cues clearly indicate Cabot’s entrenched economic status and power as a big-­game capitalist. Racial anxieties prominently amplify who Cabot is and what he symbolizes. When Vega informs Cabot that his parole officer is a stickler for parolees following the rules, Cabot responds with this jarring observation: “You know it never ceases to amaze me, a fucking jungle bunny goes out there and slits some old woman’s throat for twenty-­five cents and he gets Doris Day for a parole officer. A good fellow like you winds up with a ball-­busting prick.” Interestingly, Cabot’s racial rhetoric casts whites as the victims of preferential treatment given to blacks and suggests an American system now at work where reverse racism is normative and good white men are punished. This point is highlighted again after a short display of comic wrestling between Cabot’s son, Eddie, and Vega followed by Eddie’s crude but jesting declaration to Joe Cabot: “Ain’t that a sad sight, Daddy? A man walks into prison a white man and walks out talking like a fucking nigger. You know what I think? It’s all that black semen been pumped up your ass so far now its backed into your fucking brain and now its coming out your mouth.” Reservoir Dogs repeatedly draws attention to the perceived misfortune of white men in America. In this sense, Cabot’s and Eddie’s disparaging take on Vega’s parole situation highlights the power of black people and black culture, equating close proximity to blacks and extended interaction with blacks with corrupted whiteness. Eddie’s comments express a deep-­seated anxiety

22 Race on the QT

Big-­game capitalist Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney), his son Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn), and Vic Vega (Michael Madsen, back to camera) discuss their next caper in Reservoir Dogs.

with maintaining racial boundaries and perfectly dovetails with the conservative cadence of race relations in the 1990s, in which whites perceived themselves to be victims of unfair racial gains by blacks in the wake of the civil rights struggle, Black Power movement, and affirmative action programs.10 What makes Reservoir Dogs racially complex is its refusal to rely on comfortable racial clichés like Caucasians hiding under white sheets masquerading as sacred robes or neo-­Nazi skinheads performing a frightening parody of the Third Reich minus the goose-­stepping. Instead, Reservoir Dogs demonstrates how racism, as an attitude and an outlook both mundane and repugnant, is fully articulated by men who make good on promises, express how much they value loyalty, display sincere acts of gratitude, are humorous, and have names like Nice Guy Eddie and fathers who are likably gruff. Hence, the economic advantages of white male privilege are couched in everyday racist rhetoric even as the film details the absurdity of arguments that construct white racial identity as disadvantaged relative to black folk. For example, Cabot creates an effective cover for “standup” guy Vic Vega to meet the “gainfully employed” stipulation of his parole without actually working. With this scene, Reservoir Dogs shows Cabot’s power to circumvent the stipulations of Vega’s parole. On an ideological level, however, the scene subverts the façade of reverse racism expressed by Cabot earlier in the film, and it negates Vega’s supposed diminished white status as it was iterated earlier by Nice Guy Eddie: that Vega has

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 23

come out of prison a nigger. But because Cabot’s crime syndicate has businesses “all over the place” and he is able to put Vega on the payroll as a dockworker (who doesn’t actually show up to work), Vega is taken care of with a minimal amount of personal effort. Cabot’s exhibition of power, along with Vega’s advantageous access to social and commercial networks, fully negates any claims of white victimhood.11 Ultimately, the scene functions as a recuperative staging ground where Vic Vega not only is made economically viable but is also fully restored as a white man of honor, respect, and economic security. But like any film noir title of merit, in the end there is no happy ending, no redemption, and no escape for any criminal character no matter how sympathetically he is written. There is only death, and Reservoir Dogs delivers in that regard. None of Cabot’s men live, and even Freddy, the undercover cop (Mr. Orange), is killed. Although the audience is denied a shot of Holdaway solemn and stoic in his “victory” over Cabot, despite the loss of innocent lives, he remains the cause of Cabot’s and his racist syndicate’s internecine demise. The ruthless mastermind and hero of the film is Holdaway, not Mr. Orange. The black antihero of Melvin Van Peebles’ seminal Blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song warns his audience at the film’s end that a “baadasssss nigger is coming back to collect some dues . . . ,” and Holdaway makes good on Sweetback’s promise, although in a much more covert manner. Nevertheless, as the only on-­screen black character, Holdaway “is the central causal agent of the film’s narrative and is able to play masterfully with changing and constructed identities of the underworld . . .”12 Ultimately, Holdaway causes Cabot and his racist syndicate to meet their demise. Consequently, Reservoir Dogs has more in common with the Blaxploitation, racial revenge narratives that were the sustenance of a cash-­strapped Hollywood film industry in the early 1970s than it does with the 1950s film noir, gangster flicks Tarantino’s first film invites comparison to. This conclusion makes Reservoir Dogs a racial revenge narrative that situates blackness in a position of power and agency, and it defies superficial readings that the film is simply a racist, robust display of white masculinity. In retrospect, at its best the blunt racial rhetoric in Reservoir Dogs creates the superficial impression for the audience that it is a “fly-­on-­ the-­wall.” As a technique, it lets the audience feel they are witnessing and listening to something private,13 awkward, and possibly taboo: whites comfortably referring to black people as “jungle bunnies” and

24 Race on the QT

“niggers.” Admittedly, any attempt to free the n-­word from the prison house of language is problematic. But the use of the n-­word in Reser­ voir Dogs is more than a device; rather, it is a proposition—­or better, a reminder—­that there are white men in America who are racists and not all of them wear sheets while they burn crosses. Admittedly, with its motley crew of white gangsters who are shown disparaging black folk, Reservoir Dogs on the surface appears to be a film committed to strident retrenchment of white male confidence. I argue that this is a misreading. In fact, it is the gangsters’ racial hubris that is thoroughly skewered in the film by Holdaway, not as a pure narrative device but as an ideological foil to the brash prejudice that circulates amongst the syndicate of white thugs. Moreover, the use of the n-­word propels the narrative beyond the realm of just some crime-­caper-­gone-­wrong B-­movie and into the realm of a crime-­caper-­gone-­wrong B-­movie with ideological ramifications. The film works to negate its audience’s simple passive experience and offers the option to address the racial prejudice of the characters and possibly the viewer(s). Reservoir Dogs subversively invites the viewer to agree with or deny the veracity of the various racist suppositions characters offer up, such as Mr. Pink’s declaration that violent unprofessionalism is akin to acting like a “bunch of fucking niggers.” In this sense, the film critically challenges racist tropes that masquerade as common sense. Admittedly, the degree to which this technique outweighs the knotty deficiencies of using racially inflammatory language remains debatable. In fact, if various critics are to be believed, the mere use of the n-­word is a glaring signpost of the racism of the film and the filmmaker.14 Nevertheless, Tarantino’s first flick is a tour de force in cunningly playing the race card with a deft sleight of hand. The racist and robust display of white masculinity in Reservoir Dogs garnered criticism for questionable and ill-­defined notions of blackness and prompted many to speculate about what Tarantino thinks about black people—­rather than what Tarantino thinks American society thinks about black people. As a result, Tarantino himself—­and the degree to which the film did or did not resonate with white viewers—­became the focus of alarm, rather than the type of racial politics the film was addressing. Either way, Reservoir Dogs served notice to film aficionados that a new director was in town. And as Tarantino’s reputation, critical acclaim, and commercial success increased with later films, his deployment of black racial representation became bolder. Tarantino’s subsequent films would still engage racism, but they would abandon the type

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 25

of narrative displacement used in Reservoir Dogs with the Holdaway character. For the most part, Tarantino remained an unknown quantity after Reservoir Dogs. However, his next film project, True Romance (1993), confirmed that he was a gifted writer. This recognition was made all the more impressive given that Tarantino only wrote the screenplay for True Romance; the film was directed by Tony Scott, a brand-­name director with a strong directorial perspective. Nonetheless, not only does Tarantino’s knack for vibrant dialogue and kooky characters shine through in True Romance, like Reservoir Dogs the film also exhibits a vigorous display of white masculinity and aggressive racial rhetoric. In contrast to the racial histrionics found in Reservoir Dogs, True Ro­ mance plays with numerous signifiers of blackness and makes a more blatant critique of white masculinity and the “crisis of confidence” that emerged in the 1990s. Admittedly, the crisis of white male confidence was not unique to the 1990s. The ongoing reshuffling of white male privilege had started several decades earlier in the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1950s, black power crusade of the late 1960s and early 70s, and women’s movement of the 1970s. These movements and the social dynamics they initiated—­an influx of blacks into the middle class, black studies in higher education, and more women in higher positions in the workplace—­were driving forces for eroding significant portions of white male power in American society. But this trend did not occur uncontested. The Ronald Reagan/George Bush era of the 1980s to early 1990s was able to successfully reassert and rehabilitate a traditional image of the American white male as patriotic patriarch. By reanimating the tropes of the American cowboy and rugged frontierism, the Reagan/Bush era placated white, working-­class racial fears that traditional white patriarchy was diminishing.15 Yet by the mid 1990s the shockwaves of third-­wave feminism were being felt, black intellectuals and college students were embracing and advocating a revamped form of black power in the guise of Afrocentricity, and rap music was muscling its way into the mainstream as the popular rebel soundtrack of America’s youth. In large part, these developments were expressions of previous political and cultural tensions working themselves out naturally, not conspiratorial plots hatched to topple white men. Nevertheless, True Romance exhibits a degree of paranoia concerning the impending encroachment of blackness into the world of whiteness. This

26 Race on the QT

alarm over racial boundaries is first signaled by the frightening figure of a white pimp named Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman). Later it is explicitly marked in a monologue about the legacy of miscegenation by the black Moors in Sicily delivered to the so-­called “dark” Italian hoods. As a result, True Romance holds a significant place in Tarantino’s film oeuvre, because, like Reservoir Dogs, True Romance clearly articulates real and ongoing racial anxieties prevalent in America. True Romance features Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) and Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) as two star-­crossed lovers who must outsmart mob men, battle a vicious pimp, sell several bags of “blow,” and live to tell the tale by escaping to Cancun, Mexico, with hundreds of thousands of dollars. The story begins in Detroit, Michigan, where Clarence is a bona fide member of the lonely-­hearts club. On his birthday he is sitting by himself in a grimy theater catching a kung fu action flick. To his surprise and eventual delight in walks Alabama, an attractive platinum blonde. Their “chance” meeting leads to after-­ film chitchat, sympathetic intercourse, and, soon after, Alabama’s disclosure that she is a call girl hired by Clarence’s boss to give him a good time on his birthday. Despite such an inauspicious set of circumstances, Alabama and Clarence quickly come to the realization they are soul mates. Up to this point, True Romance has the makings of a gritty, off-­kilter, romance movie meets road movie. This strikingly changes, not in direction (because the film is a gritty, off-­kilter, romance movie meets road movie) but in symbolism, semiotics, and dialogue concerning black racial identity and white male insecurity. Similar to Reservoir Dogs, where a tantalizing morsel of dialogue foreshadows the film’s bold racial overtones, True Romance offers up a racial tidbit for the audience to ponder before the full barrage of racial rhetoric is unleashed. After leaving the theater, Clarence and Alabama are shown talking in a diner. Clarence asks Alabama her favorite color. Her response is “black.” Soon after, she confesses to Clarence, “I was a call girl. Call girls have pimps.” Clarence inquires, “Was he black?” This exchange signals what is to come: a film fully focused on white racial anxiety juxtaposed with the specter of blackness as a desired, asserting, controlling, and racially compromising presence that threatens whiteness as a chaste identity and secure status. This point is further underscored when Clarence, set to wholeheartedly embrace a life of domestic bliss, is unsettled by Alabama’s disclosure that her pimp of less than a week is alive and well. Clarence subsequently feels compelled to confront Alabama’s pimp, Drexl Spivey.

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 27

Drexl (Gary Oldman) in True Romance.

Drexl embodies one of American cinema’s most perverse versions of what Norman Mailer called the “White Negro,” a term Mailer coined to typify whites who seek out and try at best to emulate and at worst to mimic African American style, mannerisms, language, and cultural expressivity.16 Admittedly, Mailer’s term is a facile catchphrase for characterizing Drexl. Most likely, the character of Drexl owes its existence less to Mailer and more to Sport (Harvey Keitel), the degenerate white pimp coded as black in Taxi Driver (1976). Clarence’s pursuit of Alabama’s pimp in True Romance is similar to the quest of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) in Taxi Driver to “save” Iris (Jodi Foster), a prostitute (and surrogate love interest), from the clutches of Sport. Like Travis, Clarence dons a green army-­surplus jacket and gazes in the mirror as a precursor to meting out his version of justice by violently slaughtering Drexl along with several other bad guys. In each film the pimps are white men. But by employing various racialized cues such as physical mannerisms, clothing, and language, they clearly connote black racial identity. Arguably, Taxi Driver employs these signifiers as a subversive technique to deflect criticism that the film is racist while still articulating conventional racial tropes of the black pimp. But in True Romance, Gary Oldman’s performance seems most rooted in the tradition of blackface minstrelsy, an antebellum era form of popular entertainment in which whites performed on stage masquerading as blacks, a practice that later made its way to American cinema.17 Numerous dubious examples of black racial pantomiming in American cinema are informed by traditional blackface: Al Jolson belting out his signature song “My Mammy” in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927); Gene Wilder strutting his stuff

28 Race on the QT

in Silver Streak (Arthur Hiller, 1976); Neil Diamond reprising Jolson’s pioneering performance with an Afro wig in the trite remake of The Jazz Singer (Richard Fleischer, 1980); C. Thomas Howell passing his way through the halls of Harvard in Soul Man (Steve Miner, 1986); and Robert Downey Jr. giving an Oscar-­nominated performance for Best Supporting Actor as a black man named Osiris in Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008), a burlesque sendup of the modern war film. In time, blackface minstrelsy and the stereotypes associated with the genre would also morph into imitations of black folk without the greasepaint, black shoe polish, or burnt cork white performers formerly used to paint themselves black. Emulation of black style and notions of “cool” became more commonplace, particularly in popular music with artists like Pat Boone, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Vanilla Ice, and Eminem, who at various times in their careers have been accused of appropriating blackness.18 Although in True Romance Oldman lacks the burnt cork or black shoe polish of long-­ago blackface, his aping of black mannerisms, voice inflections, and overall urban African American male swagger succeeds in conveying the message that Drexl is a black white man. In reality, Drexl’s shtick is just “bad” and maybe that is the point. At first glance, such a dreadful imitation highlights the awkward nature of the type of white racial mimicry Mailer seems to deplore when describing whites who try to emulate black folk. Notwithstanding Drexl’s racial disavowal, blackness is still used as visual shorthand to express deviant, violent, and degrading beliefs, practices, and circumstances which ultimately signify how low Alabama as a white female has fallen—­a trope that owes its origins to D. W. Griffith’s racist masterpiece The Birth of a Nation (1915). In Griffith’s film, virtuous whiteness is symbolized by Flora (Mae Marsh), an ingénue waiting for her brothers to return home from the Civil War who finds herself pursued by an African American man (played by a white actor in blackface) intent on raping her. In order to escape sexual defilement at the hands of Gus (Walter Long) as he pursues her to the edge of a precipice, Flora flings herself from the cliff to her death. Later in the film, the Ku Klux Klan, portrayed as a gallant organization, will slaughter Gus. Unfortunately, this type of fear-­inducing black character remains commonplace in our contemporary era. Black men are signified as sexual victimizers of the white female protagonists in Hollywood films. For example, Steven Soderbergh’s critically acclaimed film Traffic (2000) is a classic example of how black masculinity is used to convey the descent and social (and literal) death of a young white woman. In Traffic,

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 29

Caroline Wakefield (Erika Christensen), the daughter of a conservative judge (Michael Douglas), smokes crack with a nude black man (Vonte Sweet) who is her pimp/dealer. His blackness communicates dread and the extreme degree to which the white character has fallen from her previous privileged status. She has become a tragic figure beset by drug addiction and exploitative intercourse.19 James Toback’s Black and White (1999) is an appallingly entertaining film that also makes black men an imperiling force for white women. In True Romance, Drexl articulates a similar sensibility vis-­à-­vis his cultural, stylistic, and personal expressions of black racial identity. But in True Romance, Drexl’s performance of “blackness,” although poorly executed, does perform progressive ideological work. In fact, Drexl is a surprisingly subversive figure given Hollywood cinema’s history of presenting solitary white men operating in exclusively black contexts as culturally detached, de facto rulers—­an absurd setup found in Abel Ferrars’s King of New York (1990) and any of the Tarzan films. Because Drexl is the lone white male surrounded by black subordinates, it is reasonable to expect his character to be saturated in signifiers of blackness. In this sense, Drexl Spivey is a dubious improvement over characters in numerous other films that deny the cultural intimacy that occurs between different racial groups immersed in particular socioeconomic contexts. Ultimately, however, in True Romance, Drexl’s “blackness” is a source of acute anxiety and an ideological tableau for white masculinity to reassert its centrality, a core theme of the film. For instance, Clarence symbolizes traditional white American masculinity with his attempt to enact an expression of white patriarchal power—­dominance over women’s bodies—­with Alabama. He cannot fully embrace and perform his traditional white patriarchal role until he has confronted and vanquished his “black” counterpart and subverted Drexl’s control over his cherished new wife. Alabama, as a prostitute, was/is the “property” of her symbolically “black” pimp, Drexl. In this sense, Drexl compromises Clarence’s “maleness” through his perceived authority over Alabama, and Drexl’s wholehearted embrace of blackness as a form of transgressive identity threatens Clarence’s “whiteness.” When Clarence confronts Drexl with Alabama’s status as Clarence’s wife, a heated exchange between the men reveals how Clarence’s whiteness is an insecure source of racial subjectivity. When Clarence fails even to glance at the nude breasts of a black woman in a movie playing on a nearby television screen, Drexl pontificates that Clarence’s lack of attention directed at the gratuitous display of black

30 Race on the QT

female nudity betrays his nervous mental state and overall amateurishness when it comes to negotiating with hardened criminals. Tellingly, Clarence retorts, “I ain’t looking at the movie ’cause I already seen it seven years ago. It’s The Mack, Max Julien, Carol Speed, and Richard Pryor.” Interestingly, The Mack (Michael Campus, 1973) is a Blaxploitation cult classic about a black pimp. When Clarence name-­drops the title and the names of the principal black actors, True Romance suggests Clarence’s knowledge of pop cultural blackness, and possibly even pimping, is more in-­depth than Drexl’s. While Clarence and Drexl argue as to whether or not Alabama remains a prostitute, Clarence is physically compromised and his driver’s license is inspected. When his last name is revealed to be Worley, Drexl declares, “It sounds almost like a nigger name!” Not only does this comment suggest intense anxiety concerning Clarence’s whiteness, it also signals that Clarence represents a mediated form of whiteness similar to, but not to the degree of, Drexl’s “hyper-­blackness.” Eventually the exchange escalates until Clarence kills Drexl by shooting him in the groin. This symbolic act of castration functions to affirm white chivalry in the time-­honored tradition of vanquishing the dastardly black villain who threatens the well-­being and honor of the white maiden.20 As such, the confrontation between Clarence and Drexl does more than display romantic pyrotechnics. Ideologically, the scene establishes a reasserted, albeit reformulated, expression of whiteness—­even if Clarence’s whiteness is marred by his almost “nigger name.” This racial dilemma is further brought into focus with Clarence’s father, Clifford (Dennis Hopper), a former cop who now works as a security officer and lives in a trailer next to railroad tracks. Clifford’s life and thwarted ambitions poignantly symbolize the waning stature of traditional whiteness and blue-­collar masculinity. The post-­industrial bleakness of Detroit is showcased when Clifford drives from the abandoned structure he guards to the untidy trailer where he lives. The desolate, post-­industrial setting signals that Clifford is a diminished figure, economically hobbled and unable to articulate any grand vision for Clarence and his new wife when they visit him. The best Clifford can do is to reach out to his old police contacts for information concerning the death of Drexl. Undoubtedly, Clifford’s value rests in his past. His is a stagnant life, and by extension so are the racial politics he blatantly spouts when he is confronted by gang-­boss Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken) concerning the whereabouts of Clarence and Alabama. The climatic

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 31

scene shows Clifford sitting in his cramped trailer surrounded by several mob goons as he realizes his best hope is for a quick death, because his interrogation promises to be prolonged torture. To achieve his end, Clifford offers up a corrosive observation to Coccotti that reeks of crude racial eugenics and biological racism: You know, I read a lot, especially about things—­history. I find that shit fascinating. Here’s a fact I don’t know whether you know or not. Sicilians were spawned by niggers. No, it’s—­a fact. Yeah. You see, uh, Sicilians have, uh, black blood pumping through their hearts. If you don’t believe me, you can look it up. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you see, um, the Moors conquered Sicily. And the Moors are niggers. You see way back then, Sicilians were like, uh, wops from Northern Italy. They all had blond hair and blue eyes. But, uh, well then the Moors moved in there, and well, they changed the whole country. They did so much fucking with Sicilian women that they changed the whole bloodline forever. That’s why blonde hair and blue eyes became black hair and dark skin. You know it’s absolutely amazing to me to think that to this day, hundreds of years later that—­ that Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. Now this . . . No, I’m quoting history. It’s written. It’s a fact. It’s written. Your ancestors are niggers. Huh?

It is easy to imagine Drexl gleefully accepting Clifford’s homespun ode to eugenics and black racial lineage as the ultimate compliment, but for Vincenzo Coccotti it serves as the ultimate insult. Clifford’s statement is so deplorable that Coccotti murders Clifford in a fit of rage before he can acquire the information he so desperately wanted concerning the whereabouts of Clarence and Alabama. In True Romance, Clifford’s working-­ class American whiteness serves as an honorable contrast to the suspect whiteness of Coccotti and the ersatz blackness of Drexl. Yet despite Clifford’s nobility in refusing to betray his son’s whereabouts, he is dead, just a memory—­ maybe even a ghost—­along with the politics symbolized by his racist declaration. (Ultimately, Clifford’s sacrifice is empty, since after Clifford’s death Coccotti learns of Clarence’s whereabouts anyway from a note on the fridge.) Nevertheless, his diatribe about white niggers still reverberates after his death and manifests as a racial specter for Coccotti and his crew that stands in stark contrast to the “hyper-­blackness” of white Drexl. Drexl’s one-­eyed, facially disfigured black version of

32 Race on the QT

Star-­crossed lovers Alabama (Patricia Arquette) and Clarence (Christian Slater) take a ride with the top down in sunny California in True Romance.

white masculinity that signifies the blemish of cultural miscegenation is a dead end. In contrast, because of Clifford’s accusations, Coccotti, and by extension the men who work for him, have a fervent desire to symbolically cleanse themselves of the racial stigma they carry. Their need to seek vengeance and to commit violence against Clarence and Alabama is not solely a function of Clarence mistakenly taking a suitcase that was full of Coccotti’s cocaine. Given the acute racial anxiety around blackness first symbolized by Drexl and later amplified by Coccotti and his horror about white racial impurity, racial anxiety now threatens to consume the couple. In order for Coccotti and his men to reclaim previous notions of white racial purity, Clarence and Alabama cannot just be captured, they must be expunged, symbolically erasing the mongrelized whiteness invoked by Clifford’s racist rant.21 Against this backdrop of traditional articulations of whiteness that are just as outdated as the socioeconomic life of the city (Detroit) they have left behind, it is quite appropriate that Clarence and Alabama flee to the global center of personal reinvention and transformation—­Hollywood, California. In the palm-­tree paradise of sunny southern California, Clarence, the off-­beat comic store clerk who couldn’t corral a date on his birthday a few days earlier, becomes a killer of bad men who brokers a cocaine-­ for-­money swap, carries a gun neatly tucked in his waistband, and communes with the spirit of Elvis. He convinces jaded real and wannabe Hollywood players that he is authentic. The radical reinvention of Clarence Worley, along with the look and feel of the film, has a very dreamlike quality. (Maybe Clarence didn’t escape from Drexl’s clutches.)

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 33

The visual scheme of the film shows Detroit as overcast, dim, and flat and presents Hollywood as perpetually sunny, vibrant, and awash in yellow and gold tones. Fittingly, within this Hollywood context the narrative pivots toward Alabama. Unlike Clarence and Clifford, Alabama has not had the opportunity to confront the racial anxieties signaled earlier in the film when she declares that she is not “white trash,” a pejorative racial category that stigmatizes poor whites as degraded and tainted.22 In addition to confronting the cultural politics of race and class, she also must banish the sexual stigma of prostitution. The confrontation between Alabama and a Coccotti hood named Virgil (James Gandolfini) in a hotel room in Hollywood is the focal point for resolving these multiple tensions. Coccotti has sent Virgil from Detroit to catch the couple and find the suitcase full of stolen cocaine. When Alabama returns to her hotel room, she finds him waiting for her with a shotgun resting in his lap. Virgil repeatedly threatens to give Alabama a brutal beat down if she fails to betray Clarence’s location and hand over the suitcase of cocaine. Virgil emphasizes that Alabama will lose her pretty looks from the punishment he promises to inflict, a blatant example of misogynistic masculinity. Alabama refuses to give in to his demands, and eventually Virgil makes good on his promise to beat her. After a series of brutal punches to Alabama’s face, Virgil subsequently throws her through a glass shower door. Lying in the tub bruised and bloodied, Alabama is beaten physically but her spirit is not broken. Accordingly, she cackles contemptuously at Virgil and declares he looks ridiculous. Virgil immediately rushes to look in the mirror, making himself the object of his own male gaze—­a signal that his self-­image is informed by profound insecurity; a signal that also functions as a means of critiquing white masculinity and female objectification.23 While Virgil is momentarily transfixed and distracted by his own self-­doubt, Alabama is able to commandeer the situation and swiftly dispenses with Virgil in a barrage of violent acts: she beats him with a toilet lid, burns and stabs him, shoots him several times, and bludgeons his dead corpse with the butt-­ end of a shotgun. Clearly, Virgil’s panicked response to Alabama’s taunting cackle serves as the catalyst for his demise, but most important, this scene marks a shift in Alabama’s identity, liberating her character from an identity based primarily on her attractiveness to men and her value according to male sexual objectification and validation. Killing Virgil

34 Race on the QT

negates her marginalization as eye candy and emancipates her from the multiple degrading stigmas presented earlier in the film: prostitute, sexpot, white trash, airhead, and tramp. Alabama’s primal scream of defiance and victory in the face of Virgil’s demise authoritatively announces her freedom from these liminal and degrading subjectivities. As a result of her death match with Virgil, Alabama is no longer a victim and any derogatory terms that defined her in the beginning are dispelled. On the surface, Alabama’s refusal to cooperate with Virgil suggests she is a loyal and submissive wife dutifully protecting her husband. Ultimately, however, Virgil’s sadistic attack serves as a set piece, allowing Alabama eventually to embody the most empowered figure in the film. From this point in the film to its end, the acute racial anxiety prominent in the first half of True Romance drastically recedes. Instead, multiple anxieties around gender appear: Alabama’s rejection of her sexual objectification; the spectacle of violence against women; Alabama’s twist on male-­bashing feminism and white male heterosexual insecurity with Elliot Blitzer (Bronson Pinchot), an emasculated actor and errand boy for Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek), the affected gay film producer interested in purchasing Clarence’s stash for a cut-­rate price. With these elements and figures the ideological import of True Romance registers a knee-­jerk cultural anxiety around heterosexual masculinity in American society. To this point, conventional white masculinity must be reinvented and concessions made to political and cultural pressures involving race, gender, and sexual orientation. In order to do this, the third act of True Romance functions to recuperate and restore Clarence and Alabama in such a manner that they can fulfill traditional gender roles; in doing so, the film settles for pat Hollywood resolutions. The bad guys and police officers who could identify the couple die in a blaze of bullets during the climatic shootout, allowing Clarence and Alabama to escape with the money from the cocaine deal and establish an idealized life. The film concludes with a forced note of domestic bliss on a beach somewhere in Mexico. Alabama supplies an intrusive narration in which she proclaims undying love for Clarence and remarks how cool Clarence is as he plays with their young son. Clarence has become a proud father, Alabama a doting mother and sympathetic wife. True Romance’s closing shot of Alabama viewing Clarence from a slight distance diminishes the provocative and compelling race and gender dynamics present earlier in the film by tacking on a conventional ending that feels contrived.

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 35

The conclusion clearly registers a conservative impulse in which Clarence and Alabama fulfill conventional familial roles. Earlier in the film, Clarence had invoked the cool pose of Elvis Presley and the rugged machismo of Steve McQueen in the film Bullitt (Peter Yates, 1968). By the end of True Romance, Clarence has become a subdued, voiceless, and wounded symbol of white masculinity, a status clearly telegraphed by his wearing an eye patch like Drexl. Whereas early in the film, Drexl symbolized how black sociocultural habits and expressions served fully to supplant his white racial identity, by the end of the film Clarence replaces Drexl to symbolize a form of wounded whiteness.24 In this sense, True Romance neatly encapsulates a crisis of white male confidence that was reemerging in 1990s America, a point fully expressed as a paranoid vision of a multicultural America in Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down (1993).25 While Clarence Worley is an intrepid figure, the main character in Falling Down is a defensive character appropriately referred to in the film as “D-­Fens” (Michael Douglas), an unemployed defense engineer. The film follows D-­Fens as he, frustrated by freeway gridlock, abandons his car and heads out on foot across the urban terrain of Los Angeles, trying to arrive at his daughter’s birthday party on time.26 On his journey he encounters a multicultural maze of people: a Korean store owner, Latino gang members, a Neo-­Nazi, and cynical African American youths. He perceives a general belligerence against his “work hard and receive what is fair” ethic that spurs him to violence. With his buzz-­cut hair, white-­collar short-­sleeved shirt, and briefcase D-­Fens consolidates multiple signifiers into an image of civic respect, domestic responsibility (he just wants to make it to his daughter’s birthday party), and white American middle class rage when confronted with the multitude of malfeasants. Of course, in comparison to Falling Down, True Romance is much less paranoid or hyper-­focused on white victimization. Nevertheless, both True Romance and Falling Down capture the rising ideological tide of white victimization that was washing across the American cultural landscape during the recessionary early nineties. However, True Romance rejects the sheer alarmist impulses that clearly register as white male martyrdom in Falling Down. To the film’s credit, True Romance signals that white masculinity is mutable, and Clarence represents a more ambivalent and modified articulation of American whiteness, whereas Falling Down invokes a paranoid retreat into an imaginary past. In True Romance, tropes of pop cultural blackness, burgeoning “Riot Grrrl” gender politics, and, to a lesser ex-

36 Race on the QT

tent, male homosexuality are all points of symbolic contestation, literal negotiation, and mediated resolution. Cinematically speaking, the critical success of True Romance was as much a validation of the Tarantino touch as it was of Tony Scott’s quick-­cut directorial excesses. With the film Natural Born Killers (1994), Oliver Stone also would try to capitalize on Tarantino’s writing chops by adapting a screenplay loosely attributed to Tarantino. Under Stone’s stifling grip, Natural Born Killers exhibited virtually none of Tarantino’s panache and nearly all of Stone’s self-­indulgent penchants that first began to surface with the film The Doors (1991) and fully registered in the gaudy Any Given Sunday (1999) and the monotonous Alexander (2004). The experience would appear to have made Tarantino distrustful of having his work interpreted by another director; it certainly spurred him to distance himself from the film.27 Despite Tarantino’s chilly reaction to having his brand of ultra-­ violence modified, his variety of gangster chic spawned a range of imitations as America prepared to enter the new millennium. Films such as Killing Zoe (Roger Avary, 1993, with Tarantino as executive producer), Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (Gary Fleder, 1995), The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995), 2 Days in the Valley (John Herzfeld, 1996), and Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) are a few of the more accomplished of the pack of cinematic copycats that appeared in the wake of Tarantino’s scintillating debut. As the decade of the 1990s came to an end, oddball gangsters became the standard for the new millennium, a style fully registered in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch (2000), Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000), and the television show The Sopranos (1999–­2007), which normalized a name like “Big Pussy” as an acceptable mob alias. Not until the 9/11 terrorist attack on America’s eastern seaboard and the subsequent psychological fallout did a range of films begin appearing that were more concerned with articulating post-­9/11 anxieties than with identifying with idiosyncratic gangsters. Indicative of post9/11 anxieties lurking within American society—­where terrorism, terrorists, and torture became household words—­were films like Collat­ eral Damage (Andrew Davis, 2002), Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom, 2003), The Hunted (William Friedkin, 2003), the documentary Fahren­ heit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004), Saw (James Wan, 2004), Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005), War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005), Snakes on a Plane (David Ellis, 2006), Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006), United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006), Reign Over Me (Mike Binder, 2007),

Reservoir Dogs and True Romance 37

Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008), Man on a Ledge (Asger Leth, 2012), and the cable TV series Homeland (2011–­2014), to name only a few. In terms of the gangster genre, films such as Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch, 1999) and Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002) foreshadowed the imminent exhaustion of the modern mobster genre. But with The Departed (2006), Scorsese provides proof that the cycle had gone full circle with a semi-­remake of a Hong Kong thriller where an undercover cop infiltrates a mob crew. Sound familiar? Nonetheless, when addressing the cultural politics of race in America, Tarantino remains markedly unique. Indeed, subsequent Tarantino films extend the multiple ideological tensions concerning race presented in Reservoir Dogs and True Romance and foreground blackness as essential to their narratives. Often women occupy the center of his films, and black characters occupy a significant place in many of his most interesting films. Despite placing women and minority characters as prominent figures in his films, Tarantino remains a commercially successful filmmaker who garners critical consideration as one of American cinema’s premier directors. Interestingly, however, the next phase of Tarantino’s body of work would also irrevocably place him in contention as an auteur and an accomplished racist. In Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, blackness is front and center, and these two films appear to use the n-­word like a modern day mantra; it seems as if with every other line of dialogue a character drops an n-­bomb. As his body of work grew, it became apparent Tarantino was making good on the racial subtext foreshadowed in his previous work and was not satisfied with his characters just tinkering with the lock on America’s Pandora’s box. His next two films threw wide open the lid on America’s racism and black stereotypes and reached deep into the darkest corners.

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Chapter 2

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown

Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. —­Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

With Pulp Fiction (1994) Tarantino not only avoided the sophomore jinx, he also firmly established himself as an A-­list director, received several Oscar nominations, and won an Oscar for best original screenplay. Besides earning film industry accolades, Pulp Fiction also generated ample cultural fodder as ardent cinephiles and casual moviegoers debated whether the film was a pop masterpiece or a deeply flawed work.1 The film recombined various genres in a way that broadsided moviegoers and critics alike, offering charismatically self-­reflective characters; visceral violence; and a mix of menacing dialogue, wacky speeches, and crisp wit.2 The stylistic surface of Pulp Fiction enchants with its unconventional and fractured nonlinear narrative. Certainly Tarantino was not the first director to deploy a nonlinear approach so convincingly to convey a story. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) are notable examples that use a variety of subjective perspectives to shatter expectations concerning linear narrative conventions. Nevertheless, in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s narrative formations appear shockingly original. Even though various faultfinders debated whether its racial import made Pulp Fiction a deeply flawed film or a pop masterpiece,3 such cultural debates were immaterial to ardent fans and the Hollywood film industry. Winning an Academy Award for best original screenplay firmly established Tarantino not only as an A-­list director but also as a cultural force. Pulp Fiction’s success tempted myriad filmmakers to imitate the freshly minted auteur

40 Race on the QT

with knock-­off films like Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (Gary Fleder, 1995) and 2 Days in the Valley (John Herzfeld, 1996) along with other films featuring nonlinear narratives like Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) and Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002). Pulp Fiction depicts acts of deplorable violence, yet the most disturbing aspect of the film is not the violence but the profusion of the n-­word in the dialogue. Tarantino’s own confusing comments about his aesthetic choices—­and Spike Lee’s chastisement of Tarantino for having a range of personal shortcomings—­contributed to creating a fervor concerning the degree to which his films were mainstreaming the n-­word and teaching white audiences to view the term as acceptable.4 Critics rushed to offer opinions on the generous use of the word and to ponder Tarantino’s motivations and racial politics.5 In the ensuing fixation over the thoughts, beliefs, likes, lies, indiscretions, and insights of Quentin Tarantino, the prior mainstreaming of the n-­word in American pop culture was conveniently forgotten. In the mid-­70s, Redd Foxx used the n-­word as a punch line on the prime-­time television show Sanford and Son (1972–­1977). In that same decade there were dubiously titled films like The Legend of Nigger Charley (Martin Goldman, 1972), The Soul of Nigger Charley (Larry Spangler, 1973), and Boss Nigger (Jack Arnold, 1975) playing on marquees across America. And the legendary comic album Bicentennial Nigger (1976) by Richard Pryor was receiving mainstream accolades, such as winning the Grammy Award for best comedy album. Nevertheless, the cultural politics of who could say it to whom under what circumstances and how to gauge the intended meaning were areas of racial etiquette that remained for the most part uncharted territory in the late 1990s. A decade later the public firestorm that Tarantino ignited with his liberal use of the n-­word in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown (1997) was still raging to such an extent that the n-­word was given a funeral by the Detroit branch of the NAACP in the wake of sitcom star Michael Anthony Richards’ (Seinfeld [1989–­1998]) n-­word tirade directed at an African American heckler during a comedy stand-­up routine. But, as the maxim cautions, “beware of premature autopsies.”6 Given its current circulation in American pop culture and the periodic fallout associated with it, despite the “official” funeral for the racial epithet, the n-­word is alive and well. Take, for example, the social media uproar when Gwyneth Paltrow, a white actress and ultramodish patron of hip-­hop, tweeted “Ni**as in Paris for real”; she used the title of a hit song written by Jay-­Z and Kanye West (supplemented by the words “for

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 41

real”) after a show in the City of Light. Or consider the conservative backlash following news commentator Touré Neblett’s use of the term “niggerization” to explain the strategy deployed to undermine President Barack Obama’s campaign for a second term in office. And, my favorite, envision a white woman using American Sign Language to sign the n-­word while interpreting lyrics performed by the Wu-­Tang Clan at the 2013 Bonnaroo Music Festival. Such illustrations epitomize how the use of the n-­word is as robust—­and fraught—­as ever in popular culture and highlight the inherent absurdity of race in America. In this sense, the incessant use of the n-­word in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown is less about the crude racism the use of such an epithet implies and more about the ubiquitous and often disorderly deployment of the n-­word across contemporary American pop culture. At its best, Pulp Fiction pairs black and white characters in such a way that the power dynamics between them fail to follow the Hollywood convention that chronically situates black characters as subservient secondary characters. At its worst, the film awkwardly deploys the n-­word and offers fantasized visions of black masculinity. Implicit in the critique of racist rhetoric in the film is the idea that such racist language should not be used at all or, if it is necessary to the context, used as much. The origins of the romanticized racial dynamics and imagined notions of black life operating in Pulp Fiction can be traced to Norman Mailer’s critical and indulgently baroque essay, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.” Given the signifying cool poses of black masculinity expressed by Pulp Fiction’s lead white characters Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), the trope of the white Negro is a formidable explanation. In the topsy-­turvy world of Pulp Fiction, the social construct of whiteness is a fantasized form of black cool, with Travolta and Willis easily signifying the white hipster: a figure who displays a penchant for deploying black cultural expressivity as a subversive cultural calling card that articulates and defines him as a cool white man.7 Interestingly, both John Travolta and Bruce Willis had cultivated their popularity earlier in their careers by signifying black cool. In the pop-­film sensation Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977), John Travolta pulled together various elements of black cool when, as Tony Manero, a white, working-­class disco dandy, he rhythmically strutted across the screen to the blue-­eyed soul soundtrack of the Bee Gees. Similarly, in his debut album The Return of Bruno (1987), Bruce Willis

42 Race on the QT

Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) in Pulp Fiction.

borrowed heavily from notions of black cool when he adopted the alter ego of an ersatz bluesman named Bruno who covered classic soul songs of the past. Willis further embellished an affected blackness as a commercial pitchman for Seagram’s Wine Coolers during the late 1980s. Consequently, given the background of the white leads and the stylized violence and “coolness” operating in Pulp Fiction, the two actors easily invoked disparaging likenesses to hipster heroes. Yet Pulp Fiction is more than a statement of white hipster style and ironic articulations about race.8 Below the stylistic codes, the film telegraphs a range of radical racial representations that deliver insights about American race relations beyond white misappropriation of black cultural cues and language. For example, the opening dialogue between hitmen Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (Travolta) presents a white man who sounds black engaging in sublime chitchat with a black man with a Jheri-­curl hairdo over the types and names of fast-­food products in Europe. Certainly, their conversation (ridiculous yet somehow spellbinding prose that sounds like a transcendent discussion on the mysteries of life), as well as their “look” (matching black suits and ultra-­cool demeanors), is overloaded with a flurry of stylistic codes. The overall affect conveys a certain intellectual verve and shared cultural intimacy between the characters. As a result, the “cool” c­ onversational exchange between Jules and Vincent foreshadows the radical restructuring of interracial tandems that Pulp Fiction articulates. When it comes to pairing black and white characters in films, the Hollywood film industry has a penchant for black characters who exist only to facilitate the life and love(s) of their white partners. The ten-

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 43

dency to make black characters derivative figures who articulate their purpose and relevancy exclusively in relation to the white protagonist can be found in any installment of the Shirley Temple films that include Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, as well as in myriad films like The De­ fiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958), A Patch of Blue (Guy Green, 1965), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Robert Wise, 1979), 48 Hrs. (Walter Hill, 1982), Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1989), Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990), The Last Boy Scout (Tony Scott, 1991), Kazaam (Paul M. Glaser, 1996), American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998), The Green Mile (Frank Darabont, 1999), The Family Man (Brett Ratner, 2000), The Legend of Bagger Vance (Robert Redford, 2000), Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006), Reign Over Me (Mike Binder, 2007), The Adjustment Bureau (George Nolfi, 2010), and The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011). Without a doubt, Pulp Fiction stands in stark contrast to the lopsided contours of how Hollywood has habitually fit white and black characters together. Ostensibly, Jules and Vincent engage in mundane yet simultaneously delicious dialogue to pass the time. In fact, Jules and Vincent’s verbal tennis match over the sexual and social etiquette appropriate to massaging the feet of a crime boss’s wife is more than entertaining banter. Rather, by having a significant portion of their initial onscreen time focused upon their conversational rallies, Pulp Fic­ tion brilliantly establishes Jules as a bona fide peer of his white counterpart. Jules’ compelling oration not only proves his point but also inflicts punishment, a theme telegraphed when he insists on delivering pseudosermons and bible verses before killing his victims. Consequently, as the film progresses, Jules is clearly revealed as Vincent’s pedantic and philosophical superior. In Pulp Fiction the lead black characters exhibit a proclivity to toy with their victims with sadistic loquaciousness. Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), the head gangster in the film, is as charismatically verbose as Jules Winnfield. For example, Marcellus offers Butch Coolidge, an over-­the-­hill boxer, a sinister and poetic admonishment about the upside of taking a dive in an upcoming fight and the pitfalls of pride when purposefully losing. The full impact of Marsellus’ monologue is signaled at the conclusion as he itemizes Butch’s status as a past-­ his-­prime pugilist. Marsellus extends an envelope stuffed with money toward Butch and asks Butch with thoughtful aplomb, “Are you my nigga?” In Pulp Fiction the n-­word clearly telegraphs the power to control the actions of others—­even white men. This point is subsequently reinforced after Vincent and Jules arrive at an empty strip club to de-

44 Race on the QT

liver a mysterious briefcase to Marsellus. Marsellus welcomes Vincent with the hearty exclamation—­“Vincent Vega’s in the House? My nigga! Get your ass over here.” The use of the n-­word in Marsellus’ salutation is markedly distinct from how it is later deployed by Jimmie Dimmick (Quentin Tarantino). For Marcellus, the n-­word is not meant to insult and is clearly meant to communicate something entirely different than degradation. Malik D. McCluskey makes explicit the elastic use of the n-­word when he writes: From its Latin origin niger, meaning “black,” the particular development of this word [nigger] highlights the plasticity of language. Yet, a great deal of the current debate over the n-­word fails to consider the critical distinction between meaning and reference that is central to the philosophy of language. What we mean to convey or communicate by the use of a term—­meaning—­relies upon a system of reference, with certain rules governing proper use. It is often claimed that what [African Americans] mean by the n-­word is something quite different from what many or most non-­blacks mean or could mean.9

In this regard, much has been made of the use of the n-­word in Pulp Fiction. Rightfully so, but rather than the black characters’ use of the word, it is Jimmie Dimmick’s n-­word tirade that distracts most from the jagged and byzantine cultural politics of race that Pulp Fiction strains at times to articulate. Jimmie’s use (or misuse) of the n-­word clearly resonates with a long history of white supremacy in which the word is a term of dehumanization. But given the scene’s setting and cause for the use of the word, it is quite possible that the reference and the meaning are one and the same. The gratuitous, insulting use of the n-­word occurs shortly after Jules and Vincent arrive at Jimmie’s house with a dead black man in the backseat of their car. While Jules is driving, Vincent “unintentionally” discharges his gun as he is talking to Marvin (Phil LaMarr), a young black man sitting in the backseat. Marvin is shot in the head, causing blood and brain matter to splatter throughout the interior of the vehicle. Needing to immediately get out of sight, Jules drives over to Jimmie’s home to hide the car. What follows in Jimmie’s suburban kitchen is a depraved discussion over how to handle this turn of events. The scene is drenched with racial hostility as all three men wrestle with what has just happened.

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 45

Knock it off, Jules . . . I don’t need you to tell me how fucking good my coffee is, okay? I’m the one who buys it, I know how good it is. When Bonnie goes shopping, she buys shit. Me, I buy the gourmet expensive stuff because when I drink it, I want to taste it. But you know what’s on my mind right now? It ain’t the coffee in my kitchen, it’s the dead nigger in my garage . . . No, I wanna ask you a question. When you came pulling him here, did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said “Dead Nigger Storage”? . . . Did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said “Dead Nigger Storage”? . . . You know why you didn’t see that sign? . . . Cause it ain’t there, ’cause storing dead niggers ain’t my fucking business, that’s why! . . . No, no, no, no, no, don’t you fucking realize, man, that if Bonnie comes home and finds a dead body in her house, I’m gonna get divorced? All right? No marriage counseling, no trial separation, I’m going to get fucking divorced, okay? And I don’t want to get fucking divorced! Now man, you know, fuck, I wanna help you, but I don’t want to lose my wife doing it, all right? . . .

On one hand, any theoretical analysis rooted in authorial intent is sure to draw attention to Tarantino as the sole source of this creepy conversation and to distill the racial offensiveness of the scene down to his personal beliefs and motives. Perhaps Tarantino writes and feels compelled to act out such racist dialogue because he holds racist attitudes. On the other hand, there is a more referential explanation for Tarantino cropping up in such an odd manner, an explanation that arguably says more about his aesthetic tendency to poach from other films than any deep-­seated personal racism. Tarantino’s abrasive appearance in Pulp Fiction resonates with Martin Scorsese’s awkward cameo in Taxi Driver as a racist passenger sitting in the back of Travis Bickle’s cab. Scorsese plays a cuckold who insists Travis look at the silhouette of his wife in a distant apartment window and then rhetorically asks him, in an uncomfortably self-­ conscious cadence, “You know who lives there? A nigger lives there.” He embarrassingly drones on about the type of damage he would like to impart to her genitals with a gun. For me, Tarantino’s cameo appearance in Pulp Fiction and Scorsese’s in Taxi Driver are attempts to invoke melodramatic or shocking discourse about race, but both performances suffer most from poor acting, which undercuts their attempts at racial derision and ruptures the unerring command both directors respectively exhibited in each film. For Tarantino in particular, limited acting chops hamstring the cameo and make Jimmie’s dialogue laced

46 Race on the QT

with the n-­word sound all the more affected. The interaction between Jimmie, Jules, and Vincent becomes an unnatural, unbelievable, and painfully gawky exchange. Moreover, no amount of pontification about artistic freedom or the nonexclusivity of the n-­word, including some facile rejoinder about deracializing race, negates the failure of his appearance in Pulp Fiction or effectively deflects the offensive use of the n-­word in his scene.10 Much like Michael Richards’ tirade, when he directed multiple n-­words toward black hecklers during a comedy routine, Jimmie Dimmick’s racist rant in the “Bonnie Situation” is a disturbing performance misfire. Ideologically, however, the exchange between Jimmie and Jules is more than a simple example of bigoted banter; it functions as a powerful articulation of American racism and its erasure of black people. The inordinate time the trio spend literally cleaning away proof of Marvin’s existence is a brilliant metaphor for the disposability of young black men, a theme sadly reiterated in real life in 2012 with the fatal shooting of an unarmed seventeen-­year-­old African American teenager named Trayvon Martin. Only after community protests and national media coverage occurred was the perpetrator charged with murder, and this prosecutorial reluctance created the perception that the local police and district attorney’s office in Sanford, Florida, were trying to cover up the murder. In Pulp Fiction the facts and their meaning are considerably clearer. Marvin’s death and the energy devoted to the disposal of his body signify the institutional mechanics and hostility of racism that has historically worked to erase black folks’ presence and agency in American society.11 Ultimately, the gratuitous use of the n-­word in the “Bonnie Situation” makes the scene more accurately titled the “Racial Situation.” But as a form of racial realism, however, the “Bonnie Situation” fully exemplifies its acronym—­B.S.12 Upon close inspection, though, Pulp Fiction is not grounded in realism. To begin with, are we to believe that Jules Winnfield, one of the meanest and most verbose hitmen in American cinema, is going to let Jimmie, an unarmed civilian, pose any threat to him on the chance that Jimmie’s wife might come home before they deal with the body? Clearly, Pulp Fiction rejects any serious sense of verisimilitude. Besides, only in the fairytale world of Pulp Fiction does a white man married to a black woman talk matter-­of-­factly and unflinchingly to his black friend about dead niggers in his garage. Pulp Fiction resounds with make-­believe, with its mysterious brief-

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 47

case and its glowing contents (an homage to Kiss Me Deadly [Robert Aldrich, 1955]); a dotted square sketched onto thin air; the demonic numerology of the briefcase combination (666); Marsellus use of “medieval” to characterize his preferred form of violent revenge; titled vignettes that mirror the novella form found in the Brothers Grimm; and a character named Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel) who is fearfully charismatic and endowed with special abilities of deception. Indeed, the film is a morbid fairy tale, a postmodern Brothers Grimm cautionary moral spectacle. Accordingly, as with most fairy tales, the underlying message is more important than the actual characters. In this case, the message concerns race and racism in American society. Consequently, only taking to task the “Bonnie Situation” scene for the misappropriation of the n-­word overlooks how Pulp Fiction cautions us that racism in America is always lurking behind the next scene or at the start of a new sentence or in any apparently benevolent setting. Jimmie—­traipsing around in his suburban kitchen, wrapped in a bathrobe with a coffee cup in hand, delivering harsh racial admonishments about where black folk do and do not belong—­signifies the run-­of-­the-­mill, domesticated racism circulating in American society. Take, for example, an earlier scene in the film when Vincent barters over the potency and price of heroin with Lance (Eric Stolz), Pulp Fic­ tion’s friendly neighborhood drug dealer. Surprisingly, a lighthearted haggling between friends abruptly shifts into a discussion that highlights how geography and white privilege intersect. After Vincent expresses slight skepticism over the intoxicating vigor Lance claims his array of heroin offers, Lance asks Vincent, “Am I a nigger? Are we in Inglewood? No. You’re in my home. Now white people who know the difference between good shit and bad shit, this is the house they come to . . . .” Given a previous scene with Marsellus in which Vincent is symbolically constructed as a nigger, it is interesting that Vincent stands stoically as Lance delivers his harsh admonishment concerning the racial politics of purchasing dope. Much like Jules’ lack of response to Jimmie’s racial chastisement, Vincent has no emotional reaction, either pro or con, to Lance’s comments. Clearly, Pulp Fiction articulates that racial prejudice is as commonplace as the natty robes that Lance schleps around in when dispensing sage consumer advice concerning top-­shelf heroin or that Jimmie wears when receiving compliments for his taste in gourmet coffee. Racial prejudice is couched as a matter of taste, a quality that Lance symbolizes when situating his house, and by extension the white occupants in it, as “good.”

48 Race on the QT

Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) is a symbol of power and control as his wife, Mia (Uma Thurman), approaches in Pulp Fiction.

As a point of contrast, the home of Marsellus Wallace is a space where black “taste” is affirmed, a visual point underscored when Vincent arrives at Marsellus’ home to take his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) to dinner as requested by Marsellus. Marsellus’ decor stands in stark contrast to the cluttered Craftsman home of Lance. The entranceway is tastefully landscaped and stylishly accented with Africanesque statuettes. The African art motif is repeated inside the home and highlighted again when Mia tells Vincent to use the statues as a signpost for locating the intercom. The home is spacious as well as chic and contains high-­ end surveillance cameras and monitors. These visual signs clearly code Marsellus as economically successful, and although Mia fulfills the trope of the bored white trophy wife, the African art motif found throughout signifies black culture and suggests the house is a self-­consciously black space. The glimpse the audience is given into Marsellus’ domestic space is important because it establishes his cultural sophistication and material attainment as a black man. In comparison, Lance’s homespun domestic space mirrors his everyday racist attitudes.13 The racial discrimination of Lance and Jimmie emerges in everyday domestic settings and dramatically disrupt the pleasure that white, oddball characters often offer in Hollywood films (such as The Royal Tenenbaums [Wes Anderson, 2001]) that indulge in the comic likeability of irreverent white characters. In contrast, beneath the feel-­ good giddiness of eccentric characters like Jimmie, Lance, and Lance’s kooky wife, Jody (Rosanna Arquette), Pulp Fiction constructs such figures with a harsh racial undercurrent. But Pulp Fiction also tempers its critique of whiteness and com-

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 49

municates that racism is a mindset that whites must forcefully object to, even if it means risking their well being. Marsellus’ rape scene is the morbid centerpiece of this general point, a disturbing spectacle of sexual degradation that doubles as an overtly telegraphed, albeit crude, symbolic nod to the economic, cultural, and spiritual mechanics of white racism in America.14 Make no mistake—­Butch and Marcellus are adversaries. Butch doubled-­crossed Marcellus by not taking the dive he was paid to take. But their animosity toward one another quickly disappears in the wake of being knocked unconscious and finding themselves bound and ball-­gagged in a dingy pawnshop basement that serves as a sex-­torture chamber. Marcellus is chosen first and is promptly escorted into another room where he is sodomized by Zed (Peter Greene) as Maynard (Duane Whitaker) ogles in tense anticipation for his turn. The setting is a lurid makeshift dungeon that even includes a man called the “Gimp” who is swaddled in a black leather body suit and tucked inside a locked trunk. Butch escapes from his restraints and is poised to leave the pawnshop but decides to return and vanquish Marsellus’ assailants despite his death feud with the mob boss. A strong case can be made that when Butch returns to save Marsellus from his attackers, he fulfills the classic Hollywood trope of the rehabilitated white male hero, who, no matter how flawed, ultimately assumes the mantle of moral authority in a film.15 Indeed, in this vignette Butch does fulfill this Hollywood cliché, but only by confronting bigotry. Because the entryway of the pawnshop is decorated with a large makeshift Confederate flag, and the pawnshop workers are constructed as a pair of urban hillbillies, Pulp Fiction emphasizes that Marsellus’

The African art found throughout Marsellus’ home signifies a self-­consciously black space in Pulp Fiction.

50 Race on the QT

Marsellus and Butch are bound captives in Pulp Fiction.

rape does not concern sexual release. Indeed, the Confederate flag is one of the most racially charged, iconic representations of American racism for many African Americans, and it dredges up deep trepidation as an affirmation of black enslavement, Jim Crow segregation, and white nationalism (rather than the modest display of Southern heritage that its defenders often claim).16 Admittedly, a cursory reading situates Zed and Maynard as redneck rapists whom the film uses as symbolic shorthand to comment on the role of racism in manhandling, exploiting, and abusing black folk in America. Marcellus’ sexual assault is also filmically influenced by the male rape scene in Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972), a film that presents white hillbillies as the perpetrators of sexual violence. I, however, view the sexual violence in the back room of the pawnshop as having much more meaningful resonance with the film The Pawn­ broker (Sidney Lumet, 1964) than with the gruesome rape presented in Deliverance. In The Pawnbroker, the pawnshop is also presented as a site of sexual trauma and serves as an emotional mausoleum for Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger), containing the anger, shame, and guilt he experiences after surviving a concentration camp where his wife and children perished. In one scene, a black prostitute (Thelma Oliver) confronts Sol in the back room of his pawnshop and bares her breasts to him hoping to arouse him to have intercourse with her for money she desperately wants. Instead of viewing the seminude black woman as a source of sexual arousal, Sol experiences a definitive “eyes wide shut” moment that elicits in him feelings of sickening humiliation, conveyed through a series of rapid intercut flashbacks that show Sol as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp.

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 51

The Nazi officer directs him to peer through a window, eventually shoving his head through it when he refuses to look. Inside he witnesses his wife coercively prostituted for the sexual gratification of Nazi soldiers. In this sense, the shadowy space of the present pawnshop is transcoded with the makeshift Nazi brothel as a site of sex slavery, psychological trauma, and hidden depravity. I argue that the sexual exploitation of Marsellus as a bound and gagged captive in a back room is more attuned to the wretched world of The Pawnbroker than the rural Gothic ambiance established in Deliverance. Admittedly, sadomasochistic fetishistic sex is conflated with racism in Pulp Fiction, which draws its imagery from the bondage subculture of sex clubs and pornography and conflates the props of sexual fetish with racial animus. The result is a rape/sodomy in the dingy back room of a pawnshop by a pair of white men against a captive and compromised black man as a form of racial perversion. A conventional reading of Marcellus’ victimization and Butch’s decision to save him, along with their subsequent truce, easily suggests an expression of white masculine morality.17 Moreover, the victimization of a black character who until his rape represented a figure of power and prestige without peer in American cinema invites interpretation that his victimization is symptomatic of a racist film industry. The demise of his prestige is merely an alternative expression of the tired film convention that the black character always dies first in a Hollywood film. Nevertheless, a more complex and ideologically provocative analysis also exists. Given all the literal and symbolic signifiers of power that Marsellus is invested with throughout the film, his rape clearly symbolizes an overt engagement with longstanding racial fissures in the American body politic.18 In this case, having a black man victimized in an act of racialized sodomy in an institution that represents the buying and selling of goods is an unflinching, symbolic nod to the economic, cultural, and spiritual mechanics of white racism in America. Moreover, Butch’s return to stop Marcellus’ ritualistic rape suggests that even if intense antagonisms exist between blacks and whites, in the face of racism whites are morally compelled to act against racial discrimination and exploitation. Thus, Marsellus’ rape and Butch’s behavior operate within a critical racial frame that symbolizes and advocates racial reconciliation and mutual respect between blacks and whites. Pulp Fiction as a whole defies the convention in traditional Hollywood films of only privileging white men by having Jules Winnfield, a black character, achieve the moral high ground amongst all the despi-

52 Race on the QT

cable characters presented in the film. Jules is a contemplative character rife with contradictions, a figure rarely presented among the scores of morally unambiguous, typecast “magical negros” who save the white protagonist of a film from destruction. Even though Jules symbolizes the supernatural after bullets are fired at him from a point-­ blank range and miss, he does not save his partner, Vincent Vega. Jules acknowledges he is the benefactor of a miracle and tries to convince Vincent of the validity of his assertion. Vincent refuses to accept the miraculous implication of this event and does nothing to change his behavior. For Jules, this event is the catalyst for declaring his retirement as a hitman. As a result, Jules is able to fulfill a role rarely ceded to a black character in mainstream Hollywood movies—­a redeemed and empowered figure who lives to the end of the film. Despite the antiracist articulations and symbolism outlined above, Pulp Fiction suffered severe criticism as proof that Tarantino harbors racist views towards blacks.19 For the most part, the radical racial politics of Pulp Fiction were obscured by cinematic showpieces like Travolta dancing the twist and by the gratuitous use of the n-­word. For academics, some of the most obscure elements of the film became sources for deconstruction; for instance, scatological implications were drawn from the multiple bathroom breaks shown in the film.20 Tarantino’s next film, however, would make it increasingly difficult to engage in kneejerk criticisms or look for answers in the psychoanalytic deconstruction of the subconscious and psychic mechanisms of the director. After the rousing success of Pulp Fiction, Tarantino adapted the screenplay and directed Jackie Brown (1997), a film that features a down-­on-­her-­luck middle-­aged black woman as the main protagonist. This film clearly signals that Tarantino is not only an unorthodox director and filmmaker, he also firmly roots his mounting body of work in the radical exploration of black life in America. Not since Diahann Carroll’s Academy Award–­nominated performance as a welfare dependent, hard working single mother of six children in Claudine (John Berry, 1974) has a Hollywood picture chronicled the everyday struggle of a mature black woman as a principal point of interest. Claudine presents an inner-­city working-­class narrative that breathes life into a range of ghetto-­life clichés concerning black poverty and premarital sex while deftly critiquing white institutional racism. Jackie Brown evokes a similar sociopolitical relevancy. In this case, the growing incarceration of black women who act as drug mules is

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 53

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), the confident flight attendant in the film Jackie Brown.

underscored with the film’s namesake and main character Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), a black woman fast approaching middle age. While she is struggling with a low-­paying job as a flight attendant, she is caught smuggling cash out of Mexico for a low-­level gunrunner named Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Unbeknownst to her, the package she is delivering carries a small amount of cocaine that is meant for a friend of Ordell’s. In this sense, Jackie Brown is a powerful precursor to the film Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston, 2004), a cautionary tale that explicitly chronicles the costs of becoming a courier in the illegal drug trade. The film follows a poor seventeen-year-old Colombian girl who flies to New York City after swallowing nearly sixty-five packaged pellets of heroin. Maria Full of Grace fully expresses the perils and stark economics of disenfranchised women of color as “drug mules” that Jackie Brown suggests. The film begins with Jackie confidently walking through LAX (Los Angeles’ largest airport) dressed for her job as a flight attendant. Soon after the opening credits roll, the confident and competent black woman leaving the airport dramatically recedes when she is faced with two white law enforcement officers, LAPD detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) and ATF agent Ray Nicolet (Michael Keaton). They stop her and search inside her purse to find a large sum of money and a small amount of cocaine. Jackie Brown’s detention, arrest, and subsequent introduction into the American prison-­industrial complex as

54 Race on the QT

a middle-­aged black woman underscores the ideological contours the film constructs around race, gender, and economic disempowerment. During her subsequent interrogation, detective Dargus hammers home a series of bleak observations. Lets take a look here at the file on Jacqueline Brown . . . In 1985 while a stewardess for Delta you were busted while carrying drugs for a pilot? . . . He did time; you did probation. So you get off with a slap on the wrist but all this criminal activity fucks up your shit for good with the big airlines. Cut to thirteen years later, you’re forty-­four years of age flying for the shittiest little shuttle-­fuckin’ piece of shit Mexican airline that there is where you make what, $13,000 a year? . . . You been in the service industry nineteen years, and all you make is $16,000 plus benefits? Didn’t exactly set the world on fire, did you, Jackie? . . . Look, Miss Brown, we don’t give a fuck about you. You know who we want. If you cooperate, tell us what we want to know, we’ll help you get out of this. If you refuse to cooperate, continue to cop a shit attitude like you’re doing now we will give you to Customs and they will take you to court. With your prior, the judge will give you two years. Now, you’ll probably only end up serving a year and some change but if I was a forty-­four year-­old black woman desperately clinging on to this one shitty little job I was fortunate enough to get, I don’t think that I’d think I had a year to throw away . . .

Hence the stage is set as Jackie tries to salvage her life and escape the legal predicament she finds herself facing. If Jackie fails to cooperate as an informant against Ordell, she is in all likelihood courting a conviction. Unfortunately, Jackie’s filmic predicament is similar to those of numerous real women of color. Notably, in the 80s and 90s black women were increasingly snared in the American criminal justice system by the U.S. war on drugs. For example, in the five-­year period between 1986 and 1991, the number of black females incarcerated for drug offenses increased 828%, more than three times the increase in the number of white females.21 Furthermore, because of mandatory sentencing stipulations, “drug mules” faced significant amounts of time for their nonviolent offenses, even though their involvement in the drug trade failed to come close to that of a “kingpin.”22 Against this dire backdrop, where low-­level drug offensives meet high-­wire consequences, becoming an informant is an attractive alternative to reduce one’s sentence, a pre-

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 55

Jackie caught in the prison-­industrial complex in Jackie Brown.

dicament Jackie Brown is forced to consider in the face of detective Dargus’ haranguing threats over her economic vulnerability. Certainly, Jackie Brown’s decisions are propelled by her drive for self-­ preservation, but given how the film effectively brings into sharp relief race, gender, and age as points of bias, Jackie’s choice to trick Ordell and double-­cross law enforcement agents also operates on a grander ideological level. The undercurrents concerning her symbolic status in the film are revealed in an exchange between bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) and Ordell over a $10,000 bond for Jackie’s release. To this point, Ordell admonishes Max that he should show compassion for a “forty-­four-­year-­old, gainfully employed black woman” falsely accused of possession with intent to sell cocaine. Max retorts, “Is white guilt supposed to make me forget I’m running a business?” Max’s reply echoes well-­worn conservative debates that view claims of racial discrimination as a ploy used by African Americans (the “race card”) to excuse reckless choices and receive unmerited concessions.23 Despite the conservative overtones articulated in Max’s disparaging comment concerning white guilt, he abandons his cynicism after escorting Jackie from jail to her apartment. Smitten by Jackie’s down-­to-­earth openness, Max finds himself quickly entertaining the possibility that the personal hard-­knocks narrative of a mature, working-­class black woman outweighs the negative sanctions that come from bad choices in bad situations. Eventually Max decides to aid Jackie in a cat-­and-­mouse game

56 Race on the QT

of double-­crosses and emotional feints that dupe the law enforcement officials into accepting her alibi, allowing her to walk away free with close to a half a million dollars of Ordell’s money and all her former accomplices/adversaries dead. Max’s shift away from his conservative condemnation of Jackie’s predicament is a central development because it validates Ordell’s advocacy for sympathy toward Jackie, a gainfully employed and respectable black woman, regardless of Ordell’s transparent, self-­serving motives. Moreover, the one-­hundred-­eighty-­degree pivot in Max’s receptiveness toward Jackie’s plight, a stark contrast to the hardnosed bail bondsman presented earlier in the film, suggests a more complicated, multiperspective, and holistic approach is required to accurately assess the triumphs and travails of being black in America. What also makes Max’s evolution, and the film as a whole, special is that it signals that Jackie is not just another generic Hollywood film floosy with some deep-­seated pathological need to trick her male counterparts. Instead, Jackie Brown resembles the African American trickster figure found in the rural folklore of Br’er Rabbit, a character that represents enslaved Africans who adopt guile and intellect to outwit their stronger and more powerful opponents in order to mitigate their oppressive conditions.24 Jackie is not cold or cruel by nature but by necessity, a point signaled when Jackie tells Max why she has kept her old albums rather than purchase CD versions of her favorite music. She simply states, “I can’t afford to start all over again.” By focusing on an older black woman with limited financial means, Jackie Brown smudges the ideological demarcation between right and wrong, a point that is validated by Max’s empathetic stance and increasing emotional longing directed toward Jackie as the film progresses. Jackie’s Machiavellian disposition, however, is increasingly ratcheted up to ruthless precision by the ominous adversity she faces in the form of Ordell Robbie, a manipulative and willful killer. In contrast to Jackie’s sympathetic frugality and nostalgia stands the captivating cruelty of Ordell Robbie. Ordell epitomizes the figure of the scary black man, a cinematic figure first given hyperbolic life with the frighteningly brutish black masculinity of Gus (Walter Long) in D. W. Griffith’s racist masterpiece The Birth of a Nation (1915).25 The figure still crops up in contemporary Hollywood films from dramas to comedies like John Landis’ classic frat house farce Animal House (1978). The film predictably exploited blackness for nervous laughter when a group of white college students

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 57

The menacing blackness of Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) in Jackie Brown.

stumble into a bar filled with black patrons. The same themes of white dread and menacing blackness are presented with Bill Duke’s performance as Leon in American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980), Morgan Freeman’s rendition of the pimp Fast Black in Street Smart (Jerry Schatzberg, 1987), Don Cheadle’s turn as Mouse in Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995), and Terrence Howard’s performance as DJ in Hustle and Flow (Craig Brewer, 2005). Arguably, only the King Kong films of the past (1933, 1976) have presented more grotesque imaginings of black masculinity as frighteningly dangerous, even though Denzel Washington’s crooked cop Alonzo Harris in Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001) claims, “King Kong ain’t got shit on me!” Admittedly, Washington playing against type as a menacing black man provided a unique, tour de force performance; nonetheless, Jackson’s exacting performance as Ordell Robbie is the most outstanding and complex version of ominous black criminality to date. Rarely does a Hollywood film portray the pathos and charm of the black hustler in such a convincing and complex manner. Noted cultural critic Stanley Crouch makes a similar observation: Samuel L. Jackson plays Ordell and brings enormous repositories of detail to one of the best roles the great actor ever had . . . Going far beyond Elmore Leonard, Tarantino made him into one of the most perfectly conceived monsters we will ever come across . . . Ordell is the real thing and just as ruthless, and he is also funny, very funny, espe-

58 Race on the QT

cially when explaining something to his slow-­witted white crime partner or threatening and dominating his blonde surfer girl . . .26

For the most part, Crouch’s observations are accurate concerning the complexity of the portrayal. I differ, however, with the crux of Ordell’s character. For all of Ordell’s charismatic pimp-­like swagger, he is an extremely insecure, self-­hating, and derivative black man caught in the social and psychological Gordian knot of a black inferiority complex. Ordell displays internalized racial hatred, self-­loathing, and a pathological adoration of whiteness. Admittedly, Jackie Brown is not unique in providing a black character that is overly invested in the wellbeing of whites. Hattie McDaniel brilliantly immortalized black servility as a faithful retainer to Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) in the Civil War–­era period piece Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939). Certainly the saccharine The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) qualifies for reanimating moribund racial dynamics with its depiction of a black man gleefully investing all of his life energy into the success of the white protagonist. Surprisingly, such retrograde representations are not anachronistic cinematic period pieces. Even a racially progressive film like Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) that offers a refreshing mix of white, black, and Latino characters settles into a traditional representational groove when it comes to the benevolent black chaperone trope. Although in Out of Sight Jack Foley (George Clooney) and Buddy Bragg (Ving Rhames) share a meaningful criminal friendship, Buddy fulfills the traditional Hollywood role of black chaperone to Jack, seemingly out of some benevolent and almost saintly sensibility directed at protecting the principal white character from harm.27 Jackie Brown rejects this type of cloying representation of blackness and constantly signals that Ordell’s commitment to appropriating whiteness is foolhardy and ultimately self-­destructive. Ordell first signals his racial self-­hatred when he shows the crumpled, bullet-­ridden body of Beaumont Livingston (Chris Tucker) lying in the trunk of his car to Louis Gara (Robert De Niro), a former cellmate and bank robber. Ordell pontificates to Louis about the life and death stakes of being his partner in gunrunning: Now Louis, if you gonna come in on this thing with me you have to be prepared to go all the way. Now I got me so far a half-­million dollars in a bank down in Cabo, San Lucas. I make this delivery, I’m gonna have me over a million. Hey, you think I’m gonna let a little cheese-­eatin’

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 59

Louis (Robert De Niro) is made symbolically black by Ordell in Jackie Brown.

nigga like this fuck this up? You best think again. Before I let that happen I’ll shoot this nigga in the head and ten niggas that look just like him. Understand what I’m saying?

Ostensibly, Ordell’s caveat to Louis communicates the level of violence Ordell is willing to deploy if his interests are threatened. In the wake of Beaumont’s murder, Ordell’s threatening assertion to Louis and his aborted effort to murder Jackie create the impression of a shrewd, take-­ no-­prisoners criminal. But his comments also reveal an intense devaluation of black life and foreshadow Ordell’s pathological privileging of whiteness with Melanie (Bridget Fonda), Ordell’s “little white surfer girl.” Ordell’s psychological fault lines become increasingly apparent as Jackie and Ordell plan to smuggle half a million dollars into the country. Because of Melanie’s rising resentment that she is not included in the scheme, she tries to convince Louis to join her in stealing the money from Ordell. Later, Louis tries to warn Ordell about Melanie’s intentions. Louis: But you trust Melanie around your business? Ordell: Oh! She trying to play your ass against me, ain’t she? Louis: Yeah. Uh-­huh. Ordell: See, I knew it . . . I knew it. I knew it! See, you didn’t have to say nothing. I know that bitch.

60 Race on the QT

Ordell’s “little white surfer girl” Melanie (Bridget Fonda) in Jackie Brown.

Louis: I don’t understand why you keep someone around your business and you can’t even trust ’em. Ordell: I ain’t gotta trust her. I know her. Louis: I don’t know what that means, man. Ordell: Well, you can’t trust Melanie . . . but you can always trust Melanie to be Melanie . . . Louis: Well, I don’t understand why you keep her the fuck around. Ordell: I told you, man. She’s my fine little surfer girl. You know, she ain’t pretty as she used to be and she bitch a whole lot more than she used to . . . but she white. [emphasis mine]

The film clearly illustrates that Melanie is, at best, ambivalent about Ordell, but most likely despises him, a point indicated by her disparaging remarks concerning Ordell’s intelligence and her obstinate reactions to his requests. Moreover, Louis is rightfully baffled by Ordell’s tolerance for Melanie’s treachery in light of Ordell’s murderous actions and stated commitment to kill “ten niggas” that resemble any other “cheese-­eatin’ nigga” that threatens his business. Yet Ordell insists on keeping Melanie around. Why? Because Ordell Robbie uses Melanie as an accessory to affirm and bolster his self-­esteem even though it is quite clear he cannot trust Melanie and is well aware of this fact.28 Similar to how in the 1980s Mr. T. (Laurence Tureaud) virtually smothered himself in gold chains and rings to bolster his status as a black man of value and significance, whiteness is the most precious

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 61

element and effective accessory for Ordell to enhance his value, a point skillfully underscored when Ordell purchases Louis new clothes to upgrade his appearance and announces that Louis will no longer have the “Salvation Army look” when he’s around him. Moreover, Ordell’s “tolerance” for Melanie suggests an adoration of whiteness that is extremely neurotic. Edward Gallafent makes a similar observation in his book simply titled Quentin Tarantino: Ordell wants Louis to admire his arms dealing, and he wants Melanie to be admired as a trophy. Like the beach house itself and its fittings, he considers that her presence is expressive of his success in life. He expects Melanie to act uncomplainingly in roles that spring, in his mind, from her being his possession. When she is reluctant or uncooperative his only response is mute appeal, or direct aggression. He cannot see that the charm that he exercises on, say, Max or Beaumont has any relevance to dealing with Melanie, and assumes that her behavior will be controlled adequately by violence, or the threat of it. He is conscious of her sexual desirability but mainly in that her attractiveness, and whiteness, is felt to increase her value as a trophy. [emphasis mine]29

Without a doubt, Ordell is committed to appropriating whiteness—­so much so that even if it threatens to undermine his livelihood he must possess it. Melanie functions similarly to a trophy wife, wherein a combination of attractiveness and youth confers upon the husband an elevated status amongst his peers. Hence, Melanie’s whiteness dictates desire for Ordell even though her presence knowingly threatens the success of his plans. Ordell’s choices call into question his rationality and expose his pathological attachment to and racial fetishism of whiteness, a point further signified toward the end of the film when Ordell shoots Louis and subsequently asks, “What the fuck happened to you man? Your ass used to be beautiful.” Ultimately, Ordell’s degraded status (real or imagined) as a black man (not as criminal or former convict) in relationship to “having” a white woman dependent on him (and to a lesser extent, having Louis as an accolyte) underscores his contradictory sense of pride and achievement. Melanie threatens Ordell’s criminal enterprise and demonstrably shows less loyalty to him than any of the black characters who work for him such as Beaumont, Jackie, Sheronda (Lisa Gay Hamilton), and Simone (Hattie Winston). Yet Ordell accepts from Melanie behavior and a sensibility he would deem com-

62 Race on the QT

pletely unacceptable if she were any of the black characters he employs. Accordingly, Ordell articulates an irrational and counterproductive justification of Melanie’s presence merely because, as Ordell confesses, “she white.” Ordell is a brilliant character study of a black man whose bragging and boasts are in reality overcompensation for a terribly insecure self-­concept that has strident racial overtones. Other films may capture the tone of such sensibilities when black and white folk are paired, but motivational intricacies and underlying tensions often fail to go beyond some mundane representation of black and white camaraderie or racial animus. Certainly, a saccharine film like The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011) qualifies for interpreting racial dynamics and the interior subtleties of black cultural repartee through a pair of coke–bottle–thick rose-­colored glasses. With Ordell in Jackie Brown the intricacies, motivations, and underlying tensions of race are articulated in a more precarious and meaningful manner, making the character the most complex and penetrating display of black criminality in American mainstream cinema to this date. Unfortunately, while the heartiest analyses of Jackie Brown devoted considerable attention to the privileges, responsibilities, and correct cultural cues required for saying the n-­word, they overlooked this brilliant aspect of the film.30 Jackie Brown became a lightning rod for controversy concerning the repeated deployment of the n-­word rather than being celebrated for its deft character studies regarding race. Regardless of the criticism for the regressive racial language interspersed throughout the film, Jackie Brown is in reality a progressive film; the audience is steered to identify with and champion the cause of a middle-­aged working-­class black woman struggling to salvage her life. Sure, the sting operation appears to be the centerpiece of Jackie Brown, and the bag of money is the desired object that costs several characters their lives. Nevertheless, the crime-­caper aspect of the film is more of a narrative ploy in the spirit of a MacGuffin, a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock to describe a plot device whereby some goal or object is desired and pursued but later proves tangential to the plot. The real action revolves around the typologies of the characters and their responses to dire circumstances and risky opportunities.31 In this sense, the film had more to say about economic sand traps than the debatable use and faulty application of a racial epithet.32 For example, Jackie’s economic reality is tied to eking out a living as a permanent member of the service economy; the bulk of Ordell’s fortune is beyond his grasp; Max Cherry operates near the bottom of the multibillion dollar prison-­

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 63

Jackie as Ordell’s female doppelganger in Jackie Brown.

industrial complex as a bail bondsman; Melanie is a former sex worker past her prime; and Louis is a burned-­out bank robber. All of these characters are examples of thwarted and failed economic advancement. What makes Jackie Brown such an important contribution across Tarantino’s film oeuvre to date is the way class is shown to racialize whiteness. In other words, as whites increasingly find their economic options stymied and experience economic disenfranchisement, their racial status begins to dwindle and they become, in the cumbersome words of Cornel West, “niggerized” and experience “niggerization.”33 These terms are debatable and by extension so are the conceptual validity and reductive implications they have for what it means to be black in America. Yet Jackie Brown tacitly affirms such a process for whites by picking up where Pulp Fiction left off. After Louis, a white man, agrees to join Ordell’s criminal enterprise, Ordell closes his conversation with Louis by declaring him “my nigga.” Whereas Cornel West appears to assign whites as “niggers” as a function of political violence in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, garden-­variety racial-­message films like James Toback’s Black and White (1999) and Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003) position black popular culture, especially hip-­hop, as the culprit for turning white people black. Tarantino convincingly suggests it’s economics in Jackie Brown, a notion reinforced by the film’s ostensible theme song, Bobby Womack’s gritty classic soul single “Across 110th Street” (from the Blaxploitation film Across 110th Street, Barry Shear, 1972) about the hard hustle, trials,

64 Race on the QT

Jackie symbolizes the multiple burdens of being a middle-­age, working-­class black woman in Jackie Brown.

and temptations of trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. Consequently, Jackie Brown is most noticeably invested in the intersection of race and economics and frames much of its racial dynamics within the limitations of frustrated class aspirations. Certainly, the n-­word is a prominent element in Jackie Brown, but the film has more to say about the economic hardship of being a black woman of meager means. By focusing on a middle-­aged working-­class black woman struggling to salvage her life, by showing her traversing the criminal justice system from prison intake to trial date hearing to eventually making bail, this montage of misfortune clearly intimates the dire options black women face as drug mules. Situating its lead in the morass of the prison-­industrial complex makes Jackie Brown more than a narrative about duping institutional authority and conning a con. Although the crime caper element of the film provides a sense of action and appears to be the centerpiece of the film, the dramatic tension in Jackie Brown really resides with the emotional valences displayed by all of the hard-­scrabble characters. Unfortunately, the critical reception of the film and its racial subtext was hamstrung by Pam Grier’s association with Blaxploitation cinema of the past. For cultural critics like Mia Mask, “Jackie Brown is a perfect example of postmodern nostalgia . . . As homage to Grier’s most famous role, Foxy Brown, Tarantino changed the character’s name to Jackie Brown. Jackie Brown not only reanimated the myth of the phallic woman striving for

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown 65

revenge, it also reinvented Grier’s former persona.”34 Hence the racial critique imbedded in having a black female working-­class character as the principal lead of a major Hollywood film was muted, and Jackie Brown was received as a nostalgic film that paid homage to a Blaxploitation icon and revived a fallen star’s career. Its comments on the intersection of race, gender, and class in an America on the cusp of entering the new millennium were largely missed. Despite the regressive racial language interspersed throughout the film, the fact that the audience is steered to identify with and champion the cause of a working-­class black woman struggling to salvage her life makes Jackie Brown quite a progressive film. In fact, Jackie Brown subversively highlights the increasing role of women as drug mules and characterizes the destructive powers unleashed in the quest for economic stability and upward social mobility through the prisms of race, gender, and age. Admittedly, the film delivers mixed signals: Jackie Brown can be viewed as a noir crime caper film; an accomplished homage to Blaxploitation; a fanboy’s tribute to Pam Grier; or a subversive, complex, and compelling representation of race in America. Regardless of the bellicose use of the n-­word interspersed throughout the film, Tarantino delivered a sensitive film that dares its audience to follow the characters through various emotional registers. Ultimately, Jackie Brown announced that Tarantino was a big league Hollywood director with a maverick sensibility, similar to Sam Peckinpah’s, devoted to exploring the trials and tribulations of down-­on-­their-­luck characters and bad-­guys-heroes.35 What further added an air of intrigue to the Tarantino mystique was the racial dimension to his work. Here was a successful white Hollywood director who had shown he was not afraid to incorporate black folk in his films and who openly courted controversy concerning race and black racial formation in America. Interestingly, just when it appeared that Tarantino was heating up to deliver a film career dedicated to exploring the racial landscape of America vis-­à-­vis black culture and black people, his next cycle of films was a radical departure from this pattern. Tarantino’s next three films were the action-­drama mash-­ups Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), and the lurid Death Proof (2007). Compared to his earlier films that were steeped in black race relations, these three films appeared to be escapist fare that jettisoned the controversies of black racial representation. Yes and no.

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Chapter 3

Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and Death Proof

Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with samurai swords. —­O-­R en Issii, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Nearly anytime East meets West in American cinema, clichés abound that paint Asians as inherently sinister, as comic relief, as an unassimilated horde, as people who are absurdly odd in their names, mannerism, and affect. In no field is Asian representation more clearly articulated than in filmic martial arts, specifically, and in popular culture more generally. Both fields converge with the iconic figure of Bruce Lee: “His cinematic representation of kung fu as it appears within his films . . . [has] had a massive and ongoing impact upon what was ‘known’ (or rather, believed) about kung fu and Oriental martial arts across the world.”1 The Big Boss (Lo Wei, 1971), Fist of Fury (Lo Wei, 1972), Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, 1972), Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973), and The Game of Death (Bruce Lee, 1973) became worldwide calling cards for martial arts: they created a popular interest in the practice; and they established Bruce Lee as a celebrity trailblazer in Asian representation as a nonwhite bona fide action film hero. For over forty years, as of this writing, the legacy of Bruce Lee can be traced in the mainstreaming of martial arts in American sports culture, as well as in the spectacular fight choreography in Hollywood action films, in pay-­per-­ view fight competitions, and in after-­school activities across scores of suburban communities.2 Films like The Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen, 1984; Harald Zwart, 2010), Rush Hour (Brett Ratner, 1998) The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999) and Kung Fu Panda (John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, 2008) confirm the mainstream popular appeal and imagery of martial arts in America. Tarantino’s fourth film, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003, hereafter abbreviated

68 Race on the QT

as KB:V1) may invite similar comparison as just another karate flick. Nonetheless, KB:V1 is less concerned with capitalizing on the popularity of martial arts than it is focused on paying cinematic homage to the Hong Kong kung fu film industry that has churned out scores of films and made myriad innovations in film fight choreography. Without a doubt, in terms of cinematic import KB:V1 is a self-­indulgent fanboy of a film. To this point, Tarantino drafted venerable martial arts choreographer and film director Yuen Woo-­ping to help choreograph various fight scenes, and he recruited renowned martial arts actor Sonny Chiba to work in front of the camera. The result is a grand display of kung fu pulp artistry and a successful film homage to Hong Kong martial arts cinema from the 1970s and early 80s. Given the amount of effort invested into meticulously duplicating and enhancing various effects that defined Hong Kong martial arts cinema of the past, I am sure if there was a version of Smell-­O-­Vision that worked Tarantino would have used it. Nevertheless, the visual pyrotechnics that Tarantino employs are compelling in their own right: anime, crisp black-­and-­white photography, glossy color-­ saturated cinematography, fantasy fight scenes in which combatants defy gravity with uncanny gracefulness, and copious amounts of blood. In the broadest sense, KB:V1 is a surreal martial arts action flick that is as sincere a love letter to a film genre as they come. As far as the narrative goes, KB:V1 is a fractured tale about Beatrix Kiddo, aka “The Bride,” code name Black Mamba, a white female assassin and martial arts expert. At her wedding, she is shot down by Bill (her boss and the father of her unborn child), and several other key members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DVAS). The entire wedding party is slaughtered and Bill leaves her for dead. Four years later, she awakens in a hospital where she begins her quest to hunt down and kill those responsible for the attack. The film follows the Bride’s first steps toward vengeance, which involve coaxing preeminent sword maker Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba) out of retirement to forge her a samurai sword that is so sharp that, in the words of its maker, “If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut.” On first blush, given that Uma Thurman is the female star of KB:V1, the film appears exclusively bound to issues concerning gender. Because its lead character is a professional assassin, a former bride out for revenge, and a mother (she was pregnant at the time of her attack and in the sequel she will discover her daughter is also alive) the film expresses several dueling feminist archetypes: the professional woman,

Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and Death Proof 69

the avenging Amazon, and the socially accepted role of mother. But it also confronts enduring issues concerning the cultural representation of women in Hollywood action films. The Bride stands in stark contrast to the staid representation of women in Hollywood films as romantic interests or sexual props for the male gaze.3 In this regard, little is left to the imagination to ideologically decode in KB:V1. The film is saturated with signifiers regarding the sexual politics of gender and female objectification. For example, when the Bride wakes from a four-­year coma after being shot in the head by Bill, she discovers a male nurse has been pimping out her comatose body for sex acts in exchange for money. Before she fully awakes, a shabby Vaseline jar is tossed to a john as a source for lubrication. The grimy residue on the jar signals that this sickening act has occurred numerous times over several years. The image is a gruesome representation of the abrasive nature, destructive power, and depraved quality of sexual exploitation of women by men. The sexual abuse the Bride has endured was a surreptitious act, but the film will establish how it represents the broader normalization of sexual degradation of women in a male-­dominated society (and world) by having the Bride commandeer a truck with the words “Pussy Wagon” printed in bold pink lettering splayed across the tailgate. The fact that such an offensive vehicle openly occupies public space as an everyday form of transportation signifies the common, daily gender objectification that drives sexual politics in American society. In addition, sexual molestation is presented as a perverse action deserving of death. First, the Bride kills the male nurse who profited from her serial rape, a point further rendered with another morbid example of female objectification. Later in the film, there is the death-­ scene anime flashback of O-­Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) as an eleven-­year-­old girl straddling the pedophile Yakuza boss responsible for murdering her parents. Before he can commence with his predilections, she slays him by puncturing his abdomen with a sword, and the wound releases a geyser of blood that literally fills the frame. Such a blatant visual scheme clearly signals that KB:V1 is willing not only to critique sexual violence against children but also to drench the viewing audience with blood like the unsuspecting prom queen from the film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976). Despite the subversive gender politics present in the opening portion of KB:V1, the sexualized imagery and language the film openly employs and the sexual raunchiness it exhibits unquestionably invite criticism that the film is exploitative and its sexual content gra-

70 Race on the QT

The Bride (Uma Thurman) faces the gender politics of sexual objectification in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

tuitous. But just as jarring as the symbolic overtones of sexism, sexual violence, and gender politics circulating in KB:V1 are significant racial undertones that dredge up longstanding issues surrounding racial representation in Hollywood martial arts films. Without a doubt, KB:V1 invites criticism with its casting of Uma Thurman, a blonde Nordic vixen, as the principal martial arts master in the film. In this way, KB:V1 perpetuates a trend whereby Asian characters are stereotyped and/or displaced by white characters. Emblematic and patently problematic articulations of these tropes are rampant in the Charlie Chan films of the 1930s, and more examples can be found in Sean Connery’s deplorable disguise in You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilbert, 1967); in the hyperbolic violence in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978); in the racially paranoid cityscape in Ridley Scott’s brilliant Blade Runner (1982); in the malignant typecasting in John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles (1984); in the banal stereotyping present in Year of the Dragon (Michael Cimino, 1985); in the peevish white American snobbery found throughout Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003); in the science-­fiction Orientalism of Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon franchise (1936–­1940, 1980); and in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999). Another notable example of how Asian representation is frequently situated in American pop culture places white and Asian characters alongside one another within a predominantly Asian context. In such constructs, Asian people primarily function as background for the charismatic white protagonist. Some of the most egregious examples of the above practice are found in the pop music performances of Gwen

Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and Death Proof 71

Stefani’s four Japanese backup dancers, the Harajuku Girls, who feign fondness and devotion to Stefani across several music videos. Katy Perry’s adoption of traditional geisha attire to perform her hit song “Unconditionally” at the 2013 American Music Awards drew criticism from Asian Americans, as did Asian representations in the films The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003) and The Last Airbender (M. Night Shyamalan, 2010).4 Yet, on an ideological level, KB:V1 is as messy and disconcerting as the floor at the House of Blue Leaves, littered with scores of limbs lopped off by the Bride in the wake of her confrontation with the Crazy 88s, a masked Yakuza gang. On one hand, the film clearly articulates the tendency of the Hollywood film industry to engage in racial appropriation by featuring white protagonists in martial arts films.5 Moreover, by casting David Carradine as Bill (whose name looms large in the title and who becomes a key figure in the second installment of the film), Tarantino clearly signifies racial appropriation in the form of “yellow face,” in which whites pretend to be Asian. For a generation of baby boomers (and their children, who grew up on television reruns), David Carradine is most notably known for starring on the popular television series Kung Fu (1972–­1975) as Kwai Chang Caine, a half-­Caucasian half-­Chinese Shaolin monk. Caine flees from China to the American West after killing the Emperor’s nephew in retaliation for senselessly shooting a revered Shaolin monk. The television show primarily consisted of showing Caine applying the philosophical lesson he had learned in the past as a monk to the trouble he presently encounters while protecting innocent lives. What made Carradine so problematic was that as a white male he came to symbolize “yellow face”: white appropriation and the marginalization of Asian actors.6 Moreover, like James Brown’s exclamation on the song “Payback” (1973), “I don’t know karate but I know crazy,” Carradine was not even trained in the form of combat that lent its name to the title of the show.7 Carradine was a martial arts poser, but slow-­motion fighting effects similar to those used in the cult classic Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin, 1971), combined with seamless editing, made Carradine’s amateur hand- and footwork come off as deft, deadly, and sublimely cool. Consequently, by casting Carradine as Bill, Tarantino insured that white appropriation and anxiety over Asian authenticity looms large across the ideological landscape of KB:V1. Paul Bowman, in Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon through Film, Philosophy, and Popular Culture, cites Brian Preston’s astute observation on the meaning of Kill Bill:

72 Race on the QT

In Bruce Lee and Me: A Martial Arts Adventure (2007), Brian Preston interprets Tarantino’s two Kill Bill films as amounting to Bruce Lee finally getting a kind of symbolic revenge on Carradine. In these films, Uma Thurman plays a character who rides a motorbike to the theme music from The Green Hornet, wearing an updated version of the yellow outfit Bruce Lee wore in his unfinished Game of Death (1973/1978). She seeks to exact revenge on “Bill,” who is played by David Carradine, and—­just to be sure we get the references—­Bill even plays the long wooden flute his character carried in Kung Fu. But Preston also notes that “in the choreography of Kill Bill we can also see the triumph of Bruce Lee in a wider sense. It’s a triumph owed to Bruce Lee,” he asserts: “the triumph of Asian sensibilities in world culture, specifically in the world’s number one universally appreciated art form, the action movie.”

In this symbolic manner, white appropriation is addressed, and Bruce Lee lives as a symbolic presence in the film, a presence that is visually underscored by the yellow jumpsuit the Bride wears when she performs her climatic fight scenes. But such symbolic nods to Bruce Lee do not close the circuit of meaning concerning issues of cultural appropriation and authenticity. At the most KB:V1 challenges the cultural appropriation circulating in the film, and at the least it attempts to placate critics who take it to task for placing whiteness in the center of a martial arts film. In either case, the challenge is best understood and appreciated as a symbolic discourse. The symbolic discourse between authenticity and co-­ optation is ever present in KB:V1 and is fully registered with the character of O-­Ren Issii, a biracial figure who represents anxiety over authenticity vis-­à-­vis race. The Bride’s expository narration about O-­Ren describes her as a “half-­Chinese, half–­Japanese American army brat.” The second account of her racial hybridity follows after O-­Ren consolidates her power as the head of a Japanese crime syndicate, and this account dramatically underscores how KB:V1 is not just a platform to demonstrate showy martial arts choreography but engages the cultural politics of race. The troubling role that race plays in the film emerges as various crime heads pay their respects to O-­Ren Issii as their new boss. The men are gathered around an immense table and appear to be delighted by the shift in leadership—­except for Boss Tanaka (Jun Kunimura). He vehemently condemns her elevation as the leader of the crime council,

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defiantly laments the perversion of the council with O-­Ren as the boss of all bosses, and concludes his rebuke by condemning the council for “making a Chinese Jap-­American half-­breed bitch its leader.” O-­Ren responds to Tanaka’s ethnic chauvinism by decapitating him, leaving a headless corpse gushing blood from the neck like a broken sprinkler. In the wake of her carnage, O-­Ren delivers a scolding speech to the remaining crime bosses, who are repulsed and recoil in fear around the immense table: . . . and I promise you right here and now no subject will ever be taboo. Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion. The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American heritage as a negative is, I collect your fucking head. Just like this fucker here. Now if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say now’s the fucking time! I didn’t think so. Gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned.

The hyperbolic blood-­spattered hostility that punctuates O-­Ren’s violent reaction and her promise to decapitate anyone that critiques her ethnic/racial orientation represent more than a strident response to an ad hominem attack: it signals the vulgar absurdity of using biological determinism along with fictive notions of racial and/or cultural purity as legitimate sources to evaluate human potential. Similar to films like The Omega Man (Boris Sagal, 1971), The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982), and Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998), in which blood is a potent signifier of racial anxieties about assimilation and contamination by the mongrelized “Other,” the violence that punctuates O-­Ren’s declaration reveals a film also fully dialoguing with notions of racial and biological determinism. The gratuitous display of blood signifies this tension, and the debate over purity and lineage that Tanaka espouses is delegitimized by his decapitation. The ongoing references to O-­Ren’s background, combined with the scene described above, reveal how a film ostensibly dedicated to martial arts action critiques the facile logic of racial categorization. Unfortunately, in the wake of Tanaka’s beheading, this point is blunted by the film’s embrace of Orientalist fantasy in which O-­Ren Ishii is patently constructed as symbol of traditional Eastern culture and authenticity. Before the Bride finally confronts O-­Ren, the new Yakuza boss is shown holding court with her criminal underlings while dressed as an ersatz version of a traditional Geisha. With her white kimono, white split-­toe stocking feet, customary clogs, timid gait, and pantomiming

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O-­Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), a symbol of traditional Eastern culture and authenticity, in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

demure gestures, O-­Ren fulfills the Orientalist trope of the sexually alluring subservient woman. Of course, O-­Ren is a vicious killer, but this does little to mitigate the stifling visuals that construct her in such a stereotypical manner. These visual signifiers of the Asian Other take on more ideological resonance during the climatic showdown between O-­Ren and the Bride. The contrast between the two is striking. A snow-­ filled backdrop and O-­Ren’s white ceremonial kimono signal an unsullied spiritual tradition. In contrast, the Bride wears a soiled, blood-­ stained yellow jumpsuit that signifies the hyperviolence of the West. During their epic fight, O-­Ren delivers what appears to be a lethal blow to the Bride and tops off her maneuver by calling the Bride a “silly Caucasian girl [that] likes to play with samurai swords.” O-­Ren’s overdetermined representation of Asian authenticity combined with her comments racializes their struggle. As a result, the Bride’s race appears to have doomed her for eventual defeat. But the Bride is no cultural dilettante, and she severely wounds O-­Ren in sword combat. Interestingly, O-­Ren offers an apology for racially ridiculing her as an unworthy opponent right before the Bride delivers the coup de grâce that affirms that the Bride is a valiant and worthy opponent. On the surface, O-­Ren’s retreat from her racial assessment of the Bride is further refutation of the racial chauvinism expressed earlier in the film by Boss Tanaka. However, given the criticisms leveled at Tarantino for appropriating blackness for his own self-­absorbed filmic assemblages, O-­Ren’s concession that the Bride is a worthy white opponent may serve more to provide ideological cover for Tarantino’s aesthetic choices when it comes to race.8 Arguably, the

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Bride’s triumph over O-­Ren also affirms that Tarantino is not just some silly Caucasian boy who likes to play with cultural representations of the racial Other. From this ideological vantage point, when it comes to racial representation—­and most specifically black racial expressivity, style, and character types—­Tarantino’s whiteness does not negate the accomplished engagement and honest expression of black culture and black representation across his films. Despite the apparent ideological cover that KB:V1 suggests regarding Tarantino’s artistic entitlement and ability to truthfully present people of color in his films, it has not shielded him from criticism. For example, the manner, style, and ultimate demise of Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), the only significant black character in KB:V1, has been a source of criticism for not respectfully representing black folk in the film.9 Vernita is an upper-­middle-­class homemaker with a doctor for a husband, a family dog, and a four-­year-­old daughter named Nikki (Ambrosia Kelly) living an incredibly picturesque domestic lifestyle in Pasadena, California. Vernita is also a former member of the DVAS who participated in the slaughter of the Bride’s wedding party. After coming out of her coma, the Bride tracks down Vernita. A knife fight commences right in the middle of Vernita’s Craftsman-­style home, brutally disrupting her suburban American dream. The former hitwoman, now homemaker, trades kicks, blows, and throws with the Bride until Vernita’s daughter, Nikki, enters the room upon returning from school. Immediately, the two women suspend their claustrophobic confrontation. The awkward tension between the women is accentuated by their verbal exchange after they agree to a temporary truce to protect Nikki from their vicious altercation and violent intentions.

The Bride as a symbol of the tainted West in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

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The Bride: Just because I have no wish to murder you in front of your daughter doesn’t mean that parading her around in front of me will inspire sympathy. You and I have unfinished business. And not a goddamned thing you’ve done in the subsequent four years including getting knocked up is going to change that. Vernita: So when do we do this? The Bride: It all depends. When do you want to die? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Vernita: How about tonight, bitch? The Bride: Splendid. Where? Vernita: There’s a baseball diamond where I coach Little League about a mile from here. We meet there around in the morning [sic] dressed all in black. Your hair in a black stocking. And we have us a knife fight. We won’t be bothered. Now I have to fix Nikki’s cereal. The Bride: Bill always said you were one of the best ladies with an edged weapon. Vernita: Fuck you bitch. I know he didn’t qualify that shit. So you can just kiss my motherfucking ass, Black Mamba. Black Mamba. I should have been motherfucking Black Mamba.

A strictly conventional reading of their heated conversation ostensibly views their verbal confrontation as animus fueled by a professional rivalry telegraphed by the Bride’s gendered qualification of Vernita as an accomplished knife-­wielding “lady” assassin. An equally compelling and practical account of the scene situates Vernita’s hostility toward the Bride as being driven by the fact a white woman deprived her of her rightful racialized moniker. As the only black member of the assassination squad, the “Black Mamba” moniker was arguably more appropriate for Vernita than for the flaxen-­haired Bride. Certainly, popular convention dictates the code name “Black Mamba” would be a moniker more likely befitting the only black woman in the film. Film titles such as Blacula (William Crain, 1972), Blackenstein (William A. Levey, 1973), Black Samson (Charles Bail, 1974), Black Lolita (Stephen Gibson, 1975), Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (William Crain, 1976), and Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer, 2006) use the word “black” to signify race in a very transparent and conventional manner. Accordingly, when Vernita chastises the Bride over the “Black Mamba” code name, her palpable hostility signifies a racial undercurrent between the two women and indicates the privileged position of whiteness when compared to black attainment and expertise. Like Vernita Green advocates, she

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The Bride and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) confront one another in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

“should have been motherfucking Black Mamba.” But the exchange implies that her race was used against her. Admittedly, Vernita’s extremely contemptuous and belligerent recriminations of the Bride weaken the scene; her use of obscenities and her melodramatic attitude animate the trope of the angry black woman.10 Nevertheless, there is a sophisticated racial sensibility at work that signifies tensions in white-­black power relations and challenges the privileged status of whiteness to appropriate blackness. Although not fully articulated, Vernita’s lament over the code name also suggests a casual form of racial awareness at the least, and at the most reveals a strong sense of racial pride concerning blackness as a form of identity construction and defiant self-­worth in the face of perceived white devaluation of her personhood. Of course, despite agreeing to the time and place for their death match (after Vernita has dispensed with all of her remaining domestic duties), she dies in the kitchen right in front of her daughter. When Vernita tries to kill the Bride by shooting her with a gun concealed in a cereal box, she pays with a knife lodged deep in her chest. Noted film critic Armond White calls attention to Vernita’s demise and makes a caustic observation of the callous and obtuse presentation of her death scene as a form of detached pop violence.11 First, Vernita’s death is a harsh reminder of how black characters are often eliminated in a grisly fashion and their narrative relevancy is often truncated across a variety of Hollywood films.12 Second, because Vernita is slain in front of her daughter, the death scene is unsettling and appears quite morbid. Yet in actuality, Vernita’s death scene is quite solemn and reflective. What humanizes Vernita the most is the excessive time spent displaying her corpse along with the subsequent shot of her little daughter

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staring blankly at the killer yanking a knife out of her mother’s chest. By including Vernita’s four-­year-­old child in the gruesome death scene, KB:V1 presents a disturbing reminder of the emotional weight depictions of death on screen can have. Having Vernita’s daughter bear witness to her killing is a harsh reminder of the consequences of death beyond just perpetrator and victim. This scene stands in stark contrast to the cartoon carnage presented at the House of Blue Leaves, where the Bride lops off numerous legs and arms of the Crazy 88s gang. Rather, the murder of a black woman in front of her young daughter contains more gravitas and counterbalances the cold spectacle of mayhem, murder, and mutilation in the House of Blue Leaves fight scene. Vernita is no longer just an enemy vanquished, but a mother whose maternal bond between her and her daughter is destroyed along with the family she cares for, a point clearly highlighted by the blissful suburban setting established before Vernita is killed. Consequently, the demise of Vernita clearly communicates a death not detached from tragedy. Despite the serious gender issues and subversive racial thematics woven into the fantasyscape of KB:V1, the tone of the film often veers toward the comedic and the outlandish. The outrageously excessive violence presented and the copious amount of blood shown with each death at the House of Blue Leaves are in fact dependent on audience detachment for the scene to work as a source of any enjoyment. In its excesses, KB:V1 comes dangerously close to qualifying as a better executed and acted version of John Carpenter’s manic misfire Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a cartoonish kung fu action flick heavy on special effects and light on character arc. In comparison, KB:V2 jettisons the hyperstylized violence that prevails in the first film and strains for solemnity with more grit and grime, less combat, longer conversations in cramped spaces, and more character development. This shift in tone registers in the character of Budd (Michael Madsen), Bill’s brother. In KB:V1 the audience is granted a fleeting glimpse of Budd (as a member of the assassin squad that slaughters Beatrix’s wedding party) wearing a black suit and tie that makes Madsen appear the facsimile of his Mr. Blonde character from Reser­ voir Dogs (1992). In KB:V2 this fleeting figure becomes a fully formed character who has traded in his suit and tie for the flagrant tropes of redneck whiteness to convey bad intent harbored in the “good ol’ boy” persona that Budd exudes. Budd now wears white tank tops, sports a gauche cowboy hat wherever he goes, has an updated twist on the frequently ridiculed

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mullet hairstyle, lives in a cluttered trailer, drives a beat-­up pickup truck, spits tobacco, uses ethnic slurs like “Japs,” and deploys derogatory phrases like “I don’t Jew out of paying my comeuppance.” The total effect of these various cues makes Budd a bad man and an obvious symbol of backwoods racial chauvinism, but Budd is also a constructed symbol of crude American gender bias, a sensibility clearly communicated when he shoots Beatrix with a shotgun full of rock salt and subsequently buries her alive. On the whole, this is a rather obvious use of predictable cultural cues to mark a white character as tasteless at the least and disturbingly dangerous at the most. In contrast to Budd, Bill is draped in signifiers of corruption and decadence that are more complex and sophisticated. As Bill, the ringleader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, David Carradine provides a tour de force performance of white masculine creepiness. Although Bill is a restrained figure compared to Budd’s overt racial symbolism, he clearly expresses white pathology. For example, the pantomimed gunplay between Bill, Beatrix, and their daughter B.B. (Perla Haney-­Jardine) suggests a perverse notion of the white nuclear family, a point subsequently punctuated when Bill confesses to B.B., like a lighthearted bedtime story, that he shot her mother in the head. Parenthood cannot provide a transcendent space for Bill to inhabit, even as doting dad to the daughter Beatrix thought was dead. Ultimately, Bill appears to be pathological by nature and Beatrix by environment; they are parents who produced a sick offspring. Case in point: B.B. confesses to taking a goldfish out of the fishbowl, placing it on the carpet, staring at it as it gasps for water, and summarily stomping the life out of it. With this example the film indicates the child is a heartless killer similar to both of her parents. Certainly, the film tries to recuperate Beatrix from her pathological status by showing her token display of bereavement after killing her mentor and lover, the father of her child. Notwithstanding the narrative ploy of making Beatrix a mother and showing her snuggling her daughter in a hotel room while watching television, she remains a fallen figure, drained and devoid of compassion, only able to deploy her training for killing. It is quite fitting that at the conclusion of the film, Beatrix and B.B. are watching the cartoon magpies Heckle and Jeckle and enjoying how they trick and comically assault a hapless farmer with an oversized mallet. Violence is not only normalized as comedic but populates every nook and cranny of Beatrix’s social ecology.13 Admittedly, as in KB:V1, gender bias is a significant point of analysis.

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Master Pei Mei (Gordon Liu) in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

Yet alongside the strident gender dynamics, American whiteness is also foregrounded, albeit in a fragmented and symbolic manner. Despite Beatrix’s status at the conclusion of KB:V2 as a righteous avenger and lioness reunited with her cub, she is ultimately a symbol of American whiteness, a point underscored in KB:V1 when the Bride confronts O-­Ren Ishii, and echoed again when Beatrix first meets her martial arts teacher Master Pei Mei (Gordon Liu). Under Master Pei’s tutelage, Beatrix is repeatedly berated, beaten, and humiliated because “Pei Mei hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and is said to have contempt for women.” Without a doubt, the sadistic and humiliating punishment inflicted onto Beatrix in KB:V2 appears overdetermined by gender and represents a feminist’s nightmare and a misogynist’s wet dream. Indeed, gender bias is a significant driving force behind Pei Mei’s sadistic and humiliating training program. But stark racial overtones are also articulated and symbolically represented as well.14 The visual scheme used to construct Pei Mei in relation to Beatrix functions as a racial signpost. Master Pei, with his long white beard and coiffed eyebrows, creates a striking, exotic, and ominous Orientalist symbol juxtaposed against the cut-­off blue jeans and sneakers worn by the all-­American blonde Beatrix. As a racial signifier, Master Pei’s punishing instruction symbolizes retribution for white appropriation and cultural encroachment. On one hand, KB:V2 resumes the Hollywood film industry’s tendency to crown whiteness as the superior version of another culture’s most challenging and creative expressions.15 On the other hand, despite the apparent continuation of this sensibility in KB:V2, the film registers a palpable awareness of, and, most significantly, a simmering

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hostility toward, white appropriation with the figure of Beatrix as an abused martial arts pupil.16 Eventually her training with Master Pei is successful and yields a mastery of secret martial arts methods such as punching a hole through a thick wooden board from an extremely close position. But the technique is acquired at considerable cost, as Beatrix endures pain and punishment under Master Pei’s sadistic instruction. Her time with Master Pei also signals she is moving toward spiritual transcendence, a point often reinforced by showing Beatrix commencing her arduous training by trekking up a steep mountain. Toward the end of the film, when she finds herself buried alive in wooden coffin with little room to maneuver, Beatrix’s fully signifies a fallen, drained, and “lifeless” figure, a point indicated by showing Beatrix puncture a hole in her coffin and crawl out from a grave like a zombie that refuses to die. For those willing to take the aesthetic bait, the above scene provides an ideological twist on racial diversity in American film. Because the Kill Bill movies exist in an imaginary world and are fantasy films, they are not required to articulate some form of racial verisimilitude. Of course, the staged artificiality of the opening credits of KB:V2, with Beatrix driving a convertible Karmann Ghia against a motion backdrop, arguably signals the entire film is a constructed fantasy. Consequently, as an imaginary world the film offers several arguments concerning racial representation that contribute significantly to diminishing criticism of the Kill Bill films as expressions of white appropriation. First, to require that only an Asian character could, would, or should accomplish what Beatrix does as a vengeful white martial arts expert unfairly impinges on the imaginational latitude that a fantasy

“Pei Mei hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and is said to have contempt for women,” in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

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realm supposedly provides. Second, the mutilation of scores of Asian men by a Nordic-­looking white woman is merely a staged spectacle that does not reflect or symbolize cultural subjugation. Third, what might appear to be white appropriation in the Kill Bill cycle can be read as just an expression of genuine homage that does not reflect cultural subjugation. However, KB:V2 is a bit more ideologically subversive than can be explained by adopting an “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” viewpoint. Fourth, the Kill Bill franchise differs from numerous American martial arts movies in which benevolent whites adopt Oriental culture and customs with a great deal of success, such as the star vehicles of Chuck Norris, Jean-­Claude Van Damme, and Steven Segal and films like The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003), 47 Ronin (Carl Rinsch, 2013), and, to a lesser extent, Avatar (James Cameron, 2009). The Kill Bill films reject romanticizing white characters as the honorable heirs to or noble practitioners of another ethnic/racial group’s culture. To the contrary, in the Kill Bill franchise, all of the white characters are refreshingly corrupt. In this manner, the appropriation issue that is present throughout the two films is subverted. Whiteness in this instance may co-opt Asian-­based martial arts, but the standard Hollywood trope of white moral superiority is diminished. Beatrix Kiddo may be somewhat rehabilitated, but any moral authority is invested in Vernita’s daughter Nikki. After pulling her knife out of Vernita’s chest, the Bride (Beatrix) explains to Nikki that, “It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I’m sorry. But you can take my word for it. Your mother had it coming. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting.” Consequently, if there is a third installment of this franchise a young black woman will be the star of Kill Kiddo. Like both Kill Bill films, Tarantino’s next film, Death Proof (2007), is also an exercise in self-­indulgent fandom, a point repeatedly articulated by the director and telegraphed by the excessive energy directed at duplicating the “grindhouse” aesthetic in the film.17 But even more than paying homage to exploitation films of the past, Death Proof displays the range of Tarantino’s fetishistic proclivities all in one film. The first five minutes of the film offer a barrage of voyeuristic kink perfectly scored by Jack Nitzsche’s sleazy guitar riff, taken from the go-­go dance scene (noted for actress Joy Harmon’s slow-­motion shimmy) in the cult classic film Village of the Giants (Bert I. Gordon, 1965). Visually, Tarantino’s apparent attraction to female feet dominates the opening credits. The viewer is forced to gaze, for an extended duration, at a pair of pedi-

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cured feet with bright red toenail polish resting on the passenger side of a car dashboard. The subsequent shot is just as fetishistic, a prurient examination of the bottom of lead character Jungle Julia’s (Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s) feet followed by a voyeuristic peek-­a-­boo panty-­shot of her traipsing around her apartment, a scene which concludes with Julie’s bare feet propped up on her couch. Death Proof’s in-­your-­face foot fetish quickly shifts from soft-­core voyeurism to seedy kink when the ensuing frame focuses on Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) as she contends with an urgent need to urinate. The camera follows Arlene running from the passenger side of a car to Julie’s upstairs apartment, then changes to an extreme close-­up of Arlene pressing her index and middle finger deeply against her vagina as she dashes up a flight of stairs and scampers down the hall desperate to relieve herself. Like virtually all films of this ilk, whether original or imitated, the titillation factor is cranked up to the max and sexual promiscuity is a recurrent theme. In this regard, Death Proof is an excellent knockoff of the sexploitation-­horror film genre Tarantino aches to imitate. In Death Proof, nonexplicit sexuality is the dominant visual cue, unlike true sexploitation cinema where gratuitous nudity is the stock-­and-­ trade of the genre. In this regard, Death Proof proves itself rather chaste in its lack of female nudity. Instead, the explicit discussions between Julia, Arlene, and Shanna (Jordan Ladd) about their dating exploits and the power of their feminine wiles to seduce men signals their overt sexual promiscuity. Moreover, given that in the genre corrupt ingénues are chronically killed as a form of symbolic punishment for their sexually liberated attitudes, it is no surprise that Julia, Arlene, and Shanna all perish horribly in this film.18 Yet in between Death Proof’s sexist imagery, fractured narrative, and “feet-­and-­leg show” are noteworthy ruminations on race, sex, and gender woven into a film that revels in indulgences of tone and look. Without a doubt, casting a black actress to play a character named Jungle Julia clearly conveys that Death Proof welcomingly treads on problematic racial terrain. At first glance the Jungle Julia moniker appears not only as an obnoxious form of alliteration but also as a name that dredges up the representational exotification of black women as primal sexual beings in American pop culture.19 A lengthier examination of how Jungle Julia is situated throughout the film, however, reveals a more subversive intersection of the moniker with American pop culture, history, and racial representation in film and television. First and foremost, the archetype of the jungle girl is most often a

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white woman scantly clad in an animal-­skin bikini placed in the center of a jungle or lush rainforest. In other words, the figure is a female version of Tarzan—­an attractive, heroic white male figure created by Edgar Rice Burroughs who roams the African jungle in a loincloth making sure natives, nature, and adventurers keep safe. Such a setup easily suggests racist undertones when a lone white man is constructed as a demigod in a black geographical space, whether real or imagined. Accordingly, the fusing of female sexuality with a jungle narrative that revolves around whiteness as beautiful and possessing extraordinary talents suffers from a similar racial critique.20 Comic books such as White Princess of the Jungle (1951) explicitly called attention to a multitude of dubious racial implications: a white woman who represents a force for order, attractiveness, and intelligence is juxtaposed against a jungle full of black savages. Alongside the tropes of white supremacy, the jungle girl character represents a real mainstream pinup sensibility that also undergirds this racial fantasyscape in terms of American sexual politics. In particular, for decades the American film and television industries have contributed to constructing white female sex symbols out of the jungle girl motif with figures such as Frances Gifford in the Jungle Girl serial (William Witney, 1941); Irish McCalla from the television series Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1955–­1956); Bo Derek in Tarzan, the Ape Man (John Derek, 1981); Tanya Roberts in Sheena (John Guillermin, 1984); and Gena Lee Nolin’s reprisal of the jungle vixen in the short-­ lived syndicated television version of Sheena (2000–­2002). In addition, the iconic cheesecake image of Betty Page as Jungle Betty and the artistry found in the works of Frank Frazetta, Frank Cho, and, to a lesser extent, Antonio Vargas, has affirmed a nearly mythic rendering of the white pinup model as attractive Amazonian female. Against the mythic backdrop of white Amazonian sexuality, Jungle Julia, the exotic barefoot beauty with long, billowing, curly black hair, approximates an updated and more urbanized version of the Hollywood jungle girl. The strikingly tall and attractive Sydney Tamiia Poitier is Jungle Julia, the “six-­foot baby giraffe.” In Death Proof she is a sexually enticing black female counterpoint to the preponderance of white Amazonian imagery from Hollywood’s past. Death Proof subversively signifies this point by having Julia, with her short-­shorts and tight tee-­ shirt, sit right in front of a Tarzan poster adorning the wall of one of the bars she and her friends patronize as they hopscotch their way from cantina to cantina. Despite serving as the symbolic counterpoint to decades of white Amazonian sexuality as the attractive norm, Jungle Julia

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Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), approximates an updated and more urbanized version of the Hollywood jungle girl trope in Death Proof.

is also a problematic figure in the film. Although scopophillic reverence is given to Jungle Julia’s looks, the type of voyeuristic scrutiny given to her face, legs, feet, and butt seems more about objectification than any type of representational outmaneuvering on behalf of black women. For example, the first bar scene in Death Proof has Marcy (Marcy Harriell) playfully impersonate a man trying to make a move on Arlene. In the course of the conversation Arlene randomly asks Marcy if Jungle Julia “has a big ass.” Marcy replies with a goofy southern accent, “Naw man. I like her ass that way. She got a black girl’s ass.” Jungle Julia scolds Arlene: “For your information, skinny bitch, black men and whole lot of motherfuckin’ white men have had plenty of fun adoring my ass. I don’t wear their teeth-­marks on my butt for nothing.” Metaphorically speaking, so marked was the Hottentot Venus, a black woman who became a freak show exhibit due to the bulkiness of her buttocks.21 She ended her life destitute and was dissected like a specimen after her death. Consequently, Arlene’s dissonant query about the size of Julia’s ass, Marcy’s racialized response, and Jungle Julia’s embrace of her sexual objectification ring hollow. Their comments evoke tired tropes surrounding the racial physiognomy of black women, tropes that hark back to the scientific racism of nineteenth-­ century Europe. Too much history and sexual exploitation have passed to make Julia’s wisecrack work as a convincing display of racial agency. By fixating on her particular body parts repeatedly, to the exclusion of nearly everything else about her character, the film visually hacks Julia into pieces and ultimately is an expression of her sexual dehumanization. Oddly enough, however, Death Proof wages war against the very

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Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) breaks the fourth wall in Death Proof.

objectification it sets up so aggressively with Jungle Julia in the repulsive death scene that punctuates the film’s midpoint. Death Proof signals a literal critique of the white male gaze in the guise of Stuntman Mike McKay (Kurt Russell), a murderous stalker. Stuntman Mike is shown surreptitiously watching Julia and her friends exiting a bar while sitting in his black muscle car. He then fixates on a snapshot of Julia stuck to the car visor and subsequently removes the photo from the visor to reveal a mirror that frames his eyes staring back at him. Stuntman Mike proceeds to tilt his head back and use an eyedropper to administer some type of solution in both his eyes. Later, Stuntman Mike breaks the fourth wall with a wicked grin that compels the audience to make eye contact with him. Finally, the head-­on collision between his car and the vehicle carrying Julia and her three female friends punctuates the destructive energies of the male gaze.22 In case the message of the scene is somehow missed, the crash is repeated several times to show how each woman in the car was killed. Moreover, in each case, Stuntman Mike’s headlights are shown flashing on (read: eyes opening) just prior to impact. This exaggerated focus on the eyes is meant to symbolically emphasize the male gaze as obsessively misogynistic and “deadly” by implication. Although the car crash is a grotesque spectacle of body horror, it also effectively demonstrates the logical conclusion and pathological climax that all sexual objectification eventually leads to; it fragments the female body into detached “lifeless” body parts. Because Jungle Julia rides in the front passenger seat of the car with the window down and a significant portion of her leg hanging outside the vehicle, the crash causes her leg to sever at the hip, float through the

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air and eventually land with a dull thud on the black pavement. As a consequence, Julia’s long leg[s] and feet become a source of revulsion, revealing the visual violence that is integral to the sexual objectification of its striking black Amazonian figure. Unlike David Cronenberg’s disturbing psycho-­sexual drama Crash (1996), which explores the world of people who derive sexual gratification from being in car crashes, the crash in Death Proof subversively critiques the sexual objectification of Jungle Julia, and, by extension, black women in general. Admittedly, the symbolic agency I ascribe to Jungle Julia, as a constructed figure playing against type, is strictly a postmortem analysis. Unfortunately, the character is not in any significant manner self-­reflective.23 For the most part, Jungle Julia appears unaware of herself as an object of voyeuristic desire. Neither is she self-­aware of her sexual symbolism as a counter-­image to the traditional “white jungle girl” trope. Instead, Jungle Julia wanders around in Death Proof harping about scoring marijuana, complaining about boy troubles, and extolling her taste in lead singers. These vacuous conversations may provide a semblance of the everyday experience of the character, but they entirely neglect the more interesting racial dimension of Jungle Julia as a local celebrity and black female sex symbol in a predominantly white southern city. Neither is Jungle Julia allowed an opportunity to engage the audience as a sexually savvy and complex black female performer in the tradition of Josephine Baker, who co-opted notions of the jungle primitive, the black body, and voyeuristic pleasure in a way that expressed a form of visual politics.24 Instead, the audience is served an image of Jungle Julia left literally in pieces on the road; by extension, so is her persona. Consequently, no matter how strikingly exotic and symbolically provocative a construct Jungle Julia is, her character comes off as flat as the cheesy “Jungle Julia” billboards scattered throughout the Austin, Texas, setting of the first half of the film. Ideologically, Death Proof is most successful in conveying the perversity and patriarchal power of the white male gaze to mutilate the object of sexual desire and yet remain virtually untouched by the release of these destructive energies. The second half of the film confronts this theme with a trio of empowered women when it picks up fourteen months later in Lebanon, Tennessee. In particular, the character of Abernathy Ross (Rosario Dawson) functions as a more empowered expression of the barefoot, exotic Jungle Julia trope presented in the first half of the film. Again, soft soles and pedicured toes are a beacon for Tarantino’s camerawork. Only this time they belong to Abernathy,

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and the visual justification for focusing on her feet is displaced onto Stuntman Mike’s sexual penchants. Stuntman Mike drives into a convenience store parking lot, views Abernathy’s bare feet hanging out the back window of another car, and is immediately drawn to them. Enamored of Abernathy’s feet, Stuntman Mike surreptitiously exits his car to closely stare at and pantomime kissing her toes before touching them with his fingers. The fetishistic disavowal Tarantino puts in place is pitifully transparent; nevertheless, the “foot show” signals that Abernathy is the symbolic reincarnation of the deceased Jungle Julia. In sharp contrast to the screen time used to peruse Jungle Julia’s lower extremities, the inordinate amount of time the film spends focused on Abernathy’s feet eventually has a plot payoff that clearly communicates a more defiant image. When Abernathy recoils from Stuntman Mike’s feathery touch, she removes her sleeping mask and promptly sits up in the backseat of the car. By doing so, Abernathy affirms that her body is not for voyeuristic consumption and defies becoming a symbol of exhibitionistic exploitation. Consequently, Abernathy leaves the comfort of the backseat to sit on the hood of the car and put on a pair of cowboy boots. She then directs a grimace toward Stuntman Mike’s car as it screeches off. Later, Abernathy, as Julia’s symbolic doppelganger, will perform her best interpretation of Nancy Sinatra’s pop ditty “These Boots Were Made for Walking” (1966) by delivering a skull-­busting axe kick to Stuntman Mike’s head as he lies semiconscious on an asphalt roadway. With Abernathy, Death Proof tries to compensate for the savage and visually fragmented construction and destruction of Jungle Julia by having Stuntman Mike pay for his unwanted foot fondling (and by implication Julia’s and her friends’ murders) with a death blow to his head enacted by the very objects of the film’s fetishistic construction, the leg[s] and feet of a woman. Although the second half of Death Proof clearly draws on and critiques, vis-­à-­vis Abernathy, the earlier objectification of Julia, this segment of the film primarily revolves around the interracial camaraderie between Kim Mathis (Tracie Thoms) and Zoë (Zoë Bell), and their friendship highlights the racial import of Death Proof. Certainly, the real-­time daredevil stunts, death-­defying driving sequences, and chase scenes are central to the second half of the film. Much of the excitement in Death Proof involves watching Stuntman Mike use his black 1969 Dodge Charger to repeatedly sideswipe a classic 1970 white Dodge Challenger while real-­life stuntwoman Zoë Bell hugs the hood for dear life. However, the deeper tension stems from how race drives the

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Abernathy (Rosario Dawson) wearing her “killer” boots in Death Proof.

action alongside the captivating car chase. Admittedly, the exaggerated schoolgirl rapport between Kim and Zoë feels particularly forced, most likely a function of Zoë Bell’s limited acting chops and Traci Thoms’ overly animated delivery. Despite the artificiality between the women, their exchanges unmistakably articulate racial overtones. For example, white privilege and American history are invoked when Zoë pleads to Kim, “while I’m here [in America], I’ll be your back-­cracking slave,” after Kim balks at driving with Zoë perched on the hood of the car to fulfill her desire to perform this type of stunt. Zoë continues, imploring Kim, “Whenever you want it, you’ve got it. You don’t even have to ask for it. You just order me to do it, just be like, ‘Bitch get over here and get busy.’” Zoë’s odd proposal plays as a crude race reversal, whereby a white woman will be a black woman’s slave. It also invokes the harrowing history of American slavery as well as deploying the turnaround-­is-­fair-­play racial mechanics that Tarantino is notable for utilizing when race is the topic. Against this racially charged setup, Kim literally and ideologically occupies the driver’s seat for the remainder of the film. Later, after Kim accepts Zoë’s proposition to be her stunt driver, Zoë jubilantly yells, “Faster, you black bitch! Faster!” With this joyful exclamation, a dangerous trick is transformed from a harrowing stunt into a racialized joyride with the image of a black woman driving a white car with a white woman splayed across the hood. Eventually, Stuntman Mike falls in behind the women and begins rear-­ending their car while Zoë frantically clings to the hood. With Stuntman Mike’s reappearance, the destructive sexual objectification he symbolized earlier in the film fully resurfaces. Yet Kim’s skill behind

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Kim (Tracie Thoms) contemplates what life would be like if Zoë (Zoë Bell) was her slave in Death Proof.

the wheel matches Stuntman Mike’s destructive force, and the women he just terrorized chase him down and turn the tables. In Death Proof a vengeful black woman returns the white male gaze as a masculine expression of female sexual and political energies. Kim certainly fits that ideological bill with her symbolic sodomizing of Stuntman Mike.25 As Kim rear-­ends Stuntman Mike’s Charger with her car, she exclaims, “Oh, don’t like it up the ass, do you, you redneck lunatic bastard? . . . Oh yeah, gonna bust a nut up in this bitch right now. Oh, I’m the horniest motherfucker on the road.” On one hand, a conventional reading of this sexually saturated dialogue is that it articulates (and confuses) a juvenile and obscene attack on white hegemonic masculinity as a form of female agency. On the other hand, the scene is also racially problematic by offering a stock representation of black femininity as vulgarly hypersexual and, oddly enough, masculine, a stigma foreshadowed earlier by Pam (Rose McGowan), the blonde at the bar in the first half of the film, when she snidely remarks to Stuntman Mike about Jungle Julia, “Sorry, I’m built like a girl, not a black man.”26 Accordingly, the masculine makeover of black femininity implicit in Pam’s comment is made explicit by Kim’s tirade likening herself to a punishing phallic symbol as she repeatedly revs her car engine and rams Mike’s car from behind. Kim’s symbolic sodomy of Stuntman Mike is a clumsy, crude, and lopsided articulation of black female agency when contrasted to the Beatrix Kiddo character in KB:V2 who shoulders both the role of vicious killer and loving mother, or when compared to Jackie in Jackie Brown, a film that methodically builds on the double burden of gender and race for black women. Despite these limitations, Death Proof is

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most ideologically surefooted when it asserts that the white male gaze is habitually a perverted and totalizing point of view.27 Not only does Stuntman Mike embody this theme, so do all white men in general, if the film is to be believed. For example, a sore spot amongst all the female characters in the film is the ulterior motives of the men they are intimate with. Early in Death Proof, Julia, Arlene, and Shanna critique their boyfriends, compare notes about them, and debate if any men should accompany them to the lake house during their weekend getaway. Shanna also jokingly comments about her father’s proclivity to show up at the lake house when his daughter’s girlfriends are sporting bikinis. Later their male companions prove they are no less predatory, duplicitous, and dishonest than Stuntman Mike, who is clearly marked as a sexual degenerate. Dov (Eli Roth) and Omar (Michael Bacall) conspire to get Julia, Arlene, and Shanna drunk in order to make them more malleable, at the least, and possibly oblivious, at the worst, to their sexual advances. Clearly, in Death Proof white men are constructed as problematic, bothersome, and devious, and even fathers are leering old men on the prowl. The second act of Death Proof is no more sympathetic to white males than the first. For example, when Zoë, Kim, Abernathy, and Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) show-­up at the backwoods residence of Jasper (Jonathan Loughran) to test-­drive the pristine 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T car he is selling, Jasper greets them with “What do you horny gals want?” He only agrees to permit an unaccompanied test-­drive after incorrectly assuming the girls are there filming a porno movie. Abernathy plays along with the falsehood and suggests he “talk” to Lee about it while she and her friends test-­drive the car. The scene concludes with

Zoë takes a ride while Kim drives fast in Death Proof.

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a final shot of Jasper standing in front of Lee, who is semi-­slouched in a chair having just awakened from a nap, as he delivers a raspy piglike chortle. The nature of this scene is quite disturbing, as it suggests an impending sexual assault. Arguably, it is only surpassed by the “creep quotient” of Stuntman Mike (or quite possibly by Tarantino’s excessive fixation on Julia’s legs and feet along with Arlene’s pouty lips and flush behind). Jasper’s “friendly greeting” and loutish behavior toward Lee unambiguously signal that the sexualization of young women in threatening pornographic terms is so run-­of-­the-­mill that it manifests as an affable greeting to make when meeting a woman for the first time. Ultimately, white men in Death Proof are presented as phobic, hostile, and sexually deviate, a point underscored with the campy song “Hang Up the Chick Habit” playing over the end credits, which admonishes predatory men to end their obsession with women.28 Clearly, the Kill Bill films and Death Proof fashion a revenge motif for three compelling versions of women as warrior heroines. While race is a meaningful element in these films, it is not overtly telegraphed. Nevertheless, the films mine racial anxieties by posing unpractical and unreasonable visions of black reprisal: the hyperaggressiveness of Vernita Green when she confronts Beatrix Kiddo in KB:V1, and Kim’s articulation of black bravado in Death Proof. Kim accepts a white woman as her willing slave, takes Zoë’s jacket to wear for herself, and then refuses to part with any of her own clothing articles (her belt) in the face of Zoë’s request. In the end, the racial politics expressed by Kim in Death Proof do more to demonstrate how the film suffers from a Tou­ rette’s syndrome–­like racial aesthetic, whereby the n-­word, derogatory remarks, phallic symbolism, and racial non sequiturs all seem to haphazardly pop up throughout the film. When these racial intrusions are taken individually, at best they appear idiosyncratic. At worst, they reveal a film that is unsure about its use of the racial repartee so effectively on display in Jackie Brown. The dialogue feels forced and sounds affected, and the black characters function as disjointed textual elements. In the end, Death Proof proves the limitations of Tarantino’s ability to make a superior film from a genre known for manufacturing mediocre movies. Tarantino’s next two films would ditch the cinematic preening and meandering filmic self-­indulgence that the Kill Bill films and Death Proof offer. In these films, race once again takes center stage, with Inglourious Basterds (2009) as alternative-­ history fantasy and Django Unchained (2012) as a Gothic horror film.

Chapter 4

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained

What shall the history books read? —­Hans Landa, Inglourious Basterds

I’m here to tell you, that however bad things get in the movie, a lot worse shit actually happened. —­Q uentin Tarantino, commenting on Django Unchained

The Hollywood war film is a staple in American pop culture, reflecting the extent to which war has become, in the Orwellian sense, a permanent fixture in the perpetuation of American geopolitical interests. Countless films have projected the battle cry of war onto the silver screen, and any attempt to enumerate these films and their unique elements would be an encyclopedic endeavor, at the least. What all war films do have in common is that they make a political statement, and in this sense Inglourious Basterds (2009) makes good on that truism. However, deciding just what political statement the film makes depends on what type of war film Inglourious Basterds is in the first place. Besides being one of the most off-­kilter of all of Tarantino’s movies to date, Inglourious Basterds is a cinematic Rorschach test that invites critics and audiences to come to various and sometimes conflicting conclusions about the film. As a war film, Inglourious Basterds easily invites twisted comparisons to films like The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967), Kelly’s Heroes (Brian G. Hutton, 1970), Force 10 from Navarone (Guy Hamilton, 1978), Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998), and The Monuments Men (George Clooney, 2014). Like Inglourious Bas­ terds, these films base their narratives around a motely crew of unlikely characters corralled together to accomplish some virtually impossible goal while killing numerous Nazis along the way. As a satire, Basterds

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is similar in tone and style to the satirical good guys and twisted villains found in films like Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), Dr. Strange­ love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964), Catch-­22 (Mike Nichols, 1970), and M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970). In particular, the eerie Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), with his excessive, calculating intelligence, strikes a chord similar to the charismatically villainous Nazi colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) of In­ glourious Basterds. With regards to its treatment of history, Inglourious Basterds spurred a war of words over Tarantino’s aesthetic responsibility (or lack thereof) for thoughtfully balancing the tension between history and poetic license: the film has Adolf Hitler and his top officials mowed down by machine guns.1 In other words, Inglourious Basterds takes place in an alternate reality, an extremely disconcerting and perplexing choice for a film concerning Nazism, Hitler, and the Jewish Holocaust. John Reider makes this observation about the unconventional chronology found in Inglourious Basterds: The entrance of altered history into the narrative’s generic mix comes in the form of a surprise ending: the story’s departure from its apparently realist (if not very realistic or plausible) World War II setting to an entirely different fictional world where Hitler, Goebbles, and Goering died in a theatre in Paris. . . . The move into altered history is the move that enables the climatic revenge fantasy itself to succeed. And that is all it does. The tropes of altered history in classic examples such as Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) or Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Lucky Strike” (1984) involve tracing the complex and profound ramifications of a localized change in the fabric of ­history . . .2

Of considerable note is that Philip K. Dick is one of America’s premier science fiction writers and The Man in the High Castle (1962) is an alternate history novel concerning Nazi Germany. Correspondingly, Inglourious Basterds is more than ahistorical; it presents something more akin to an alternative world that exists in a parallel universe. In fact, this alternative-­world sensibility is signaled even in the film’s title by the misspellings—­or more fittingly, “alternate” spellings—­of the words “inglorious” (“inglourious”) and “bastards” (“basterds”). Although admittedly a contentious proposition, I believe the film is best categorized as a form of science-­fiction fantasy, because Inglourious Basterds

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constructs an entirely new history with its alternate World War II historical timeline.3 Within the genre of science fiction, history can be fluid, speculative, and flexible, all elements at play in Inglourious Basterds. Furthermore, in science fiction related genres like the superhero comic book and graphic novel, alternate realities and parallel or divergent universes are common tropes in which revered historical events are given unconventional outcomes. Certainly, DC Comics has used the trope of the multiverse as a means to explore and write alternate versions of character histories and events without contradicting the continuity of other narratives. A few standout examples of this “what if” alternative reality trope are Watchmen (Alan Moore, 1986), which has the U.S. winning the Vietnam War; Ex Machina (Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, 2004), a sci-­fi graphic novel meets political drama where one of the Twin Towers remains standing; to a lesser extent, the film Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011); and my favorite episode from the original television series Star Trek (1966–­1969), “Mirror, Mirror,” whereby a transporter malfunction delivers Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to an alternate universe where Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) has a goatee. Not only is the notion of an alternate universe a cornerstone of the science-­ fiction genre, Hitleresque figures frequently appear who symbolize evil incarnate, a convention periodically used in the original Twilight Zone television series (1959–­1964), the long running British show Doctor Who (1963–­to date), several episodes of the original Star Trek television series, sci-­fi schlock like They Saved Hitler’s Brain (various, 1969), the original Star Wars films (George Lucas, 1977, 1980, and 1983), and the sci-­fi thriller The Boys from Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978) in which multiple Hitler clones are created.4 Inglourious Basterds is not an attempt at historical fiction, since the film clearly exists beyond the threshold of plausibility. Rather, In­ glourious Basterds fully exploits the considerable leeway allowed in science fiction for (re)presenting various historical figures and historical events; and, like virtually all science fiction, whether good, bad, or mediocre, the film indulges in metaphoric rhetoric and imagery to examine some current ethical dilemma by means of social or political allegory.5 Inglourious Basterds is less about World War II and more about critically deconstructing the political pathology of racial violence.6 The result is a film that is not merely an outlandish war movie: it is also an elaborate ideological set piece for exploring the perversity of discrimination as belief and behavior, as corrupted and corrupting,

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by institution and individual. In this sense, Inglourious Basterds ostentatiously calls attention to the destructive madness of racism and invests considerable visual energy signaling the pathology of racism by rendering various characters that populate the film in a distorted and almost cartoonish fashion. Inglourious Basterds is not interested in replicating the Nazi regime through a docudrama aesthetic; its rejection of this style is clearly recognizable with the Nazi officer nicknamed the “Jew Hunter.” The gut-­wrenching opening of the film introduces the nefarious “Jew Hunter,” Colonel Hans Landa, and signals the type of visual rhetoric the film will continue to employ to convey the grotesque dimensions of subjugation. Colonel Landa arrives in the picturesque French countryside to interrogate the dairy farmer LaPadite (Denis Menochet) concerning the whereabouts of a Jewish family Landa is trying to locate. It quickly becomes apparent that Landa is aware that the family is hiding under the floorboards of the farmer’s cottage and that he has horrible intentions for them, yet the farmer and Landa initially trade poker faces as they sit at the table. Their conversational confrontation plays out as a suspenseful and excruciatingly somber real-­time exchange until Landa unveils a smoker’s pipe of obscene proportions. Like a sight gag from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Landa’s pipe visually disrupts the foreboding tension of the scene.7 On one hand, the disproportionately sized smoker’s pipe functions as a visual prop that shatters the solemn atmosphere the scene has diligently created. On the other hand, Landa’s Sherlock Holmes–­like pipe overtly calls attention to a defining element of institutional subjugation—­spectacle.8 As a film, Inglourious Basterds is most accomplished and artistic in deploying visual metaphors to convey the pathology of racism. Landa’s flamboyant pipe signifies the type of exaggerated, excessive, and narcissistic displays of spectacle employed by all oppressive and totalitarian regimes and institutions—­and by their agents of repression—­to manufacture an intimidating aura of superiority. Later in the film this same point is restated by showing Hitler as a peevish dandy sitting for a literally larger-­than-­life mural portrait. However, in the world of Inglourious Basterds even the protagonists are warped. For example, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is a caricature, a twisted take on the larger-­than-­life filmic figure of the American military man in the style of John Wayne in the The Green Berets (various, 1968) or George C. Scott in Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970). Lieutenant Raine, the leader of a Jewish American assassination squad sent be-

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The outlandish pipe of Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) signals the grotesque dimensions of subjugation in Inglourious Basterds.

hind German lines to kill Nazis, delivers inspiring speeches to his men with an exaggerated vocal delivery reminiscent of Looney Toons’ Foghorn Leghorn. Furthermore, he admonishes the men on his team to scalp hundreds of Nazi soldiers to strike fear in the enemy, and he relishes his ability to carve near-­perfect swastikas into the foreheads of his enemies with his oversized Bowie knife. Given that in the alternate world of Inglourious Basterds the final atrocities of the Holocaust are averted with the murder of Adolf Hitler and virtually his entire cadre of high-­level Nazi henchman, the metaphoric setup becomes increasingly clear. Extreme conditions require extreme responses, and heroic figures are constructed in proportion to the grotesque articulations of abominable inhumanity epitomized by the various Nazi officers presented in the film. Without doubt, the annihilating impulse of racism is represented by showing Landa ordering the soldiers under his command to execute the Jewish family hidden under the dairy farmer’s floorboards. But Inglourious Basterds is not content to just fixate on Nazism: the film also indicts American racism by optically invoking the striking imagery of The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), a classic American film with widely acknowledged racist overtones.9 In The Searchers, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), an ex-­Confederate soldier, learns that his niece, Debbie (Natalie Wood), was captured by Comanche Indians and vows to bring her back. As he labors to find her, his hatred of Native Americans mounts and his anxiety that his niece has assimilated with the Comanche people grows; it becomes increasingly uncertain whether Ethan intends to save Debbie or kill her. The Searchers concludes with a stunning image of Edwards ending his five-­year quest by delivering Debbie to the doorstep of her father’s (his

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brother’s) home, his lone figure silhouetted against a bright and empty landscape. Inglourious Basterds restages this iconic conclusion from The Searchers, except that the point of view is from inside LaPadite’s cottage and the doorway frames the fleeing figure of Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a young girl running in terror across a picturesque knoll as she barely escapes the death sentence just meted out to her family. Visually, the scene functions as a brilliant optic reversal of The Searchers and transcodes the “redemptive” racism of Ethan with the virulent racism of Landa by substituting the triumphant homecoming of Ethan’s adolescent niece with a fleeing teenage Shoshanna. The subversive mirroring of The Searchers is not the only visual scheme implemented in Inglourious Basterds to underscore the racial import that Shoshanna represents. In The Searchers racial miscegenation is a potential death sentence for Debbie, a young white woman. Inglourious Basterds further inverts The Searchers by presenting interracial intimacy between Shoshanna as an adult woman and her theater projectionist Marcel (Jacky Ido), a black man. Although they are involved in a clandestine relationship, it is a loving one that in due course functions as a basis for righteous retribution. Their pair-­bonding is pivotal in bringing to bear Shoshanna’s plan to incinerate Hitler and the Nazi high command during the premier of a highly anticipated German propaganda film: Marcel must lock the exits of the theater and set it ablaze. Besides the figure of a victimized Jew, Shoshanna also stands proxy for a variety of other oppressed groups. For example, when she is shown applying Indian war paint to her face during the climactic fire, she signifies Native Americans. When she fends off the repeated unwanted romantic advances of a Nazi war hero, she symbolizes sexually harassed women. In addition, her intimate relationship with a black man signals her alliance with blackness, a marginalized presence and discredited identity in the film. With these visual cues Shoshanna subversively demonstrates how Inglourious Basterds operates on several ideological levels. But Shoshanna is not just a conflated symbol of oppression; she also conveys the power of the oppressed to enact retribution. Before Marcel is cued to light a pile of highly flammable nitrate film stock, guaranteed to set the entire theater aflame in a short time, the image of Shoshanna’s head is projected onto the screen. Shoshanna’s disembodied “Giant Face” declares, “I have a message for Germany. That you are all going

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Shoshanna’s lover and theater projectionist Marcel (Jacky Ido) in Inglourious Basterds.

to die, and I want you to look deep into the face of the Jew who is going to do it . . .” She then ominously cackles over the death scene as Hitler, his various high level henchmen, and other Nazi supporters are burned alive and later riddled with bullets by two members of the Basterd team. The visual pyrotechnics Tarantino skillfully deploys to create such a disturbing death scene clearly challenge conventional film aesthetics concerning the display of World War II Jewishness beyond the genocidal destruction and victimization of German Jews at the hands of Nazis.10 The image of Shoshanna’s head projected continuously onto the screen as the fire consumes everyone in a hellish conflagration remains in the mind’s eye long after the film is over, a stubborn reminder of the disruptive power of film.11 Even after the screen has burned away, Shoshanna’s giant face appears hovering in the air on wafts of billowing smoke. Although the last image of Shoshanna is visually similar to the disembodied head of the magician in the Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), the visceral effect of Shoshanna’s uncanny spectral image is unnerving and strange. In this regard, the image recalls the gigantic flying stone-­godhead from the cult sci-­fi film Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974), in which a menacing figure makes ominous declarations about death and spews guns and ammunition from its mouth. Ultimately, Shoshanna brazenly rejects representation as a tragic Jewish figure and creates a chilling image of revenge. She also signifies the radical confrontation and destruction of institutional sources of oppression: by loving a black man and refuting the notion of miscegenation, by becoming a symbolic Native American warrior, and by confronting and destroying the Nazi who sexually harassed her. As visually self-­conscious, cathartic, and racially subversive as In­

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glourious Basterds is in deploying various semiotics concerning race, the film also deploys discursive strategies to critique racism, particularly as it pertains to American race relations. The first discursive example involves a scene where Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) is dining with a cadre of sycophants and pontificating on the racial politics of American sports. Goebbels comments, “It’s only the offspring of slaves that allows America to be competitive athletically. American Olympic gold can be measured in Negro sweat.” Goebbels’ passing remarks about black folks’ sweat equity in American sports is a telegraphed reference to Jesse Owens’ gold medal success at the 1936 Berlin Olympics that undermined Nazi propaganda about the superiority of an Aryan master race. Moreover, these filmic comments draw attention to and speak to a broader racial discourse that advocates a crude biological determinism that reductively translates black racial identity to that of “the athlete” or casts blacks as dupes of the sports industry.12 Consequently, Goebbels’ superficial comments about black folks’ sweat equity accentuate the nagging issue of race in America. A subsequent scene further underscores how Inglourious Basterds engages not just Nazi subjugation but also American racial oppression. The scene takes place at a tavern table where several members of the “Basterds,” disguised as Nazi officers, are seated. Before the “Basterds” can leave the pub with their clandestine contact, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), an SS Officer (August Diehl) invites himself to sit with them. At the overbearing insistence of Officer Hellstrom all five begin playing a card-­game version of charades in which participants deduce, through a series of clues, the name of a famous person written on a piece of paper stuck on their foreheads. Certainly, the “uninvited table guest” dilemma is a clever way to ratchet up the tension for the audience as the “Basterds” struggle to stay in character as Nazi officers in the midst of real Nazi soldiers. However, the opening round of the guessing game also serves as a subversive commentary on the cultural politics of American race relations in a setting far removed from the United States. The conversation proceeds as follows: Major Dieter Hellstrom: Now, gentlemen, around this time you could ask whether you’re real or fictitious. I, however, think that’s too easy, so I wont ask that yet. Okay, my native land is the jungle. I visited America, but the visit was not fortuitous to me, but the implication is that it was to somebody else. When I went from the jungle to America, did I go by boat?

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Bridget von Hammersmark: Yes. Major Dieter Hellstrom: Did I go against my will? Bridget von Hammersmark: Yes. Major Dieter Hellstrom: On this boat ride, was I in chains? Bridget von Hammersmark: Yes. Major Dieter Hellstrom: When I arrived in America, was I displayed in chains? Bridget von Hammersmark: Yes! Major Dieter Hellstrom: Am I the story of the Negro in America? Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki: No. Major Dieter Hellstrom: Well, then, I must be King Kong.

Film essayist William Brown accurately notes what the game ideologically articulates in Inglourious Basterds: In guessing that he has been given King Kong, Hellstrom recasts the story as being an allegory of slavery in the USA. Carried across the ocean in chains, where white Americans use the “savage” King Kong for profit, Hellstrom’s reading of King Kong as allegorical of the slave experience in the USA also reminds us of the ideological nature of cinema: cinema does not just tell us entertaining stories, but these stories also have “hidden” meanings, that, in the case of King Kong, ­reveal the capitalist and racist ideology of the United States.13

Hence, Hellstrom’s accurate assessment of his celebrity identity within the context of the game articulates a striking racial allegory that also derives its racial resonance from a long history of equating blacks as subhuman and simian in appearance and behavior.14 Within the context of Inglourious Basterds, the reference to King Kong does double duty as racial analogy and as an analogy. The racial subtext of the King Kong film franchise (1933, 1976, and 2005)—­and that of other ape-­centric films like the Planet of the Apes film cycle—­has been thoroughly deconstructed for its allegorical reimagining of American race relations, sexual politics, and the popular articulation of African Americans as animalistic, primitive, and, ultimately, a threat to American culture, law, and order.15 Consequently, the comments in Inglourious Basterds concerning King Kong as a whole articulate and represent allegorical meaning that operates beyond the strict narrative and plot devices employed to deliver a thrilling

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moment of comic relief in a fictional film about Word War II. Certainly, Inglourious Basterds is toying with the historical relationship between film and violence and with the inversion of historical terror whereby German Nazis are burned to death instead of German Jews during the Holocaust.16 Nonetheless, Inglourious Basterds has ideological meaning(s) culled from a range of variegated racial references. In this case, the iconic image of a giant ape dragged out of the jungle and placed in chains for economic exploitation and the entertainment of whites easily dovetails with the reality of the U.S. slave trade, whereby captivity and enslavement are fundamental experiences that inform black racial formation in America. In this regard, the “hidden” meaning of Inglourious Basterds suggests the pathology of German Nazism is the ideological cousin to American racism. Although films like the George Lucas–­produced Red Tails (Anthony Hemingway, 2012) and Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna (2008) appear to be leading contenders as contemporary examples of antiracist films that tackle World War II–­era racial prejudice, these films are less about making a compelling critique of institutional racism and more focused on establishing the dignity of black folk in a discriminatory environment. To this point, Red Tails and Miracle at St. Anna are racial underdog narratives with a Horatio Alger twist, much like conventional Hollywood race-­message movies of the past such as Home of the Brave (Mark Robson, 1949), A Soldier’s Story (Norman Jewison, 1984), Men of Honor (George Tillman Jr., 2000), and Antwone Fisher (Denzel Washington, 2002). These films are unlike Inglorious Basterds, which signals destruction as a remedy for racism, a point brazenly presented with the death of a theater full of a fascist and racist audience members.17 Rather, these race-­message movies express strong assimilationist impulses that end with lasting images of triumphant black achievement in the face of white racism, instead of focusing on the destruction of the institutions that are the source of disenfranchisement. In this sense, In­ glourious Basterds compels inclusion within the ranks of radical antiracist films that filmically destroy the source of racism, either literally, as in Ivan Dixon’s militant The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973); hyperbolically, as in the racial satire Putney Swope (Robert Downey, Sr., 1969); metaphorically, as in Samuel Fuller’s White Dog (1982); or optically, as in Scott McGehee’s and David Siegel’s psychological horror film Suture (1993). Most important, as an antiracist film, Inglourious Basterds stakes out critical ideological territory by rejecting the Hollywood impulse to rehabilitate white racists and to give the impression

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 103

that racism is a personal issue, such as the jerry-­rigged racial ideology found in films like American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998) and Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004) that make racism an individual’s choice, driven by ignorance or situational circumstances, respectively. In American History X a committed neo-­Nazi forsakes his racism after encountering a nice black man in prison, and Crash shows a racist white LAPD officer transformed after pulling a black woman out of her wrecked car before it explodes, an act of heroism that is designed to negate the emotional trauma he inflicted on her when he sexually molested her weeks earlier under the pretense of a pat-­down. Inglourious Basterds stands in sharp contrast to these mealy-­mouthed attempts to recuperate white racists. The conclusion of Inglourious Basterds delivers a powerful message that racism can be made invisible, and that advocates of white supremacy like Hans Landa are not only indiscernible but can accrue political power, social acceptance, privilege, status, and real material gain in America.18 This point is clearly signaled when Landa brokers a deal with Allied military elites absolving all his crimes; he is promised U.S. citizenship and secures assurances for his financial security once he is relocated to America. Landa is on the verge of parlaying his participation in a racist system to his benefit, in and out of the Nazi party, until Lt. Aldo Raine intervenes in the Faustian deal. Raine caves in to his compulsion to carve swastikas on the foreheads of captured Nazis, and in graphic detail he engraves a swastika on Landa’s forehead with his bowie knife. Permanently scarred, Landa remains marked as a racist, and his ability to effortlessly assimilate into the American backdrop as a modestly wealthy and upstanding citizen is ruined. Inglourious Basterds refuses to allow Landa to disappear into American society as a recuperated racist, an unconventional ending by Hollywood standards. Admittedly, Inglourious Basterds did play to conventional box-­office wisdom and courted critical acceptance by mutilating Nazis and cinematically slaying Adolf Hitler, one of the most detested figures in modern history.19 Not surprisingly, Inglourious Basterds was successful financially and garnered multiple Oscar nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, despite depictions of extreme violence and grisly visuals such as scalps ripped off of dead Nazi soldiers, the bloodied skull tops of several Nazi soldiers strewn amongst leaves like human litter, bullet-­ridden Nazis convulsing in a manner similar to the notable death scene at the end of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and the morbid bashing of a Nazi officer’s skull with a bat. Other simi-

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larly radical antiracist films such as White Dog, a film about a canine trained to savagely attack and kill black people at sight, and The Spook Who Sat by the Door, which ends with images of America on fire, not only evaded commercial success and critical accolades but were actually suppressed from public viewing.20 Inglourious Basterds, with its wanton destruction of numerous Nazis, signaled that revenge by the oppressed was just, either as institutional destruction or permanent condemnation (e.g., Landa with a swastika carved into his forehead). Despite the successful execution of the revenge motif in Inglourious Basterds, a motif previously established in the Kill Bill films, racial revenge in Tarantino’s next film would prove more problematic. Django Unchained (2012) explicitly tackles antebellum slavery in America. Without a doubt one of the most enduring shibboleths of American racism is the enslavement of black folk, a cornerstone of American history, politics, economics, and culture. Typically, at best Hollywood films have advanced a rather trite view of black enslavement; at worst the films are racist masterpieces like Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a film that not only presented the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, but also provided Hollywood with the “appropriate” film grammar for the modern movie. Following Birth of a Nation, subsequent Hollywood films were guilty of imagining Southern slavery as socially benign, with nearly an entire Hollywood genre built on this ideological conceit. Film scholar Ed Guerrero judiciously captures this racial dynamic: [T]he film industry began to conceptualize and produce the “Old South” as an escapist vehicle, a panacea for depression-­era anxieties . . . During Hollywood’s classic period (1930 to 1945), there was hardly a plantation film made that did not contain some sort of sentimentalized musical interlude performed by devoted slaves on the plantation or the black slaves of the postbellum years . . . In most of these films, if blacks labored at all, they did so while singing happily; thus music masked or softened the historical reality of black folks’ stolen labor; along with the parasitism of the master class. Plantation life was reproduced in romantic, nostalgic scenes of splendorous wealth, clichés such as white-­columned porticos, mint juleps, and white ladies in lavish formal gowns . . . Nowhere do these slave masters give much attention to what must have been a very demanding business—­the punishment, torture, and exploitation involved in the day-­to-­day affairs of running a slave system.21

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 105

Films like Gone With the Wind (1939) and Song of the South (Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson, 1946) stand as paradigmatic texts for mythologizing America’s institution in their portrayals of blacks as gratified slaves and whites as benevolent slave masters. But this type of one-­ sided rendering of historical racial tensions is not unique to African Americans. I would argue that Native American representation has experienced the most one-­dimensional interpretations throughout the history of American cinema. Without question, a multitude of westerns that explored the lives, times, tragedies, and triumphs of white frontierism litter the American filmscape at the expense of Native Americans. In contrast to the established history of Hollywood films advancing trite and racist presentations of black enslavement, a wave of militant black slave films did crop up during the high tide of Blaxploitation films in the 1970s, having appropriated the last vestiges of political verve from a waning Black Power movement. Films such as Slaves (Herbert Biberman, 1969), The Legend of Nigger Charley (Martin Goldman, 1972), The Soul of Nigger Charley (Larry Spangler, 1973), Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975), Drum (Steve Carver, 1976), and The Slavers (Larry Kent, 1977) transformed Black Power threats of an impending black revolution into film clichés of abhorrent enslavement, vengeful violence against whites, and gratuitous scenes of interracial sexual intercourse.22 The low point of this aesthetic makeover is the practically unwatchable Goodbye Uncle Tom (Gualtiero Jacopetti, 1971), a gonzo, exploitative slave film of unmatched luridness. Goodbye Uncle Tom ostensibly chronicles the epic dehumanization of enslaved Africans as they make their way from the African continent to the antebellum South. In reality, however, the film itself is a virtual exercise in enslavement, given that the Italian film crew shot the film in Haiti under the approval of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, one of the Caribbean’s most despicable dictators. Most surprising, the most provocative aspect of Goodbye Uncle Tom is not the gratuitous nudity or spectacles of torture but the use of science fiction to jumpstart the narrative: a time machine appears to transport present-­day “documentarians” to the past in order to record atrocities and interview various agents of black enslavement. Unfortunately, the fully restored film print of Goodbye Uncle Tom is a pornographic smorgasbord of sick and sickening imagery where poor Haitian peasants are given the worst possible direction in recreating nauseatingly vivid representation of racial oppression as a Technicolor spectacle. The most mainstream and successful challenge in American

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pop culture to such propagandistic examples of black enslavement is Roots (1977), a 1970s television miniseries about American slavery. Roots recast the epic plantation film that was Hollywood’s vision of slavery as a narrative about reluctant immigrants. Although the indignities of subjugation are included in particular installments of the saga, the overarching tone of the groundbreaking miniseries is saccharine. It is a story predominantly about blacks on a quest for dignity, a perspective still present in many of the recent Hollywood films that tackle the topic of racial discrimination. By the early 1980s, the militant Black Power politics of the late 1960s had waned, and not surprisingly, so had the overly formulaic Blaxploitation film fad of the 1970s. As a result, filmic representations of American black enslavement virtually disappeared, only to periodically crop up in historicized film interpretations such as Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989), Amistad (Steven Spielberg, 1997), the bizarre Ill Gotten Gains (Joel B. Marsden, 1997), and Beloved (Jonathan Demme, 1998). Interestingly, science fiction tropes are used in several films that address African American enslavement. In science fiction films, the legacy of black enslavement and its attendant cultural anxieties are experienced as racial, political, and social allegories and as aesthetic disavowals all collapsed into a singular dreamscape of visual spectacle, as seen in the original Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968), The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles, 1984), Brother Future (Roy Campanella II, 1991), Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Alien Nation (Graham Baker, 1988), and The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999).23 Most important, the science fiction staging of black enslavement clearly indicates that filmic representations of African American enslavement are remarkably malleable, a viewpoint also embodied in Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Fittingly, much has been made of Django Unchained as a black spaghetti western that fashions its cowboy style out of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Sergio Corbucci’s original Django (1966). Django Unchained draws its racial swagger from a collage of dubiously titled films like Boss Nigger (Jack Arnold, 1975) and Mandingo (1975).24 Although considerable signifiers of the western are present in Django Unchained, such as sweeping shots of men riding their horses against expansive vistas and cowboy campouts around a fire, the film is something altogether different. A closer and more rigorous examination reveals that Django Unchained is less al dente than first impressions suggest. In fact, the vocabulary of the Gothic is a significant presence in the film, even

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 107

though upon first glance Gothic tropes appear to be at extreme odds with the self-­proclaimed spaghetti western aesthetic pushed by the director and credulously accepted by critics.25 But with Django Un­ chained, the sightlines for viewing an Italian subgenre of the western as a statement about black enslavement are obscured. The film clearly has more in common with the Gothic horror aesthetic found in films like The Beguiled (Don Siegel, 1971), Beloved (1998), and The Skeleton Key (Iain Softley, 2005) than any spaghetti western. To this point, Django Unchained begins with a conventional Gothic motif, a man metamorphosing in the deep dark of night. The staging for this transformation occurs after several shackled black male slaves are shown marching barefoot across blistering, sun-­scorched terrain as two white slave traders on horseback escort them, until nightfall when they eventually reach a dark, wind-­chilled woodland. Their solemn trek under a moonless sky is interrupted by the appearance of a giant molar bobbing back and forth on top of a riding coach. The driver of the coach is Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a dentist cum bounty hunter who is looking to purchase a slave named Django to identify a trio of notorious sibling bandits called the Brittle Brothers. Earnest negotiations between Schultz and the two slave-­ drivers conclude abruptly when Schultz shoots one captor dead and the other’s horse in the head. As a result of his ruthless tactics, the mare collapses on the slave-­driver and crushes his leg. Schultz subsequently frees Django, who immediately flings a flimsy blanket from around his shoulders and emerges from the dark a transformed figure. The scene is extraordinarily eerie as Django sheds the trappings of enslavement yet literally remains scarred by it: a collage of whip marks on his back are distinctly visible. The scene becomes increasingly evocative of a horror film with the actions of the remaining shackled slaves. Like zombies from George A. Romero’s classic horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968), they trudge forward like the walking dead to kill the white slaver trapped underneath his horse. As they plod forward, their bondage chains rattle until they close in on the hapless man and shoot him in his head. This uncanny display of violent licentiousness foreshadows the Gothic excesses woven throughout the rest of the film, and Django Unchained doles out a liberal number of them: fanciful, ambivalent absurdity; fantastic displays of the grotesque; and perverse and diabolical exploits. The fanciful is first signaled in the style and speech of Dr. Schultz, a ruthless bounty hunter with aristocratic flair and magniloquent speech

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Django (Jamie Foxx) in full “Little Boy Blue” Gothic splendor in Django Unchained.

patterns. Arguably, the character is a symbolic nod to the image of the white abolitionist as an erudite social reformer of tastes and traditions somewhat distinct from American common folk. Yet, the full-­fledged expression of the fantastic registers when Django self-­consciously decides to don an electric “Blue Boy” Little Lord Fauntleroy costume to play the role of Schultz’s valet. This costume officially marks Django as mythic character, and as the narrative progresses he increasingly becomes a figure who exceeds the logic, rules, and requirements of realism and historical fact but who definitely meets the demands of a Gothic aesthetic. The imaginary—­or, more accurately, the Gothic—­status of Django is suggested not only by the absurdity of the valet costume but is also clearly signaled by the deployment of another classic Gothic device, a mirror to show a character is enchanted or cursed. The mirror effect is used when Django confronts one of the Brittle Brothers on the verge of whipping Little Jody (Sharon Pierre-­Louis), a young female slave tied to a tree with her back exposed. When Little Jody catches a glimpse of Django in a discarded full-­length mirror set to one side of the tree, his face and hands are “unnaturally” indiscernible. Only the Victorian costume casts a reflection. The effect, in that moment, works to destabilize Django as a human representation and places him in the realm of living myth, a specter of righteous retribution. He is able to intercede in the public torture of the innocent and as an enchanted figure, Django is imbued with the power to whip a white man and then subsequently shoot him to death without any white reprisals. Django Unchained employs superstitious elements only offered in the Gothic aesthetic, elements that are repeated with the figure of Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who appears as a ghost

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 109

to him, a specter that is not a mere memory or an image of longing.26 From this point forward the film fully embraces the other paradigmatic feature of the Gothic: fusing terror with laughter.27 This fusion makes Django a film of emotional effect rather than an accurate historical rendering. Case in point, the audaciously burlesque depiction of Klansmen squabbling over the size of the cutout eye holes of their homemade hoods (re)presents antebellum enslavement as the interplay of sadistic horror and absurdist comedy. The result is a perversely entertaining and comically grotesque interpretation of one of America’s most notorious racist organizations and staunchest supporters of racial hatred and violence against black folk. The Gothic effect is further evident as Django and Schultz embark on their epic journey into the Deep South to rescue the film’s maltreated heroine, Broomhilda. After Schultz and Django discover that Broomhilda was sold to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a plantation owner known for having the best bare-­knuckle fighting slaves, the pair decide to pose respectively as a buyer and a talent scout interested in purchasing slaves fit to fight to the death for entertainment. Under this elaborate ruse they also plan to purchase Broomhilda. But before they make good on their plan, Schultz and Django must meet the epitome of the Gothic villain in Calvin, a decadent aristocrat and the perfect picture of internal moral decay, intimated by the incestuous tone that he adopts whenever his widowed sister, Lara (Laura Cayouette), is present.28 Calvin is the harbinger of the many excruciating episodes of carnage and chilling displays of body horror experienced by various enslaved African American characters populating the film and witnessed by the audience. The first brutal set piece occurs shortly after the bounty

Django as a spirit of revenge (he casts a partial reflection) in Django Unchained.

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Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) as a spectral figure in Django Unchained.

hunting pair meet Calvin in an upstairs sitting room where two black male slaves are engaged in a bloody battle of fisticuffs to the death in front of a warm and inviting fireplace. With frightful aplomb Calvin provides the victor with a hammer to finish off the incapacitated fighter, completing the death scene. Although the historical reality of slave fights to the death as a form of white entertainment is more myth than reality, as a racial metaphor, however, the Mandingo fight perfectly articulates the fusion of dread and delight, abjection and desire that underscores the appetite for violence and erotic sadism that was black enslavement.29 The repulsive viciousness of American slavery is further symbolized when Calvin and various business subordinates caravan to the foreboding Candyland plantation. On their way to the plantation they encounter D’Artagnan (Ato Essandoh), a slave who was caught running away. He is perched in a tree begging for his life while slave catchers with leashed dogs surround him on the ground. D’Artagnan subsequently declares he no longer has the will to bludgeon other black men to death as a Mandingo fighter. In response, Calvin coaxes him down from the tree only to direct the slave trackers to unleash the dogs that spring on him and begin to rip at his flesh. The absurdist ambiance established earlier in the film with bungling Klansmen, anachronistic background rap music, and witty punch lines delivered by Django is shattered by the death shrieks of a black man clawed and bitten to death by dogs. When it comes to (re)presenting black enslavement as torturous and terrifying, Django Unchained is deadly serious. Only when the audience is introduced to Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), the faithful house slave, do the absurdist tendencies of the Gothic im-

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 111

pulse present in Django Unchained reemerge with results that are simultaneously sinister and an exercise in utter hilarity. When Schultz and Django eventually arrive at Candie’s Mississippi plantation mansion, they meet Stephen, Candie’s most loyal and trusted slave. Stephen is the consummate Uncle Tom, a derisive and colloquial title African Americans have used to define a black person who despises black people and acquiesces to the whims and wishes of whites for material gain and a sense of self-­worth. The animosity Stephen expresses toward Django as a free black man is brilliantly signaled by Stephen almost having an apoplectic fit upon seeing Django riding a horse onto Calvin’s plantation. Moreover, when Stephen and Django occupy the same cinematic frame, they symbolize, albeit reductively, an ongoing and strident ideological divide within black political discourse over whether accommodationism or militancy is the most effective approach toward gaining racial justice in America. However, the “sell-­out” racial politics Stephen symbolizes are more complex than the caricatured performance of Stephen’s front-­stage persona. Later, in an interesting reversal of power, the habitually servile Stephen is shown cavalierly sipping brandy while instructing his “master,” Calvin, that Schultz and Django are there to get Broomhilda. This pivot in power suggests that Stephen also epitomizes the sophisticated guile and misdirection needed for African Americans to survive enslavement and possibly outwit whites, for better and for worse. Deception as a survival mechanism of enslavement is further signaled in the climactic confrontation between Stephen and Django when Stephen abandons his walking cane, affected limp, and elderly

Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), the loyal slave in Django Unchained.

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A momentary reversal of power between Stephen and Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Django Unchained.

mannerism, stands straight, and walks over to the bottom of the staircase to show his contempt for Django, who is peering down at him. By shedding his veneer of feeble subservience, Stephen communicates that Django may think he is above him but he is not better than him. Despite these symbolic nods to the nuances of black agency in the most oppressive of contexts, Jackson’s performance as a faithful house slave makes him arguably the most loathsome figure in the film. It is a performance that straddles the line between method acting genius and reprehensible caricature. Ultimately, history will be the definitive judge as to which interpretation has the most merit. Of course attributing such a servile character to Samuel L. Jackson as an exceptional source is an absolutely specious critique. The prototype for Jackson’s debatable performance is Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, a film that provided the paradigmatic black caricatures (played by white actors in blackface) of the Uncle Tom, Mammy, Buck, and Coon characters for later generations of black actors to imitate or attempt to discredit.30 Although much has been made of Django Unchained as a unique examination of American enslavement in the form of a spaghetti western, rather the aesthetic excesses of the Gothic are employed to address the conventional horrors of black subjugation in antebellum America. The film is a Gothic text. How else are we to understand the considerable screen time given to such props as a slave’s skull used to deliver a soliloquy about phrenology at a dining room table, or to account for the scenes of Broomhilda pouring a full glass of water on the floor, then passing out and collapsing after seeing Django at Calvin’s plantation? Skulls and fainting heroines are staples in the Gothic production,

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and they play to true melodramatic affect in Django Unchained. Fred Botting maps numerous stock elements of the Gothic: In Gothic fiction certain stock features provide the principal embodiments and evocations of cultural anxieties. Tortuous, fragmented narratives relating mysterious incidents, horrible images and life-­ threatening pursuits predominate . . . Specters, monsters, demons, corpses, skeletons, evil aristocrats, monks and nuns, fainting heroines, and bandits populate Gothic landscapes as suggestive figures of imagined and realistic threats.31

Likewise, Django Unchained includes bandits, skeletons, evil aristocrats, specters, fainting heroines, faces that do not cast a reflection, corpse-­trading, and nocturnal transformations.32 Consequently, given the aforementioned aesthetic rubric, Django Unchained is quite consistent with the Gothic aesthetic in its wholesale use of various Gothic tropes, and it invites a rereading of the film as a Gothic production that frenetically articulates and signifies the ridiculous, absurd, sublime, and profoundly nightmarish conventions of life as an enslaved black in America. Django Unchained’s aesthetic approach is exceedingly radical when compared to various other films that have addressed America’s peculiar institution but which fail to lay bear how peculiar it actually was—­a sentiment embodied in Django Unchained in toto. For example, the films The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972) and The Soul of Nigger Charley (1973) focus on fugitive slaves fending off attacks from white authorities while catering to the ham-­fisted politics of Blaxploitation films. In Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974) and Boss Nigger black sheriffs “take over” racist small towns, a reversal of racial polarities of power. Within these films, enslavement is used as a historical platform to symbolize Black Power politics as both militant revolution and community control. In succeeding decades the overall impact of these representational valences around the depiction of African American enslavement in American cinema was a political mixed bag. Undoubtedly, the Hollywood films of the present that engage the institution of slavery have abandoned the “Old South” mythology of black enslavement as a former paradise. Nonetheless, films like Glory, Amistad, and Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012) tend to present only fleeting and episodic expressions of black agency against whites. Amistad and Lin­ coln in particular are invested in exploring the bureaucratic burden of black enslavement on notions of American democracy. Certainly, both

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The Gothic aesthetic on full display in Django Unchained.

film productions are more responsive to demystifying the “Old South” mythology with images and narratives that depict the mechanisms of American enslavement as violent and dehumanizing. Yet both films dwell primarily on the existential angst of America’s political elite as they try to reconcile the differences between what America espouses as its political ideals and what it actually practices concerning life, liberty, justice, and human dignity. In Amistad, the black protagonist’s climatic moment is a mangled declaration for freedom. In the epic Lin­ coln, a formerly enslaved house worker quickly glosses over the fact that she was beaten with a shovel as a child as she rushes to attend to the president; it appears as a verbal footnote in relationship to the grand discourse on American slavery that the film represents. For the most part, both films predominantly present black folk as dignified but silently suffering figures. Only 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013) is a serious testament to the mental and physical trauma of enslavement from the perspective of the racially oppressed. Similar to Django Unchained, the main character in 12 Years a Slave is on a quest to reunite with his family after being enslaved for more than a decade. But the tale told by Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a true adaptation of this harrowing portion of his life. Northup is a free man with a wife and two children living in New York. He works as a carpenter and musician until he is tricked, kidnapped, labeled a runaway slave under a false name, and sold into southern bondage. From here, the film explores the daily struggles of enslavement for black folk. At times poetically uncompromising, it visually logs the type of violent dehumanization of the body, mind, and spirit that enslavement entails. Despite the pitch-­perfect performance turned in by Ejiofor as a man

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 115

struggling to maintain hope, the film veers into uneven terrain in its portrayal of the punishment and discipline suffered by Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), a young female slave. Her repeated beatings and rape become a spectacle of depravity visited upon a black body meant to represent in toto the violence visited upon black bodies, from slave ship to public lynching. Moreover, the continuous unedited shots showing a black slave being beaten highlight the sadistic voyeurism that is inimical to 12 Years a Slave, and they invoke a cinema of cruelty that borders on horror and invites comparison to “torture porn.”33 Yet, despite the psychosexual depravity that is the currency of 12 Years a Slave, it is less a horror film than Django Unchained. Rather 12 Years a Slave relies more on the emotional valences of loss, shame, and despair, an emotional triad that has more in common with Paul Schrader’s film Hard­ core (1979) than any other film about black enslavement to date. Hard­ core is without doubt a destructive work, in which death and film are grafted together as a father, Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott), searches for his daughter who has disappeared into the unseemly world of pornographic snuff films. In 12 Years a Slave, Northup wants to reunite with his family, a desire made all the more poignant by showing Northup with his family, confident, accomplished, and fully dressed in the style of the period. But as a slave, the foundations of his previous world erode; he is later shown stripped down to the dingy attire of slavery, isolated, insecure, and confused as despair begins to slowly seep into his being. A similar deconstruction is apparent in Hardcore with VanDorn’s methodical unraveling as a parent, person, father, and religious follower, after he sees his daughter Kristen (Ilah Davis) manhandled in a pornographic film while sitting in a seedy porno theater. In order to find and save his daughter, VanDorn must pose as a pornographer. He must become what he despises and witness deplorable acts of dehumanization to reunite with his child. Similarly, Northup, a free man, must adopt the ways of a slave so that he can live long enough to find a way to reunite with his family. In trying to reunite with their loved one(s) both characters are exposed to sadistic violence, sexual exploitation, and senseless death as the price of doing business. In this sense, the moral despair wrought from kidnapping and subsequent exploitation is the most arresting emotional theme, palpably visceral in Hardcore and poignantly captured in 12 Years a Slave. Perhaps, like Hardcore with its seedy mise-­en-­scenes, 12 Years a Slave is guilty of the very sins it earnestly attempts to revile. Given the tortuous ordeals the characters and the audience must en-

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dure, the film successfully humanizes black folk, but the cost is a visual barrage of dehumanizing depictions of psychological abuse and sickening physical punishment. Arguably, 12 Years a Slave is as problematic as it is progressive in presenting a serious filmic treatise on black enslavement. But to the film’s credit, 12 Years a Slave labors to transcend the physical and sexual degradations of slavery that are the voyeuristic bread and butter of a film such as Goodbye Uncle Tom. In startling contrast, Tarantino’s Django Unchained makes black romantic love the focus of the film and fulfills the conventional cultural work of Hollywood films to affirm individualistic heroism. Consequently, the forbidden love story of an enslaved couple is played out against the epic horror of slavery in America. In the end, the black protagonist gets the girl, vanquishes all of his enemies, and rides off into the proverbial sunset. Yet as a metaphor of racial agency, Django Unchained’s traditional Hollywood narrative, spliced with black enslavement, carries a much more radical message than the paint-­by-­the-­ numbers plot points just covered. Surprisingly, Django Unchained is a stirring assertion of the commitment and courage of black folk to love one another, despite the most callous of environments and under the most oppressive institutions. In this sense, Django and Broomhilda are similar to the defiant love symbolized by the character Sixo in Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–­winning novel Beloved, who treks across treacherous landscape risking limb and lynching just to see his Thirty-­ Mile Woman for a few precious moments. Moreover, Django Unchained insists on highlighting the sado-­erotic subjugation of African slaves, a point repeatedly signaled by flashbacks of Broomhilda being tortured by branding, whipping, and being stripped of her clothes; by passing shots of bondage irons that encase black bodies; and by the repeated threats of castration made against a captive Django. The beatings that the black bodies endure in 12 Years a Slave are in many ways a response to American cinema’s sanitized and often lopsided presentation of American slavery as mere discomfort. But in Django Unchained the spectacle of physical degradation, epitomized by Mandingo fighting competitions, functions as a powerful racial metaphor for the fetishized black body of today, a potent signifier of the relationships between black professional athletes and team owners, a vast majority of whom are white men.34 In this sense, Django Unchained works on a broader ideological scale than does 12 Years a Slave. Most specifically, Django Unchained is a trenchant reminder of America’s racial legacy and its relationship to the racial politics of the

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 117

Django as a cowboy dandy in Django Unchained.

present era, a point perfectly underscored by the anachronistic use of contemporary rap music in the film. Admittedly, the final forty minutes of Django Unchained are more cowboy cliché than Gothic love story given how Django finally dispenses of all his enemies with a six-­shooter. Moreover, the closing image of Django decked out in oval sunglasses, a flamboyant vest, and three-­quarter-­length jacket, and shown smoking a cigarette from a skinny cigarette holder fulfills the role of a black dandy cowboy similar to Toller (Sidney Poitier) in Duel at Diablo (Ralph Nelson, 1966), Jesse Lee in Posse (Mario Van Peebles, 1993), and Jim West (Will Smith) in Wild Wild West (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1999). Later, after the plantation is blown away by dynamite the film succumbs to an insipid conclusion by having Django perform a series of horse tricks for Broomhilda’s delight, a poor imitation of Roy Rogers riding his famous horse Trigger. On one hand, maybe the ending has more to do with paying homage to the obscure black cowboy films of the past that were targeted to black audiences and often made outside of the traditional Hollywood film system like Harlem on The Prairie (Sam Newfield, 1937) and Bronze Buckaroo (Richard C. Kahn, 1939). On the other hand, it is quite reasonable the Django trick show is a feeble tribute to Woodrow Strode, a pioneering black actor who played black cowboys in traditional Hollywood films and a few spaghetti westerns. Nevertheless, the ending of the film feels tacked on, looks corny (the last thing I expect from a Tarantino film), and comes off more as parody than tribute.35 Despite its allusions to the spaghetti western, Django Unchained is not the western revenge narrative promoted and popularized in the wake of the film’s initial box office opening. In the long run and overall,

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Django Unchained is a Gothic horror film, and like all Gothic productions the film reflects historical discontinuities and contemporary cultural anxieties.36 Make no mistake, however—­even as a Gothic production Django Unchained is not a perfect film. It is flawed. The film overreaches in its length by clocking in at two hours and forty-­five minutes; it exhibits uneven pacing, has too many underdeveloped ancillary black characters, and relies too much on flamboyant, evil white plantation owners and degenerate henchmen to coax the viewing audience into cheering their destruction. But as a Gothic horror film, the ideological motif of Django Unchained expresses fears American society has difficulty directly confronting.37 Django hints at collective racial fury on the part of enslaved black folk of the time: when Schultz tests the idea of becoming a bounty hunter, Django quips, “Kill white folks and they pay you for it? . . . What’s not to like?” In this case, Django Un­ chained functions as a blatant example of the return of the repressed and expresses a sensitivity to the real possibility of black revolt in America given its history of real racial rebellion with Nat Turner in 1831, the Watts Rebellion in 1965, Detroit in the 1960s, Miami in 1980, and Los Angeles in 1992.38 This anxiety around armed rebellion against whites is present in Django Unchained, but for the most part it is assuaged by the overly subdued performances of the other black slaves that populate the film. Besides Django, all the other enslaved black folk are static figures. Although Django Unchained adopts the classic Hollywood template of heroic triumphant individualism as the most effective expression of problem solving (rather than an organized and collective response to oppression), it leaves open an alternative reading of this expression of individualism. Allegorically, with the figure of Django, the film crudely articulates the notion of the exceptional black person. Most important, Django Unchained seems to suggest that exceptional blacks are more militant and most likely to oppose white subjugation, a point signaled by Calvin’s theory that Django is a “one in ten thousand” type of Negro. But the one in ten thousand typology also dovetails with a more radical idea formerly articulated by the profound and prolific intellectual and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. He coined the term “the talented tenth” to describe the loose statistical extrapolation, if not desire, that at least one in ten black persons would become leaders and commit themselves to social change to improve the conditions of black folk in America. This sentiment is refracted in Django Unchained when Calvin Candie

Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained 119

pontificates as to why Django is defiant, so unlike the other enslaved Africans: Where I part company from many of my phrenologist colleagues is I believe this is a level above bright, above talented, above loyal that a nigger can aspire to. Say one nigger that just pops up in ten thousand. The exceptional nigger. But I do believe that, given time exceptional niggers like Bright Boy [Django] here become if not frequent more frequent. Bright Boy, you are that one in ten thousand.

Here the crude articulation of racial exceptionalism overlaps with Du Bois’ belief that exceptional African Americans, the best and brightest of the black race, will lead the masses of black folk out of social decay. In this sense, the extended pseudoscience that Calvin Candie drones on about at the dinner table and the triumphant heroism of Django work as metaphors for the real politics of racial uplift and social change that have their place in African American history. Certainly numerous African American women and men can claim the assessment as exceptional, but often their extraordinary contribution to black freedom occurs within the context of a community or possibly within some form of organized response to oppression. But this perspective is a double-­ edged sword that cuts against notions of social and political advancement as well. Implicit in the logic of the exceptional black person as a statistical anomaly is the proposition that the overwhelming majority of black folk are mediocre at best. This type of thinking lays the foundation for the type of scientific racism found in the discredited eugenics movements of America’s and Nazi Germany’s pasts, along with more debatable scientific pretentions found in racialized notions of the Bell Curve.39 From this standpoint various modes of oppression appear as mere manifestations of the statistical reality of supposed black inferiority. Nevertheless, Django Unchained is an interventionist film that attempts to confront the purposeful discontinuity surrounding the history of the portrayal of racial oppression in American cinema. As a grisly Gothic horror film with comedic touches, Django Unchained is a masterfully disconcerting film original in style, depth of racial pathos, and breadth of filmic influences. It is also provocative and visually profane, similar to the early films of David Cronenberg that engage in disturbing displays of body horror and sexual violence, themes found in

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Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983). On the one hand, the representation of American slavery in Django Unchained stands in stark contrast to make-­believe imagery found in classic and canonized Hollywood films such as Gone With the Wind, which presented racial tropes whereby black slaves seemed like trained pets comfortable in their enslavement and happily obedient to their masters. On the other hand, the successful revolt of an imaginary black man played out against a Gothic fantasy backdrop is apolitical at best and regressive at worst. Arguably, until Hollywood makes a multi-­million-­dollar film about Nat Turner, a real African American slave who led a slave rebellion in 1831 in Virginia, Django Unchained will have to suffice.

Coda

Unlike Black music, Black cinema could find no authentic place in the Black community . . . As a commodity, its function is finally that of every other industrial film, every other exploitation film. —­David James, Allegories of Cinema

Much of the critical disdain for the racial politics of black representation in Tarantino’s films is rooted in the ideological vice grip of black respectability that has shaped so much of American race relations. Black folk have a long history of trying to prove their humanity to a dismissive white social order, and that struggle has often included a fight against over-­employed stereotypes and degrading images of black folk that justify discriminatory beliefs and practices.1 In this sense, the concern over how black people represent themselves and are represented by others is warranted. The criminal, sexually promiscuous, lewd, street-­life loving, and physically aggressive black person is deemed problematic because he/she has been and is repeatedly used to validate racist constructions of black folk for political purposes. Consequently, black folk have had the added responsibility of being judged individually as representative of an entire race of people. Because of that burden, black folk have in various eras tried to be “a credit to their race.” Given this historical backdrop, it is not surprising that vocal critics such as black filmmaker Spike Lee, noted essayist Ishmael Reed, and television talk show host Tavis Smiley view black enslavement as a mismatched subject for the spaghetti western genre, and they consider the comedic flourishes interspersed across Django Unchained as inappropriate.2 Most likely, what these Tarantino naysayers take issue with are the aesthetic choices used in the film that apparently compromise the solemnity of black peoples’ epic struggle in America to regain

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their humanity. In stark contrast to Tarantino’s films are films such as Sounder (Martin Ritt, 1972), Once Upon a Time . . . When We Were Colored (Tim Reid, 1996), and Beloved, which allow for the dignity of black people and exemplify the tonal and narrative gravitas expected when the topic is Jim Crow racism or enslavement. Black racial representation in American cinema, or in films by and about black people, has historically been charged with the task of affecting public opinion concerning eliminating racial discrimination and/or bringing attention and a sympathetic awareness to some deplorable socioeconomic conditions facing African Americans. Certainly, classic social-­problem films like Pinky (Elia Kazan, 1949), Raisin in the Sun (Philip Rose, 1961), Black Like Me (Julius Tannenbaum, 1964), or A Patch of Blue (Guy Green, 1965) were made to evoke concern over the plight of the “racially unfortunate” in American society. To counteract the “negative” images of black people and characters, racial progressives often expressed the urge to censure (or more accurately, to create films that are more acceptable and less disruptive) when presenting material addressing racial inequality in America to mainstream white audiences. This burden of positive or “respectable” black racial representation has very conservative overtones and is informed by the mainstream rhetoric of the civil rights movement. In addition, the anxiety over the types of racial representation presented in Tarantino’s films is rooted in a rather traditional media effects perspective whereby filmic images are seen as stirring emotional, sexual, and cognitive responses in the viewer.3 Given the popular success of Tarantino’s films, a rambling paranoia endures that imagines the effects of his racial representations of blackness as quite possibly shaping the popular memory regarding race in America with “negative” images of black people, normalizing derogatory language directed at African Americans, and recuperating whiteness as a racially privileged identity.4 Tarantino films become racist texts that extend the racism of the period—­particularly with the recuperation of the n-­word as a normalized term that whites can now feel comfortable using, or at least enjoy hearing when deployed.5 But before we decide whether or not a given film is affecting a viewer or declare how it is psychologically impacting a viewer, let us be as clear as possible about the meaning of the content, or, more specifically, the cultural work that a film performs, before turning the conversation to the “effect” of a film on attitudes, beliefs, or social practices. If the point of analysis begins with how a film makes a particular

Coda 123

viewer think or feel about an event, real or constructed, and includes literal and simplistic notions of “positive” and “negative,” the analysis of race becomes extremely stunted. Take, for example, a film like Pre­ cious (Lee Daniels, 2009), whose visual and narrative currency trades on its heavy-­handed sociological sermonizing. The black teenage protagonist possesses a laundry list of traumatic shortcomings: she is illiterate, abused, morbidly obese, a victim of molestation, a mother of two incestuous children, and a welfare stooge for her mother. This “tangle of pathology” was the catalyst for former First Lady Barbara Bush to spark a nascent national debate about the importance of literacy in the wake of the special screening she was privy to, and to subsequently admonished others to see the film.6 A film like Precious could easily be categorized as a positive “social message” film or a cautionary tale concerning how a lack of literacy and an abundance of abuse warps the human spirit and stymies potential and motivation. Yet a critique of the cultural work the film performs operates beyond positive vs. negative tropes and yields a more insightful set of conclusions. Precious also courts criticism for its cultural work as yet another form of racial exploitation: a particular form of black racial commodification whereby chronicling black inner city life as docudramatic dysfunction is good entertainment.7 Certainly debates concerning racial representation are important. But the cultural work of a film like Precious (and this is true of Tarantino’s popular cinema, or any film for that matter) must be examined not in terms of literal and simplistic notions of “positive” and “negative” but decoded for the cultural meaning and ideological currency the film generates. As far as the cultural politics of race are concerned, Tarantino’s pop art films appear to be most interested in exploiting urban criminal underworld depictions of blackness. Such a focus makes Tarantino and his films easy targets to condemn for perpetually constructing stereotypical, pathological black characters, or as bell hooks posits, promoting “a new style of primitivism.”8 One of the major ideological takeaways concerning race in the films of Tarantino is that the representation of racial friction on film is not solely inside the mind of the director. Rather than stabilizing whiteness, Tarantino’s films home in on the mounting anxiety around black masculinity, interracial sexuality, and racialized violence in American society. Moreover, although Tarantino’s films are indicative of particular ideological themes, the strident reaction and multiple anxieties stirred by the use of the n-­word, f-­word, and graphic violence9

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allude to a broader and more troubling ideological impulse operating in American society today: a desire to deny or erase history. In this new millennium of mainstream racial politics, the current hegemonic norm exhibits a troubling tendency to overtly erase elements of American history that are reminders of and testaments to a disturbing past and a unfair present. This ideological and cultural drift is best captured by the representational practices of Hollywood filmmaking in the post 9/11 era, a development cogently observed and examined in Aviva Briefel and Sam J. Miller’s edited volume Horror after 9/11. Concerning “Hollywood’s growing role in shaping reality after 9/11,” Briefel and Miller posit: The faith that cinematic representations could rewrite the real was also apparent in smaller-­scale operations of filmmakers who edited the towers out of films such as Serendipity (Peter Chelsom, 2001), Zoo­ lander (Ben Stiller, 2001), and Spider-­Man (Sam Raimi, 2002), all of which, produced before 9/11, included the World Trade Center in the New York skyline. This strange impulse to alleviate trauma through a technological repetition compulsion conveys the fantasy or nightmare that the towers “were never there to begin with.”10

The position taken for granted by Hollywood is that removing disturbing elements, expressions, and images that are out of sync with the prevailing norms, practices, and worldview is a mark of societal, cultural, and even political progress. Yet these alterations are not value neutral, and they remain particularly problematic when viewed through the lens of race relations in America. The film Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) touches on this when Enid (Thora Birch) uses a promotional picture in her art class of a caricatured black man from the fictitious chicken restaurant franchise “Cook’s Chicken Inn,” formerly called “The Coon Chicken Inn.” Her art teacher places it on display as a social critique of American racism. Later the art judges deem the poster racially offensive and demand its removal. Here the critique of racism becomes an act of racism. Even though the art officials’ charges of racism on the part of Enid are incorrect, the more disturbing element is the repressive political and cultural implications of their demand. The visual censorship of a stubborn fact is reminiscent of the totalitarian government of the former Soviet Union, which habitually engaged in altering images or erasing people from pictures in an attempt to change public memory.11

Coda 125

Even in the most innocuous cases of historical alteration, such actions have a repressive dimension whenever images and ideas that are not of the social and political moment are erased to deny history and to articulate the new idea, the new aesthetic, and the new reality as the only reality. Arguably, George Lucas’ theatrical re-­release of the Star Wars (1977) franchise in 1997 best exemplifies this insipid sensibility in American film. The Star Wars films were ostensibly altered to improve the films, a trend that became a staple for the subsequent re-­release of various special edition DVDs touting how the color and sound have been upgraded from the originals and the low-­fi special effects improved to reflect present expectations. It is easy to write off the procession of altered Star Wars films that continue to crop up in “special edition” packaging as merely a function of George Lucas’ neurotic fixation on his films. In addition, the backlash against the alterations is easily viewed as an expression of excessive fandom that for devotees of the original films plays out as personal anger toward George Lucas. For a moment, however, ignore the irritating creative control and artistic overindulgence the creator of the epic space opera exhibits and disregard the fanatical fan base that has expressed hostility toward Lucas for “ruining” films they became attached to as children. Instead, let us consider another question. Are Lucas’ alterations really driven by personal obsessions with digital filmmaking and with perfecting various special effects, or are they in answer to the political realities of the time? Admittedly, the ideological implications of the latter are most intriguing given how Star Wars was a response to and emerged from the post-­Vietnam, American mythic landscape.12 Moreover, because of the alterations of actual filmic events and the digital erasure and replacement of original actors, the original Star Wars (1977) now exists as ephemera and the current Star Wars franchise exists as a capitalist consumer text that primarily meets the demand for the entertainment-­ industrial complex it helped spawn.13 With the multiple revisions, prequels, ancillary revenue streams, merchandising, and planned reboots, the franchise is now in an economic galaxy far, far away from the traumatized post-­Watergate, recession weary, and post-­Vietnam America that the original Star Wars trilogy was ideologically addressing. In this sense, erasing past “mistakes” in the Star Wars trilogy, eradicating the Twin Towers from Hollywood films, airbrushing Soviet-­style visual censorship, and suppressing racist imagery from America’s past are all a part of the same continuum. Of course on the spectrum of Orwellian totalitarianism and po-

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litical oppression, the doctored Star Wars films do not rank alongside the pictorial eradication that Joseph Stalin used to consolidate his rule. Nevertheless, in the post–­civil rights and possibly postracial world of America signified by the election of a black president and the presence of a black family in the White House, the erasure of America’s racial history of “mistakes” keeps cropping up in American cinema. With this mode of revisionism, racism is required to disappear in order for the past to properly mesh with the racially enlightened and technologically advanced society that presently exists. Correspondingly, in the case of the representation of racism, film as an artistic and commercial apparatus that articulates the American public memory demonstrates an impulse toward erasure.14 Often, depictions of a racialized American society are removed and racial discord is scrubbed from films depicting an era where blatant racism was part and parcel of the sociopolitical and cultural landscape of the time. This revisionist impulse is clearly registered in films like Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker, 1988), The Pa­ triot (Roland Emmerich, 2000), and Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002), and it is fully expressed in America’s post-­racial Obama era with a spate of Hollywood films such as X-­Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011), The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011), and Captain America: The First Avenger (Joe Johnston, 2011) that have sanitized racial animus in American society by presenting colorblind white worlds during historical periods of acute racism and racial unrest. Even the bizarrely amusing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Timur Bekmambetov, 2012), a film that covers the American Civil War, the most direct and widely known racial confrontation in American history, obscures the real racial politics of the war for Southern secession. The film brazenly redirects the reality of American slavery as institutional racism rooted in the ideology and practice of white supremacy and settles for explaining slavery as the brainchild of vampires that require unfettered access to blood. Admittedly, as a radical political metaphor, the film could appear as a shrill indictment of Southern slave-­ owners as inhuman, parasitic capitalists and the Confederate Army as a soulless militia. But by focusing on thwarting a collection of vampires from turning America into a Nosferatu nation, Abraham Lincoln: Vam­ pire Hunter severly mutes the racial politics of a nation struggling to abandon its most brutal commitment to white supremacy as expressed in the enslavement of black folk. Instead, a Malthusian catastrophe is designated as the true source of the Civil War, whereby the living dead are only content because black slaves are their source for sus-

Coda 127

tenance, and if they remain satiated these vampires will not prey on the American white population. In Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter black people are literal fodder in this genre mash-­up. A more obvious example of the euphemistic approach to addressing racial oppression is Rachel L. Swarns’ American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama. The book traces the first lady’s lineage to an enslaved woman named Melvinia.15 In detailing this ancestor’s story as a slave, the book abounds with racial euphemisms: corporal punishment, servitude, discipline, masters who “pursue” sexual relations, and creative conjecture as to whether an enslaved black girl was “fond” of her enslavers paint a bittersweet “up from slavery” narrative. The result is a “quintessentially American story” that avoids vividly situating American slavery as a perverse institution of white privilege predicated on the abuse and exploitation of black folks’ bodies for labor, economic gain, and sexual release. Too often, as in the film Jefferson in Paris (James Ivory, 1995), the sexual relationship between the white master and his black female slave is reimagined as a forbidden love story sans sexual imposition. In such films, the everyday threat of violence and the use of violence to coax conformity from black slaves are conveniently concealed. Whether filmmakers deploy historical revisionism or genre mash-­up, erasing racial trauma or altering antagonistic racial undercurrents by replacing them with sanitized representations are problematic propositions. It is as if “not seeing” racism on the big screen means that racism does not exist or that no one will remember that it did. The depiction of a world not impacted by racism is a type of idealistic representation, and such a portrayal became a source of ridicule during the phenomenal success of the Cosby Show (1984–­1992), a television sitcom about a black upper-­middle-­class family that failed to deliver a treatise on racial discord.16 Tarantino’s films stand in stark contrast to such sanitizing of the intersection of power, race, and sexuality. For example, in Pulp Fiction the rape of a black man by white men and the erasure of the bloody remnants of Marvin’s black body from the white backseat of a vehicle are vivid testaments to the way QT films invoke racial histories in American society and occupy critical space in American pop culture. Certainly, Django Unchained self-­consciously responds to the often glossed-­over aspects of African American enslavement as a form of social death.17 All of Tarantino’s films are racially insurgent; they function as cultural signposts hailing American society through the medium of

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cinema. As a director and writer he has an uncanny ability to translate stylistic nods from the Blaxploitation genre and, most of all, to incorporate 1970s Hollywood cinema’s infatuation with explicitness in a manner that appeals to a generation of filmgoers who are likely unfamiliar with the cultural milieu, political urgency, socioeconomic pressures, and racial tensions of that decade. Admittedly, QT films forego the sexual explicitness that was also a hallmark of 1970s cinema, seen in films like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970), Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971), A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971), Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972), and Pretty Baby (Louis Malle, 1978). Instead, gory violence, explicit sexual dialogue, and racist rhetoric are his nods to the insurgent cinema of the 1970s. In this sense, the Tarantino touch is of the past, yet tailor-­made for a generation of American moviegoers who have come of age in the postmodern moment where strident aesthetic demarcations have given way to fluid and porous boundaries, where heterogeneity has usurped homogeneity. Hip-­hop, the pop music of this particular cultural moment, is most emblematic of this sensibility as a cultural and commercial expression.18 Against this backdrop, Tarantino is less an auteur, in the nomenclature of conventional film studies, and more a cinematic DJ, given his mash-­up, sampling aesthetic.19 QT’s directoral style has much in common with DJ sampling in hip-­hop, a point I made in Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes: In hip-­hop music the producer/DJ will take a preexisting sonic artifact such as a saxophone riff, a funky baseline, or a catchy hook from a recognized melody, harmony, or vocal phrasing and use it as a sonic platform to build upon and create something strikingly fresh. For example, a signature refrain from the Broadway musical Annie is used on Jay-­Z’s Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life (1998). The song “It’s the Hard-­Knock Life” was sampled and transformed from a happy-­go-­lucky show tune into a hip-­hop bass-­heavy banger that shot up the music charts. These “sampled” reinterpretations provide the listening audience the ability to aurally experience the rebirth of a familiar tune in a refreshingly distinct manner.20

Similarly, Tarantino’s films are well-­crafted mélanges of intertextuality that synthesize various filmic references in ways that modern audiences respond to and appreciate. Django Unchained demonstrates the

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sampling aesthetic by drawing from various genres such as Blaxploitation, spaghetti westerns, buddy flicks, historical dramas, period pieces, and comedic satires. The final result is a compelling, Gothic-­infused horror film that is being consumed by audiences generations removed from the institution of American enslavement at a cultural moment when America openly flirts with the idea of being a postracial society in the wake of electing a black president for two terms of office. Of course other directors have strained to introduce contemporary relevancy in a film firmly rooted in America’s past. For example, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013) is a lavish 3-­D film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel that uses the Roaring Twenties Jazz Age as the backdrop for a cautionary tale about the American dream of upward social mobility. Although contemporary hip-­hop and pop soul music are integrated into Baz’s Gatsby, for me the overall effect cultivates a sense of acute dissonance rather than resonance. Just as it is a mistake to view Jackson Pollock’s paintings as confluences of random drips virtually anyone could duplicate, so too is it misguided to view Tarantino’s cinematic pastiche as a mechanical suturing of past and present that is easily reproduced for effect. Despite having a filmic sensibility clearly rooted in the past, QT films resonate with the technological and cultural zeitgeist of today’s society. This postmodern pastiche is perfectly underscored in Death Proof when Jungle Julia pulls out a cellphone and begins sending text messages in a film that feels firmly rooted in a 1970s setting. Moreover, the films of QT engage America’s past every time the n-­word is uttered. In previous decades the n-­word was simply “nigger,” an everyday racial slur. An erstwhile publication like Mark Twain’s classic American novel the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) frequently uses the n-­word. Though by many critical accounts the novel was a critique of nineteenth-­century American racism, the book repeatedly has been taken to task as a vulgar and stereotypical portrayal of black folk.21 Sound familiar? QT cinema constantly underscores race in America, and his use of language has incurred critical scorn similar to that heaped on Twain.22 One critical difference is that QT has an audience of paying adults, while the Twain text is often presented as required reading to children and young adolescents in school settings.23 Nonetheless, irrespective of the appropriateness of the setting or the age of the intended audience, Tarantino’s filmic body of work remains up for debate concerning the racist or antiracist message it presents. If eloquent and insightful theorization about American race rela-

130 Race on the QT

tions is the expectation, then Tarantino the talk show guest, award show speechmaker, and press junket orator is a tongue-­tied jester on his best day. Although it is easy to see that race matters to Tarantino, he is not Cornel West. At the end of the day QT is a filmmaker, not a race philosopher, and whatever mangled explanation of race politics he offers will play out like those of most Americans who have not dedicated their intellectual lives to the topic of black racial formation. Hit and miss. The films are where the real poststructural action resides, because they do dialogue with real structures of racial marginalization and engage the ideological justifications used to legitimize these structures and the unequal relations they produce. To what degree the films of QT edify these structures or call them into question remains debatable. A reasonable, if superficial, critique is that QT’s films use race to pique interest and attract attention. But I argue that this exploitative formula is best applied to mediocre, low-­budget films that would not garner any attention if not for their lurid material or graphic nature. Tarantino’s films are also permeated with elements of pop schlock, a filmic sensibility inherited from the low-­budget exploitation film genre. However, his films are viewed as artistically accomplished and they are well financed, so the exploitation label is not a good fit. The QT aesthetic, however, pilfers from that genre for mood and tone, and black characters have figured prominently as signifiers of the subversive politics of cool. For as much as blackness signifies cool in QT films, the characters and conversations concerning blackness also deliberately remind the viewing public of the vulgar, absurd, and messy ideological place that race continues to occupy in American society. In this manner, Tarantino’s films are transgressive works that refuse to allow American pop culture to function as a safe haven for the fantasy of reality television, mindless boy bands, MTV video divas, Walt Disney rappers, and ubiquitous zombies. Claims of an American postracial culture in the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection are presumptuous and passé. The outrage generated by Django Unchained demonstrates how racial anxiety still remains active in this nation. In my mind, this is possibly the greatest strength concerning the body of Tarantino films to date. QT films compel attention at the least; at the most they serve as catalysts for discussions around black racial formation across the public sphere. Numerous articles and analyses are generated when Tarantino brings out a new film. Certainly this was the case for Django Un­ chained. Print and Internet media outlets fixed on the racial issues circulating throughout the film, and a range of cultural critics, scholars,

Coda 131

liberals, conservatives, radicals, entertainment personalities, college students, black barbershop clientele, and Facebook pages—­along with entrenched, new-­school and circumspect pundits alike—­weighed in on the meaning and importance of Django Unchained as it relates to African American life and America’s racial politics. Here was a moment for the intellectual admirers of Jürgen Habermas to feel buoyed by this nascent resurgence of social awareness in the public sphere. Although the marketing buzz around Django Unchained was most suited to evoke racial debate, all of QT’s prior films to date are dialoguing with the cultural politics of race. QT films embrace this political situation, whereas other directors have acknowledged the cultural politics of race in their work only in order to blunt criticism concerning black representation. Take, for example, Woody Allen. He habitually presented a New York City devoid of black folk as the setting for his films, and when he eventually acquiesced to the reality of black peoples’ urban existence and included black characters of any significance, he went retro with a sassy black maid in Bullets over Broadway (1994) and a black female prostitute in Deconstructing Harry (1997). Only Melinda and Melinda (2004) offers anything interesting regarding black representation with the character of Ellis Moonsong (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as an elegant piano player who happens to be black. In stark contrast to the racially reticent films of Woody Allen, Tarantino’s films are jubilant forays into racially taboo territory such as American slavery, black female sexuality, white racism, interracial relationships, and racial revenge. There is, however, an area in which QT lags far behind in cinematic genius when compared to notable directors such as Woody Allen, John Cassavetes, John Huston, Roman Polanski, and Sydney Pollack: the ability to act. Quite frankly, Quentin Tarantino cannot act his way out of a paper bag. Nonetheless, QT has accrued a string of cameo film performances that are both wooden and unconvincingly animated, from his first bit part in Reservoir Dogs to his latest part to date as an Australian miner in Django Unchained. Even when he does not exert his considerable directorial license by placing himself in his own films and instead performs in someone else’s, the results are similarly dreadful. To this point, directorial friend and partner in crime Robert Rodriguez has played the part of enabler for QT to try and satiate his acting bug. The hokey horror film From Dusk till Dawn (1996), directed by Rodriguez, has QT playing a sociopathic bank robber who lumbers from one scene to the next as a supporting actor to George Clooney’s leading-­man cha-

132 Race on the QT

risma. From Dusk till Dawn is a seedy, exploitative mess—­an aesthetic that is repeated for better or for worse with Planet Terror (2007), the first half of the self-­indulgent Grindhouse (2007), a sleazy double feature Rodriguez and Tarantino felt compelled to make (of which the second half is Death Proof, discussed in chapter four).24 For the most part, Tarantino’s acting chops remain underdeveloped compared to the innovative and provocative films he has written and directed. Clearly, the most dynamic aspect of Quentin Tarantino’s talent is his films, not his ability to disappear inside a character. I admit the relationship between Tarantino’s films and the white audience remains problematic despite the provocative representational engagement with race across the films. As an African American male, in Django Unchained I found the shuffling subservience of Samuel L. Jackson’s Stephen and his incessant use of the n-­word laugh-­out-­loud funny. I wonder, however, what is it about Jackson’s quintessential portrayal of a house slave that makes white audiences erupt with laughter? For me, along with other African American friends and professional acquaintances I’ve talked to about the film, the comedic import of Jackson’s performance and his strident interpretation of the character appear to be drawn from Malcolm X’s scathing critique of the house Negro, a black slave who fulfilled duties inside the plantation home rather than laboring in the field. In his notable 1963 speech “Message to the Grass Roots,” Malcolm X explains how the slave mentality of a house Negro is preoccupied with identifying with his master to such an extent that if the master becomes ill the house Negro will ask, “What’s the matter boss? We sick?” In comparison, the field Negro is constructed as the polar opposite in psychic orientation, a theme symbolized by Django’s militancy and constant challenges to white authority. In this sense, Jackson’s front-­stage house Negro performance appears to embody all of the pejorative qualities Malcolm X designates concerning black people and leaders who appear more concerned with the interests of whites than benefits for blacks. The contemporary colloquialism for this type of black person is “sellout,” and within the private sphere of various black cultural institutions a broad swath of black folk are aware of this terminology and the racial politics involved in its usage. In my mind, knowledge of that historical and cultural backdrop is paramount for interpreting and appreciating how Jackson perfectly articulates the type of tomfoolery that white oppression cultivates and that a variety of blacks have engaged in. Given the long history and legacy of white audiences laughing at black folk as minstrel carica-

Coda 133

tures and as various incarnations of comic buffoonery too numerous to list, the popularity of Tarantino films with whites raises concerns. In Django Unchained, the house Negro archetype is deployed for subversive comedic effect, but the distinction as to whether whites are in on the joke and laughing with black people or at black people is undetermined. The answer to the dilemma described above will rely on media studies social scientists to deliver with their surveys, interviews, and questionnaires. There must be some form of data to sort out conjecture from fact. Nonetheless, as Stanley Crouch has insightfully noted: “Whether Tarantino’s films or screenplays are good or bad, race and crime and what they reveal to us about society are always what his work is about, which is why he is important. He seems to have no other subjects and, given what the ones he focuses on can provide, there is no need for them.”25 At their worst, QT films invite consideration as racial schlock that is transgressive but crudely conceived when the topic turns to black representation, a point epitomized by Ralph Bakshi’s ill-­fated attempt at racial satire with the live action/animated film Coonskin (1975). Contemporary critics have tried to rehabilitate Coonskin as an antiracist film that uses grotesque stereotypes to show the racism of the system that created these images in the first place.26 But the stereotypical depictions of male homosexuality and the blatant sexual objectification of women in Coonskin undercuts this facile reasoning. Neither of these gross caricatures is cast as a triumphant statement against homophobia or misogyny. At the end of the day, it is difficult to critique pornography by creating pornography. In contrast, what serves QT well when he embarks on the slippery slope of representing black people as killers, criminals, sex symbols, and slaves is a reverential sensibility regarding blackness as the arbitrator of cool.27 For example, even though Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winnfield is a foul-­mouthed, odd-­ looking black killer, he is also the man with the wallet inscribed with the words “Bad Motherfucker” in big block letters, a disposition communicated in a fully drawn character who is given the juiciest dialogue in the film. In this sense, QT films lack the overt stereotypical disdain toward blackness present in films like Coonskin, The Jerk (Carl Reiner, 1979), White Chicks (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2004), and Soul Plane (Jessy Terrero, 2004), and in the animated television shows The PJ’s (1999–­ 2001), which adopt dubious imagery of black folk for comic effect or to make some stilted point about race in America. Admittedly, Tarantino is most associated with displaying hyper-

134 Race on the QT

violence in films and harboring a Cronenbergesque sensibility when it comes to body horror, with the depictions of an ear sliced off a tortured police officer, limbs chopped off scores of Asian men, scalps ripped from the tops of Nazis’ heads, exploding bodies, and decapitations. A closer look, however, reveals that lurking beneath the adolescent giddiness of Tarantino’s gratuitous displays of violence and fetishistic film gaze are articulations about race that challenge myriad racial taboos, cultural expectations, and power dynamics concerning race relations in America. Most specifically, his films constantly implicate America’s historical angst over race and invite the viewing audience to confront blackness as a source of optic, political, and cultural anxiety. While Django Unchained is easily categorized according to the racial thematic that drives the narrative, it makes conspicuous what all prior Tarantino films were in deep dialogue with—­racial blackness. Certainly, in his films QT has also provided an image of American race relations that appears to owe its outlandish dimensions and distortions to the artifice and affect he wields. But that is the easy analysis. The obnoxious expressions of black racial representation and the lewd language dealing with race in the films of Quentin Tarantino are not merely the functions of one director. In the final analysis, the carnivalesque, fun house mirror representations of race in Tarantino’s films might be the unadulterated likenesses of the real toxic beliefs that dominated this nation’s historical past, that exist in our pop culture present, and that possibly may prevail in America’s social future.

Notes

Introduction 1. Adrian Wooten, “Quentin Tarantino on Adapting Rum Punch, Moving the Story to LA, Elmore Leonard’s Opinion,” in Gerald Peary, ed., Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated (University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 110. 2. James Mottram, The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Holly­ wood (Faber & Faber, 2007). 3. Todd McCarthy, “Review: Reservoir Dogs,” Variety, January 26, 1992. Mc­ Carthy says Tarantino’s first film is filled with racist colloquialisms. 4. Wooten, “Quentin Tarantino on Adapting Rum Punch,” in Peary, ed., Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, 110. 5. Erik Bauer, “The Mouth and the Method,” in Peary, ed., Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, 116. 6. Ibid., 116. 7. Mali Elfman, “Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds Interview,” in Peary, ed., Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, 151. 8. Jim Smith, Tarantino (Virgin Books, 2005), 102–­106. 9. Jordan Zakarin, “Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ Reignites Debate over N-­Word in Movies,” The Hollywood Reporter, December 15, 2012. 10. Aaron Barlow, Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes (Praeger, 2010), 1–­36. 11. Sharon Willis, High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Films (Duke University Press, 1997). 12. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Temple University Press, 1993). 13. See the chapter “Moulanyans, Medigahns, and Wonder Bread Wops: Race and Racism On-­Screen and Off,” in George De Stefano, An Offer We Can’t Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America (Faber & Faber, 2007), 231–­294. 14. H. Rap Brown, Die Nigger Die: A Political Autobiography (Dial Press, 1969). 15. Ronald P. Formisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (University of North Carolina Press, 2003). 16. Sean Tierney, “Quentin Tarantino in Black and White,” in Michael Lacy and Kent Ono, eds., Critical Rhetorics of Race (New York University Press, 2011), 81–­97. 17. Armond White. “See Quentin Kill,” Africana, October 14, 2003. http://www .africana.com. 18. Stanley Crouch, The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity (Basic Civitas, 2004).

Chapter One 1. See Jeff Dawson, Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool (Applause Books, 1995), 90–­93. 2. Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-­Hop Generation (St. Martin’s Press, 2005).

136 Notes to Pages 15 – 28 3. See Paul Gormley’s theoretical and supercharged use of film studies nomenclature that links hip-­hop gangster bravado to Reservoir Dogs in The New-­Brutality Film: Race and Affect in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Intellect Books, 2005). 4. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, eds., Quentin Tarantino and Phi­ losophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch (Open Court, 2007). 5. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (Continuum, 2011). The coon caricature came to prominence as a cornerstone character of the American minstrel theater tradition of the late 1800s. Also see Camille F. Forbes, Introducing Bert Williams: Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America’s First Black Star (Basic Civitas Books, 2008). 6. See Gormley, The New-­Brutality Film, 142. 7. See Gormley, “Trashing Whiteness: Pulp Fiction, se7en, Strange Days, and Articulating Affect,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 6:1 (April 2001): 160. 8. See Stephen Weinberger, “It’s Not Easy Being Pink: Tarantino’s Ultimate Professional,” Literature/Film Quarterly 32(1): 50. 9. Certainly an argument can be made that Holdaway is reckless and jeopardizes innocent civilians and costs several bystanders and police officers their lives by allowing the robbery to actually occur before trying to stop it. In this sense, Holdaway’s method could read as a mark of unrestrained unprofessionalism that fulfills Mr. Pink’s racist edicts about blacks and professionalism. I argue, however, that Holdaway represents Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” approach to destroy Cabot and the white bigots he employs. 10. See Bruce Bawer, The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind (HarperCollins, 2012). 11. See Deirdre A. Royster and Stephen Steinberg, Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-­Collar Jobs (University of California Press, 2003). 12. Gormley, The New-­Brutality Film, 142. 13. Chris Vognar, “He Can’t Say That, Can He? Black, White, and Shades of Gray in the Films of Quentin Tarantino,” Transition 112: 23–­31. 14. Sean Tierny, “Quentin Tarantino in Black and White” in Michael Lacy and Kent Ono, eds., Critical Rhetorics of Race (New York University Press, 2011), 81–­97. 15. S. Craig Watkins, Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema (University of Chicago Press, 1999). 16. Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the White Hipster,” Dissent (Fall 1957). Alternatively, see John Leland, Hip: The History (HarperCollins, 2004), for a more measured analysis of Mailer’s take on white emulation of black expressivity in America. 17. Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford University Press, 1993). 18. See Greg Tate, Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture (Broadway Books, 2003). Despite the bombastic title, the insights and analyses of one of America’s best cultural critics on race and pop culture are thoughtful, shrewd, provocative and concise when mapping out the interplay between appropriation and the commodification of blackness in America.

Notes to Pages 29 – 40 137 19. See Deborah Shaw, “‘You Are Alright, But . . .’: Individual and Collective Representations of Mexicans, Latinos, Anglo-­Americans, and African-­Americans in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22(3): 211–­223. 20. See Caroline Jewers, “Heroes and Heroin: From True Romance to Pulp Fic­ tion,” Journal of Popular Culture 33(4): 39–­61. 21. See Stanley Crouch’s colorful essay, “Eggplant Blues: The Miscegenated Cinema of Quentin Tarantino,” in The All-­American Skin Game, or The Decoy of Race (Vintage, 1997), 229–­236. 22. See Matt Wray, Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of White­ ness (Duke University Press, 2006); Stanley Crouch, The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity (Basic Civitas Books, 2004); and Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, White Trash: Race and Class in America (Taylor & Francis, 1996). 23. See Susan Courtney, Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Nar­ ratives of Gender and Race, 1903–­1967 (Princeton University Press, 2005), 204. She makes an insightful analysis of how masculinity, race, and the use of the mirror all converge to convey a sense of failure/power for a white male figure. 24. See Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–­2010 (Crown Forum, 2013), for a rigorous academic lament on the decline of American white male orthodoxy as the ruling paradigm of an era. 25. Ruby Tapia makes a similar observation concerning True Romance in the astute analysis found in “Volumes of Transnational Vengeance: Fixing Race and Feminism on the Way to Kill Bill,” in Grace Kyungwon Hong and Roderick A. Ferguson, eds., Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University Press, 2011), 134. 26. See Richard Dyer, “Whites Are Nothing: Whiteness, Representation, and Death,” in Isabel Santaolalla, ed., “New” Exoticisms: Changing Patterns in the Con­ struction of Otherness (Editions Rodopi B.V., 2000); Gormley, The New-­Brutality Film; and Nicola Rehling, Extra-­Ordinary Men: White Heterosexual Masculinity and Contemporary Popular Cinema (Lexington Books, 2009), 215–­219. 27. Gerald Peary, ed., Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated (University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 42.

Chapter Two 1. See Dana Polan, Pulp Fiction (British Film Institute, 2008). 2. In 2013, the United States National Film Registry selected the film for preservation for being culturally, historically, and/or aesthetically significant. See “‘Pulp Fiction,’ ‘Roger & Me,’ ‘Mary Poppins’ Join National Film Registry,” Variety, December 12, 2013. 3. See noted intellectual Henry Giroux, “Racism and the Aesthetic of Hyperreal Violence:
 Pulp Fiction and Other Visual Tragedies,” 
Social Identities 1:2 (1995): 333–­ 354; and “Pulp Fiction and the Culture of Violence,” Harvard Educational Review 65 (Summer 1995): 299–­315. 4. Gerald Peary, ed., Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated (University Press of Mississippi, 2013); and Cynthia Fuchs, ed., Spike Lee: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2002). 5. Sharon Willis, High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood

138 Notes to Pages 40 – 54 Films (Duke University Press, 1997). She leans heavily on black cultural critic Todd Boyd to take Tarantino to task for his indulgent use of the n-­word. 6. Stanley Crouch scribed a dramatic manifesto, “Premature Austopsies,” about the life-­ affirming and death-­ defying powers of America’s classical music, Jazz, spoken by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., on Wynton Marsalis’ award-­winning album The Majesty of the Blues (1989). 7. See John Leland, Hip: The History (HarperCollins, 2004); Susan Fraiman, Cool Men and the Second Sex (Columbia University Press, 2003); the chapter “Miming Blackness: Reservoir Dogs and ‘American Africanism,’” in Paul Gormley, The New-­ Brutality Film: Race and Affect in Contemporary American Film (Intellect Books, 2005), 137–­158; and Jeff Dawson’s celebratory exposé, Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool (Applause Books, 1995). 8. See Ruby Tapia, “Volumes of Transnational Vengeance: Fixing Race and Feminism on the Way to Kill Bill,” in Grace Kyungwon Hong and Roderick A. Ferguson, eds., Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racializa­ tion (Duke University Press, 2011), 134. 9. See Malik D. McCluskey, “‘. . . And It’s Deep Too’: The Philosophical Comedy of Richard Pryor,” in Audrey Thomas McCluskey, ed., Richard Pryor: The Life and Legacy of a “Crazy” Black Man (Indiana University Press, 2008), 100. 10. See Willis, High Contrast, 209–­213. 11. Edward Gallafent, Quentin Tarantino (Pearson, 2006), 79. 12. See Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005). 13. See Gallafent, Quentin Tarantino, 72–­73. 14. See Stanley Crouch’s verbose and rigorous riffing on this point from “Blues in More Than One Color,” in The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity (Basic Civitas Books, 2004), 170–­174. 15. Hernan Vera and Andrew M. Gordon, Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). 16. See Robert E. Bonner, Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South (Princeton University Press, 2004). 17. See Randall E. Auxier, “Vinnie’s Very Bad Day: Twisting the Tale of Time in Pulp Fiction,” in Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, eds., Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch (Open Court, 2007), 139. 18. See Crouch, “Blues in More Than One Color,” in The Artificial White Man, 170–­174. 19. See Jonathan J. Cavallero, Hollywood’s Italian American Filmmakers: Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino (University of Illinois Press, 2011), 140–­143. 20. See Paul Gormley, “Trashing Whiteness: Pulp Fiction, se7en, Strange Days, and Articulating Affect,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 6:1 (April 2001): 160; Samuel Kimball, “‘Bad-­Ass Dudes’ in Pulp Fiction: Homophobia and the Counterphobic Idealization of Women,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 16(2): 171–­192; Devin Anthony Ogreron, “Scatological Film Practice: Pulp Fiction and a Cinema in Movements,” Post Script: Essays in Film & the Humanities 19(3): 29–­ 40; and Caroline Jewers, “Heroes and Heroin: From True Romance to Pulp Fiction,” Journal of Popular Culture 33:4 (Spring 2000): 39–­61. 21. See Stephanie R. Bush-­ Baskette, “The War on Drugs as a War on Black

Notes to Pages 54 –71 139 Women,” in Meda Chesney-­Lind and Lisa J. Pasko, eds., Girls, Women, and Crime: Selected Readings (Sage Publications, 2012), 175–­184. 22. Bush-­Baskette, “The War on Drugs,” in Chesney-­Lind and Pasko, eds., Girls, Women, and Crime. 23. Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card against America’s Poor (Routledge, 2001). 24. Bryan Wagner, Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2009), 160–­167. 25. Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton University Press, 2002). 26. Crouch, “Blues in More Than One Color,” 184. 27. K. Anthony Appiah, “‘No Bad Nigger’: Blacks as the Ethical Principle in the Movies,” in Marjorie Garber, Jann Matlock, and Rebecca Walkowitz, eds., Media Spectacles (Routledge, 1993). 28. Nicola Rehling, Extra-­Ordinary Men: White Heterosexual Masculinity and Contemporary Popular Cinema (Lexington Books, 2009), 213. 29. Gallafent, Quentin Tarantino, 33–­34. 30. See Fuchs, ed., Spike Lee Interviews, 150–­153. 31. See Aaron Barlow, “Jackie Brown: Music, Metadiegesis, and Meaning,” in Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes (Praeger, 2010), 93. 32. See Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film (Simon and Schuster, 2005), 319. The author sees Tarantino presenting films in which class is a significant source of meaning. 33. Cornel West, “Niggerization,” The Atlantic, November 1, 2007. 34. Mia Mask, Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film (University of Illinois Press, 2009). The observation about the revenging phallic woman is more accurately applied to the film Death Proof with the black female character’s symbolic sodomy of Stuntman Mike when her car rear-­ends his vehicle. 35. Laurent Bouzereau, Ultraviolent Movies: From Sam Peckinpah to Quentin Tarantino (Citadel Press, 2000), 13.

Chapter Three 1. Paul Bowman, Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon through Film, Phi­ losophy, and Popular Culture (Wallflower Press, 2013), 1. 2. See Bowman, Beyond Bruce Lee. 3. See Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: Politics and Ide­ ology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (Indiana University Press, 1990), 136; Martha McCaughey and Neal King, eds., Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies (University Texas Press, 2004); Jennifer K. Stuller, Ink-­Stained Amazons and Cine­ matic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology (I. B. Tauris, 2010). 4. See Motoko Rich, “Land Of the Rising Cliché,” New York Times, January 4, 2004. 5. See Nicola Rehling, Extra-­Ordinary Men: White Heterosexual Masculinity and Contemporary Popular Cinema (Lexington Books, 2009), 194. 6. See Kent A. Ono and Vincent Pham, Asian Americans and the Media (Polity, 2008).

140 Notes to Pages 71– 87 7. See Bowman, Beyond Bruce Lee, 4. 8. See bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies (Routledge, 1996) for a discussion of racial representations, notions of artistic vision, and notions of purity as stereotypical distortions. Armond White, in “See Quentin Kill,” Africana, October 14, 2003, offers a caustic analysis of what makes Tarantino tick as a filmmaker and outlines the types of racial gimmickry he employs to trick audiences to applaud his “trash cinema.” 9. White, “See Quentin Kill.” 10. Another competing explanation for the animus in the scene is Vivica Fox’s proclivity to excessively emote when doing almost any rendition of an offended black woman. See films Set It Off (1996), Soul Food (1997), and Two Can Play That Game (2001). 11. White, “See Quentin Kill.” 12. See Robin R. Means Coleman, Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (Routledge, 2011). 13. Edward Gallafent, Quentin Tarantino (Pearson, 2006), 112–­113. 14. See David Kyle Johnson, “Revenge and Mercy in Tarantino: The Lesson of Ezekiel 25:17,” for an insightful, offhanded quip “that the entire Kill Bill saga can be interpreted as a symbolic story of Bruce Lee getting revenge for the Americanization of Asian culture.” In Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, eds., Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch (Open Court, 2007), 59. 15. See Greg Tate, Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture (Broadway Books, 2003). 16. See Stanley Crouch, The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity (Basic Books, 2005). 17. See Aaron Barlow, Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes (Praeger, 2010), 123–­137; and Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, Grindhouse: The Sleaze-­ Filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature (Weinstein Books, 2007). 18. Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ide­ ology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (Indiana University Press, 1988), 185–­186. 19. See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (Routledge, 2005); and Jeffery A. Brown, “Panthers and Vixens: Black Superheroines, Sexuality, and Stereotypes in Contemporary Comic Books,” in Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II, eds., Black Comics: The Politics of Race and Representation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 133–­149. 20. Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Captive Bodies: Postcolonial Subjectivity in Cinema (SUNY Press, 1999). 21. Nadja Durbach, Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture (University of California Press, 2009). 22. Aaron C. Anderson, “Stuntman Mike, Simulation, and Sadism in Death Proof,” in Greene and Mohammad, eds., Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy, 18. 23. See Angela Ndalianis, The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses (McFarland, 2012), specifically the chapter “Payback’s a Bitch! Death Proof, Planet Terror, and the Carnivalization of Grindhouse Cinema,” 107–­142. 24. See Anne Anlin Cheng, Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Notes to Pages 90 – 96 141 25. See Barlow, Quentin Tarantino, 129. 26. See the chapter “Sexual Disguise and Cinema,” in Annette Kuhn, The Power of the Image: Representation and Sexuality (Routledge, 1985), 48–­73, for the coded way that cross-­dressing works to affirm the spectacle of difference, a point that is salient to the unstable representation of black sexuality in light of the various trends that present black women as masculine, including Flip Wilson’s Geraldine; the cross-­dressing films of Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, and Tyler Perry; and various films like He’s My Girl (1987), Stir Crazy (1980), High Risk (1981), Risky Busi­ ness (1983), Crying Game (1992), To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), Holiday Heart (2000), Woman on Top (2000), Juwanna Mann (2002), and Kinky Boots (2005). 27. See Ndalianis, The Horror Sensorium, “Payback’s a Bitch!,” 107–­142. 28. Ken Garner, “You’ve Heard this One Before: Quentin Tarantino’s Scoring Practices from Kill Bill to Inglourious Basterds,” in Arved Ashby, ed., Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers after MTV (Oxford University Press, 2013), 171.

Chapter Four 1. See Robert von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema (Continuum, 2012). Devoted to deconstructing the film from a range of viewpoints, the book shares a consistent topicality across chapters: A broad range of scholars and critics examine how the Jewish Holocaust is presented in the film. 2. See John Rieder, “Race and Revenge Fantasies in Avatar, District 9, and In­ glourious Basterds,” Science Fiction Film and Television 4.1 (2011): 41–­56. 3. See John Hoberman “Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds Makes Holocaust Revisionism Fun,” Village Voice, August 18, 2009; Kim Newman, “Inglourious Basterds,” Sight and Sound 19:9 (September 2009): 73; and Todd Herzog, “‘What Shall the History Books Read?’ The Debate over Inglourious Basterds and the Limits of Representation,” in von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, 271–­296. 4. Elizabeth Bridges, Kristin T. Vander Lugt, and Daniel H. Magilow, eds., Nazi­ sploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-­Brow Cinema and Culture (Continuum, 2011). 5. See Richard Hodgens, “A Brief, Tragical History of the Science Fiction Film,” Film Quarterly 13:2 (1959): 30–­39; J. P. Telotte, Science Fiction Film (Cambridge University Press, 2001); Vivian Sobachack, Screening Space: The American Science Fic­ tion Film (Rutgers University Press, 2004); Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” in Sean Redmond, ed., Liquid Metal: Science Fiction Film Reader (Wallflower Press, 2004), 40–­47; and Adilifu Nama, Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fic­ tion Film (University Texas Press, 2008). 6. Rieder, “Race and Revenge Fantasies,” 52. 7. See Srikanth Srinivasan, “The Grand Illousion,” in von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, 1–­13. The chapter makes specific reference to Landa’s pipe as a sight gag and describes all of the film’s characters as cartoonish. 8. Eric Kligerman views the oversized pipe as a bit of comic relief meant to show the artifice of cinema. Kligerman, “Reels of Justice: Inglourious Basterds,

142 Notes to Pages 97 –103 The Sorrow and the Pity, and Jewish Revenge Fantasies,” in von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, 147–­162. I read the excessiveness as more than sight gag and see it as political symbolism (see Guy Deboard, Society of the Spectacle [Black & Red, 2000]), a symbolism that encompasses the Third Reich’s use of spectacle as a cornerstone of its death-­cult political order, which is embodied in its uniforms, mass public parades, architecture, mass exterminations, blitzkrieg war strategy, and propaganda films. 9. Sharon Willis, “‘Fire!’ in a Crowded Theater: Liquidating History in In­ glourious Basterds,” in von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, 163–­192; Martin Flanagan, Bakhtin and the Movies: New Ways of Under­ standing Hollywood Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 86–­110; and Glenn Frankel, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend (Bloomsbury, 2013). 10. See Michael D. Richardson, “Vengeful Violence: Inglourious Basterds, Allohistory, and the Inversion of Victims and Perpetrators,” in von Dassanowsky’s Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, 93–­112; Aaron Kerner, Film and the Holo­ caust: New Perspectives on Dramas, Documentaries, and Experimental Films (Continuum, 2011); and Paul Breines, Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Di­ lemma of American Jewry (Basic Books, 1990). 11. See Jason Haslam, “Inglourious Criticism, Basterd Fantasies: Rancière, Tarantino, and the Intellectual Spectacle of Hope,” in Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam, eds., The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope (University of Toronto Press, 2013), 178–­202. A classic example of theoretical film studies analysis at work, the chapter relies heavily on the nomenclature of the field to explicate the meaning and optic power of the film. 12. A dubious perspective that still garners legitimacy in books with stilted titles like Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk about It (John Entine, PublicAffairs, 2001); and Darwin’s Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (John Hoberman, Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 13. See William Brow, “Counterfactuals, Quantum Physics, and Cruel Monsters in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds,” in von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, 247–­270. 14. See Marlon Riggs compelling, Emmy-­winning documentary Ethnic Notions (Signifyin’ Works, 1987). 15. See James Sneed, White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side (Routledge, 1994); and Eric Greene, Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Poli­ tics, and Popular Culture (Wesleyan University Press, 1998). 16. See Kligerman, “Reels of Justice,” in von Dassanosky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. 17. See Haslam, “Inglourios Criticism,” in Faflak and Haslam, eds., The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope, p. 189. 18. See Eduardo Bonilla-­Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-­Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); and Deirdre A. Royster and Stephen Steinberg, Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-­Collar Jobs (University of California Press, 2003). 19. See Rieder, “Race and Revenge Fantasies.”

Notes to Pages 104 –121 143 20. Lisa Dombrowski, The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You (Weslyan University Press, 2008); and Frank B. Wilderson III, Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Duke University Press, 2010). 21. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Temple University Press, 1993), 20–­21. 22. Guerrero, Framing Blackness, 30–­35. 23. Guerrero, Framing Blackness; and Nama, Black Space. 24. See Todd McCarthy, “Django Unchained: Film Review,” Hollywood Reporter, December 11, 2012. 25. See Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Tarantino ‘Unchained’: Django Trilogy,” in Gerald Peary, ed., Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated (University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 184–­198. 26. See Clive Bloom, Gothic Histories: The Taste for Terror, 1764 to the Present (Continuum, 2010), 112–­127. 27. Fred Botting, Gothic (Routledge, 1996), 168. 28. Ibid., 5. 29. See Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-­ Making in Nineteenth-­Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997), 22–­50. 30. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpre­ tive History of Blacks in American Films, 4th ed. (Continuum, 2001). 31. See Botting, Gothic, 2. 32. See Bloom, Gothic Histories, 4. 33. See André Bazin, The Cinema of Cruelty from Buñuel to Hitchcock (Arcade Publishing, 1982); and Armond White, “12 Years a Slave Uses Sadistic Art to Patronize History,” CityArts, October 16, 2013. 34. William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemp­ tion of the Black Athlete (Broadway Books, 2007). 35. See the chapter, “Django Unchained: How Not to Do Screen Violence,” in Gregory Desilet, Screens of Blood: A Critical Approach to Film and Television Vio­ lence (McFarlad, 2014). He also views Django Unchained as a poorly executed parody. 36. Bloom, Gothic Histories. 37. See Wheeler Winston Dixon, History of Horror (Rutgers University Press, 2010). 38. Walter C. Rucker, Jr., and James N. Upton, eds., Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Greenwood Publishing, 2006). 39. See Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (Oxford University Press, 2012); and Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman, eds., The Bell Curve Debate: History, Documents, Opinions (Crown Publishing, 1995).

Coda 1. Certainly, the Willie Horton political attack ad used in the 1988 presidential campaign epitomizes how black representation in the media is a potent cultural force. The George H. W. Bush campaign attacked the governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, for being soft on crime with the mug shot of a disheveled black man convicted of murder who was allowed to take part in a weekend furlough pro-

144 Notes to Pages 121–129 gram. While out one weekend he repeatedly raped a white woman and assaulted her fiancé. The attack ad is credited for turning the tide in favor of Bush Sr. in the campaign, and it easily evoked the representation of black men as overt sexual savages, an image first popularized in the film The Birth of a Nation. 2. “Tavis Smiley Slams ‘Django Unchained,’ Calls it ‘Spoof’ of Slavery,” TheGrio, http://thegrio.com/2013/01/08/tavis-­smiley-­slams-­django-­unchained-­calls-­it-­spoof -­of-­slavery/; and Ishmael Reed, “Black Audiences, White Stars, and ‘Django Unchained,’” Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2012. 3. See Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (Vintage, 1973). 4. Sharon Willis, High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Films (Duke University Press, 1997), 211. 5. In “Racism and the Aesthetic of Hyperreal Violence: 
Pulp Fiction and Other Visual Tragedies” (Social Identities 1:2 [1995], 333–­354), Henry A. Giroux

 does an excellent job of reductively taking Tarantino to task as a filmmaker who epitomizes the racist excesses of America. 6. “Barbara Bush: Go See ‘Precious’,” Newsweek, December 12, 2009. 7. Ishmael Reed, “Hollywood’s Enduring Myth of the Black Male Sexual Predator: The Selling of ‘Precious,’” Counter Punch, December 4–­6, 2009. 8. bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies (Routledge, 1996), 8. 9. John Berra, Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Par­ tiality of Independent Production (Intellect Ltd., 2008), 168–­178. 10. Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror (University of Texas Press, 2011), 6. 11. David King, The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia (Holt Paperbacks, 1999). 12. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Temple University Press, 1993), 118. 13. See Adam Bresnick, “The Birth of the Entertainment-­Industrial Complex,” Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1999. 14. Jason Sperb, Disney’s Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South (University of Texas Press, 2012). 15. Rachel L. Swarns, American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama (Amistad, 2012). 16. Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis, Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream (Westview Press, 1992). 17. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Harvard University Press, 1985). 18. Charles Aaron, “What the White Boy Means When He Says Yo,” in Raquel Cepeda, ed., And It Don’t Stop!: The Best American Hip-­Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years (Faber & Faber, 2004), 211–­237. 19. Jason Bailey, Pulp Fiction: The Complete Story of Quentin Tarantino’s Master­ piece (Voyageur Press, 2013), 123. 20. Adilifu Nama, Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes (University Texas Press, 2011), 92. 21. James S. Leonard, Thomas A. Tenney, and Thadious M. Davis, eds., Satire or Evasion?: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn (Duke University Press, 1991).

Notes to Pages 129 –133 145 22. Kevin W. Saunders, Degradation: What the History of Obscenity Tells Us about Hate Speech (New York University Press, 2011), 159. 23. Leonard, Tenney, and Davis, eds., Satire or Evasion? 24. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, Grindhouse: The Sleaze-­Filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature (Weinstein Books, 2007). 25. Ibid, 140. 26. John Strausbaughis, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult, and Imi­ tation in American Popular Culture (Penguin Group, 2007); and Michael Gillespie, “Reckless Eyeballing: Coonskin and the Racial Grotesque,” in Mia Mask, ed., Con­ temporary Black American Cinema: Race, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies (Taylor & Francis, 2012), 76–­86. For a more contextualized and astute ideological deconstruction of the use of Coonskin to fit a conservative discourse around race, see Sperb, Disney’s Most Notorious Film. 27. Dana Polan, Pulp Fiction (British Film Institute, 2008); and Manthia Diawara, In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 2000), 271–­272.

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150 Race on the QT Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University Press, 1993. Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-­ Making in Nineteenth-­Century America. Oxford University Press, 1997. Haslam, Jason. “Inglourious Criticism, Basterd Fantasies: Ranciere, Tarantino, and the Intellectual Spectacle of Hope.” In Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam, eds., The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope, 178–­202. University of Toronto Press, 2013. Herzog, Todd. “‘What Shall the History Books Read?’: The Debate over Inglourious Basterds and the Limits of Representation.” In Robert von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema, 271–­296. Hoberman, John. Darwin’s Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Houghton Mifflin, 1997. ———­. “Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds Makes Holocaust Revisionism Fun.” Village Voice, August 18, 2009. Hodgens, Richard. “A Brief, Tragical History of the Science Fiction Film.” Film Quar­ terly 13:2 (1959): 30–­39. hooks, bell. Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies. Routledge, 1996. Howard, Sheena C., and Ronald L. Jackson II, eds. Black Comics: The Politics of Race and Representation. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Jacoby, Russell, and Naomi Glauberman, eds. The Bell Curve Debate: History, Docu­ ments, Opinions. Crown Publishing, 1995. Jewers, Caroline. “Heroes and Heroin: From True Romance to Pulp Fiction.” Journal of Popular Culture 33:4 (Spring 2000): 39–­61. Jhally, Sut, and Justin Lewis. Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream. Westview Press, 1992. Johnson, David Kyle. “Revenge and Mercy in Tarantino: The Lesson of Ezekiel 25:17.” In Richard Green and K. Silem Mohammad, eds., Quentin Tarantino and Phi­ losophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch, 55–­73. Kerner, Aaron. Film and the Holocaust: New Perspectives on Dramas, Documen­ taries, and Experimental Films. Continuum, 2011. Kimball, Samuel. “‘Bad-­Ass Dudes’ in Pulp Fiction: Homophobia and the Counterphobic Idealization of Women.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 16(2): 171–­192. King, David. The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. Holt Paperbacks, 1999. Kligerman, Eric. “Reels of Justice: Inglourious Basterds, The Sorrow and the Pity, and Jewish Revenge Fantasies.” In Robert von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema, 147–­162. Leland, John. Hip: The History. HarperCollins, 2004. Leonard, James S., Thomas A. Tenney, and Thadious M. Davis, eds. Satire or Eva­ sion?: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn. Duke University Press, 1991. Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford University Press, 1993. Mailer, Norman. “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the White Hipster.” Dissent (Fall 1957).

Bibliography 151 Mask, Mia, ed. Contemporary Black American Cinema: Race, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies. Routledge, 2014. ——— ­. Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film. University of Illinois Press, 2009. McCarthy, Todd. “Django Unchained: Film Review.” Hollywood Reporter, December 11, 2012. ———­. “Review: Reservoir Dogs.” Variety, January 26, 1992. McCaughey, Martha, and Neal King, eds. Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies. University Texas Press, 2004. McCluskey, Malik D. “‘. . . And It’s Deep Too’: The Philosophical Comedy of Richard Pryor.” In Audrey Thomas McCluskey, ed., Richard Pryor: The Life and Legacy of a “Crazy” Black Man, 89–­105. Indiana University Press, 2008. Mottram, James. The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood. Faber & Faber, 2007. Murray, Charles. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–­2010. Crown Forum, 2013. Nama, Adilifu. Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film. University of Texas Press, 2008. ———­. Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes. University of Texas Press, 2011. Ndalianis, Angela. The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses. McFarland, 2012. Neubeck, Kenneth J., and Noel A. Cazenave. Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card against America’s Poor. Routledge, 2001. Newitz, Annalee, and Matt Wray. White Trash: Race and Class in America. Taylor & Francis, 1996. Newman, Kim. “Inglourious Basterds.” Sight and Sound 19:9 (September 2009): 73. Ogreron, Devin Anthony. “Scatological Film Practice: Pulp Fiction and a Cinema in Movements.” Post Script: Essays in Film & the Humanities 19(3): 29–­40. Ono, Kent A., and Vincent Pham. Asian Americans and the Media. Polity, 2008. Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard University Press, 1985. Peary, Gerald, ed. Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated. University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Polan, Dana. Pulp Fiction. British Film Institute, 2008. Reed, Ishmael. “Black Audiences, White Stars, and ‘Django Unchained.’” Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2012. ———­. “Hollywood’s Enduring Myth of the Black Male Sexual Predator: The Selling of ‘Precious.’” Counter Punch, December 4–­6, 2009. Rehling, Nicola. Extra-­Ordinary Men: White Heterosexual Masculinity and Con­ temporary Popular Cinema. Lexington Books, 2009. Rhoden, William C. Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. Broadway Books, 2007. Rich, Motoko. “Land of the Rising Cliché.” New York Times, January 4, 2004. Richardson, Michael D. “Vengeful Violence: Inglourious Basterds, Allohistory, and the Inversion of Victims and Perpetrators.” In Robert von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema, 93–­112.

152 Race on the QT Rieder, John. “Race and Revenge Fantasies in Avatar, District 9, and Inglourious Bas­ terds.” Science Fiction Film and Television 4.1 (2011): 41–­56. Riggs, Marlon, director. Ethnic Notions. Documentary film. Signifyin’ Works, 1987. Royster, Deirdre A., and Stephen Steinberg. Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-­Collar Jobs. University of California Press, 2003. Rucker, Walter C., Jr., and James N. Upton, eds. Encyclopedia of American Race Riots. Greenwood Publishing, 2006. Ryan, Michael, and Douglas Kellner. Camera Politica: Politics and Ideology of Con­ temporary Hollywood Film. Indiana University Press, 1988. Saunders, Kevin W. Degradation: What the History of Obscenity Tells Us about Hate Speech. New York University Press, 2011. Shaw, Deborah. “‘You Are Alright, But . . .’: Individual and Collective Representations of Mexicans, Latinos, Anglo-­Americans, and African-­Americans in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22(3):211–­223. Smith, Jim. Tarantino. Virgin Books, 2005. Sneed, James. White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side. Routledge, 1994. Sobachack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. Rutgers University Press, 2004. Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.” In Sean Redmond, ed., Liquid Metal: Science Fiction Film Reader, 40–­47. Wallflower Press, 2004. Sperb, Jason. Disney’s Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden His­ tories of Song of the South. University of Texas Press, 2012. Srinivasan, Srikanth. “The Grand Illousion.” In Robert von Dassanowsky, ed., Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema, 1–­13. Strausbaughis, John. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult, and Imitation in American Popular Culture. Penguin Group, 2007. Stuller, Jennifer K. Ink-­Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology. I. B. Tauris, 2010. Swarns, Rachel L. American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama. Amistad, 2012. Tapia, Ruby. “Volumes of Transnational Vengeance: Fixing Race and Feminism on the Way to Kill Bill.” In Grace Kyungwon Hong and Roderick A. Ferguson, eds., Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization, 131–­147. Duke University Press, 2011. Tarantino, Quentin, and Robert Rodriguez. Grindhouse: The Sleaze-­Filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature. Weinstein Books, 2007. Tate, Greg. Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture. Broadway Books, 2003. “Tavis Smiley Slams ‘Django Unchained,’ Calls it ‘Spoof’ of Slavery.” TheGrio, January8,2013.http://thegrio.com/2013/01/08/tavis-­smiley-­slams-­django-­unchained -­calls-­it-­spoof-­of-­slavery/. Telotte, J. P. Science Fiction Film. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Tierney, Sean. “Quentin Tarantino in Black and White.” In Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono, eds., Critical Rhetorics of Race, 81–­97. New York University Press, 2011.

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Index

Film characters are alphabetized by first name; film stills are denoted by f following the page number. Abernathy Ross (Rosario Dawson, Death Proof), 87–88, 89f, 91 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Timur Bekmambetov, 2012), 126–127 Across 110th Street (Barry Shear, 1972), 63 Adjustment Bureau, The (George Nolfi, 2010), 43 Adolf Hitler (Martin Wuttke, Inglouri­ ous Basterds), 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 103 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, 1885), 129 African Americans, 105; in Birth of a Nation, 28; and Confederate flag, 49–50; and criticism of Django Un­ chained, 131; in Django Unchained, 109; and exceptionalism, 119; in Falling Down, 35; in Hollywood films, 113; in Inglourious Basterds, 8; mimicry by whites, 27; and the n-­word, 40, 44; and the “race card,” 55; and racial subtext of King Kong, 101; and rendering of historical tensions, 105; in Reservoir Dogs, 8; and science-­fiction tropes, 106; and socioeconomic conditions, 122; in Spike Lee films, 7; in Tarantino films, 127–128; and Uncle Tom trope, 111. See also black characters; spe­ cific films Afrocentricity, 25 Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette, True Romance), 26, 28, 29, 32–34, 32f Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, Inglourious Bas­ terds), 96, 103 Alexander (Oliver Stone, 2004), 36 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974), 6 Alien Nation (Graham Baker, 1988), 106

Allen, Woody, 7, 131 Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington, Training Day), 57 alternate history, 94–95. See also revisionism American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980), 57 American history: and Abraham Lin­ coln: Vampire Hunter, 126; and Death Proof, 89; and Django Un­ chained, 11, 119; erasure of, 124; and slavery, 104 American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998), 43, 103 Amistad (Steven Spielberg, 1997), 106, 113–114 Animal House (John Landis, 1978), 56–57 Annie (Broadway musical), 128 Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977), 7 Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011), 95 Antwone Fisher (Denzel Washington, 2002), 102 Any Given Sunday (Oliver Stone, 1999), 36 Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito, Death Proof), 83, 85, 91, 92 Arquette, Patricia, in True Romance, 26, 32f Arquette, Rosanna, in Pulp Fiction, 48 Asian representation: in American pop culture, 70–71; in Kill Bill saga, 11, 140n14; in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 74; in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 81–82; in martial arts films, 67 Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), 82 Baker, Josephine, 87 “Ballot or the Bullet” (Malcolm X, 1964), 5

156 Race on the QT Bamboozled (Spike Lee, 2000), 7 Baywatch (1989–1999), 14 B.B. (Perla Haney-­Jardine, Kill Bill: Vol. 2), 79 Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman, Kill Bill), 79–82, 81f, 90. See also Black Mamba; Bride, the Beaumont Livingston (Chris Tucker, Jackie Brown), 58–59, 61 Beguiled, The (Don Siegel, 1971), 107 Bell, Zoë, in Death Proof, 88, 90f, 91f Bell Curve, 119 Beloved (Jonathan Demme, 1998), 106, 107, 122 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970), 128 Bicentennial Nigger (Richard Pryor, 1976), 40 Bickle, Travis (Robert De Niro, Taxi Driver), 27 Big Boss, The (Lo Wei, 1971), 67 Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986), 78 Bill (David Carradine), Kill Bill: Vol. 1), 69; Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 79 Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin, 1971), 4, 71 Birch, Thora, 124 Birth of a Nation, The (D. W. Griffith, 1915), 28, 56, 104, 112, 143–144n1 Black and White (James Toback, 1999), 29, 63 black characters: in Death Proof, 92; in Django Unchained, 118; in Hollywood films, 41, 42–43, 77; in Jackie Brown, 61–62; in Pulp Fiction, 43– 44; in Tarantino films, 37, 123, 130; in Woody Allen films, 131. See also African Americans; specific charac­ ters; specific films Blackenstein (William A. Levey, 1973), 76 blackface minstrelsy, 27–28, 133, 136n5 black female sexuality, 11, 131 Black Like Me (Julius Tannenbaum, 1964), 122 Black Lolita (Stephen Gibson, 1975), 76 Black Mamba (Uma Thurman, Kill Bill),

68, 76–77. See also Beatrix Kiddo; Bride, the black masculinity: in athletics, 142n12; in Birth of a Nation, 56; in King Kong films, 57; in Pulp Fiction, 41; in Tarantino films, 123; in Traffic, 28. See also white masculinity blackness, 2–3; in Hollywood films, 56–57; in Inglourious Basterds, 98; in Jackie Brown, 57f, 58; in Reservoir Dogs, 11, 16–17, 23–24; in Tarantino films, 10, 12–13, 37, 74–75, 122, 123, 130, 133–134; in Traffic, 29; in True Romance, 25–26, 28–32, 35; white appropriation of, 28, 41–42, 77, 136n18. See also race; whiteness black power movement, 4, 22, 25, 105, 106, 113 Black Samson (Charles Bail, 1974), 76 black sexuality, 141n26 Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer, 2006), 76 black studies, 25 Blacula (William Crain, 1972), 76 Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998), 73 Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), 70, 106 Blaxploitation: and depictions of slavery, 113; and Hollywood, 105–106; and Jackie Brown, 63–65; and Reser­ voir Dogs, 23; as Tarantino influence, 3–6, 9–10, 12, 128, 129; and True Romance, 30, 31. See also specific films Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974), 4, 113 Blink 182, 14 Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006), 43 Blue Collar (Paul Schrader, 1978), 7 “Blues in More Than One Color” (Stanley Crouch), 9 Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967), 6, 103 “Bonnie Situation,” in Pulp Fiction, 44–45, 46–47 Boone, Pat, 28

Index 157 Boss Nigger (Jack Arnold, 1975), 40, 106, 113 Boss Tanaka (Jun Kunimura, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), 72–73, 74 Botting, Fred, 113 Bowen, Michael, in Jackie Brown, 53 Bowman, Paul, 71–72 Boys from Brazil, The (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978), 95 Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991), 14–15 Brando, Marlon, 4 Br’er Rabbit, 56 Bride, the (Uma Thurman, Kill Bill), 68– 69, 70, 70f, 71, 72, 73–75, 75f, 77f. See also Beatrix Kiddo; Black Mamba Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger, Inglourious Basterds), 100–101 Briefel, Aviva, 124 Bronze Buckaroo (Richard C. Kahn, 1939), 117 Brooks, Robert, in Reservoir Dogs, 17, 18f Broomhilda (Kerry Washington, Django Unchained), 108–109, 110f, 111, 112, 116, 117 Brother from Another Planet, The (John Sayles, 1984), 8, 106 Brother Future (Roy Campanella II, 1991), 106 Brothers Grimm, 47 Brown, H. Rap, 5 Brown, James, 71 Brown, William, 101 Budd (Michael Madsen, Kill Bill: Vol. 2), 78–79 Buddy Bragg (Ving Rhames, Out of Sight), 58 Bullets over Broadway (Woody Allen, 1994), 131 Bullitt (Peter Yates, 1968), 35 Bunker, Eddie, in Reservoir Dogs, 16 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 84 Burton, Tim, 2 Buscemi, Steve, in Reservoir Dogs, 13–14, 16

Bush, Barbara, 123 Bush, George H. W., 25, 143–144n1 Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis, Pulp Fic­ tion), 41, 43, 44, 49, 50f, 51 Butler, The (Lee Daniels, 2013), 8 Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained), 109–110, 111, 111f, 112f, 114f, 118–119 Captain America: The First Avenger (Joe Johnston, 2011), 126 Captain Kirk (William Shatner, Star Trek), 95 Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma, 1993), 15 Caroline Wakefield (Erika Christensen, Traffic), 29 Carradine, David: in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 72; in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 79; in Kung Fu, 71 Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), 7, 69–70 Carroll, Diahann, in Claudine, 52 Carter, Jimmy, 14 Cassavetes, John, 131 Catch-­22 (Mike Nichols, 1970), 94 Cayouette, Laura, in Django Un­ chained, 109 Chan, Charlie, 70 Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973), 4 Cheadle, Don, in Devil in a Blue Dress, 57 Chiba, Sonny, 68 Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), 6 Cho, Frank, 84 Chronic, The (Dr. Dre, 1992), 14 City on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987), 13 civil rights movement, 7, 22, 25, 122, 126 Civil War, 28, 58, 126 Clarence Worley (Christian Slater, True Romance), 26, 29–30, 32–33, 32f, 35 class, 25, 139n32; in Claudine, 52; in Falling Down, 35; in Hollywood films, 104; in Jackie Brown, 11, 55, 62, 63–65; in Tarantino films, 139n32; in True Romance, 31, 33 Claudine (John Berry, 1974), 52 Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper, True Romance), 30–31, 32

158 Race on the QT Clockwork Orange, A (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), 128 Clooney, George: in From Dusk till Dawn, 131–132; in Out of Sight, 58 Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008), 37 Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom, 2003), 36 Collateral Damage (Andrew Davis, 2002), 36 Colonel Landa. See Hans Landa Coltrane, John, 9 Confederate flag, 49–50 Connery, Sean, 70 “coon,” 16, 112, 136n5 Coonskin (Ralph Bakshi, 1975), 133 Coppola, Francis Ford, 4 Cosby Show (1984–1992), 127 Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996), 87 Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004), 103 Crazy 88s, 71 Cronenberg, David, 87, 119, 134 cross-­dressing, 141n26 Crouch, Stanley, 9–10, 57–58, 133, 138n6, 138n14 Crying Game (1992), 141n26 Daniels, Lee, 8 D’Artagnan (Ato Essandoh, Django Un­ chained), 110 Davis, Ilah, in Hardcore, 115 Dawson, Rosario, in Death Proof, 87, 89f DC Comics, 95 Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007), 10, 11, 65, 82–92, 129, 132, 139n34 Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, 1997), 131 Deer Hunter, The (Michael Cimino, 1978), 7, 70 Defiant Ones, The (Stanley Kramer, 1958), 43 Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972), 50, 51 De Niro, Robert: in Jackie Brown, 58, 59f; in Taxi Driver, 27 De Palma, Brian, 15 Departed, The (Martin Scorsese, 2006), 5–6, 37

Derek, Bo, 84 Detroit, Michigan, 26, 30, 32–33, 40, 118 Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995), 57 “D-­Fens” (Michael Douglas, Falling Down), 35 dialogue: in Death Proof, 90, 92; in The Godfather, 4–5; and the n-­word, 37, 40, 44–46; in Pulp Fiction, 39, 42– 43, 133; in Reservoir Dogs, 15–16; in Tarantino films, 1, 128; in True Ro­ mance, 25, 26. See also specific films Diamond, Neil, in The Jazz Singer, 28 DiCaprio, Leonardo, in Django Un­ chained, 109, 111f, 112f, 114f Dick, Philip K., 94 Dirty Dozen, The (Robert Aldrich, 1967), 93 DJ (Terrence Howard, Hustle and Flow), 57 Django (Jamie Foxx), 108f, 109, 109f, 111, 112, 116, 117, 117f, 132 Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966), 106 Django Unchained (Tarantino, 2012), 10, 127, 128–129; compared to Death Proof, 92; criticism of, 121, 130–131; as critique of race relations in America, 11–12; discussion of, 104–120; as parody, 143n35; and racial blackness, 134; and white audiences, 132–133 Doctor Who (1963–­to date), 95 Donowitz, Lee (Saul Rubinek, True Romance), 34 Doors, The (Oliver Stone, 1991), 36 Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989), 7 Douglas, Michael: in Falling Down, 35; in Traffic, 29 Downey, Robert, Jr., in Tropic Thunder, 28 Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (William Crain, 1976), 76 Dr. Dre, 14 Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman, True Ro­ mance), 26, 28, 29, 31–32, 35 Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1989), 43 Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), 94

Index 159 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964), 94 drug mules, 52–53, 54, 64–65 Drum (Steve Carver, 1976), 105 Du Bois, W.E.B., 118, 119 Duel at Diablo (Ralph Nelson, 1966), 117 Dukakis, Michael, 143–144n1 Duke, Bill, in American Gigolo, 57 Duvalier, François “Papa Doc,” 105 Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), 6 economics, 53, 63–64, 104 Ejiofor, Chiwetel: in Melinda and Melinda, 131; in 12 Years a Slave, 114–115 Elliot Blitzer (Bronson Pinchot, True Romance), 34 Ellis Moonsong (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Melinda and Melinda), 131 Ellison, Ralph, 9 Eminem, 28 Enid (Thora Birch, Ghost World), 124 Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973), 67 Essandoh, Ato, in Django Unchained, 110 Ethan Edwards (John Wayne, The Searchers), 97–98 eugenics, 31, 119. See also racism Ex Machina (Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, 2004), 95 Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993), 35 Family Man, The (Brett Ratner, 2000), 43 Fast Black (Morgan Freeman, Street Smart), 57 female sexuality, 83, 84, 131 feminism, 25, 34 Ferlito, Vanessa, in Death Proof, 83 film noir, 23 film studies, 9, 10, 136n3, 142n11 Fistful of Dollars, A (Sergio Leone, 1964), 106

Fist of Fury (Lo Wei, 1972), 67 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 129 Flash Gordon (1936–1940, 1980), 70 Flora (Mae Marsh, Birth of a Nation), 28 Fonda, Bridget, in Jackie Brown, 59, 60f Force 10 from Navarone (Guy Hamilton, 1978), 93 Forster, Robert, in Jackie Brown, 55 48 Hrs. (Walter Hill, 1982), 43 47 Ronin (Carl Rinsch, 2013), 82 Foster, Jodi, in Taxi Driver, 27 Four Little Girls (Spike Lee, 1997), 7 Fox, Vivica A., 140n10; in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 75, 77f Foxx, Jamie, in Django Unchained, 108f, 109f, 117f Foxx, Red, 40 Foxy Brown (Pam Grier), 64–65 Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson, The Departed), 5 Frazetta, Frank, 84 Freeman, Morgan, in Street Smart, 57 French Connection, The (William Friedkin, 1971), 4, 7 Fresh Prince of Bel-­Air (1990–1996), 14 Friedkin, William, 7 From Dusk till Dawn (Robert Rodriguez, 1996), 131–132 “Fuck tha Police” (N.W.A., 1988), 14 funk, 15 Gallafent, Edward (Quentin Tarantino), 61 Game of Death, The (Bruce Lee, 1973/ 1978), 67, 72 Gandolfini, James, in True Romance, 33 Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002), 37, 126 gangsta rap, 14–15 Gates, Darrel, 14 gender bias, 79–80 gender politics, 11, 35, 69–70 Get On the Bus (Spike Lee, 1996), 7 Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990), 43 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch, 1999), 37 Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001), 124

160 Race on the QT Gifford, Frances, 84 “Gimp,” the (in Pulp Fiction), 49 Giroux, Henry A., 144n5 Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989), 106, 113 Godfather, The (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972), 4–5, 7 Godfather, The, Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), 7 Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939), 58, 105, 120 Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The (Sergio Leone, 1966), 106 Goodbye Uncle Tom (Gualtiero Jacopetti, 1971), 105, 116 Gothic fiction, 113 Gothic horror, in Django Unchained, 12, 106–114, 117–120, 129 Grand Theft Auto (1997), 15 Great Gatsby, The (Baz Luhrmann, 2013), 129 Green Berets, The (various, 1968), 96 Green Day, 14 Green Hornet, The, theme music of, 72 Green Mile, The (Frank Darabont, 1999), 43 Grier, Pam: as Foxy Brown, 64–65; in Jackie Brown, 53, 53f, 55f, 63f, 64f Griffith, D. W., 28, 56, 104, 112 Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez, 2007), 132 Groth, Sylvester, in Inglourious Bas­ terds, 100 Guerrero, Ed, 104 Gus (Walter Long, Birth of a Nation), 28, 56 Guss, Louis, 4 Habermas, Jürgen, 130–131 Haney-­Jardine, Perla, in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 79 Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, In­ glourious Basterds), 94, 97f, 103, 141–142n8, 141n7 Harajuku Girls, 70–71 Hardcore (Paul Schrader, 1979), 115–116 Harlem on The Prairie (Sam Newfield, 1937), 117

Harmon, Joy, in Village of the Giants, 82 Harriell, Marcy, in Death Proof, 85 Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), 68 Help, The (Tate Taylor, 2011), 43, 62, 126 He’s My Girl (1987), 141n26 High Risk (1981), 141n26 hip-­hop, 14, 15, 40, 63, 128, 129, 136n3. See also rap music Hitchcock, Alfred, 2, 62 Holdaway (Robert Brooks, Reservoir Dogs), 17–20, 18f, 23–25, 136n9 Holiday Heart (2000), 141n26 Hollywood, California, 32–33 Hollywood films: and black characters, 28–29, 51–52, 56–58, 65, 77, 117; and black/white character pairs, 41–43; and Bruce Lee, 67; and explicitness, 128; and female characters, 34, 56, 69, 84, 85; and historical revisionism, 124–126; and individualism, 116, 118; and racial representation, 70, 71, 102; and slavery, 104–106, 113, 120; and war, 93; and white characters, 48, 49, 80, 82, 102–103. See also specific films Holocaust, in Inglourious Basterds, 94, 97, 102, 141n1 Homeland (2011–2014), 37 Home of the Brave (Mark Robson, 1949), 102 Honeydripper (John Sayles, 2007), 8 Hong Kong kung fu film industry, 68 hooks, bell, 123 Hopper, Dennis, in True Romance, 30 Horton, Willie, 143–144n1 Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005), 36 Hottentot Venus, 85 Howard, Terrence, in Hustle and Flow, 57 Howell, C. Thomas, in Soul Man, 28 Hughes, Howard, 2 Hunted, The (William Friedkin, 2003), 36 Hurricane, The (Norman Jewison, 1999), 8

Index 161 Hustle and Flow (Craig Brewer, 2005), 57 Huston, John, 131 Ido, Jacky, in Inglourious Basterds, 98, 99f Ill Gotten Gains (Joel B. Marsden, 1997), 106 In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks, 1967), 6 Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009), 8, 10, 11, 92, 93–104, 141n7 interracial pairs, 42, 88, 98 interracial relationships, 1, 7, 98, 131 interracial sexuality, 7, 105, 123 In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967), 8 Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952), 9 Iris (Jodi Foster, Taxi Driver), 27 Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002), 40 Jack Foley (George Clooney, Out of Sight), 58 Jackie (Pam Grier, Jackie Brown), 11, 53– 56, 53f, 55f, 59, 61, 63f, 64, 64f, 90–91 Jackie Brown (Tarantino, 1997), 10, 11; and black racial identity, 37; compared to Death Proof, 90–91, 92; discussion of, 52–65; and the n-­word, 8, 40–41 Jackson, Samuel L.: in Django Un­ chained, 110, 111f, 112, 112f, 132–133; in Jackie Brown, 53, 57, 57f, 59f, 63f; in Pulp Fiction, 42, 42f Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott, Hard­ core), 115 James, David, 121 Jasper (Jonathan Loughran, Death Proof), 91–92 Jay-­Z, 40–41, 128 Jazz Singer, The (Alan Crosland, 1927), 27 Jazz Singer, The (Richard Fleischer, 1980), 28 Jefferson in Paris (James Ivory, 1995), 127 Jerk, The (Carl Reiner, 1979), 133 “Jew Hunter.” See Hans Landa Jewison, Norman, 8 Jim Crow, 49–50, 122

Jimmie Dimmick (Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction), 44, 48 Jim West (Will Smith, Wild Wild West), 117 Jody (Rosanna Arquette, Pulp Fiction), 48 Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney, Reservoir Dogs), 16–23, 22f, 136n9 Johnson, Lyndon B., 14 Jolson, Al, in The Jazz Singer, 27 Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth, In­ glourious Basterds), 100 Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction), 42, 42f, 43–44, 46, 51–52, 133 Julien, Max, in The Mack, 30 Jungle Fever (Spike Lee, 1991), 7 Jungle Girl (William Witney, 1941), 84 Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Death Proof), 83, 84–85, 85f, 86–87, 90, 91, 92, 129 Juwanna Mann (2002), 141n26 Karate Kid, The (Harald Zwart, 2010), 67 Karate Kid, The (John G. Avildsen, 1984), 67 Kazaam (Paul M. Glaser, 1996), 43 Keaton, Michael, in Jackie Brown, 53 Keitel, Harvey: in Pulp Fiction, 47; in Reservoir Dogs, 16, 21f; in Taxi Driver, 27 Kelly, Ambrosia, in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 75 Kelly’s Heroes (Brian G. Hutton, 1970), 93 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Tarantino, 2003), 10, 11, 65, 67–78, 92, 104 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (Tarantino, 2004), 10, 11, 65, 78–82, 90 Killing, The (Stanley Kubrick, 1956), 39 Killing Zoe (Roger Avary, 1993), 36 Kim Mathis (Tracie Thoms, Death Proof), 88–90, 90f, 91, 91f, 92, 139n34 King, Rodney, 13 King Kong (1933, 1976, 2005), 57, 101–102 King of New York (Abel Ferrar, 1990), 29 King Schultz, Dr. (Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained), 107, 109, 111, 111f

162 Race on the QT Kinky Boots (2005), 141n26 Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955), 46 Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971), 128 Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979), 7 Kristen (Ilah Davis, Hardcore), 115 Kruger, Diane, in Inglourious Basterds, 100 Ku Klux Klan, 28, 104, 109, 110 Kung Fu (1972–1975), 71, 72 kung fu films, 68 Kung Fu Panda (John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, 2008), 67 Kunimura, Jun, in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 72–73, 74 Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine, Kung Fu), 71 Ladd, Jordan, in Death Proof, 83 LaMarr, Phil, 44 Lance (Eric Stolz, Pulp Fiction), 47, 48 LaPadite (Denis Menochet, Inglourious Basterds), 96, 98 LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department), 14 Lara (Laura Cayouette, Django Un­ chained), 109 Last Airbender, The (M. Night Shyamalan, 2010), 71 Last Boy Scout, The (Tony Scott, 1991), 43 Last Picture Show, The (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971), 128 Last Samurai, The (Edward Zwick, 2003), 71, 82 Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972), 128 Lawrence, Martin, 141n26 Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Death Proof), 91–92 Lee, Bruce, 67, 72, 140n14 Lee, Jesse, in Posse, 117 Lee, Spike, 7–8, 121; and criticism of Tarantino, 40 Legend of Bagger Vance, The (Robert Redford, 2000), 43, 58

Legend of Nigger Charley, The (Martin Goldman, 1972), 40, 105, 113 Leigh, Vivien, in Gone With the Wind, 58 Leonard, Elmore, 57 Lewis, Jerry Lee, 28 Liberation of L.B. Jones, The (William Wyler, 1970), 4 “Like a Virgin” (Madonna, 1984), 16 Limp Bizkit, 14 Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012), 113–114 Little Jody (Sharon Pierre-­Louis, Django Unchained), 108, 109f Liu, Gordon, in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 80, 80f, 81f Liu, Lucy, in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 69, 74f Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996), 8 Long, Walter, 28; in Birth of a Nation, 56 Los Angeles riots, 13, 118 Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003), 70 Loughran, Jonathan, in Death Proof, 91 Louis Gara (Robert De Niro, Jackie Brown), 58–60, 59f, 61 “Lucky Strike, The” (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1984), 94 Lynch, David, 2 Machete (Robert Rodriguez, 2010), 132 Mack, The (Michael Campus, 1973), in True Romance, 30 Madonna, 16 Madsen, Michael: in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 78; in Reservoir Dogs, 16 Mailer, Norman, 27, 28, 41, 136n16 Major Hellstrom (August Diehl, In­ glourious Basterds), 100–101 Malcolm X, 5, 132, 136n9 Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992), 7 male gaze, 33, 69, 86–87, 90–91 Mammy, and Birth of a Nation, 112 Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975), 105, 106 Mandingo fights, 110, 116 Manero, Tony (John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever), 41

Index 163 Man in the High Castle, The (Philip K. Dick, 1962), 94 Man on a Ledge (Asger Leth, 2012), 37 Marcel (Jacky Ido, Inglourious Bas­ terds), 98, 99f Marcy (Marcy Harriell, Death Proof), 85 Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston, 2004), 53 Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen, Jackie Brown), 53–54, 55 Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames, Pulp Fiction), 43–44, 47, 48, 48f, 49, 50f, 51, 127; home of, 49f Marsh, Mae, 28 Martin, Trayvon, 46 Marvin (Phil LaMarr, Pulp Fiction), 44, 127 M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970), 94 Mask, Mia, 64–65 Master Pei Mei (Gordon Liu, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), 80f, 81f Matewan (John Sayles, 1986), 8 Matrix, The (Wachowski Brothers, 1999), 67, 106 Max Cherry (Robert Forster, Jackie Brown), 55, 56, 62–63 McCalla, Irish, 84 McCluskey, Malik D., 44 McDaniel, Hattie, in Gone With the Wind, 58 McGowan, Rose, in Death Proof, 90 McQueen, Steve, in True Romance, 35 Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973), 4 Melanie (Bridget Fonda, Jackie Brown), 59–60, 60f, 61, 62, 63 Melinda and Melinda (Woody Allen, 2004), 131 Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), 40 Menace II Society (Hughes Brothers, 1993), 15 Menochet, Denis, in Inglourious Bas­ terds, 96 Men of Honor (George Tillman, Jr., 2000), 102 “Message to the Grass Roots” (Mal­ colm X), 132 Miami race riots (1980), 118

Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman, Pulp Fic­ tion), 48, 48f Micheaux, Oscar, 8 Miller, Sam J., 124 Million Man March, 7 minstrel caricatures, 132–133 minstrel theater, 136n5 Miracle at St. Anna (Spike Lee, 2008), 7, 102 “Mirror, Mirror” (Star Trek), 95 Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker, 1988), 126 Monuments Men, The (George Clooney, 2014), 93 Morrison, Toni, 116 Mouse (Don Cheadle, Devil in a Blue Dress), 57 “Mr. Black,” in Reservoir Dogs, 16–17 Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen, Reservoir Dogs), 16, 19–20 Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino, Reser­ voir Dogs), 16 Mr. Orange/Freddy (Tim Roth, Reser­ voir Dogs), 16–19, 18f, 21f, 23 Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi, Reservoir Dogs), 16–20, 24, 136n9 Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek), 95 Mr. T. (Laurence Tureaud), 60 Mr. White (Harvey Keitel, Reservoir Dogs), 16, 17, 19–20, 21f Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel, Pulp Fiction), 47 Murphy, Eddie, 2, 141n26 Myers, Russ, 2 NAACP, 40 narrative displacement, 25 Native Americans, 97, 98–99, 105 Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994), 36 Neblett, Touré, 41 New Hollywood cinema (1970s), 6 Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn, Reservoir Dogs), 20 Nicholson, Jack, in The Departed, 5 Niggas With Attitude (N.W.A.), 14

164 Race on the QT Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968), 107 Nikki (Ambrosia Kelly, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), 75, 77–78, 82 9/11 terrorist attack, 36–37, 63, 124 Nitzsche, Jack, 82 Nixon, Richard, 14 Nolin, Gena Lee, 84 Norris, Chuck, 82 n-­word: as critique of racism, 129; in Death Proof, 92; in Django Un­ chained, 132; in Jackie Brown, 37, 41, 62, 63, 65; mainstream use of, 40–41; in Pulp Fiction, 37, 40, 41, 43–44, 46– 47, 52; in Reservoir Dogs, 19, 24; in Tarantino films, 1, 8, 9, 122, 123–124 Nyong’o, Lupita, in 12 Years a Slave, 115 Obama, Barack, 126, 130 Obama, Michelle, 127 Oldman, Gary, in True Romance, 26, 27f, 28 Oliver, Thelma, 50 Omega Man, The (Boris Sagal, 1971), 73 Once Upon a Time . . . When We Were Colored (Tim Reid, 1996), 122 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975), 6–7 Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Brown), 11, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57–60, 57f, 59f, 61, 62 O-­Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), 69, 72–75, 74f Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998), 36, 58 Owens, Jesse, 100 Page, Betty, 84 Paltrow, Gwyneth, 40–41 Pam (Rose McGowan, Death Proof), 90 pastiche, 10, 129 Patch of Blue, A (Guy Green, 1965), 43, 122 Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), 94

patriarchy, 25 Patriot, The (Roland Emmerich, 2000), 126 Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave), 115 Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970), 96 Pawnbroker, The (Sidney Lumet, 1964), 50–51 Peckinpah, Sam, 2, 65 Perry, Katy, 71 Perry, Tyler, 8, 141n26 Pierre-­Louis, Sharon, in Django Un­ chained, 108, 109f Pinchot, Bronson, in True Romance, 34 Pinky (Elia Kazan, 1949), 122 Pitt, Brad, in Inglourious Basterds, 96 PJ’s, The (1999–2001), 133 Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968), 106 Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez, 2007), 132 Poitier, Sidney, in Duel at Diablo, 117 Poitier, Sydney Tamiia, in Death Proof, 83, 84, 85f Polanski, Roman, 131 Pollack, Sydney, 131 Pollock, Jackson, 129 Posse (Mario Van Peebles, 1993), 117 postracial society, 129–130 Precious (Lee Daniels, 2009), 8, 123 Presley, Elvis, 28; in True Romance, 32, 35 Preston, Brian, 71–72 Pretty Baby (Louis Malle, 1978), 128 prison-­industrial complex, in Jackie Brown, 53–54, 55f, 64 Pryor, Richard: as comic, 2, 40; in The Mack, 30 Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994): and blackness as cool, 133; discussion of, 39–52; and intersection of power, race, and sexuality, 127; and the n-­word, 3, 8, 37; and racial dynamics, 10; and white masculinity, 11 Putney Swope (Robert Downey, Sr., 1969), 102

Index 165 Quentin Tarantino (Edward Gallafent), 61 race: and American film, 9–10; and commodification of blackness, 136n18; and economics in Jackie Brown, 64; and gender in True Ro­ mance, 33–34; and racism in Pulp Fiction, 47; and Reagan years, 14; in Tarantino films, 10, 65, 127, 133–134; and white masculinity, 137n23. See also blackness; whiteness “race card,” 55 race relations: in Hollywood films, 5, 124; in Inglourious Basterds, 100– 102; in Pulp Fiction, 42; in Reservoir Dogs, 22; in Tarantino films, 11, 65, 121, 134 racial discourses, 3, 10, 12, 45, 72, 100, 145n26 racial fetishism, 11, 51, 61, 116 racial politics, 1, 12, 32, 92, 130–131, 132 racial representation: in American pop culture, 83–84; in Hollywood films, 70, 122; in Kill Bill films, 81–82; in Precious, 123; in Tarantino films, 24–25, 65, 75, 122, 123–124, 134 racial revenge, 23, 104, 131 racial violence, 95 racism: in America, 37, 41, 134; in American film, 4–6, 102–103, 124, 133; and Death Proof, 85; and eugenics, 119; in Inglourious Basterds, 11, 95, 96–97, 98, 100, 102; and Jackie Brown, 51–52; in Pulp Fiction, 45– 51; in Reservoir Dogs, 15, 19, 20–25; and revisionism, 126, 127; in The Searchers, 97–98; and slavery, 104; and Tarantino films, 3, 8–9, 122, 129, 131; in True Romance, 31. See also eugenics racism, scientific, 31, 85, 119 Raisin in the Sun (Philip Rose, 1961), 122 rap music, 14–15, 25, 110, 117. See also hip-­hop Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950), 39

Ray Nicolet (Michael Keaton, Jackie Brown), 53 Reagan, Ronald, 14, 25 Red Tails (Anthony Hemingway, 2012), 102 Reed, Ishmael, 121 Reider, John, 94 Reign Over Me (Mike Binder, 2007), 36, 43 Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992), 10, 11, 136n9; discussion of, 13–25 Return of Bruno, The (Bruce Willis, 1987), 41–42 reverse racism, 21–23 revisionism, 126–127. See also alternate history Rhames, Ving: in Out of Sight, 58; in Pulp Fiction, 43, 48f, 50f Richards, Michael Anthony, 40, 46 Riot Grrrl gender politics, 35 Risky Business (1983), 141n26 Roberts, Tanya, in Sheena, 84 Robinson, Bill “Bojangles,” in Shirley Temple films, 43 Robinson, Kim Stanley, 94 Rodriguez, Robert, 131–132 Rogers, Roy, 117 Roots (1977), 106 Roth, Tim, in Reservoir Dogs, 16, 21f Royal Tenenbaums, The (Wes Anderson, 2001), 48 Rubinek, Saul, in True Romance, 34 Rush Hour (Brett Ratner, 1998), 67 Russell, Kurt, in Death Proof, 86, 86f Sanford and Son (1972–1977), 40 satire: in Bamboozled, 7; in Coonskin, 133; in Inglourious Basterds, 93–94; in Putney Swope, 102 Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977), 41 Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998), 93 Saw (James Wan, 2004), 36 Sayles, John, 8 Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981), 119

166 Race on the QT Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh, Gone With the Wind), 58 School Daze (Spike Lee, 1988), 7 Schultz, Dr. King (Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained), 107, 109, 111, 111f Schumacher, Joel, 35 science fiction: in Flash Gordon, 70; in Goodbye Uncle Tom, 105; In­ glourious Basterds as, 94–95; and slavery films, 106 Scorsese, Martin, 5, 37, 45. See also spe­ cific films Scott, George C.: in Hardcore, 115; in Patton, 96 Scott, Tony, 25, 36. See also specific films Searchers, The (John Ford, 1956), 97–98 Segal, Steven, 82 Seinfeld (1989–1998), 14 Sellers, Peter, in Dr. Strangelove, 94 semiotics, 26, 99–100 Serendipity (Peter Chelsom, 2001), 124 Set It Off (1996), 140n10 sexual objectification, 33–34, 70f, 85–87, 89–90, 133 sexual violence, 50, 69–70, 119 Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000), 36 Shanna (Jordan Ladd, Death Proof), 83, 91 Sheena (John Guillermin, 1984), 84 Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1955–1956), 84 Sheena (2000–2002), 84 Sheronda (Lisa Gay Hamilton, Jackie Brown), 61 Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds), 98–99 Silver Streak (Arthur Hiller, 1976), 28 Simone (Hattie Winston, Jackie Brown), 61 Sinatra, Nancy, 88 Singleton, John, 14–15 Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973), 7 Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984), 70 Skeleton Key, The (Iain Softley, 2005), 107

Slater, Christian, in True Romance, 26, 32f Slavers, The (Larry Kent, 1977), 105 slavery, 131; and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 126; and Death Proof, 89; in Django Unchained, 110; and historical revisionism, 127; in Hollywood films, 104–106, 113, 119– 120; and Inglourious Basterds, 101; in Lincoln, 114; in Tarantino films, 131; in 12 Years a Slave, 115–116 Slaves (Herbert Biberman, 1969), 105 Smiley, Tavis, 121 Smith, Will, in Wild Wild West, 117 Snakes on a Plane (David Ellis, 2006), 36 Snatch (Guy Ritchie, 2000), 36 Soldier’s Story, A (Norman Jewison, 1984), 8, 102 Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger, The Pawn­ broker), 50 Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave), 114–115 Song of the South (Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson, 1946), 105 Sopranos, The (1999–2007), 36 Soul Food (1997), 140n10 Soul Man (Steve Minor, 1986), 28 Soul of Nigger Charley, The (Larry Spangler, 1973), 40, 105, 113 Soul Plane (Jessy Terrero, 2004), 133 Sounder (Martin Ritt, 1972), 122 soundtracks, 15, 41 spaghetti westerns, 112, 117, 121, 129 Speed, Carol, in The Mack, 30 Spider-­Man (Sam Raimi, 2002), 124 Spook Who Sat by the Door, The (Ivan Dixon, 1973), 5, 102, 104 Sport (Harvey Keitel, Taxi Driver), 27 Stalin, Joseph, 126 Star Trek (1966–1969), 95 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Robert Wise, 1979), 43 Star Wars (George Lucas), 70, 95, 125–126 Stefani, Gwen, 70–71 Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained), 110–111, 111f, 112f, 132 Stir Crazy (1980), 141n26

Index 167 Stolz, Eric, in Pulp Fiction, 47 Stone, Oliver, 36 Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A., 1988), 14 Street Smart (Jerry Schatzberg, 1987), 57 Strode, Woodrow, 117 Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell, Death Proof), 86, 86f, 92, 139n34 Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006), 36 Suture (Scott McGehee and David Siegel, 1993), 102 Swarns, Rachel L., 127 Sweet, Vonte, in Traffic, 29 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971), 4, 23 Tarantino, Quentin: as actor, 16, 44, 45–46, 131, 132; as cinematic DJ, 128; criticism of, 24, 52, 74–75, 94, 121– 122, 135n3, 140n8, 144n5; on Django Unchained, 93; as executive producer of Killing Zoe, 36; and intersection of power, race, and sexuality, 127–128; and the n-­word, 129; as public figure, 1, 2–3, 130; and race as a subject, 8–9; and racial role reversals, 89; and racial subtext, 37; and white audiences, 132, 133; as writer, 36, 39. See also specific films Tarzan, the Ape Man (John Derek, 1981), 84 Tarzan films, 29 Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), 7, 27, 45 Temple, Shirley, 43 “These Boots Were Made for Walking” (Nancy Sinatra, 1966), 88 They Saved Hitler’s Brain (various, 1969), 95 Thing, The (John Carpenter, 1982), 73 Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (Gary Fleder, 1995), 36, 40 Third Reich, 141–142n8 third-­wave feminism, 25 Thirteen (Catherine Hardwicke, 2003), 63

Thoms, Tracie, in Death Proof, 88, 90f Thurman, Uma: in Kill Bill, 68, 70, 70f, 72, 75f, 77f, 81f; in Pulp Fiction, 48, 48f Tierney, Lawrence, in Reservoir Dogs, 16 Tierney, Sean, 8–9 Toback, James, and Black and White, 29 Toller (Sidney Poitier, Duel at Diablo), 117 To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron, 1995), 141n26 Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), 28–29 Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001), 57 Travolta, John, in Pulp Fiction, 41, 42, 42f, 49f, 52 tropes: of Asianness, 70, 74; of blackness, 27, 58, 77; of cowboy, 25; of Gothic horror, 107, 113, 114f; and Pre­ cious, 123; of racism masquerading as common sense, 24; of science fiction, 106; in True Romance, 35–36; of Uncle Tom, 111; of white negro, 27, 41, 136n16; of whiteness, 28, 48, 49, 84, 87 Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008), 28 True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993), 10; discussion of, 25–37; and white masculinity, 11 Tucker, Chris, in Jackie Brown, 58 Tureaud, Laurence (Mr. T), 60 Turner, Nat, 118, 120 Twain, Mark, 129 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013), 114–116 Twilight Zone (1959–1964), 95 Two Can Play That Game (2001), 140n10 2 Days in the Valley (John Herzfeld, 1996), 36, 40 typecasting, 70 Uncle Tom, 111, 112 “Unconditionally” (Katy Perry, 2013), 71 United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006), 36

168 Race on the QT Usual Suspects, The (Bryan Singer, 1995), 36 Van Damme, Jean-­Claude, 82 Vanilla Ice, 28 Van Peebles, Melvin, 2, 4, 23 Vargas, Antonio, 84 Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), 76, 77f, 92 Vicenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken, True Romance), 30–33 Videodrome (David Cronenberg,1983), 120 Village of the Giants (Bert I. Gordon, 1965), 82 Vincent Vega (John Travolta, Pulp Fic­ tion), 41, 42, 42f, 43–44, 46, 47–48, 52 violence: in Blaxploitation films, 105; in Cronenberg films, 119; in Death Proof, 11, 87; in Django Unchained, 110; in Falling Down, 35; and gangsta rap, 14; in Hollywood films, 6, 36; in Inglourious Basterds, 95, 102, 103–104; in Jackie Brown, 59; in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 69–70, 73–74, 77–78; in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 79; in Pulp Fiction, 39, 40, 42, 50; in Reservoir Dogs, 15, 19–20; and slavery, 127; in Tarantino films, 1, 12, 123–124, 128, 134; in True Romance, 34; in 12 Years a Slave, 115 Virgil (James Gandolfini, True Ro­ mance), 33–34 Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life (Jay-­Z, 1998), 128 Walken, Christopher, in True Romance, 30 Waltz, Christoph: in Django Un­ chained, 107–108, 111f; in Inglourious Basterds, 94, 97f War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005), 36 War on Poverty, 14 Washington, Denzel, in Training Day, 57 Washington, Kerry, in Django Un­ chained, 108, 110f

Watchmen (Alan Moore, 1986), 95 Watts Rebellion (1965), 118 Wayne, John: in The Green Berets, 96; in The Searchers, 97 Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, 1972), 67 Welles, Orson, 2 West, Cornel, 63, 130 West, Kanye, 40–41 White, Armond, 9, 77, 140n8 White Chicks (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2004), 133 White Dog (Samuel Fuller, 1982), 102, 104 white male gaze, 86, 87, 90–91 white masculinity, 11, 20, 23–25, 29, 31–32, 33–35, 137n24. See also black masculinity “White Negro, The: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster,” 27, 41 whiteness: in American pop culture, 14, 84; in Birth of a Nation, 28; in Jackie Brown, 58–61, 63; in Kill Bill franchise, 72, 76–77, 78–80, 82; and “old boy network” in Reservoir Dogs, 11; in Pulp Fiction, 41, 48–49; in Reser­ voir Dogs, 21–22; and Tarantino films, 122, 123; of Tarantino himself, 75; in True Romance, 25–26, 29–32, 35. See also blackness; race White Princess of the Jungle (1951), 84 white privilege, 47, 89, 127 white supremacy, 11, 44, 84, 103, 126 white victimhood, 23, 35 Wilder, Gene, in Silver Streak, 27–28 Wild Wild West (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1999), 117 Willis, Bruce, in Pulp Fiction, 41–42, 50f Wilson, Flip, 141n26 Winstead, Mary Elizabeth, in Death Proof, 91 Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), 99 Womack, Bobby, 63 Woman on Top (2000), 141n26 women’s movement, 25 Wood, Natalie, in The Searchers, 97 Woo-­ping, Yuen, 68 Wu-­Tang Clan, 41

Index 169 X, Malcolm, 132, 136n9 X-­Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011), 126 Yates, Peter, 35 Year of the Dragon, The (Michael Cimino, 1985), 70 “yellow face,” 71

You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilbert, 1967), 70 Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974), 99 Zed (Peter Greene, Pulp Fiction), 49–50 Zoë (Zoë Bell, Death Proof), 88–90, 90f, 91, 91f, 92 Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2001), 124