Last night I went with a friend to see Inglorious Basterds, and as a veteran of many a Tarantino film, it was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. Also predictable was the reaction of those right bloggers with an interest in reviving the aesthetics of Soviet Realism; Debbie Schlussel, for instance, hastened to declare it her Movie of the Year. But if the sight of skulls being cracked like coconuts thrilled her (“it’s good against evil. And it’s thoroughly satisfying. I wish they showed even more…the treatment [the Germans] got in this movie is the same way we should treat all of our enemies, but simply don’t have the guts to do so”), at the same time it made her sad to think of all the heads that would go cinematically unbashed (“no-one in Hollywood has the guts to do an “Inglorious Basterds” with Americans fighting our current enemy: Muslim invaders who’ve also replaced their friends, the Nazis, as the thugs upon Europe”).
What I didn’t anticipate was the way the film would inspire certain bloggers to fashion their own Louisville Sluggers out of dense, straight-grained stupidity, and start swinging wildly at the heads of their own readers. Dr. Melissa Clothier, the Opinin’ Osteopath, took several particularly vicious cuts the instant I clicked this link from Roy’s place.
Inglourious Bastards might be Quentin Tarantino’s best movie so far. As expected, it’s full of gruesome violence, gratuitous splattering blood, and revenge fantasies.
To quote Crow T. Robot: “Whatever tugs at your bobber, little buddy.”
Tarantino has some messages for everyone though and they aren’t politically correct…Here are some of the lessons from the movie:
This should do wonders for our national security posture.
1. Enhanced Interrogation works: The reason William Wallace from Braveheart fame was so remarkable was because he didn’t break.
He also didn’t win.
Nearly everyone, eventually breaks.
Unless they’re played by Mel Gibson. Then they go gloriously to their death, blaming the Jews and calling Robert the Bruce “Sugar Tits.”
When one gets a bad guy to spill the beans, good guys get saved. It ain’t pretty. But sleep deprivation, psychological discomfort, and in Tarantino’s case, a public head bashing are very effective means of extracting information.
Yes, people who’ve been driven to a psychotic episode by sleep deprivation, then had their skull fractured by a baseball bat are frequently a font of useful information. I’m pretty sure this is how Roger Ailes preps Glenn Beck before each show.
2. There are bad guys.
That is a fresh slant.
Now, in this politically correct world, only the Nazis may be used as bad guys. Don’t mention the barbary of Native Americans or current slave traders, or Hugo Chavez.
Okay, I admit it, I never knew that Native Americans were infested with Saracens. No wonder they were so grouchy.
Hell, don’t mention the barbaric acts of actual barbarians–the Barbary pirates.
And don’t talk about their barbacans, barbeques, or Barbarian Brothers movies on VHS.
These days, the only acceptable bad guy is of German extraction.
And it’s led cinema into a creative cul-de-sac. Aren’t we all just a little tired of watching Godzilla fight gigantic Nazi stormtroopers?
Actually…I’d probably go see that.
Anyone who is labeled “bad” is labeled Hitlerian.
For instance, Bryan Cranston’s character in Breaking Bad, and his plans to exterminate world Jewry by selling meth to Southwestern crackers.
For fun though, when you go see the movie, just put an Islamist in the place of the Nazi.
It’s almost as much fun as watching two girls go at it in a porn tape and putting yourself in the place of the pizza delivery boy. But I have to wonder just how much attention you’re paying to the film’s profound and complex message if you’re devoting most of your brain’s computing power to digitally replacing the Germans with Arabs. Oh well, I guess it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re not doing it every time a Nazi shows up on screen.
Every time. Just imagine a freedom hating terrorist biting it hard. It’s profoundly satisfying.
I hope her seat had a chance to air dry before the next screening.
If Tarantino were really that edgy, he’d have chosen a more relevant bad guy, but in these times, naming evil is passé.
It’s tough when producers are too timid to properly service your fetish. Snuff porn enthusiasts, for instance, have to make do with torture porn, and it’s weak tea indeed.
What made me love the movie most, though, didn’t occur on the screen. The packed theater that made my vengeance-loving heart glad.
NOTE TO DR. CLOTHIER’S PATIENTS: Ask her if she’s just returned from a matinee of Inglorious Basterds before allowing her to violently twist your neck.
Primal? Uncivilized? It’s pretty to think so.
Thanks, Hemingway.
So, while I’m still waiting for Quentin Tarantino to show some real courage and portray the monstrosity that is Islamofascism–the psychotic Muslim element who carry around Mein Kempf for moral encouragement–I’ll take what I can get. And right now, a movie where the bad guys get incinerated is profoundly satisfying.
It’s nice to see the good guys win. It’s nice to see the bad guys suffer and die. I’m hoping that Inglourious Bastards starts a trend. Now, to choose a more timely enemy.
P.S. Brad Pitt is hot. And the way he says “Nazis” makes me smile. I’m saying it that way from now on. Nat-zees.
UPDATE TO PATIENTS: If your chiropractor has suddenly started talking in a comically exaggerated Appalachian accent, consider rescheduling your appointment.
The moral equivalence crowd can shove their sanctimony up their collective ass. There are people right now who loved seeing Americans die in the World Trade Center. They relished it and still do. The Lockerbie bomber, Al Qaeda, the Taliban all glory in their death cult. No reasoning, no gentleness will change their black souls. Just as Nazis felt justified in their abject cruelty, so do the Islamofascists who carry out their modern mission of freedom killing violence.
The only solution? Kill the killers.
There is a reason America continues to fight this pesky foe.
Looking back on the carnage wrought by the Second World War, I believe we can best and most solemnly honor the memory of its victims by never forgetting the gosh darned peskiness of the Nazis.
It’s us or them. Let it be them.
Or let it be Lowenbrau.
By the way, to the liberals out there: Was World War II a revenge fantasy?
Crap, I meant to study for this! Um, I’m gonna say…False?
Because technically, the European theater wasn’t “our” war. I mean Germans didn’t attack us.
They just declared war on us.
And that war cost a lot of money.
Oh now you’re worried about how spendy an invasion can get?
I do not regret that America took the war to the terrorist murderers. A sense of moral outrage should determine foreign policy.
Unless Jimmy Carter is in the White House.
Barack Obama’s bland indifference to the people of Iran is telling. Should we go to war there?
I think we should let outrage decide. It’s got a level head.
That can be disputed. But what cannot be disputed is that Iran is a totalitarian, fascist regime that wants to exterminate a whole race of people. IT IS EVIL. To not be affronted by their disgusting philosophy and actions is to show indifference to innocent, freedom-loving people.
Let’s bomb the crap out of its freedom-loving people.
The left resisted efforts to get involved in WWII.
That’s why they supported the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and were later accused of “premature anti-fascism.” Oh wait, sorry. You want the America Firsters — they’re in the Henry Regnery Memorial Ballroom and Bund next door.
They didn’t want to see the atrocities of Japan, Germany and Italy, especially, because it didn’t fit their never ending selfish narrative.
It’s true. Most leftists who saw Guernica in 1937 simply dismissed it as “that painting with the weird cow.”
Either freedom or tyranny is on the march. It is never static. And freedom must be bought or lost.
So freedom can be bought, lost, or marched on (but not in your socks, or you’ll get all staticky). Choose wisely.
Dr. Melissa has apparently received some remedial tutoring in the chronology of World War II, and has issued an update which is actually stupider than anything you’ve read so far. Feel free to click through and be dazzled, but I’ve got to go now and try to stuff my brain back in my skull.
“1. Enhanced Interrogation works: The reason William Wallace from Braveheart fame was so remarkable was because he didn’t break.”
If Enhanced Interrogation works so well, why don’t they try it first on the mother fuckers who dreamt it up? Ya know, Cheney, Yoo, Ashcroft, Rummy, Bush and the rest.
“These days, the only acceptable bad guy is of German extraction.”
I think you can lump the Americans in with the Germans. The ones from the Bush Administration.
“I do not regret that America took the war to the terrorist murderers. A sense of moral outrage should determine foreign policy.”
How about that moral outrage determine the SOB’s who started torturing and are doing their best to undermine health care?
“Either freedom or tyranny is on the march. It is never static. And freedom must be bought or lost.”
Tyranny was on the march during the Bush/Cheney nightmare years. Freedom is trying like hell to come back now. All we have to do is give the repukes a taste of their own medicine. (Or maybe no medicine at all, ever. Since that’s what they want for the rest of us. Let them die a slow, painful, miserable death.)
Left by mary b on August 28th, 2009