Violent Feelings: Quentin Tarantino’s Cruel Optimisms

Abstract

After the cascade of allegations of sexual assault made against Harvey Weinstein, Quentin Tarantino’s longtime producer, what can one say about Tarantino or the violence of his films? According to Uma Thurman, star of his reputation-making Pulp Fiction (1994), Tarantino learned that Weinstein tried to sexually assault her prior to shooting Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003); Thurman has indicated that this may have soured their working relationship on the two-part film (Dowd). Richard Rodriguez, Tarantino’s longtime collaborator on films such as From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and Sin City (2005), asserts that he wrote his segment of Tarantino’s next release, Grindhouse (2007), for Rose McGowan in response to her claims of having been raped by Weinstein. After hearing McGowan’s story, Rodriguez remarked: “I ... revealed to Rose right then and there that I was about to start writing a movie with Quentin Tarantino, a double feature throwback to 70’s exploitation movies, and that if she was interested, I would write her a BAD ASS character and make her one of the leads” (Lang). When the allegations against Weinstein appeared, Tarantino explained to the New York Times that he knew about the alleged assaults of Thurman, McGowan, and Mira Sorvino, and admitted, “I knew enough to do more than I did” (Kantor). At the very least, Tarantino, by his own admission, is implicated in a Hollywood culture pervaded by abuse. To engage with his films now means that one must grapple with the ways in which his work conjures and justifies violent feelings. Such issues have marked Tarantino’s work from the start, from the opening dialogue about Madonna in Reservoir Dogs (1991) to the questionable critique of media in Natural Born Killers (1994). However, Tarantino’s films subsequent to his apparent knowledge of Weinstein’s alleged crimes mark a renewed focus on the revenge plot. Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), and The Hateful Eight (2015) present viewers with representational questions about violence in terms of gender and race, and attempt to build an aesthetic and ethical project to examine the production of feelings that encourage, justify, or incite violence. To recognize the nature of this project does not mean that one should accept at face value