Over the holidays, I finally saw The Hateful Eight. I went to an early-morning show and there were mostly older men there, which is probably evidence of the fact that the film is very much a Western, and men are mostly the audience for westerns. I liked The Hateful Eight and I thought several actors were doing some of their best work to date, like Samuel Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins and Kurt Russell. Was it my favorite Tarantino movie ever? Not really. It wasn’t even one of my top-three movies of the year (Spotlight and The Martian are definitely on the list). But it was good, and if you like Tarantino’s films, you’ll enjoy it.
One of the things that bugged me about the film is that Tarantino seems to want to say larger things about race, the n-word, slavery, etc, but he just… doesn’t. It’s not that the film is preachy, it’s just not as profound as Tarantino thinks it is. Which brings me to this new Tarantino interview in The Telegraph – you can read the full piece here. Tarantino ends up talking a lot about race, the Confederate flag and other stuff.
The slaughter at the Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina: Tarantino says that nine people were shot by a 21-year-old “white supremacist a–hole,” as Tarantino puts it, “who wraps himself up in the Rebel flag… All of a sudden, people started talking about the Confederacy in America in a way they haven’t before. I mean, I’ve always felt the Rebel flag was some American Swastika. And, well, now, all of a sudden, people are talking about it, and now they’re banning it, and now it’s not OK to have it on f—king license plates, and coffee cups, and stuff. And people are starting to question about stuff like statues of Bedford Forrest in parks. Well, it’s about damn time, if you ask me.”
The urgency of police violence: “If you ask black folks in America what’s been going on with unarmed black and brown males being shot by the cops, it’s not a new phenomenon….[but now the violence is] being filmed, and people have seen it, and we’ve watched it on television in a way that we haven’t before. And it’s actually penetrated and pierced the national consciousness and the national news media. In a weird way, I think that will prove to be not too dissimilar to watching the Vietnam War on television.”
Violence in film versus violence in real life: “But one of the things that backs up my point is that in the last 25 years, when it comes to industrial societies, hands down the most violent cinema that exists in any one country is Japan. Sometimes grotesquely so. And as we all know, they have the least violent society of all. It’s just right there.”
I think the swastika-Confederate flag comparison is pretty apt, actually. And what surprised me was that following the massacre in South Carolina, so many people were on the same page about it – I didn’t think anything would change, but South Carolina took the flag down and it actually mattered and it felt like something shifted. I also think his comparison between seeing images of the Vietnam War and seeing images of black and brown citizens being assaulted and gunned down has changed the conversation in fundamental ways.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Why does he get under my skin and annoy me so much when he actually says things I agree with? Too smug? I just can’t stand him.
I love him but I admit he has one of those slappable faces, GNAT. I would never, ever, ever, slap anyone, so if I think it, it must be true, right?!
I like all the stuff he says here. And we in England have had our own conversation about the English flag (Cross of St George, not the UK’s Union Jack) being hijacked by the more unpleasant elements of our society and how we should or shouldn’t try to reclaim it, so I found those comments particularly interesting.
Ha! It IS his face. Now I feel bad.
I get the sense that he says these things not just to make a point about whatever issue he’s discussing, but also in an attempt to show how enlightened and progressive he thinks he is. And he’s not all that great on race issues (e.g. response to Django Unchained criticisms).
Yes, there’s something very “educating the stupid people” about him. It’s childish of me to let it bother me, I guess.
He’s 100# Awkward Geek. And he’s still super excited that his fame occasionally scores him a hot woman.
But apart from the way he moves his mouth, I don’t mind him.
I get what you’re saying GNAT. My only real issue with what he says here and what Samuel L. Jackson said the other day is that they are only referencing black/brown men. I really wish they wouldn’t exclude all the black/brown women who have died by the hands of the police brutality, we need people to speak out for those women just as much because they deserve justice as well.
Thank-you.
Excellent point. Not to mention ignored rapes and domestic abuse.
The Hateful Eight was great.
Yes he could have taken racial themes deeper but overall a good movie.
The Rebel Flag in my opinion more offensive then the Swastika. The Swastika has a long peaceful history now ruined by the Nazi’s. While the Rebel Flag has always been tainted.
It might not be helpful to try to define levels of offense of various symbols. To victims of Nazi aggression, the Swastika’s peaceful past was and is irrelevant. They are both awful symbols of hatred and the murder of innocents.
It’s interesting, if you are over on Instagram, there are a lot of younger jewelers who are claiming to have NA backgrounds (and I’m pretty certain one of the biggest offenders doesn’t) making lots of jewelry using swastikas, claiming they are trying to rehab the “whirling log.” I understand the symbol is ancient and in many Asian cultures it is all over their temples, but to rehab it here but showing it swinging in the cleavage of an almost naked woman – no. Just no. It’s not time to rehab this symbol, if ever.
And the Confederate flag never meant anything good – just secession. So no to that, too, IMHO.
The fact remains that to over a billion people of Hindu and Buddhist faith, the swastika has always been a symbol of goodwill. They’re not obliged to change their symbol just because some racist white people decided to twist it and use it in a way that it never was intended for.
And I am not a fan of western people (usually white) who come to India and try to start shit on social media implying that Indians are anti-Semitic because they saw a Hindu swastika on a sweets box, or on the door of someone’s home. I’ve seen a few of those getting torn a new one by Indians, and frankly I don’t feel sorry for them. We had that symbol for thousands of years before the Nazis stole it, and they do not get to redefine it for us as murder and racism. (especially since India is one of the few countries that had a minority Jewish community and never actually targeted them for persecution any more than other minority religions, unlike the bearers of the Confederate flag).
That said, I do not approve of the recent wave of white people trying to re-appropriate the swastika either. It’s NOT yours to appropriate and use, just as it wasn’t the Nazi’s. Sacred symbols should be left to those who actually believe in them.
@teacakes The end.
It’s funny how he mentions the urgency of the police situation with black people.
I hear/see so much hand wringing about terrorism and fear of extremists but by all accounts from what I observe in real life and social media POC are far more worried about their own US cops than any of that.
The country ignores racism until the bodies pulling up get too high to explain and then suddenly wants to shuffle in long-needed change and yet we’re supposed to worry and pull our hair about refugees. Better yet how the crisis of terrorism is entirely made in the image of a brown Muslim and not a white male with a penchant for guns.
Right?
I keep wondering where is the wall to coverage of the situation in Oregon where a bunch of white men with guns have held up a federal building. I bet you if these men were black or Muslim we’d have constant coverage on every major news channel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/01/03/armed-militia-bundy-brothers-take-over-federal-building-in-rural-oregon/
Totally agree.
You guys nailed it.
I told someone I was more scared of cops killing me and no one knowing what happened to me than traveling to the middle east …let me tell you some people were shocked by that. Its a real fear.
The twitter feed about the Oregon crew is comedy gold. If anyone is interested and hasn’t seen it yet, check #VanillaISIS, #YallQueda and #YeeHawd. The feds are being called out for the double standard, and the ‘training videos’ remind me of the Palins. There doesn’t really seem to be a lot of support for the case on there.
They wouldn’t call them ‘peaceful protesters’. What’s peaceful about a bunch or violent racist yahoos taking up the cross for a couple of strangers who seem intent on burning the country down? But when you’ve got world-class racist jerk Megyn Kelly on the cover of Vanity Fair, it tells you were people’s heads are.
And they would be “terrorists.” As these white terrorists should be called. Call them what they are.
I would call them stupid and in over their heads. At least they haven’t decapitated anyone.
I’m a Southern Liberal Democrat and I approve this message
Ditto.
I’m Southern and lean more towards the conservative side, but still approve this message! Hate is hate.
Yes he is right to compare the Rebel Flag as the American Swastika, both apt and resonant.
He’s a moron of the highest order-another of touch Hollywood liberal who thinks he has all the answers.
Yep.
It’s really horrible that it took innocent people being gunned down in a church for people to wake up and see what that flag represents. I live in the Midwest and see it too often and it just tells me to stay the heck away from that racist. You could say it means southern pride and represents a time when the south was strong, well they were strong on the backs of free labor, torture, terror and oppression of my people sooooo no not accepting that.
People have long known what that flag represents, but it took that horrible massacre to actually spur some Southern states to remove it from their government buildings. Before that, flag removal efforts failed based on the “heritage”, “history” and “my granddaddy fought in the war” excuses. Good riddance to it.
I think the country wasn’t ready to tackle the rebel flag until the massacre happened which is a tragedy itself. I feel like part of the country at least is starting to wake up from the fantasy that racism against blacks doesn’t exist to the extent that it does and hope that the revisionist history of the south continues to be challenged.
Please pass your message on to the textbooks of Texas, they need it.
i like the hateful eight. i agree with other posters that he could have gone a little deeper to finish his point. i liked what the film illustrated about race and i also liked what i think he was trying to say on misogyny.
Hey may be a piece of work, but I really liked many of the things he’s been saying lately.
Me, too. I’m trying not to be cynical about it. I know a few months back there was some sort of backlash over…something he said–maybe something related to race? Can’t remember. I was thinking his recent comments were damage control for that, but what he’s saying–especially in this latest interview, is sooooo spot on and sounds so sincere.
He’s right. And I usually have some squint for QT, as I’m never sure what he’s trying to do. But I get him here. That flag on top of the State House was a national embarrassment and a slap in the face to POC whose ancestors were enslaved. I just hate that it took that monster slaughtering those people in a church for it to come down. My god.Also, I think that flag was treasonous-the South lost the war, those flags should never have been allowed anywhere on state/federal grounds. And yes..I hate to say it, but people NEED to see what is really happening in these cases of excessive force/outright murder in some of these cases. Also, let me say that I truly believe most cops are amazing at their jobs, and I am grateful for them. But we are all waking up and seeing for ourselves what folks of other races have been dealing with all along.
I’ve been saying the same thing for years. If it had been the north that lost the civil war, we would have never seen that flag again. There is no reason for the confederate flag to exist beyond 1865.
I’m from Vietnam and lived in America for couple years. About his comparison, I feel like some are still deeply unaware (“is it still on?”) or ignorant (my fav “we won”) even after the war ended.
I liked The Hateful Eight alright, but I really think Quentin should stop it with the Westerns. It was the same as Django. Good, could’ve been better, definitely not on par with his other films.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty much every day that you hear, ‘black on black’ and ‘comply’. I could write a book.
I’m not a big fan of this guy, but he’s certainly right about this.