Reincarnating the Spaghetti Western and exploitation films from the 1970s, Quentin Tarantino has injected an overdose of violence and non-linear scripts into mainstream cinema. Some of his writing and directing techniques have influenced other filmmakers and his glorification of violence has spawned a whirlwind of controversy, real-life violence, and heated political debates. Tarantino’s mark on cinema triggered a new era of bad conquering good and the opposite of the happily ever after Hollywood ending. Blurring the lines between good and evil by injecting sympathy for the enemy and provoking emotion through music and violence, Quentin immersed the viewer into the counter-culture underworld.
Born in 1963 and named after a character played by Burt Reynolds, Tarantino dropped out of high school and pursued his film addiction by working in a video rental store (Walker). Eventually he made it the Cannes Film Festival with his film Reservoir Dogs and subsequently started the A Band Apart production company to continue his film career. Tarantino’s influences range from J.D. Salinger, fast-food culture, and French New Wave cinema, to Akira Kurosawa (Phillips). Although Quentin mostly wanted to become an actor, his disjointed scriptwriting and films became his calling card.
Tarantino’s signature writing style often portrays plots and characters in no linear chronological order, unlike most films, it’s almost as if he writes a normal script and then throws the pages into the air letting them fall and gathering them up in no particular order. While Tarantino did not invent non-linear narrative, he has definitely brought it back into the mainstream.
In the past fifteen years, Tarantino’s “wild” techniques are probably the most visible influence on unorthodox film narration, and to that extent we can speak broadly of a “Tarantino effect” to indicate the rising number of alternative narratives over that time. This is not to say that other filmmakers… all did not have an impact, just to credit Tarantino with leading the latest parade. (Berg)
Many successful films have been influenced after Tarantino’s lead of non-linear narrative, although they have not been nearly as influential. Young directors and writers today cite Tarantino as a major influence, and this will not likely change soon. Some may say Tarantino has only regurgitated already over-used plot formulas, while this may be true; Tarantino has simply made movies he already loves but with a newer twist. In fifty years, it would be laughable to see Michael Bay’s Transformers being cited as the main influence for cinema in the late twenty-first century. Not only has Quentin’s writing been an influence, but his directing techniques have gone on to influence others as well.
One weapon in Tarantino’s directing arsenal is the “trunk shot.” A “trunk shot” is a scene where the camera is placed inside the trunk of a car or in a briefcase (at least that is what Tarantino wants you to believe) with the camera pointing outwards at the actors as they stare down towards it. This gives the viewer the illusion they are actually in the trunk, immersed in the scene. Tarantino did not invent the “trunk shot” but he has made it a more popular technique in modern cinema. “The very trunk shot is a kind of in-joke for the director’s (Tarantino’s) fans” (Lyman) since Quentin uses the angle in nearly all his films. Even the recent comedy The Hangover employs this technique, while there is not much research on the origin of this angle it will certainly be an easy to pull off homage to Tarantino in the future. While new film techniques are difficult to invent, one thing Tarantino has no trouble inventing is controversy.
The most controversial film Tarantino is responsible for is Natural Born Killers. Written by Roger Avery and co-written by Tarantino, the film was again rewritten to suit Oliver Stone’s needs when he directed it (Phillips). Although Quentin Tarantino has tried to distance himself from the film as Peter Travers finds in his interview “‘It’s just kind of out there, and it doesn’t have anything to do with me’ he says after being coaxed to elaborate.” It’s undeniable the film was Quentin’s brainchild. The film involves two outlaws deeply in love with one another, all the while on a murderous rampage. Natural Born Killers has been blamed for many real life murders including “the decapitation of a thirteen-year-old girl by a fourteen-year-old boy in Texas” (Phillips). Oliver Stone even ended up in court because of the controversy surrounding these murders. Senator Bob Dole used the film to attack violence in mainstream cinema along with the loss of values in America. (Phillips) Regardless of whether or not this was all truly Oliver Stone’s fault, or whether or not you can cite a violent act as being an immoral addition to humanities, Tarantino could only feel like a scientist who worked on the first atomic bomb without realizing it.
Quentin is certainly no angel when portraying violence in the films he writes and directs. Reservoir Dogs shows a torture scene where the bad guy cuts off an undercover cop’s ear, the movie ends with nearly all the characters being shot to death. Tarantino’s Kill Bill series often shows heads and arms being cut off, and then voluminous fountains of blood spurting in all directions from the wounded area. Inglorious Basterds shows a military group shooting Nazis with machine guns nonstop for nearly two minutes. Obviously, Tarantino was not the only one portraying violence in his films. Violence in the media is an age-old debate, but the debate has not deterred many from continuing to show it. Was Tarantino responsible for the rise in the portrayal of violence in film? He is certainly not responsible for all of it, although he did make it “cool”. The Persian Gulf War had just ended in 1991, it being the first most televised war in history because of twenty-four hour news channels and other technologies. Reservoir Dogs came out only a year after the war ended. Our culture allowed Tarantino’s portrayal of violence because we were becoming immune to it. Tarantino may have merely jumped on the bandwagon, but his films secured ultra-violence at the movie theaters for another twenty years. Aside from romanticizing brutality, Quentin also swayed the industry for years to come through his meticulous casting.
Steve Buscemi had appeared in a few floundering movies along with some bit parts on television, but Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction thrust him into a life-long career where he is usually identified by his odd face and crazy teeth. John Travolta’s career was jump started again after appearing in Pulp Fiction. Even Uma Thurman could give a nod to Tarantino for pulling her out of the superhero, comic book based movie trenches. Quentin Tarantino has had a wide influence on all aspects of the movie industry and on pop culture.
The best way to judge Tarantino’s influence on our current culture is to imagine if he never wrote or directed any movies. Where would cinema be today had he not written so well or not been so successful in his endeavors? How would we make fun of the French name for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or the audacity of a five dollar milkshake? Would we even know who Samuel L. Jackson is? Would we have been able to laugh at violence so easily? Where would the attraction of empowerment come from if Uma Thurman had not single-handedly killed dozens of ninjas in a matter of seconds with a sword? What about smiling like a child as we watched Hitler being pumped full of lead? Tarantino made, and continues to make his mark, just as violence in cinema continues to spread.
Works Cited
Berg, Charles RamÃrez. "A Taxonomy of Alternative Plots in Recent Films: Classifying the “Tarantino Effect”." Film Criticism 31.1/2 (2006): 5-61. OmniFile Full Text Mega. Web. 27 July 2011.
Lyman, Rick. "Tarantino." The New York Times (n.d.): LexisNexis Academic. EBSCO. Web. 27 July 2011.
Phillips, Kendall R.. Controversial cinema the films that outraged America. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2008. Print.
Travers, Peter. The Rolling stone film reader: the best film writing from Rolling stone magazine. New York: Pocket Books, 1996. Print.
Walker, Andrew. "Faces of the week ." BBC News. BBC, 14 May 2004. Web. 27 July 2011. .
No comments:
Post a Comment