Obviously meant “aggrieved”, but see, sarcasm again. Do you think that makes you look “objectively right”, as you like to say?
Quentin Tarantino's Mom
I just like to laugh at the allegedly educated.
I never referred to myself as “educated” or “allegedly” so. Anyway, the last few pages have been repeating the Reviews & Ratings Discussion thread, so I’m probably done here.
Tarantino, incidentally, never had any formal training except going to “see movies every night”, I’ve always thought that was the way to go.
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Yes, you like to laugh at everything, so I see.
But I notice you don’t reply when it comes to “force majeure” and the like. Interesting.
I’m probably done here.
Because it was petty, and you were wrong anyway about no one else being directly responsible for Knox's troubles.
I'd say so. Because, you know, you don't really care, do you?
I'd say so. Because, you know, you don't really care, do you?
In general, not so much about this exact discussion, but about attitudes such as yours. And as I keep reminding you, it wasn’t me being “wrong”, it was a different interpretation. I care that the side which demands respect for all manner of difference extends no such courtesy to anyone else. This is sad and terrifying, so yes, I actually care about that more than I should and more than is strictly healthy.
This will eventually get shut down too, probably because of me, but on the rarer occasions when I laugh, I laugh at the fact that people like you consider themselves a “tolerant and enlightened majority”.
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I care very much.
And as I keep reminding you, it wasn’t me being “wrong”, it was a different interpretation.
This is sad and terrifying, so yes, I actually care about that more than I should and more than is strictly healthy
I laugh at the fact that people like you consider themselves a “tolerant and enlightened majority”.
We're spinning wheels here, hun.
Then why have half your responses been variations of "why should I care?" "Why should I be consistent?" You're like a child.
I’ve already commented on maturity, never did see it as a virtue. To quote @Flicker, I am probably also largely anti-adult.
If I really am like a child, thank you kindly for the compliment
The wrong interpretation because, in fact, several people happened to be directly responsible in making Knox's life a living hell.
Yes, yes. "Tolerate my intolerance."
Last edited by AgrippinaX; 08-11-21 at 02:35 PM.
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I care about the terrifying advent of left-wing prescriptivism, indeed
And no, I still don’t think anyone should be expected to be consistent.
Hence force majeure.
I am probably also largely anti-adult.
I want to highlight a passage from the New Orleans newspaper I linked above. I think this says it about as well as anyone:
In the L.A. Times interview he [Tarantino] predicts that children of the African Americans who are assailing his movie will eventually come to see “Django Unchained” as a kind of “rite of passage for young, black males.” This would seem to be a clear case of projection, of Tarantino displacing his own feelings onto the object of his adoration. In other words, for young, hip, white males, mastery of black vernacular idiom is a “rite of passage,” even if its meaning is frequently misunderstood.
You mean black and Jewish people?
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That’s pretty phenomenal. And again, by now I’m more interested in highlighting the imbalance in the above exchange. In terms of the language used and things inferred.
Like I inferred, you're not an intellectual. Hey, that's great. You don't seem to need to be. Fine. You want to examine the language in the thread? I appear to be primarily concerned with an intellectual position based on scholarly assessments of Tarantino's revenge films. You find that boring? Great. There's, what? 50, 60 other threads?
If you want to pinpoint the exact time that I started getting short with you, you may note it was 'round about the time you said you weren't particularly interested in engaging the subject intellectually. Kind of like a nuisance, you're still here for some reason.
Please do not escalate this any further.
And please be very careful about introducing serious accusations or implications if the person has not given you a clear reason to.
And please be very careful about introducing serious accusations or implications if the person has not given you a clear reason to.
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It's a shame that the best critical cultural assessment of Django is behind a paywall at WSJ, the author, Ishmael Reed, still has his slapdown of Tarantino's prissy reaction to the film's critics.
This is from an interview Tarantino gave to Brett Easton Ellis: "If you’ve made money being a critic in black culture in the last 20 years you have to deal with me. You must have an opinion of me. You must deal with what I’m saying and deal with the consequences."
Again with the consequences! Oh, rue the day. So here's a multimillionaire filmmaker using the salaries of "black culture critics" (that highly lucrative vocation) to preemptively dismiss them.
"But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about ‘Django,’ I couldn’t have cared less. If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter."
Note that this is the same guy who earlier was saying that young black men would consider the film a rite of passage. But, "shucks, whatever, I'm a weasel", blah blah.
Inconsistency denotes a lack of integrity.
This is from an interview Tarantino gave to Brett Easton Ellis: "If you’ve made money being a critic in black culture in the last 20 years you have to deal with me. You must have an opinion of me. You must deal with what I’m saying and deal with the consequences."
Again with the consequences! Oh, rue the day. So here's a multimillionaire filmmaker using the salaries of "black culture critics" (that highly lucrative vocation) to preemptively dismiss them.
"But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about ‘Django,’ I couldn’t have cared less. If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter."
Note that this is the same guy who earlier was saying that young black men would consider the film a rite of passage. But, "shucks, whatever, I'm a weasel", blah blah.
Inconsistency denotes a lack of integrity.
Please do not escalate this any further.
And please be very careful about introducing serious accusations or implications if the person has not given you a clear reason to.
And please be very careful about introducing serious accusations or implications if the person has not given you a clear reason to.
Cool, thanks.
To that end:
I don't see why these things are inconsistent. It seems to me Tarantino's always made a huge distinction between what people think of his work, and what critics do, and this seems in keeping with that. He's always thought of himself as a moviegoer's moviemaker.
Which is not to say his hope/belief that young black men will come to adore Django makes a lot of sense to me. I just find that complimentary, rather than mutually exclusive, with the stuff about think pieces and the like.
To that end:
"But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about ‘Django,’ I couldn’t have cared less. If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter."
Not that this is the same guy who earlier was saying that young black men would consider the film a rite of passage. But, "shucks, whatever, I'm a weasel", blah blah.
Not that this is the same guy who earlier was saying that young black men would consider the film a rite of passage. But, "shucks, whatever, I'm a weasel", blah blah.
Which is not to say his hope/belief that young black men will come to adore Django makes a lot of sense to me. I just find that complimentary, rather than mutually exclusive, with the stuff about think pieces and the like.
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I don't see why these things are inconsistent. It seems to me Tarantino's always made a huge distinction between what people think of his work, and what critics do, and this seems in keeping with that. He's always thought of himself as a moviegoer's moviemaker.
Which is not to say his hope/belief that young black men will come to adore Django makes a lot of sense to me. I just find that complimentary, rather than mutually exclusive, with the stuff about think pieces and the like.
Which is not to say his hope/belief that young black men will come to adore Django makes a lot of sense to me. I just find that complimentary, rather than mutually exclusive, with the stuff about think pieces and the like.
What defines Tarantino, in my eyes, is a statement he made once, about making movies for the laidback tv crowd who can start watching it, then get up to go to the toilet, or to fetch a pizza, and come back to watch the rest of it without caring much about what they've missed in-between. He doesn't mind. For me, that idea qualifies as cosmic-level lovecraftian horror. But also... okay, so, that's his universe.
It means that while I find his films semi-enjoyable, and his work always a bit interesting, he's not a person I can take immensely seriously. And I see little difference between digressions about his statements and digressions about the philosophical insights of Jean-Claude Van Damme. It's a bit too much "their own things" to be worth caring beyond polite you-do-you acknowledgment.
I don't dislike him, it's just... he's not exactly the Jean-Paul Sartre of Cinematographical Arts. Dunno what people expect from his interviews.
It means that while I find his films semi-enjoyable, and his work always a bit interesting, he's not a person I can take immensely seriously. And I see little difference between digressions about his statements and digressions about the philosophical insights of Jean-Claude Van Damme. It's a bit too much "their own things" to be worth caring beyond polite you-do-you acknowledgment.
I don't dislike him, it's just... he's not exactly the Jean-Paul Sartre of Cinematographical Arts. Dunno what people expect from his interviews.
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Get working on your custom lists, people !
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The inconsistency, in my eyes, is that on one hand he wants the legacy of the film to be placed pretty high in the estimate of future African American audiences, the "children of the African Americans who are assailing his movie", while on the other, when confronted with substantial criticisms that he simply doesn't want to bother discussing (because he's always refused to discuss them), he steps back from the pretense that he is making a legacy-defining film to saying, "take it or leave it, it doesn't matter". I find it not only inconsistent but dishonest because it clearly matters to Tarantino, which is why he gets so defensive whenever criticism of his films come up.
Saying "it doesn't matter" doesn't necessarily mean "I don't care." It's also interpretable as "It doesn't matter what a specific person says" or "It doesn't matter what people now say," and the latter is explicitly echoed by the generational distinction he goes on to make. The idea that a film's legacy ultimately has nothing to do with formal criticism strikes me as a reasonable position. And I say that as someone who really values formal criticism in the arts.
Also, technically, the L.A. Times interview says that he "predicts" *(and that's not even a quote) it will matter to young black men, not that it's important to him that it does. A reasonable leap to make, but still a leap.
Anyway, if there is some tension here, it seems like the kind of completely run-of-the-mill tension between having to live with public criticism without giving it too much power over you. If, in response to that, he likes to imply he cares a little less than he actually does, that doesn't really strike me as noteworthy, let alone egregious. That's a line all famous creative types end up straddling.
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Another interesting piece from Jelani Cobb:
For his part, Django never deigns to offer a civil word to any other slave, save his love interest. In a climactic scene, Django informs his happily enslaved nemesis that he is the one n-word in ten thousand audacious enough to kill anyone standing in the way of freedom.
Is this how Americans actually perceive slavery? More often than not, the answer to that question is answered in the affirmative. It is precisely because of the extant mythology of black subservience that these scenes pack such a cathartic payload. The film’s defenders are quick to point out that “Django” is not about history. But that’s almost like arguing that fiction is not reality—it isn’t, but the entire appeal of the former is its capacity to shed light on how we understand the latter. In my sixteen years of teaching African-American history, one sadly common theme has been the number of black students who shy away from courses dealing with slavery out of shame that slaves never fought back.
It seems almost pedantic to point out that slavery was nothing like this. The slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution. Nearly two hundred thousand black men, most of them former slaves, enlisted in the Union Army in order to accomplish en masse precisely what Django attempts to do alone: risk death in order to free those whom they loved. Tarantino’s attempt to craft a hero who stands apart from the other men—black and white—of his time is not a riff on history, it’s a riff on the mythology we’ve mistaken for history. Were the film aware of that distinction, “Django” would be far less troubling—but it would also be far less resonant. The alternate history is found not in the story of vengeful ex-slave but in the idea that he could be the only one.
The primary sin of “Django Unchained” is not the desire to create an alternative history. It’s in the idea that an enslaved black man willing to kill in order to protect those he loves could constitute one.
Is this how Americans actually perceive slavery? More often than not, the answer to that question is answered in the affirmative. It is precisely because of the extant mythology of black subservience that these scenes pack such a cathartic payload. The film’s defenders are quick to point out that “Django” is not about history. But that’s almost like arguing that fiction is not reality—it isn’t, but the entire appeal of the former is its capacity to shed light on how we understand the latter. In my sixteen years of teaching African-American history, one sadly common theme has been the number of black students who shy away from courses dealing with slavery out of shame that slaves never fought back.
It seems almost pedantic to point out that slavery was nothing like this. The slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution. Nearly two hundred thousand black men, most of them former slaves, enlisted in the Union Army in order to accomplish en masse precisely what Django attempts to do alone: risk death in order to free those whom they loved. Tarantino’s attempt to craft a hero who stands apart from the other men—black and white—of his time is not a riff on history, it’s a riff on the mythology we’ve mistaken for history. Were the film aware of that distinction, “Django” would be far less troubling—but it would also be far less resonant. The alternate history is found not in the story of vengeful ex-slave but in the idea that he could be the only one.
The primary sin of “Django Unchained” is not the desire to create an alternative history. It’s in the idea that an enslaved black man willing to kill in order to protect those he loves could constitute one.
Saying "it doesn't matter" doesn't necessarily mean "I don't care." It's also interpretable as "It doesn't matter what a specific person says" or "It doesn't matter what people now say," and the latter is explicitly echoed by the generational distinction he goes on to make. The idea that a film's legacy ultimately has nothing to do with formal criticism strikes me as a reasonable position. And I say that as someone who really values formal criticism in the arts.
Also, technically, the L.A. Times interview says that he "predicts" *(and that's not even a quote) it will matter to young black men, not that it's important to him that it does. A reasonable leap to make, but still a leap.
The filmmaker isn’t one to run from controversy, and in an interview with the L.A. Times, Tarantino went even further in his own defense, bragging, “Even for the movie’s biggest black detractors, I think their children will grow up and love this movie. I think it could become a rite of passage for young, black males.”
If, in response to that, he likes to imply he cares a little less than he actually does, that doesn't really strike me as noteworthy, let alone egregious. That's a line all famous creative types end up straddling.
We aren't really talking about formal critics though. Many of the detractors were not film critics (and indeed many of these detractors will grant Tarantino's considerable talents as a formal filmmaker), but usually people who have pointed out the ways in which Django, even if inadvertently, regurgitates myths and stereotypes that could have been avoided with some basic research. Again, I find Tarantino's allergy to even address these specific criticisms to be a problem.
Re: myths and stereotypes and "avoided with some basic research." Was that the problem, though? Ignorance? The bit you quoted above suggests that a lot of black students felt shame when learning about slavery. If that's a fact, it seems an important one, and it fits QT's clear desire to create some kind of temporary catharsis. It would be reasonable to argue that he should actually not try to provide that catharsis, because it precludes him from interrogating where it comes from (the myths and stereotypes you allude to), but that's a much tougher conversation to have. It's pretty tough, just in general, to know the right time to provide support and comfort for someone where they are, and the right time to correct them or lay out tough truths.
I suspect that he knows that he can't rationalize it away, so to me its a sign of a petulant ego.
The actual quote does not suggest that it's not important to him: LA Times got it right, He was bragging about it.
I understand that completely. There's a lot of petulant egos in show business.
One thing worth asking is whether Tarantino is worse in his self-regard here than other influential filmmakers, or just a lot more willing to say so. I suspect the latter, but obviously I can't prove that.
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