Moral/historical/aesthetic relativism

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• Michael Dempsey says:

  June 22, 2012 at 9:44 am

  No mat­ter how it’s executed, the very concept of this movie is noth­ing but obscene, and I’m glad you cut through all the comic-book-postmodern-fun-whatever that stu­pidly tries to jus­ti­fy it.
  This one’s a def­in­ite never-see for me.

• jbryant says:

  June 22, 2012 at 11:08 am

  Ever since the nov­el came out, this whole idea has struck me as some­thing one might con­coct as part of a par­lor game. I’d expect it to inspire a funny fake movie poster rather than a full-length story. I’ll give the author a back-handed com­pli­ment: it must have taken real per­sever­ance to plow ahead with such a wrong-headed concept.
  But I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, so… grain of salt.

• Brian Z says:

  June 22, 2012 at 12:26 pm

  Thanks for this Glenn. I was see­ing all of these reviews giv­ing the film I pass and it was driv­ing me nuts. It’s an abhor­rent and ter­ribly made movie.

• Tom Block says:

  June 22, 2012 at 12:31 pm

  I did­n’t like “Inglorious Basterds” at all (for Tedious Bullshit Factor reas­ons, noth­ing to do with its treat­ment of Nazis), but I can see the dis­tinc­tion you’re mak­ing here, even if “IG” has made it easi­er for dir­ect­ors to jus­ti­fy their rapes of his­tory as pomo spins on it. And crappy look­ing as it is, at least this one’s got “fantasy” stamped all over it–unlike, say, “They Died With Their Boots On” or “Mississippi Burning”.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  June 22, 2012 at 1:58 pm

  Almost any his­tor­ic­al movie is about the era in which it’s made, not the era that it’s ostens­ibly about. IB was a fantasy about how kewl tor­ture is when the right people do it, presen­ted in the Cheney years, and as such, infin­itely more abhor­rent than AL:VH’s loud “durrrrr”.

• bill says:

  June 22, 2012 at 3:22 pm

  Boy oh boy. I’ve been think­ing about INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS the last couple of days, and about some of the shit it got, and is appar­ently still get­ting, about the viol­ence and tor­ture and appar­ent or pos­sible advoc­a­tion of that tor­ture, and even about how some people defend the base­ball bat scene because the Nazi there is “noble” or “loy­al” (and loy­al to *what*? None of those people care to take their argu­ment that far)…I guess I’m just sur­prised that people can get them­selves so tied up into knots about how Nazis are phys­ic­ally treated on screen in a work of fic­tion. This depresses me far, far more than any­one get­ting a vis­cer­al or cath­artic thrill from it.
  And not incid­ent­ally, but 2009 was not “the Cheney years.”

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 22, 2012 at 3:52 pm

  Bill, your response to the asser­tion under scru­tiny is far more polit­ic than mine would have been. I myself was doing a Google image search for those “Screwball” and “bats in the bel­fry” flash­card rebuses Bugs Bunny used to hold up at cru­cial moments in cer­tain Looney Tunes.

• bill says:

  June 22, 2012 at 3:56 pm

  Well, your impulse was more polit­ic than I actu­ally feel, so call it a push.

• Colonelmortimer says:

  June 22, 2012 at 6:42 pm

  A tan­gen­tially related story: I have a co-worker in her early 20s whose enjoy­ment of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS was greatly heightened due to her not know­ing how Hitler actu­ally died.

• Dan Coyle says:

  June 23, 2012 at 12:23 am

  Was her mind blown when you told her it was actu­ally the Golden Age Human Torch that broke into the bunker in Berlin and burned him alive in self defense?
  (Seriously, that’s how it happened in Marvel Comics)

• Oliver_C says:

  June 23, 2012 at 2:56 am

  Yeah, but then Hitler was cloned and became the Hate-Monger, not for­get­ting that Baron Zemo pre­served the ori­gin­al Hitler’s brain and wanted to trans­plant it into Captain America’s body, and…

• Peter Labuza says:

  June 23, 2012 at 9:46 am

  Also re: Bill/Glenn, few seem to com­ment that the entire Chapter 2 sequence lead­ing up to and includ­ing the base­ball bat is all about the Basterds try­ing to appear way more men­acing and evil than they actu­all are. Donny has to put on a show so the oth­er sol­dier will reveal the loc­a­tion of the pla­toon. None of it is actu­ally motiv­ated to the thrill of viol­ence (QT has to make it appear as such so the sol­dier thinks he will also die a hor­rible grue­some death)

• Tom Carson says:

  June 23, 2012 at 8:33 pm

  Thing is, the Basterds are *nev­er* shown as being par­tic­u­larly good at what they do. They’re a bunch of galoots, reg­u­larly mocked by the European char­ac­ters for their intru­sions into crap they don’t under­stand. Pitt’s idea of speak­ing Italian is the least of it.

• bill says:

  June 23, 2012 at 10:20 pm

  They do help kill Hitler, though, which is a pretty big deal. Morally rep­re­hens­ible though it evid­ently is.

• Tom Carson says:

  June 23, 2012 at 10:29 pm

  Indeed they do, and it’s their claim to glory. I’m not sure it’s suf­fi­ciently appre­ci­ated that the movie is – among many oth­er things – Tarantino’s idea of defin­ing (cel­eb­rat­ing?) the nation­al char­ac­ter of all the coun­tries who fought Hitler, with the obvi­ous and big excep­tion of the Russians.

• bill says:

  June 23, 2012 at 11:02 pm

  No, it’s not suf­fi­ciently appre­ci­ated, you’re right. Even I tend to chalk up Shosanna as not even a rep­res­ent­at­ive of her coun­try, but simply a per­son who has some ven­geance deal out. But it’s true: brute force power from the US, civ­il­ized quick-thinking from the UK, and sur­repti­tious sab­ot­age from the French.
  That sounds like I’m slight­ing the US, but I’m not. Just form a movie ste­reo­type approach, though…

• Dan Coyle says:

  June 23, 2012 at 11:41 pm

  Oliver C: there’s also the story, writ­ten by the same writer, where Captain America and his pals are shown to have helped inspire the Warsaw Uprising through their heroism.

• Frank McDevitt says:

  June 24, 2012 at 10:36 am

  A choice Rotten Tomatoes com­ment under your review:
  “How is it a crime to say, “Hey, Abe Lincoln was a badass.” Is it too hard to assume that, if vam­pires exis­ted, and Lincoln knew about them, that he would kill them? Abraham Lincoln was almost as awe­some as Teddy Roosevelt.” – Noah Abraham G.
  The “badassi­fic­a­tion” of U.S. Presidents is maybe the worst inter­net trend ever.

• Thomas says:

  June 24, 2012 at 10:40 am

  “Morally rep­re­hens­ible though it evid­ently is.”
  Ruthlessly killing Hitler and the oth­er Nazi top brass is per­fectly fine with me. It’s the tor­tur­ing and scalping of the “nor­mal” German sol­diers that I find more prob­lem­at­ic (as evil as the Nazis were, they were still human.) It did­n’t ruin the film for me or any­thing, but I did find it a bit unpleas­ant at the time.
  Of course, a lot of what I’ve read about the film since has helped me see that it’s quite a bit more com­plex than I ori­gin­ally gave it cred­it for. Unfortunately, some of Tarantino’s com­ments around the time the film was released did­n’t make me feel any bet­ter – I remem­ber one com­ment to the extent that he could­n’t stand it in movies where sol­diers stood around debat­ing the fate of an enemy sol­dier they had cap­tured, because they should really just shoot him in the head (he cited “Red Dawn” as one film that does this right.) Because that’s more “real­ist­ic” or “just” or some­thing, apparently.

• Not David Bordwell says:

  June 24, 2012 at 6:42 pm

  “Abraham Lincoln was almost as awe­some as Teddy Roosevelt.”
  From Dusk Til Dawn IV: Rough Riders’ Revenge
  Silly me, I thought INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS was actu­ally a fantasy aven­ging real, his­tor­ic­al Nazi crimes against cinema, not SHOAH, SCHINDLER’S LIST, or for that mat­ter, THE BIG RED ONE.
  You know, slave­hold­ing plant­a­tion own­ers were human beings, too, so brace your­self for DJANGO UNCHAINED.
  Who would have thought at the begin­ning of the week THIS would turn out to be the most depress­ing thread?

• Dan Coyle says:

  June 25, 2012 at 1:06 am

  Man, I love the Big Red One. It’s worth watch­ing to scrub the screw­iness of Inglorious Basterds out of your brain.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  June 25, 2012 at 8:58 am

  I guess I’m try­ing to fig­ure out why people seem to find the Basterds carving up P.O.W.‘s fore­heads to be all in good fun, even though it res­on­ates rather uncom­fort­ably with very recent events, while hav­ing Abe Lincoln killing vam­pires, a much purer fantasy, is rep­re­hens­ible. Is it strictly because Tarantino is a more enter­tain­ing director?

• Tom Russell says:

  June 25, 2012 at 9:55 am

  Fuzzy: From Glenn’s review, I think the point would be that ALVH, wheth­er its cre­at­ors are fully aware of it or not, frees human beings from culp­ab­il­ity for the crime of slavery, which is extremely mor­ally rep­re­hens­ible. Tarantino’s film does­n’t make any such claims w/r/t WWII and the holocaust.
  IIRC, here was a dis­cus­sion in these parts a couple years back that com­pared JFK to BASTERDS. And the sali­ent point in that dis­cus­sion was that while both traffic in altern­ate his­tory, JFK (1) thinks its altern­ate his­tory is real, and (2) per­petu­ates a dan­ger­ous, harm­ful, and ignor­ant myth. Now, I’m not say­ing ALVH does either of these things– I don’t think any­one’s going to come away from it con­vinced that vam­pires inven­ted slavery– but the idea behind the film is com­pletely and unques­tion­ably repugnant.

• Keith Uhlich says:

  June 25, 2012 at 10:00 am

  TFB: I think it might very well be because “IB” res­on­ates, where­as “ALVH” does not (it really is empty spec­tacle, though I was fairly amused by its ineptitude). Not to say that any movie res­on­ates the same way from per­son to person—“IB” rubs you the wrong way because of its par­al­lels to mod­ern events; for me those par­al­lels lead to some­thing deep­er, an emo­tion­al con­flict very much at odds with the sur­face violence.

• Tom Russell says:

  June 25, 2012 at 10:05 am

  Also: I don’t really under­stand how you took away “tor­ture is kewl when the right people do it” from BASTERDS. The carving in the film in my read­ing was hor­rif­ic, and inten­tion­ally so. And at the very least, the under­ly­ing “mes­sage” of the carving is a mor­al one: that the Good German Who Had No Idea What Was Really Happening is a myth. It’s a destruct­ive myth that, like the altern­ate his­tory in JFK, has become accep­ted as a truth by the ignorant.

• bill says:

  June 25, 2012 at 11:57 am

  Tom – Why is it neces­sary that all films depict­ing Nazis in WWII should now go out of their way to acknow­ledge that not every single German was a Nazi? INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is spe­cific­ally about Nazis. I don’t believe the “mes­sage” of the carving is that there were no such Germans. The “mes­sage”, if any­thing, is that it sucks that so many actu­al Nazis got away with it, and isn’t it cath­artic to see some get­ting back just a frac­tion of what they dealt out?
  This is really mad­den­ing. Nazis are the next group that people are going to demand be treated fairly in movies? Because I can think of a few oth­ers that should be ahead of them in line.

• Tom Russell says:

  June 25, 2012 at 12:43 pm

  “Tom – Why is it neces­sary that all films depict­ing Nazis in WWII should now go out of their way to acknow­ledge that not every single German was a Nazi?”
  I must’ve expressed myself very poorly, because what I meant was the oppos­ite: I’m glad Tarantino *did­n’t* do that.
  I think you’re right about the “mes­sage”; and please note that I used quotes around mes­sage because I am gen­er­ally very dubi­ous about look­ing for mes­sages in films. I was just try­ing to engage Mr. Bastard’s argument.

• bill says:

  June 25, 2012 at 12:48 pm

  Oh. Oops! Sorry. I reread your com­ment just now and see my mistake.

• Not David Bordwell says:

  June 25, 2012 at 4:25 pm

  Let me try again:
  BASTERDS is not a dis­ser­ta­tion on the suf­fer­ings of Jews or oth­er crimes against human­ity per­pet­rated by the Nazis, so I think read­ing the treat­ment of the Nazis in that film as what the revenge fantasy is about misses much of the point. What BASTERDS comes damn close to being is a dis­ser­ta­tion on the crimes of Joseph Goebbels against world cinema, as Tarantino’s appar­ently encyc­lo­ped­ic know­ledge of the German film industry on dis­play in the movie makes clear. What a lot of the crit­ics who dug BASTERDS really got off on was the way Tarantino uses film to exact his revenge on the top brass of the Third Reich—literally with­in the film itself, but also in his mas­tery of the vari­ous genres that are mother­’s milk to QT, all of which would have been deemed “degen­er­ate” by the Nazis (if, of course, they had exis­ted): Spaghetti Westerns, grind­house exploit­a­tion, films by any num­ber of dir­ect­ors clearly on QT’s mind (Robert Aldrich, Sam Fuller, J. Lee Thompson, Brian DePalma), etc.
  As if the cast­ing of Eli Roth as the Bärenjude wer­en’t enough of a clue, the nas­ti­ness of the scalpings, bludgeon­ings, swastika carvings, even the mont­age of Til Schweiger’s Nazi exe­cu­tions, are all grind­house Grand Guignol. The fact that QT had Eli Roth dir­ect the pro­pa­ganda film-within-the-film Stolz der Nation adds a tasty fris­son to the proceedings.
  This is “all in good fun” for fans of these vari­ous genres, as AL:VH will be for fans of Seth Grahame-Green, vam­pire slay­ing, and Timur Bekmambetov who don’t care a whit about the implic­a­tions of the back­story for “post-racial America.”
  But I also think there is more going on in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS than just Tarantino hav­ing a lark because watch­ing Christoph Waltz get his fore­head sliced open makes your stom­ach turn. There is some­thing to be said for the way the revenge fantasy he lays out has degen­er­ate people earn­ing a posthum­ous vic­tory through degen­er­ate art.
  Whereas, accord­ing to Glenn’s review, the revi­sion of his­tory in AL:VH serves what pur­pose exactly? The “badassi­fic­a­tion” of a pres­id­ent who did­n’t really need it?

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  June 26, 2012 at 12:08 am

  Some inter­est­ing thoughts on the history/fables behind AL:VH here (after wad­ing through a couple para­graphs of “my wacky stu­dent”): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w‑scott-poole/abraham-lincoln-vampire-hunter_b_1609691.html