Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema ed. by Robert von Dassanowsky (review)

Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Basterds made waves among critics even before its release. When he announced that he was making a film that focused on a group of Jewish American soldiers who use extreme measures to exact revenge on the Nazis, many in the press worried about depicting the group who were the primary victims as perpetrators of violence. After the film was released, most critics agreed that Tarantino had successfully created a fantasy world in which Jews were able to shed the mantle of victimhood and enact vengeance against figures who, in reality, perpetrated unspeakable violence against Europe’s Jewish population. Since then, Inglourious Basterds has entered the canon as an essential twenty-first-century work of art, worthy of serious consideration as such. Such consideration is the goal of the book Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema, a collection of essays examining the film as an example of metafilm and looking at the ways in which gender, history, and popular culture are depicted.

An issue that Inglorious Basterds addresses, at least indirectly, is the connection between the military conflict of World War II and the genocide commonly referred to as the Holocaust. These two events occurred simultaneously and are inextricably intertwined but should never be confused for one historical incident. Tarantino does a great job showing this, with his dual narrative focusing alternately on the Basterds and Shosanna. Their stories intertwine, especially toward the end of the film, but they do not represent two versions of the same story. One particularly good essay from this collection comes from Heidi Schlipphacke, who suggests that this duality also represents the genders of the main characters represented in each story. She notes that—despite Bridget von Hammersmark’s involvement with the Basterds—half of the story is overwhelmingly masculine in outlook and that Shosanna’s story echoes the Greek tragedy of Medea. Her analysis of the film is insightful and should be of interest to film scholars and also those who study gender.

Many of the essayists who write in this book are enamored of Tarantino’s Jewish revenge fantasy. The appeal of a story that gives agency to Nazism’s victims is obvious, but this is far from the reality of the Holocaust. I agree that this perspective on the Shoah is a new and refreshing change from the standard narrative of hopeless victimization, but I disagree with the authors who suggest that Tarantino’s vision, particularly through the character of Shosanna, is an assertion of female power. Tarantino writes from a distinctly white, North American, gentile perspective, and I would have liked to see some discussion on the issue of a non-Jewish man trying to represent the experiences of a Jewish woman from France and whether or not Quentin Tarantino’s personal biography is important to the way he tells this particular story.

One aspect of this film that has received some attention from critics but probably deserves more examination is its multilingual nature. Within this text, Sharon Willis notes that linguistic and cultural misunderstandings frequently drive Tarantino’s narrative. Along those lines, she writes on the ways in which language and cultural difference lead to disaster for the characters in Inglourious Basterds. She cites the obvious example of the Basterds’ linguistic incompetence contrasted with the malign Hans Landa’s polyglot nature, specifically their inability to fake their way through the basic Italian needed at the premiere of Stolz der Nation. Additionally, and perhaps more interestingly, she points to the demise of Lieutenant Hicox as another example of a character’s fatal lack of cultural understanding. Willis makes the suggestion that the death of the film scholar after he fails to recognize a basic difference between British and German culture is Tarantino’s way of stabbing at film scholars, who might be well educated but lack street smarts.

Overall, this collection is successful, as the authors were able to...