Some excerpts from the rather long but excellent article from
Spike: The unbearable wokeness of Tarantino’s critics
If anybody is still uncertain about the extent to which
woke identity politics has corroded the arts, one need look no further than the mainstream critical response to Quentin Tarantino’s new film,
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood...
...
.Richard Brody in the New Yorker complains that the film is ‘
obscenely regressive’, ‘ridiculously white’, and
‘celebrates white-male stardom’.
Matthew Rozsa in Salon dismisses it as
‘sexist historical revisionism’. Writing for the
Observer, Wendy Ide mars an otherwise insightful review by expressing frustration at
‘the positioning of middle-aged white males as the real victims’.
Those critics who have become subsumed into the cult of
wokeness can rarely lay claim to individuality in their analysis. The cumulative effect feels like the product of a hive mind, one that is less concerned with artistic merit than with matters of diversity, inclusivity and representation...
Time magazine published an article entitled
‘We Counted Every Line in Every Quentin Tarantino Film to See How Often Women Talk’. And yes, the exercise is as fatuous as it sounds...
...One of Brody’s many bugbears is the representation of Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh, who is humiliated in a scuffle with stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) on the set of The Green Hornet.
Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter) has described the portrayal as
‘irresponsible’ and
‘belittling’. Former basketball player
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar considers it
‘somewhat racist’.
Lee biographer Matthew Polly calls it
‘inaccurate’. In reality, the scene in question is a strong comedic set piece with an impressive performance from Moh, which also happens to serve an important function in the narrative. A screen idol like Bruce Lee hardly needs to be protected from caricature, and it is surely demeaning to his legacy to suggest otherwise.
It’s not a distinction that troubles film critic
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh. Writing for The Times, she attacks Tarantino’s
‘sadistically violent, casually racist and misogynistic fantasies, which, he insists, are just movies, not real life’. She identifies a number of supposedly offensive instances of violence against women in Tarantino’s back catalogue, which not only reveals her ongoing struggle with the concept of fiction, but also conveniently neglects the fact that his male characters tend to fare even worse.
The most ludicrous response to the film has come, perhaps predictably, from the
Guardian. Indulging in the most spurious cod-psychoanalysis,
Caspar Salmon claims that
‘Tarantino’s filmography reveals a director in search of increasingly gruesome settings to validate his revenge fantasies and confer legitimacy on his bloodthirst’. Again, the charge of misogyny is made on the grounds that Tarantino depicts
‘morally repellent’ violence against women...