Canceling Quentin Tarantino?
Though problematic, the famed auteur remains an essential American filmmaker
Awriter for the Guardian suggests we cancel Quentin Tarantino because his films “have reveled in extreme violence toward women.” Debatable, but this is quite a paragraph:
In Tarantino’s debut directorial feature, “Reservoir Dogs,” the only female characters in the credits are “Shot Woman” and “Shocked Woman.” “Pulp Fiction,” his second film, features female characters more prominently, but a trend of reveling in the abuse of women began to emerge. One of “Pulp Fiction’s” most famous scenes involves Uma Thurman’s character getting stabbed in the heart with a shot of adrenaline to resuscitate her after a drug overdose. ( Though it’s fair to say male characters were also subjected to extreme violence.)
Well, every important character in “Reservoir Dogs” suffers extreme violence and they’re all men. Is the problem that there are not enough women getting aggressed in the film? No fair leaving women out of the ear- removal party, Q. T.!
As writer Roy Chacko seems to know but doesn’t quite concede, the vast majority of the violence in Tarantino films is directed at men. True, the Bride played by Ms. Thurman in the “Kill Bill” movies suffers horribly, but this is in the service of her being justified in meting out lots of violence toward her antagonists ( some male, some female). Violence is Mr. Tarantino’s idiom.
Mr. Chocko doesn’t mention it, but the climactic scene of Mr. Tarantino’s latest, “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” has a scene depicting violence against a woman that goes on a bit too long. And when I say “a bit too long,” I mean it’s grotesque. There’s also a running joke about how Brad Pitt’s character killed his wife and got away with it. Mr. Tarantino finds this detail hilarious; I don’t see the humor. The beatings given to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character in “The Hateful Eight” are likewise gruesome and gratuitous. Extreme, cartoonish gore can be funny, but it’s a lot less funny when a woman is the target. Women are naturally more vulnerable, and this alters our emotional reaction.
What about the violence directed by Mr. Tarantino at women during the making of his films, though? Mr. Tarantino admits spitting on Ms. Thurman during “Kill Bill” filming ( because her character was being spit on and he didn’t trust an actor to nail it in a single take) and also told her to drive a car she wasn’t prepared to drive, which resulted in a crash. Mr. Tarantino says she was a shaky driver but didn’t consider the task particularly complicated. He does regret this last, though, and gave The New York Times footage from “Kill Bill” for a story as a mea culpa.
At the New York Post, my longtime colleague Sara Stewart says “Tarantino’s Exploitation Has No Place in Hollywood Anymore.” Why, she asks, does the female lead of his new picture, Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, get almost nothing to say?
“I just reject your hypothesis,” Mr. Tarantino said to a reporter who asked a question along these lines.
“That’s interesting,” Ms. Stewart responds, “because I reject some of Tarantino’s hypotheses, including the one about [ Tate’s husband Roman] Polanski’s innocence regarding the sexual assault of a 13year- old. (‘ Look. She was down with it … He didn’t rape a 13- yearold, it was statutory rape, all right? … She wanted to have it,’ Mr. Tarantino said in a 2003 interview with Howard Stern.)” Mr. Tarantino later apologized for saying this. She continues:
In a world where we have an increasing number of heroic females — especially in films written and directed by actual women — it may be game over for male auteurs who create supposedly strong women oncamera and denigrate them from behind it. In 2019, we don’t need that type of guy anymore, especially one who thinks silencing Sharon Tate for most of his film is somehow a fitting homage.
I would disagree that we “don’t need” Mr. Tarantino, one of our most interesting filmmakers.
The New Yorker’s Richard Brody dings the new film for a different reason: It’s too white. The movie “celebrates white- male stardom ( and behind- the- scenes command) at the expense of everyone else.”
Mr. Brody points out that a movie villain played by Leonardo DiCaprio’s actor character refers to a Mexican as a “beaner,” but then again, villains do tend to say mean things.
There’s also another slur in the movie that bothers Mr. Brody: “There’s no slur delivered more bitterly by Cliff and Rick than ‘ hippie,’ and their narrow but intense experiences in the course of the film are set up to bear out the absolute aptness of their hostility.” I guess the use of this epithet might cause me sorrow if I had once been a hippie. But then again, the hippies in question are … the Manson Family.