If you’re a member of Generation X or Gen Y, chances are the films of Quentin Tarantino affected how you interact with pop culture to this day. His status as the last man standing of the indie directors who broke onto the early 90s film scene makes him a black swan. The fact that he started as a movie nerd working at a Los Angeles video store makes him a Pop Cult high priest.
Many traditionalists in the above demographics find themselves plagued by what I call the Tarantino Riddle. The conundrum resides in the following: A textbook Gen X nihilist who worships the most degenerate era in cinema made some of the most iconic, enjoyable movies of our lifetime.
Does Tarantino’s oeuvre vindicate the post-Hayes Code New Hollywood era? Does it definitively repudiate the comparatively more conservative cinema of the 80s?
Let me refer you to propaganda expert Devon Stack for a thorough treatment of just how dreary, miserable, and frankly inhuman New Hollywood’s output was:
Now consider Tarantino. He seizes every chance to lionize New Hollywood–specifically because it featured unlikeable characters who had no arcs and suffered meaningless deaths. He dismisses the concept of heroes and derides 1980s cinema for always letting the good guys win.
Stack points out that the way to analyze a movie is by examining its message and the effects that message has on the audience. Therefore, the question to ask is, do Tarantino’s own movies embody his boutique 90s relativism?
Taking a cursory glance at his freshman effort, the instant cult classic Reservoir Dogs, one is tempted to say yes. The director’s own comments, though, hint at a ray of light penetrating the film’s otherwise gray morality. The reason why Mr. Orange confesses his true identity to Mr. White is because he has found the thief to be a man of honor, and honor demands that he know the truth. In that respect, we can at least find some noble pagan virtue on display in Tarantino’s first film.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have his late-aughts love letter to New Hollywood, 2007’s Death-Proof. Not only is that movie crammed with degeneracy and bereft of heroes, it even shows early signs of Death Cult morality. Which, perhaps ironically, keeps the movie from being entirely nihilistic.
Then, on the far opposite pole, we have Tarantino’s self-described swan song Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. A modern fairytale that presents an idealized vision of a bygone age, this film stands shoulder to shoulder with his others in terms of bloodshed. Yet as I noted in my review, for all his talk of nihilism, Tarantino can’t stop the violence in his films from conveying meaning. It resolves into an unvarnished good vs evil story at the end. And as in all the most memorable fairytales, the heroes live happily ever after.
It’s worth noting that Death-Proof remains Tarantino’s lowest-regarded movie, while Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is among his most beloved.
However strange it sounds, the Tarantino Riddle has the same answer as that of George Lucas. In both cases, we have a master storyteller formed by the films of his youth who fails to understand his movies’ appeal. Whereas sheer financial power immunized Lucas to the studios’ demands, Tarantino’s maverick status shielded him from PC hate mobs and critics. The difference between a maverick and a rogue is that a maverick keeps producing quality. Tarantino’s insistence that his next movie will be his last indicates he knows which side his bread’s buttered on, and that it can only be spread so thin.
Sharp students of pop culture may suspect other reasons for Tarantino’s imminent retirement. Above and beyond his main benefactor’s disgrace, that is.
Tarantino made his bones as an indie maverick preaching the second coming of New Hollywood nihilism. His tune hasn’t changed in thirty years. Even in Current Year interviews, he sounds like a 90s hipster holding forth on moral relativism in a chic coffee house.
Listen to his recent interview on Joe Rogan for a perfect example:
The truth–and there’s reason to believe that truth has dawned on Tarantino–is that 70s nihilism and 90s relativism served their purpose and are now obsolete. The trap edgy mavericks always fall for is assuming that their edgy beliefs are ends in themselves. Tarantino admits that Hollywood is even more censorious now than it was in the 50s and 80s. What he might have realized, at least dimly, is that edgy relativists like him helped destroy the prior moral order to pave the way for Death Cult moralism.
And with bourgeois relativism having outlived its usefulness to Hollywood, there will soon be NO PLACE for reactionaries like Quentin Tarantino.
He just might be learning not to make entertainment for people who hate you.
Take a page from Quentin. Stop supporting studios that hate you. Support creators who want to entertain you.
“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is most definitely a love letter (as in, will you marry me?) to late 1960’s Hollywood. It’s the very anthesis of Death-Proof and Pulp Fiction. It’s as if he’s saying “remember all I said about how horrible old Hollywood was, well nevermind.” I think it’s clear he sees the writing on the wall. “Mavericks” have no place when the revolution is over. In fact, they’re the first ones up against the wall.
Perhaps the most telling part of that interview was when, after an hour of praising edginess at moralism’s expense, Tarantino sheepishly bows to Death Cult morals the instant Rogan brings up his mentor getting #metoo’d.
Then you have him perseverating over a once-fawning critic calling him right-wing in a “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” review. He’s starting to figure out that yesterday’s edgelord is today’s regressive.
Spreading nihilism is like telling people to not have children. You’ll only set up your own kind to be replaced, because your propaganda will only affect people as over-educated as yourself.
Learning that Tarantino settled down with a wife and recently became a father was one of the biggest surprises from his Rogan interview. I wouldn’t be surprised if his marriage influenced Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and his decision to retire.
A lot of the time on Cannon Cruisers whenever we find a movie we dislike immensely we quickly discover that Tarantino was influenced by and champions it. We are never surprised by this knowledge.
The difference is that these specific exploitative movies were made to revel in debauchery and thinly veiled pornography while I can’t say anything Tarantino has ever done is actually like that. It feels more like he uses his talent as an artist to see things in these pieces of garbage that no one, not even the creators, see in it. I might have my problems with him, but it feels as if he does have a bit of the muse in him when just about nobody left in Hollywood does.
This is why, by the way, that I will always content that ’80s cinema was better than ’70s cinema. Even the exploitative movies such as those by Cannon are actually moral movies.
My issues with Tarantino aside, I’ve never disliked his movies for being amoral because they never come off that way. Even if he really wished they did.
Listening to his Rogan episode immediately made me think of Cannon Cruisers. The former is like a Bizarro World version of the latter.
I think you’ve got Tarantino’s number down cold. His artistic genius is at war with his addiction to blood & guts titillation, and he’s a great enough artist that his muse usually wins.
The moment that cinches it comes when he laments to Rogan that they no longer make movies in which a soldier survives two tours in ‘Nam only to be gunned down in a convenience store. You can hear in his voice that he knows such an ignoble death is wrong.
Try though he might to deny meaning, his vision is too clear not to see it everywhere.
When I got to the edgy phase of my film the two movies which were my favorite were Pulp Fiction and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Looking back, I was just fascinated by the violence and irreverence of the two movies. But I can also see that while neither movie is exactly edifying, at least Pulp Fiction has a moral core. Each of the three main characters face moral dilemmas, and notably the one that does the worst at it is the one who ends up dead. Meanwhile in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is completely nihilistic. The “heroes” might be a less violent than many of the gangsters they go up against, but ultimately their only goal is to get money to get themselves out of a mess they got into, and they don’t care how they get it.
Tarantino is very effective at using violence as a narrative tool.
One of the examples that will always stick with me, and is one of the reasons he is probably hated, is in Inglorious Basterds which is supposed to be a “Yeah, Kill the Nazis!” brainless popcorn romp for the Pop Cult set. However, there is that scene with the loyal soldier who stands by his convictions and suffers a noble death. Did Tarantino dare to suggest living and breathing human beings fought on the Wrong Side and are more than cartoon villains? That’s not supposed to happen in this type of movie!
No wonder it never became a meme for the woke crowd.
Feel like in QT’s case he is more attached to traditionalism than his peers. New Hollywood’s nihilism was largely reactionary, a sort of generational war of narratives, but the core of it was still centered around that classical moral foundation. Filmmakers who made the 70’s anti heroes still had parents and grandparents who lived through the Great Depression and two world wars. Even their anti-morality tales held some stock of meaning. But what about now, when we are dealing with copies of copies of copies of 70’s nihilism, alongside the added baggage of 50 years of no draft, legal abortion, gay pride and other progressive crusades, all filtered through a megaglobocorpo technocracy currently feigning black power and communism while not even based in America, God’s country, anymore? QT is too sentimental about Americana, and it saves him and his work from the meaninglessness it celebrates.
Anti-white anti-Christian piece of shit