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It's probably the least surprising of the past week that Quentin Tarantino is a literal son of a bitch. I think we all knew. I suppose the question is at what point does he become responsible for not being a more figurative son of a bitch. The problem with SOBs is that they have trouble transcending this adolescent momma-blame in their adult years, while inflicting their resentments and insecurities onto the rest of their personal relationships. Or their audiences, as some cases indicate.
You may have seen the story: No Elvis Cadillac For Mommy should definitely be the name for QT's last movie, btw.
You can definitely tell the SOB as the guy still talking about "consequences" about an ass-chewing from his mom 45 years ago. But there's some important context here which isn't easy to discern because QT has spent as much time obscuring his mother in his biography as he's obscured others who have given him important material support when he needed it (ie, Roger Avary, most obviously). So it probably needs to be pointed out that QT's mother was a 16-year-old high school dropout when she gave birth to the little bastard. She married young, for convenience to emanciate herself from her parents, who nevertheless ended up helping raise the child due to the struggles of the frequently single working class mother. QT was raised by his mother in working class Torrence in south central-ish LA, and found some paternal support in a string of her husbands and boyfriends who tended to also be struggling professionally. I haven't seen any evidence of exposure to substance abuse or corporeal punishment in his childhood.
The portrait that this paints to me is that Connie McHugh probably was trying to do the best she could with a cocktail of youthful poor judgment, bad luck and paycheck-to-paycheck insecurity. Even QT's own version of events shows that his mother was less discouraging of his writing as a hobby than that he "can't do that in class", no doubt due to her hard-won wisdom on the costs of academic failure. Did I mention that QT was 12? Why would any grown adult still be concerned with maintaining the integrity of a 12-year-old's tantrum?
I remember being 12. One of my teachers would scold me because I would take the weekly vocabulary assignment, to use each new word in a sentence, and instead turn in short stories with them. My creative impulses were frequently discouraged by authority figures and family members who felt that "getting a good job" was the paramount purpose of education, and saw such esoteric endevours as a waste of time. More crucially was the discouragement that I received from peers, who similarly ridiculed efforts that went outside the norms of their own mundane recreations and interests. I am certain that I have entertained a variety of "lists" in my life of those doubters who one day I would have washing my car, Biff-style. Revenge plots, after all, are fairly rewarding creative exercises for a frustrated pube.
What I'm having trouble getting over, though, is how a man, validated by enormous success and acclaim, that is over a decade my senior could still be so dedicated to harboring these deeply adolescent indulgences. Maybe that's the price of international household fame, at his relatively young age of 30. Maybe his affluence and ability to buy off introspection is what has arrested the normal path of emotional development for young adults to process their disappointments in their parents and heroes, and the guilt-fueled resentments of our having disappointed them, and the learning to see our parents and heroes and vulnerable, flawed human beings, more than likely doing the best that they could in the circumstances, and who weren't always immune to the same selfish impulses that a 12 year old would assume as their own rightful prerogative. The above excerpt sounds like a Big-like scenario where a 12 year old has magically inhabited some 58 year old's body. It's the lack of self-awareness that is most disturbing. One would think that, at the very least, absent a healthy development of catharsis and forgiveness, that QT would have maybe learned to keep this arrested adolescent a little disguised in public, being the embarrassing neuroses that any adult can clearly recognize it as being. No, he's proud that he's still holding his breath.
And it then occurred to me that this is, in fact, precisely my biggest gripe with most (but especially recent) Tarantino films. He hasn't grown up. Worse, perhaps, he's defiantly incapable. Now this isn't some kind of Peter Pan/Willy Wonka "young at heart" type of deal. Many adults are quite capable of preserving a youthful and innocent vigor and connection to the wonder and curiosity that define the edenic paradise. Tarantino is no Mr. Rogers. Instead, he simply lacks wisdom and maturity, and, thinking back on his recent films, it seems so evident that it's like a missing piece has fallen into place. I'm sure many others have figured this out before now. I've certainly had my suspicions. Perhaps its my general admiration for his very evident capabilities as a filmmaker that have led me to overestimate his inherent abilities as a writer (of anything deeper than sharp dialogue). It seems impossible not to see QT's revenge epics as his own vicarious spite and vindictiveness, except he was clever enough to realize that he needed to hide this spite behind non-white male protagonists (mothers, slaves, Jews, Sharon Tate). But it's all cosplay adolescent revenge at the end of the day, from that kid with the bulbous head and the queer name who was told to do his homework by a mother likely getting off a 16-hour shift. It makes sense in that context how QT, despite these newfound social justice concerns, could so brazenly (and ultimately defensively) put Uma Thurman in physical risk (and then get Harvey Not Sorry to pay her off into silence), who could fetishize black bodies (some body parts more than others) with a curious visceral relish, who could have no second thoughts on turning Jews into torturers despite the well documented history of the community's hard-fought human rights struggles, and how he could so casually and callously throw Bruce Lee under the bus despite this having nothing really to do with the story. (Cliff could have easily demonstrated his fighting skills on any stunt man who was not, incidentally, known for enduring a ton of racist abuse from other stunt men.)
So while QTs immaturity certainly comes as no surprise, in itself, what clicked for me specifically was this almost unspoken aspect ot his recent films that has unsettled me, and now that aspect is clear as crystal, magnified and condensed in the exchange above. It is these films' ultimate and undigested spite and vindictiveness, channeled as they are into righteous tales of social revenge, but they still have a bitter sting of that 12 year old who wanted blood and flaming fury on those who doubted his fragile malformed ego.
I'm pretty much convinced now that Daisy is Mommy Connie.
"Mom, your tone hurts. It hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time." QT is committed to preserving his emotional virginity.
You may have seen the story:
She was bitching at me about that and then in the middle of her little tirade, she said, ‘Oh, and by the way, this little ‘writing career,’ with the finger quotes and everything. This little ‘writing career’ that you’re doing? That **** is ****ing over.' She meant you just can’t do that in class when you should be doing something else.....When she said that to me in that sarcastic way, I was in my head and I go, ‘OK, lady, when I become a successful writer, you will never see penny one from my success. There will be no house for you. There’s no vacation for you, no Elvis Cadillac for mommy. You get nothing. Because you said that....There are consequences for your words as you deal with your children. Remember there are consequences for your sarcastic tone about what’s meaningful to them.
You can definitely tell the SOB as the guy still talking about "consequences" about an ass-chewing from his mom 45 years ago. But there's some important context here which isn't easy to discern because QT has spent as much time obscuring his mother in his biography as he's obscured others who have given him important material support when he needed it (ie, Roger Avary, most obviously). So it probably needs to be pointed out that QT's mother was a 16-year-old high school dropout when she gave birth to the little bastard. She married young, for convenience to emanciate herself from her parents, who nevertheless ended up helping raise the child due to the struggles of the frequently single working class mother. QT was raised by his mother in working class Torrence in south central-ish LA, and found some paternal support in a string of her husbands and boyfriends who tended to also be struggling professionally. I haven't seen any evidence of exposure to substance abuse or corporeal punishment in his childhood.
The portrait that this paints to me is that Connie McHugh probably was trying to do the best she could with a cocktail of youthful poor judgment, bad luck and paycheck-to-paycheck insecurity. Even QT's own version of events shows that his mother was less discouraging of his writing as a hobby than that he "can't do that in class", no doubt due to her hard-won wisdom on the costs of academic failure. Did I mention that QT was 12? Why would any grown adult still be concerned with maintaining the integrity of a 12-year-old's tantrum?
I remember being 12. One of my teachers would scold me because I would take the weekly vocabulary assignment, to use each new word in a sentence, and instead turn in short stories with them. My creative impulses were frequently discouraged by authority figures and family members who felt that "getting a good job" was the paramount purpose of education, and saw such esoteric endevours as a waste of time. More crucially was the discouragement that I received from peers, who similarly ridiculed efforts that went outside the norms of their own mundane recreations and interests. I am certain that I have entertained a variety of "lists" in my life of those doubters who one day I would have washing my car, Biff-style. Revenge plots, after all, are fairly rewarding creative exercises for a frustrated pube.
What I'm having trouble getting over, though, is how a man, validated by enormous success and acclaim, that is over a decade my senior could still be so dedicated to harboring these deeply adolescent indulgences. Maybe that's the price of international household fame, at his relatively young age of 30. Maybe his affluence and ability to buy off introspection is what has arrested the normal path of emotional development for young adults to process their disappointments in their parents and heroes, and the guilt-fueled resentments of our having disappointed them, and the learning to see our parents and heroes and vulnerable, flawed human beings, more than likely doing the best that they could in the circumstances, and who weren't always immune to the same selfish impulses that a 12 year old would assume as their own rightful prerogative. The above excerpt sounds like a Big-like scenario where a 12 year old has magically inhabited some 58 year old's body. It's the lack of self-awareness that is most disturbing. One would think that, at the very least, absent a healthy development of catharsis and forgiveness, that QT would have maybe learned to keep this arrested adolescent a little disguised in public, being the embarrassing neuroses that any adult can clearly recognize it as being. No, he's proud that he's still holding his breath.
And it then occurred to me that this is, in fact, precisely my biggest gripe with most (but especially recent) Tarantino films. He hasn't grown up. Worse, perhaps, he's defiantly incapable. Now this isn't some kind of Peter Pan/Willy Wonka "young at heart" type of deal. Many adults are quite capable of preserving a youthful and innocent vigor and connection to the wonder and curiosity that define the edenic paradise. Tarantino is no Mr. Rogers. Instead, he simply lacks wisdom and maturity, and, thinking back on his recent films, it seems so evident that it's like a missing piece has fallen into place. I'm sure many others have figured this out before now. I've certainly had my suspicions. Perhaps its my general admiration for his very evident capabilities as a filmmaker that have led me to overestimate his inherent abilities as a writer (of anything deeper than sharp dialogue). It seems impossible not to see QT's revenge epics as his own vicarious spite and vindictiveness, except he was clever enough to realize that he needed to hide this spite behind non-white male protagonists (mothers, slaves, Jews, Sharon Tate). But it's all cosplay adolescent revenge at the end of the day, from that kid with the bulbous head and the queer name who was told to do his homework by a mother likely getting off a 16-hour shift. It makes sense in that context how QT, despite these newfound social justice concerns, could so brazenly (and ultimately defensively) put Uma Thurman in physical risk (and then get Harvey Not Sorry to pay her off into silence), who could fetishize black bodies (some body parts more than others) with a curious visceral relish, who could have no second thoughts on turning Jews into torturers despite the well documented history of the community's hard-fought human rights struggles, and how he could so casually and callously throw Bruce Lee under the bus despite this having nothing really to do with the story. (Cliff could have easily demonstrated his fighting skills on any stunt man who was not, incidentally, known for enduring a ton of racist abuse from other stunt men.)
So while QTs immaturity certainly comes as no surprise, in itself, what clicked for me specifically was this almost unspoken aspect ot his recent films that has unsettled me, and now that aspect is clear as crystal, magnified and condensed in the exchange above. It is these films' ultimate and undigested spite and vindictiveness, channeled as they are into righteous tales of social revenge, but they still have a bitter sting of that 12 year old who wanted blood and flaming fury on those who doubted his fragile malformed ego.
I'm pretty much convinced now that Daisy is Mommy Connie.
"Mom, your tone hurts. It hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time." QT is committed to preserving his emotional virginity.
Last edited by Jinnistan; 08-09-21 at 05:53 PM.
