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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Saturday March 13th, 2004 01:24 |
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16964
See Quentin Kill
By Armond White, Africana.com <http://www.africana.com>
October 15, 2003
When you think of the resounding flop of Jackie Brown – the film Quentin Tarantino made after his 1994 Pulp Fiction changed contemporary movie history – it's no wonder he offs Vivica A. Fox early in his new movie, Kill Bill. He wasn't about to repeat the mistake of asking mainstream movie audiences to take a black person's emotional life seriously.
Vivica A. Fox's character Vernita Green (a.k.a. Copperhead) may return in Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (to be released next Spring) courtesy of the film's fractured time scheme. But for now she is a typical example of Hollywood cannon fodder. It's another bait-and-switch role, used to lure black filmgoers to a movie and then be conveniently dispatched to appease white racist distaste. Vernita is a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAS), a group of hit-women working for the film's shadowy title character Bill, a pimp figure. Although Kill Bill shows how one diva, The Bride (Uma Thurman), seeks revenge on Bill by first hunting down and killing her sister divas, this movie is no more an examination of patriarchy than was the Hughes Brothers' noxious American Pimp. Tarantino, always in trivia-mode, simply creates his own Charlie's Angels but ups the pop references and intensifies the violence quotient. Vernita's death is not taken seriously, but then Tarantino takes nothing seriously besides his adolescent fascination with the low end of popular culture.
Tarantino is the first white filmmaker to forge a career based on disreputable, underclass taste – the movie culture that black urban youth were raised on and affectionately viewed as their own. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill owe their inspiration to '70s blaxploitation movies – a Hollywood trend that catered to the domestic fragmentation that occurred in America after '60s political dissent, responding specifically to the social conflagrations of riots and rebellions that shifted the tax base and demographic make up of most U.S. cities. (Abandoned urban movie houses were blighted, left to feature the kind of trash-product that had been the traditional fare of drive-ins.) Blaxploitation anticipated a lasting cultural fragmentation. The pop audience that the '60s seemed to unite became newly segregated into distinct racial and generational enclaves. The young folk who grew up on blaxploitation (and who would innovate hip hop culture) withdrew into disaffected sub-cults – claiming grade Z action movies, even the cheaply made and hastily dubbed kung-fu imports, as aesthetic ideals divorced of any social or ideological thinking.
Young, white Tarantino witnessed and participated in these changes. As a new era's hipster, Tarantino embarked upon a different kind of white flight. He gravitated toward sleazy black pop but without acquiring any political identification. He could reject the traditional, bourgeois film content and claim a timely, original approach: His films emphasized the pleasure of pop without moral conscience, yet were rife with racially tinged violence. Blaxploitation was thereby reborn as something postmodern – a white-identified entertainment form that took lack of social progress for granted and celebrated the post-80s tenets of greed and narcissism.
This was coincidental with hip hop's dubious achievement of "N****r," unearthing former opprobrium and transforming it into publicly accepted address. Tarantino, in his own way, affected a similar transformation, appealing to the public's unaddressed racial anxiety and seeming to relieve it through ruthless evocations of racism and hostility. That was the novelty of his early '90s screenplays that incorporated vicious, racist utterances into slangy, kitsch-obsessed dialogue (in Reservoir Dogs, True Romance and Pulp Fiction the various "N****r" references were clearly hostile, not salutary). Tarantino's irresponsible comic lingo matched the blithe way he dramatized brutality devoid of purpose.
It's no coincidence that Pulp Fiction made a star of Samuel L. Jackson, who embodied Tarantino's devolution of blaxploitation heroism (a prototype that was always community conscious) as a figure of single-minded, craven, remorselessness. Tarantino's regard for blaxploitation – like his passion for Japanese animation and Hong Kong action flicks – is a simple matter of white appropriation. Kill Bill has the most panache (and the biggest budget) of any grade-Z action flick ever made. But it is a questionable triumph. All it demonstrates is the tendency for dominant culture (Hollywood, America, white supremacy) to co-opt the styles and implied needs of subcultures, deracinate them and then produce something spectacularly conceited.
Kill Bill may be mindless, but it is not meaningless. Tarantino's move away from the concerns of blaxploitation – and the black female heroine of Jackie Brown with Thurman's blonde valkyrie – reveals his true allegiance. He's not a black filmmaker the way some have claimed Bill Clinton was a "black" president. Tarantino has simply hoovered-up all the same pop trivia that had been consigned to the poor, urban class and serves it back as a demonstration of the success and approbation that can be had simply by forsaking such issues as social inequality, historically-determined class roles, genuine spirituality and injustice. Consider: He is exactly like a black teenager watching Shaft, Three the Hard Way or The Chinese Connection, unconcerned with how movies portray substantive human dilemmas except that he's now 45 years old, free of the social traps that beset unenlightened, underprivileged black youth and shows no particular connection to the one black female figure in Kill Bill.
Vernita Green's death is as startling and outrageous as all the others in Kill Bill, the first step in the film's supposedly humorous series of slaughters. Tarantino stages Vernita's murder in her own home, after she and The Bride have demolished the living room in a brawl. It's kind of witty but also not. The juxtaposition of domesticity and surreal violence only leads to a vicious shocker: Vernita's daughter arrives home from grade school in time to watch her mother nailed to the kitchen cabinet by a knife. It takes a near-idiotic mentality to detach this scene from its sociological and psychological horror and then laugh. Movie-nerd Tarantino goes for shock, but he also aims for pain. His penchant for pop effects does not erase the fact that this is a black woman butchered by a white woman. The basic elements of the scene are part of its message, crucial to its effect. Disregarding motherhood, family, class and race tension conveys no lesson, it only exacerbates.
There's not enough back story to Vernita and The Bride's relationship to make up for Tarantino's apparent indifference. As with the Jackson-Travolta pairing in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino is incapable of portraying realistic black/white relationships; he retreats into his own screwy blaxploitation fantasy. Vernita's death in Kill Bill is another heartless narrative furbelow in a storyline and movie that, in the end, simply continues Hollywood's white-supremacist conventions.
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realgreeneyes
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Posted: Saturday March 13th, 2004 03:34 |
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| Even though i agree with you in some parts i mmust say that if it was the case of him having no right to do such films and to be racially predujice would it not be better if black people refused to do films like that no matter what the cost i.e in pulp fiction when tarantino used the word N****r would it not be wise for the black actors to make and stand and say you have no right to use those kind of words, i feel sometimes why is it wrong for white people to say words like these if our own kind use it all the time no matter who says it it is a degrading term used to segregate a certain group of people you dont catch asians calling out to thier friends oi P*ki wassup or jews hey wassup shilock if you want people to respect the person you are and the race you are from then teach them that as they have no right to call these names then you have no right to call each other the same im sick and tired of people saying that television and the media potray black people as stupid when if offered a role where i had to degrade my race i would not take up the position and compromise my integrity.
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Fredblack
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Posted: Saturday March 13th, 2004 10:58 |
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@Prince Hakeem. I am convinced that the average black person/actor is mentally retarded such is our backwardnesss. The first time I saw "Pulp Fiction", or even "Reservoir Dogs", [but very early] Tarantino's racism was right in my eyes.
Isn't it just like us to after the event say how racist the man is[surprise surprise] ,but not one of those actors had the balls, or moral integrity, to say, sorry I am not going to read those lines. Called taking responsiblity and personal leadership. Realgreeneyes, is right on the money on this issue.
I lost count how many time the word "N****r" was used in Pulp Fiction and I am sure I was not the only black person in the movie theatre feeling very uneasy and saying what the hell is this?.
But yet we will big up people like Samuel Jackson? Not until we have respect for ourselves, our children and people, and our image, and what it represents and BE PREPARED to "to pay the cost to be the boss", will people have respect for us.
I saw an interview with Barry Norman[film critic] and Tarrentino, who took the latter up about his use and abuse of race and racism. The man ,in his white arrogance and confidence, said basically he did not give a F...K and why should he, when black people are so hungry and lack respect for themselves and their people?.
But we have short memory, lack intelligence, and will big up "black stars" who will fill their pockets at our children's expense.
Think about it.
Fred
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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Sunday March 14th, 2004 20:14 |
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@Fredblack
Look at what Tarantino has to say on that:
http://www.tmtm.com/sides/tarant.html
Tarantino feels free to play with the concept of black and white when it comes to race also. The frequent use of "N****r" and classic monologues like Dennis Hopper's "Sicilians are spawned by N****rs" speech in True Romance [an early Tarantino script, sold for $30,000 to fund the making of Reservoir Dogs] have led to frequent allegations of racism. However Tarantino claims that by using such a loaded word so frequently and almost randomly (white characters are called N****rs almost as often as black ones) he is actually trying to defuse the word of its power. N****r, he claims, "is probably the most volatile word in the English language. My feeling is that any time a word is that powerful, you should start screaming it from the rooftops, take away that power." And, interestingly, almost every couple in Pulp Fiction is of mixed race or culture.
Tarantino's role in Pulp Fiction was just an excuse to use the word N-word, because if his character "Jimmy" was in such a rush to get them out the house with the dead body before his wife came home from work, then why would he make them both a cup of coffee and hang around so casually??? He probably thought that casting a black woman as his wife and claiming how much he loved her was a perfect justification for the "dead N****r storage" remarks.
I remember reading an article on Samuel Jackson's defense of his own use of the word and Tarantino's, and he basically said that when he was growing up he used to be called a "N****r" all the time so therefore he doesn't view it as offensive.!! It's a shame that he can't see that his good 'friend' Tarantino is making a fool out of him in front of millions of people and denigrating us as a whole. I couldn't see Tarantino convincing Jackie Chan to refer to fellow Orientals as 'gook' or 'slope' etc because he wouldn't even think of going there. If he so badly wants to reflect the language that's being spoken in modern day America then why not have black characters using terms like 'cracker' or 'caveb**ch'?
It's a shame that in this day and age you have a black man vehemently defending a white man on the use of the most offensive word geared towards people of African descent.
Last edited on Thursday July 15th, 2004 12:37 by Prince Hakeem
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Fredblack
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Posted: Sunday March 14th, 2004 21:47 |
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@Prince Hakeem. Thanks for that bro.
While I don't personally care what or how Tarentino's seeks to rationalise his remarks, as I know how I feel about it when being exposed non stop in a movie house to that kind of abuse.
But for Samuel Jackson to open his arse and come with that rationalisation shows you how stupid, and fool fool, these people are. Better shut his mouth in silence and take his money. But no. Such is the power of the word and how it will be viewed, he needs to conjure up such a shambolic defence. Like he doesn't see any use of the term by his own and that by whites. Even on that level, the man is an idiot....
Fred
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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Thursday July 15th, 2004 12:32 |
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| ^
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RAS BERRY
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Posted: Thursday July 29th, 2004 15:55 |
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| ANYHOW WHITE BWOY CALL MI A N****r, MI FINGA AH ITCH FI PULL DI TRIGGA!!!
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Burning Spear
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Posted: Saturday July 31st, 2004 12:51 |
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What pissed me off was when Denzel was all over Tarintino for using the n-word in his films.Then he did the same thing in Training Day".
Spike Lee has put Tarintino's hypercritical a** on blast on a many occasion.
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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Wednesday August 4th, 2004 16:05 |
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Burning Spear wrote: What pissed me off was when Denzel was all over Tarintino for using the n-word in his films.Then he did the same thing in Training Day".
What makes it even sadder is that a white man wrote the script for Training Day.
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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Saturday January 27th, 2007 03:00 |
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http://www.mindspring.com/~louve/artnpulp.html
Art and Pulp Fiction
- Self-Righteous in the Righteous Room
A week after the 1996 Academy Awards, a week and year after the Pulp Fiction Oscar "snub", I was asked in a small, Atlanta bar whether or not I felt Quentin Tarantino were a racist. Being the only "minority" in the Righteous Room, I didn't want to get into it, didn't want my feelings to fall on deaf, preconceived notions and, inevitably, have the term "Racist" tarred and feathered on my hide. But, it happened, anyway. Oh, well. Since I wasn't heard, I felt that, maybe, I could be read.
I said I didn't know. But. There are some very uncomfortable portrayals of blacks in Pulp Fiction. Basically, by the end of the evening, as protests became more heatedly drunken, I was told I was full of sh*t. Ignorant. Only thought in terms of black and white. That QT (as he's referred to in Spike Lee's Girl 6) is an ARTIST. (I guess no artist can be racist - it's against their genetic code.)
I do agree that QT is an "Artist" (whatever that means) and, as such, is allowed to portray whatever he wants. But, that moniker doesn't exempt him if someone feels he (or any Artist) is racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever. Unfortunately, many whites feel that Art is a shield to hide behind in order to escape scrutiny and any person who dares to scrutinize is a reactionary á la Jesse Helms.
Well, I ain't no Jesse. Hell, I write. Wouldn't I look stupid? What I want to do is examine Art. What Hollywood considers Art. Pulp Fiction.
I feel that Hollywood very rarely concerns itself with the elevation of humanity, "Art," but money gross. Profits. In order to make money, money, money, money, MONEY! Hollywood relies on comfortable, recognizable stories - the one, good cop, the Jezebel/femme fatale, etc. - unfortunately based on many stereotypes. Of course, a lot of these stereotypes have been created and constantly perpetuated by Hollywood itself and greatly influences the way people think about the Other. Some would call this Propaganda, but Hollywood calls it Art.
They would claim that they do not degrade people, humiliate people, yadda yadda. That the films that suffer such indictments, if made well, only represent the "Artist's vision". They get away with this tripe because people have swallowed it from the great Institutes of Art - allowing William Faulkner to be called a "great" American writer, among others. But, also because impressions of the Other have changed and do change. Sort of. And, Hollywood's stereotypes change accordingly. This gives the impression that racist portrayals have been abolished. A thing of the past. No. it simply means that they've changed. Stepin Fetchit is a reprehensible character, but clean him up a little and call him Martin, and you're off the hook. But, just because the ignorant slave now has his own talk show doesn't mean that he's still not portrayed, perceived as the ignorant slave. He just got a tailor and a raise. Just like Aunt Jemima got a perm.
Now, many would disagree with me - like those barroom intellectuals. They contended that if I were offended with Pulp Fiction I had the right to be, but I didn't have the right to consider that stuff "Racist". Why not? Art. Of course. Art. Something so complex I just didn't couldn't grasp - I guess.
- A Tinseltown Triptych
Maybe I grasp Art a little too well. (Doubt it.) After all, I must call into question any industry that calls Birth of a Nation (that heart-warming tale about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan) "Art." Mississippi Burning was hailed - for its brilliant twisting of history into a surreal, white liberal, wet dream - with those poor nigras being abused, lynched, the horror! the horror! by those BAD, BAD misguided whitefolks and saved by those two, white enlightened knights of the FBI (one word: COINTELPRO!)?! Now, that's Art! Not racist! Why?
It's simple. In the case of Birth of a Nation, it's considered the first film with a plot. We must praise it for its "Artistic" achievement. Who cares what that plot is. In being fair I must admit that this movie, though Art, is now considered "Racist" (which doesn't stop Art houses from showing it). But, Mississippi Burning, a movie about the "Civil Rights Movement", that flagrantly disregards history for plot, with not one black main character, only showing the darkies getting lynched, is not. The reason it isn't is because, I feel, in order for something to be "Racist," it must be socially accepted as such. Not by the race being ismed, but by whites. For example, when the Chilean play, "Death and the Maiden" was cast for its Broadway production, Hola (the Hispanic actors' guild) protested because no Hispanics were in this Hispanic play. Hola said this was racist. Whites? No. euroamericans playing Latinos is not considered "Racist" - by whites, who cried, "Why do roles have to be race-specific?" (Odd argument coming from them.) Despite Hispanics claiming the contrary. If my arguments are false, why aren't this example and whites in black-face considered equally "Racist"?
Birth of a Nation, now, has tons of black-faces, has the Klan as heroes, ad nauseum: these are things "universally" considered racist. Therefore, it's a racist film. Having blacks virtually nonexistent in film and, when their black faces show up, they're always the victim is not a "Racist" concept. Today. Therefore, Mississippi Burning is not a "Racist" film. This also holds true with Pulp Fiction.
One more point about black-face. Ted Danson, not too long ago, discovered just how fierce reaction to black-face can be. The b**tard. But, back in the day, it was considered the furthest thing from racist. Ask Al Jolson. Oh, Mammy! It was a white-socially-accepted image of them there darkies and was considered quite humorous. Even black entertainers had to wear black-face! (It was offensive to see them in their real skin.) People were entertained by this and thought nothing of it. Racist? Never. So, is black-face "Racist"? Yes. Because, now, whites see that it clearly is. We all do. But, there are many images we see today that entertain us, that we're comfortable with, that we think nothing of: women are called "b**ches" all the time and nobody complains (except Rush Limbaugh's FemiNazis); we see white actors in brown-face, yellow-face, any-face except black, and there are no problems; Asians are always meek and timid unless it's "Charlie"; Hispanics never know the language; Arabs are always Allah-mad terrorists; even in the era of Blaxploitation II - Electric Boogaloo, blacks are still the criminals or the victims - but victims of our own crimes, now.
I contend that just because something is not white-socially-accepted as "Racist" doesn't mean it's not. Just because whites determine what is "Racist" and what's not doesn't mean others aren't offended at the way they're being portrayed. Just because "old" stereotypes are shown in a "new and improved" light - imperceptible to many - doesn't mean Hollywood isn't still muddying our views of each other. And, just because I'm saying something is racist doesn't mean I'm some whining … African-American screaming for more "affirmative action".
Now, to our feature presentation.
Pulp Fiction.
A N****r by Any Other Name…
In QT's Crime World, Los Angeles, there are only two African-American characters with any real significance: hitman Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Marsellus (Ving Rhames). Now, Jules, though hard as hell, is only a lackey, but Marsellus is THE Man, the Head N****r in Charge. This is a twist. In film and TV the "minority" "bosses" - which you do see more of - are still nonentities (except for Deep Space Nine) and barely have a word to say. Except: OK, brilliant, renegade white cop who really knows how to catch the bad guy, I'm going to suspend you for not following my orders. And will be proven wrong in the end. (The new "PC" image of black management, which keeps the white man down and is really and truly incompetent - like they always said?) And, the "minorities" who usually flood Crime World are still the pawns to whites - Italians ninety times out of ten (talk about your stereotypes). But, not Marsellus. Obviously, affirmative action has worked - at least in Pulp Fiction.
But, first, let's examine Jules. The storefront preacher/assassin. A Jehri-curled Jesse Jackson gone mad. From the Ezekiel scene we know that Jules is a very scary individual, a professional. He don't take no sh*t from nobody. Something we usually don't see. He ain't whistlin "Dixie", ain't singing "We Shall Overcome." He's not the good-natured sidekick to Mel Gibson. In fact, he's constantly telling Vincent (John Travolta) what to do. Could this really be? A strong black man on film? Is this Hollywood?
Oh … yes. It is.
Fast-forward. Vincent accidentally blows off another African-American's head in the back seat of their car while Jules is driving. They have to get off the road. Jules has to call on an old friend, Jimmy (QT).
Jimmy agrees to help but ain't none too happy bout it. Jules shuffles and Yassa bosses Jimmy. Then QT, the Artist, portraying his "Artistic vision", proceeds to spray "N****r" like graffiti all over the scene. After all, he doesn't run a "Dead N****r Storage" service.
Jules has imposed on his friend; he's in the wrong; so he has to accept the abuse given. Under the guise of friendship, Jimmy's allowed to call a spade a spade. That preaching assassin, who, by this point, believes he's been saved by God, is a completely different animal. The buck has been castrated. N****r, N****r, N****r, Tarantino - sorry, Jimmy - fumes. And, Jules? Yassa, yassa, I's sorry fo the impo … impo … the imposition, suh.
But, Vincent gets reprimanded, too, Bill. What? When Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel) shows up, he chews Vincent out. Oh, yeah. Right. Vincent demands respect after all the orders Wolf gives, and the latter stoically "goes off." He lambastes Vincent and punctuates the tired with "Buster."
So, two men in an equally compromised position, both an imposition, Jules and Vincent, one black, one white, both get their come uppance. Jules is a "N****r"; Vincent, a "buster". Oh, yeah. That's fair.
See, that's not racist, contested the barroom intellectuals. Why? First, Jimmy has a black wife (blink and you'll miss her). He CAN'T be racist (just ask all those slave holders with mulatto children). Two, Jimmy and Jules are FRIENDS. We don't know their relationship. Fair enough. Maybe their friendship was so liberated that Jimmy ole buddy, ole pal could call Jules "N****r" all the time to the congenial backslap. Oh, you's so funny, Jimmy. I don't know. It's not how I was raised. Thank God. And, I don't know anyone who was. Third of all, Jimmy never directly calls Jules a N****r. The word's just spat on him several times, and Jules passively wipes it off.
("N****r" be funny like that. It is racist to call somebody that, but not "Racist" to say - just ask some of my barroomers. After all, you could be referring to a "lazy person" or "a member of a socially disadvantaged class of persons" or referring to how "Racist" other whites are for using that word while it's oozing from your lips. I f**king disagree. N****r was invented to refer to blacks and blacks ONLY. And, when using that word, you are referring to nobody else - despite liberal attempts by Webster's telling you differently - despite white kids feeling cool calling themselves "N****rs" listening to rap. Therefore, when using it in black company, no matter what the guise, you are referring to that person or people who look a hell of a lot like her/him. Calling her/him a N****r. Of course, this definition is not white-socially-accepted and will be refuted. So be it.)
Now, I realize that it would've been asinine to have Wolf call another white man "cracker" or "honky" or "peckerwood", but were Jules and Vincent, two men in an equally bad situation, the "N****r" and the "buster" treated equally? Would this treatment be considered "Racist"? You decide.
- f**ked Like a b**ch
In one corner we have "Uncle Marsellus" (as Mr. Wolf called him). Cool. Suave. Superfly. With a lot of cool lines. I would go into his relationship with Mia (Uma Thurman), the object of "everyone's" desire (How many times have we seen the savages lust after Jane?), which goes unfilmed like the slaying of royalty on the Elizabethan stage. But, I won't. I'm tired of all the replays of O.J. Othello and how Vincent/Cassio/Ron Goldman could've saved the white ewe from being tupped by the black ram. The more things change…
Shakespearian-style, before we ever see him, we know Marsellus is a mean N****r: after all, he had his boys mutilate another "N****r" who gave his wife a foot massage, and we also heard how he doesn't like to be "f**ked like a b**ch."
In the other corner we have Butch (Bruce Willis), the Washed-Up Boxer on the Take. In Hollywood all boxers are washed-up and on the take - just like all Nazis have British accents. So, like we know that the Nazis are going to be real mean dudes, we also know what's going to happen with Butch. He'll take the money, but his "odd sense of honor" (as they called it in the bar) will somehow shine through, and he won't take the dive. Surprise! Surprise! That's what happens! So, now, we know there'll be a fight between "good" and "evil," Butch and Marsellus.
GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!
Good accidentally runs into evil on the street, then purposely runs into him with his car. Soon, a dazed chase scene with reckless bullets stumbles across the screen and ends in a good ole boy's gun shop. Fight! Fight! A N****r and a white! Marsellus is even more dazed than Butch, and Butch easily takes him - much like the white hero in Birth of a Nation clears out a cabin of a dozen slothful black-faces with his righteous fists - telling Marsellus that this ass-whoopin is "Pride talking to you." And, just when he's about to blow Superfly's head off, he's stopped by the proprietor's shotgun.
The next thing we know, both Marsellus and Butch are bound and gagged. The LAPD is called in (the new "Racist" cops; the only racist cops?) and the Gimp. Something real bad's about to happen, but the law enforcement officer can't decide to whom. Eanie, meanie, miney, moe, catch a N****r by the toe… Marsellus! Come on down!
Marsellus disappears; we hear torture in the background; and Butch MacGivers his way out of bondage. Loose, he punches out the chained Gimp and limps to freedom. But … then Butch is struck by "conscience." With the rebel flag literally at his back, we see the White Messiah resurrected (for more White Messiah flicks, see Mississippi Burning, British Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, Gunga Din, Betrayed, The Power of One, even Strange Days, hell! anything with whites, "Racism", and "minorities"). Even though Marsellus has done nothing but exploit Butch and try to kill him, the washed-up boxer just can't let him suffer such a gruesome fate. Even though, with Marsellus dead, he'd be free. Butch must save him from those BAD, BAD white men. So, in shining white armor and samurai sword, Butch saves the day.
The White Messiah finds compassion and saves the enslaved African, who's being "f**ked like a b**ch" (Hm?). Butch is lauded for his "odd sense of honor". A hero. And, why not? He proves that not all white people are bad (Thank God for the FBI, says Mississippi Burning). Only white RACISTS. So, don't be angry at us, good white people. Look at what Butch did. You can't be angry with him. With us. It's the white RACISTS who are the problem. Not us. Can't you see?
I'm not saying that Whitey's the Devil, evil, or omnipotently nefarious. Nor am I saying that there are no good white people. God forbid. What I am saying is that The White Messiah is a constant white liberal theme in film. I guess it's used to allay that "White Guilt" I've been hearing so much about and to appeal to "minorities" with a "We're not all so bad." But, what it always does is have a situation with "minorities" being oppressed by a white "Racist" system and, subsequently, being saved by another white. These "minorities" never save themselves, never seem to be able to. It tries to make us all believe that the only way we'll ever be able to succeed is via The White Messiah. We must sit with our eyes to the sky for the "blue-eyed Jesus" to descend and lead us through the gates of Heaven.
Just ask Marsellus. While vowing to "get medieval" on the white racist's ass with shotgun in hand and pants around his ankles, Marsellus thanks Butch for being his savior by clearing all debts and letting him go free.
We all can get along!
- Hallelujah, Hollywood!!!
- I do hope I have answered my barroom intellectuals' questions. They did shock. I thought I was the only one who thought Pulp Fiction was questionable. Egotist. I think they asked because 1) I, obviously, was the only "minority" they'd had access to, and 2) even though QT used very stereotypical, racist portrayals, he did it with enough twists to raise some doubt. For that he should be commended. Anyway. But, in the end, the thought was shuffled to the back of their minds as seven whites Little Big Horned me and called me an idiot for thinking the way I did (maybe because they didn't want to think that way?). They conveniently fell behind the shield of Art, deciding - independent of me, of course - that QT was simply portraying Jules and Marsellus the way he did "to question society's views on race." Funny, in all of Pulp Fiction's critical acclaim, I never heard any "race questions" being asked. Did you? It was considered a great, Artistic achievement.
And, why not? If Birth of a Nation is still considered a "great, Artistic achievement," why not Pulp Fiction?
So, if this were indeed QT's intent, why didn't I hear that question until a year and a half after the movie's release? Why don't we ask the same of Scorsese and Coppola or, even, Cecil B. DeMille with his Charlton Heston Moses? Why don't we ask it of Alan Parker with his deliberate lies in Mississippi Burning or his cannibalization of voodoo in Angel Heart? Why don't we ask if Hollywood's racist when Ben Kingsley and Keanu Reeves both appear in brown-face? Or when Latino scripts like Scarface, Death and the Maiden, House of Spirits, etc., cast Euroamericans - excluding Latinos? Or, when "minorities" are constantly nonexistent, bit-parted, and/or humiliated in some stereotypical way? Is it because these instances are not white-socially-accepted as "Racist"? That these images do not offend because it hasn't been agreed upon by whites that they are offensive? Do they offend the wrong people? Think back to Hola. Does it take whites to determine what is "Racist" (like the Klan and Ted Danson)? Is that why Arnie can slaughter scores of "fanatical" Arab "terrorists" in True Lies and be lauded for his Family Values while Spike Lee is called an anti-Semite for his caricature of Jews in Mo' Better Blues?
Were that label and the one of "Racist" slapped on him because he'd characterized whites in much the same way they've been portraying "minorities" for a century? Is that the same reason a simple action flick, Thelma and Louise, was considered male-bashing? Is it because images "degrading" white males is something new and not white-socially-accepted?
I'm just asking.
-- Bill Campbell
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Posted: Saturday January 27th, 2007 11:07 |
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Bill Campbell's article started well and then he just lost the plot! I wont go so far as to say Tarantino is a card carrying racist, but that film appears to be a vent for him to throw up some the racist bilge which every American, White and Black are inundated with. Yes I find it hard to watch the "dead N****r storage" bit because, from the minute the black dude is shot in the car, till the hose pipe scene, it feels like one long KKK joke.But real Black life in America can be like that - lives are cheap, plantation type relationships exist, white Americans verbalise their racism quite openly, black people get murdered casually and often in farcical situations.The episode in question could have appeared as fly on the wall. And maybe that is Tarantino's point?
I do however agree with Bill that the interweaving relationships do not stray too far from the established hollywood format. Working class Whites and Blacks are generally violent; white southerners are perverted racists; foreigners are sinister; there is one noble white hero.What I have noticed in the film however, and that may partly explain the dead N****r storage scene, is that friendships are presented as being complex and uncomfortable...they could be nasty, tenous, one sided or weird. For example Butch, who is White, is Marsellus' good N****r;hunny bunny and her lover cut their cutesy love talk hold up the cafe using the foulest language;Butch displays some shocking violence towards his loyal girlfriend;Marsellus' wife wants to screw Vincent; near the end of the film, Marselus and Butch share a terrible secret.
I dont think Pulp Fiction is a great film. It doesnt say anything edifying about humanity, doesnt point out some great truth in an original way. It is however manipulative, accessible, funny, sensationalist and memorable.Its like one of Jules's big kahuna burger, great to tase but hardly nutrional.
Last edited on Saturday January 27th, 2007 11:09 by check_check
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