Martin Scorsese's films, GOODFELLAS and CASINO, and Quentin Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION are examined to determine if the crime film of the 1990s has become increasingly more in the style of film noir. The differences and similarities between the two crime films each director has either written or co-written in the 1990s are delineated to demonstrate this trend. Other crime films of the latter 1990s (SEVEN, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and MULHOLLAND FALLS) are also examined to aid in defining the latest incarnation of the crime film as "Noir Modernist," a term that is demonstrated to be a more accurate description for the current crime films than B. Ruby Rich's, "Neo-Noir of the 1990s."

In this thesis, I explore the representation of Nazis and violence in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), including how the film proposes justification for violence and murder, and how the film participates in cultural fantasies. The film presents an alternate outcome of World War II in which the Allies achieve victory by assassinating Hitler and the High Command of the Third Reich in a movie theater. The Nazis in the film, far from being a complex enemy, are used for their token villain status. Using the Nazis in this way both participates in and reinterprets the Nazisploitation genre. The protagonists, the clandestine military force known as the "Basterds," which attacks German troops using guerrilla warfare tactics, help make this victory possible. Aldo, their leader, encourages his men to brutalize the Nazis they come in contact with, and Aldo shows the way by carving swastikas in the foreheads of Nazis he allows to live. Tarantino creates an aesthetic surrounding his violence in an attempt to create a paradigm in which murder is imagined to be morally acceptable. Yet the film also supports this paradigm by setting the Nazi up in much the same way cinema uses the zombie, as a killable being, a blank body on which violence can be justifiably enacted. As a blank body, cultural imagination can also be inscribed on the Nazi, using them as a meditation on Jewish revenge fantasy and a fantasy of American revenge against terrorists. In the end, the Basterds become more like Nazi villains than heroes due to their participation in Nazi-like violence. The audience, as well, faces the problem of becoming like Nazis by viewing the film.

The submitted thesis is titled Representations of Femininity in Quentin Tarantino's Movies and it focuses on the process of femininity construction in six selected movies both written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The aim of this study is to identify how Tarantino operates the notions of conventional femininity and traditional female gender roles. Furthermore, it investigates to what extent his films either support or subvert stereotypical gender identities. In relation to the research issues the key concepts are defined by the theoretical part of this work. In particular it describes the theory of social and media construction of reality, gender as construct, film as a part of patriarchal structure or feminist perspectives related to the film production. This same part also offers basic information about Quentin Tarantino's personality and his film works in general. In order to answer the research questions the thesis employs a qualitative method of critical discourse analysis which functions as a helpful tool while reconstructing the image of femininity set by media. Moreover, the selected method serves to reveal latent meanings applied by film as a form of media to affect both behavioural and cognitive individual characteristics. Keywords Femininity, gender, construct, stereotype,...

No description available.

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis / The goal of this thesis is to understand the relationship between the evolving representations of African American women in post-Civil Rights era films about the Transatlantic slave trade; the portraits these images present of black women and their history; and how these films approach the issues of difficult heritage and re-presenting atrocity in entertainment. Film shapes the ways in which we understand the past, leaving a lifelong impression about historical events and the groups involved. By analyzing the stories, directorial processes, and the public responses to four films of 20th and 21st centuries focused on the controversial historical topic of American chattel slavery and its representation of the most underrepresented and misunderstood victims of the Peculiar Institution, this work will argue that, when supplemented with historiography and criticism rooted in historical thinking, cinematic depictions of the past make history more accessible to the public and serve as a form of public memory, shaping the way the public thinks about our collective past.

How should we, Americans, confront our complicity in reproducing the Shoah? For complicit we are, if consumerism is any metric: Steven Spielbergs 1993 film Schindlers List had grossed $321 million as of 2012; more than 40 million people have made the pilgrimage to the sacred US Holocaust Museum; at last count, The Diary of Anne Frank had sold 30 million copies. These numbers are stale staples in the debate over the ethics of Shoah representation, of course, but they bear out the skepticism of critics who have questioned American Holocaust consumer culture. And consumerism is only the first of many such ethical quandaries, which include how to deal with the trauma that audiences experience upon viewing Holocaust films and what happens when secondary witnesses overidentify with Holocaust victims.This paper takes up an unusual form of Holocaust art: misrepresentative film. I discuss two films, Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds and Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest Hotel, to argue that intentional misrepresentations not only call attention to the pitfalls of traditional representation but also encourage audiences to work through the transhistorical trauma of the Shoah. Released in 2009, Tarantinos was perhaps unique in cinema for its radical alteration of history, intended to give audiences the sheer pleasure of seeing the Nazi regime go up, literally, in flames. Though the film is undoubtedly a revenge fantasy that, using Dominick LaCapras terms, embodies acting out€ in response to historical trauma, it does so by flipping the traditional narrative: unlike most depictions of the Shoah, it complicates the victim-perpetrator binary, identifies audiences with the transgressors, and constantly calls attention to its own fictionality. Movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel are evidence that Tarantino really did shatter the constraints of the genre. Basterds certainly makes no effort toward historical accuracy, but since its appeal depends on the audiences awareness of its inaccuracies, Tarantino is still elbow-deep in real history. Anderson is not. Budapest is a troubled film, haunted by invasions, wars, arrests, and displays of arbitrary power, many of which recall the Third Reich. The function of these ominous forces, however, is not to offer commentary on the Shoah but simply to recreate the illusory world of Stefan Zweig, on whose writings it was based. In producing a movie about Nazi-occupied Europe in which the troubles of the period are relegated mostly to the background, Anderson furthers the deconstruction of the Holocaust film genre, raising the possibility that such films can be historically serious without being bound by restrictive rules.

How should we, Americans, confront our complicity in reproducing the Shoah? For complicit we are, if consumerism is any metric: Steven Spielbergs 1993 film Schindlers List had grossed $321 million as of 2012; more than 40 million people have made the pilgrimage to the sacred US Holocaust Museum; at last count, The Diary of Anne Frank had sold 30 million copies. These numbers are stale staples in the debate over the ethics of Shoah representation, of course, but they bear out the skepticism of critics who have questioned American Holocaust consumer culture. And consumerism is only the first of many such ethical quandaries, which include how to deal with the trauma that audiences experience upon viewing Holocaust films and what happens when secondary witnesses overidentify with Holocaust victims.This paper takes up an unusual form of Holocaust art: misrepresentative film. I discuss two films, Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds and Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest Hotel, to argue that intentional misrepresentations not only call attention to the pitfalls of traditional representation but also encourage audiences to work through the transhistorical trauma of the Shoah. Released in 2009, Tarantinos was perhaps unique in cinema for its radical alteration of history, intended to give audiences the sheer pleasure of seeing the Nazi regime go up, literally, in flames. Though the film is undoubtedly a revenge fantasy that, using Dominick LaCapras terms, embodies œacting out in response to historical trauma, it does so by flipping the traditional narrative: unlike most depictions of the Shoah, it complicates the victim-perpetrator binary, identifies audiences with the transgressors, and constantly calls attention to its own fictionality. Movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel are evidence that Tarantino really did shatter the constraints of the genre. Basterds certainly makes no effort toward historical accuracy, but since its appeal depends on the audiences awareness of its inaccuracies, Tarantino is still elbow-deep in real history. Anderson is not. Budapest is a troubled film, haunted by invasions, wars, arrests, and displays of arbitrary power, many of which recall the Third Reich. The function of these ominous forces, however, is not to offer commentary on the Shoah but simply to recreate the illusory world of Stefan Zweig, on whose writings it was based. In producing a movie about Nazi-occupied Europe in which the troubles of the period are relegated mostly to the background, Anderson furthers the deconstruction of the Holocaust film genre, raising the possibility that such films can be historically serious without being bound by restrictive rules.

This dissertation examines two films directed by Quentin Tarantino, whom I have situated as a postmodern film director, within the theoretical context of the philosophies of two postmodern philosophers: Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard. I argue that the major institutions of society, such as the family and religion, are viewed as grand narratives, in Lyotard’s sense of the term, which Tarantino repeatedly subverts. Overlapping with this intersection of Lyotard’s philosophy in Tarantino’s films is the Baudrillardian loss of the real, which manifests as hyperreality in many scenes. I suggest that Tarantino makes a conscious effort to create such hyperreality with the creation of playful signifiers in his films. I examine selected scenes to find Baudrillard’s “successive phases of the image” (Baudrillard 2010:6) that lead to the creation of a simulacrum. The compelling intersections between the creation of Baudrillardian simulacra and the subversion of Lyotard’s grand narratives are explored within selected scenes which are deconstructed by means of film narratology, semiotic analysis and narrative analysis. The combination of the various methods of media research in this thesis enables what Jane Stokes calls “a more textured understanding” (2008:27) of the films under discussion. A close reading from a semiotic point of view facilitates a deconstruction of some obscure elements, such as the embedded meaning in lyrics and dialogue or the messages implicit in the mise en scène. / English Studies / M. A.

This dissertation examines two films directed by Quentin Tarantino, whom I have situated as a postmodern film director, within the theoretical context of the philosophies of two postmodern philosophers: Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard. I argue that the major institutions of society, such as the family and religion, are viewed as grand narratives, in Lyotard’s sense of the term, which Tarantino repeatedly subverts. Overlapping with this intersection of Lyotard’s philosophy in Tarantino’s films is the Baudrillardian loss of the real, which manifests as hyperreality in many scenes. I suggest that Tarantino makes a conscious effort to create such hyperreality with the creation of playful signifiers in his films. I examine selected scenes to find Baudrillard’s “successive phases of the image” (Baudrillard 2010:6) that lead to the creation of a simulacrum. The compelling intersections between the creation of Baudrillardian simulacra and the subversion of Lyotard’s grand narratives are explored within selected scenes which are deconstructed by means of film narratology, semiotic analysis and narrative analysis. The combination of the various methods of media research in this thesis enables what Jane Stokes calls “a more textured understanding” (2008:27) of the films under discussion. A close reading from a semiotic point of view facilitates a deconstruction of some obscure elements, such as the embedded meaning in lyrics and dialogue or the messages implicit in the mise en scène. / English Studies / M. A.