Read Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy for Free Online

were antagonized by
Nietzsche’s accelerated advancement in academic circles and his choice to answer that good fortune with a flamboyant criticism of intellectualism instead of a conventional scholarly treatise. 14 The book sealed his reputation as a speculative eccentric and effectively stalled his career. But with equal decisiveness, it heralded a bright new philosophical light—at least for those who had eyes to see.
    Little Q, as Quentin Tarantino’s mother reportedly called him as a child, developed a youthful passion for writing stories and screenplays and for watching movies that was almost as intense as Nietzsche’s creative passion. Quentin spent much of his childhood scripting and staging elaborate games, recitations and plays (including annual Mother’s Day dramas in which he repeatedly, but always apologetically, killed off his mother). 15 He saw John Boorman’s Deliverance when he was only nine years old and it seems to have marked an important milestone in his life; not only was it one of innumerable films he saw as a child, and later as a video-store employee and action-movie aficionado, it solidified in him a lasting appreciation for the emotional power of the cinematic experience, as one of his many biographers has observed: “he loved the visceral effect movies had on him, even when he didn’t understand what was really going on” (Bernard, p. 13).
    Reservoir Dogs famously begins in a restaurant with a bunch of loquacious crooks comically deliberating over the subtext of early Madonna lyrics and the social merits of obligatory tipping. After their meal, the crime boss, his managerial son, and six operatives who make up the unlikely job crew, jauntily approach their cars as the cheery, melodic ’70s hit “Little Green Bag” plays on the radio. The slo-mo shot that ends this amiable
scene, an image of six happy thieves walking together in identical black suits, white shirts and skinny black ties, has become the signature image of the film. But it is the disturbing and incongruent violence that immediately follows this scene that has become the primary trait of Tarantino’s signature style: before the credits have finished rolling, and while the same infectious music is still blaring away, the film abruptly transports us to the bloodsoaked backseat of a getaway car, where one of the eight criminals is now writhing in agony while his partner dispenses maternal comfort from behind the wheel. The rest of the movie (including the musically choreographed torture and threatened immolation of a captive policeman), bleeds out in a rendezvous warehouse amid brutal confrontations, profane accusations, and brilliant back-story digressions.
    As with Nietzsche’s unconventional book, Tarantino’s unconventional movie left critics wondering what had hit them—or bit them, as the case may be.

Is Reservoir Dogs a Comedic Heist Film? That Dog Don’t Hunt
    The first question any serious viewer is prompted to ask of Reservoir Dogs is what kind of movie is this exactly, and why was it such a sensation? A month after the film premiered at Sundance in January of 1992, producer Richard Gladstein described it as “a very, very, very, very , violent comedy.” At the time, Tarantino himself described it in much the same way: “It’s a heist film, about a bunch of guys who get together to pull a robbery and everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. . . . It all leads to violence and blood, but it ends up being black, gallows humor.” 16
    Well . . . not exactly. There is, to be sure, plenty of wry humor in Reservoir Dogs . And some very funny scenes and dialogue are cleverly juxtaposed to the movie’s raw violence. But is that enough to make the film itself a comedy (even a black, violent comedy)? Think of John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank. Now there’s a violent comedy. And despite its bloody wall-towall
violence, that film isn’t anywhere near as disturbing as this film. On the other hand, Reservoir Dogs