Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema: Sidesplitting sLaughter

“What Nazis were in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, slaveholders are in his Western Django Unchained: People who are a gas to exterminate.”1 Thus writes David Edelstein (2012) in his review for Vulture.com. On the face of it, the two films might not appear all that similar. In terms of setting, they are separated by nearly a century, and they are no more similar in their visual tone; Inglourious Basterds (2009) is awash in the saturated hues of red, black, gold, and green; Django Unchained (2012) maintains a parched, earth-tone pallet. And yet, they are so thematically compatible that we might regard them as companion pieces. Most centrally, both films trace the protagonist’s journey from victimhood to vengeance, a narrative trope common to the genres of the war film and the Western. Tarantino’s choice to work within these two particular genres marks a significant turning point in his career, for, as Robert Burgoyne argues, in “the twentieth-century United States, the narrative forms that have molded national identity most profoundly are arguably the western and the war film.”2 In the following pages, I argue that Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained deploy the ancient theme of revenge in order to challenge the narrative of heroism that has remained a central component of the war film and the Western. That is, Inglourious and Django can be read as counternarratives, even correctives, to the “dominant fictions” of war and heroism that have held sway over the collective imaginary.3 Furthermore, I point out the significance of the body to these two genres, and I show how both of Tarantino’s films include scenes of bodily inscription—branding, lashing, and carving the skin.

Identity Making from Soap to Nuts

This article addresses the problem of contemporary European vision of the results of World War II through the prism of cinema, namely, a specific genre: horror. The images created in this genre by Norwegian and French directors are analyzed: Standartenführer, Germans, Soviet soldiers. The material is two relatively well-known films of the horror-comedy (black humor) subgenre («Operation "Dead Snow" (2009), «Operation "Dead Snow 2" (2014) (Norway) and the slasher «Underground Horror» (2022) (France, Belgium). The balance of power in these films, when the victory over zombies (German soldiers who have turned into the living dead) is won either by Europeans and Americans, or by representatives of national minorities, is, from the author’s point of view, the code of modern culture in the West, when the role of Soviet troops in the Victory over fascism is hushed up, when gays or representatives of national minorities act as heroes; when the Second World War becomes the subject of a comedy comprehension with an admixture of trash. Such a code differs significantly from the one that existed in literature and cinema of the immediate post-war period (in the second half of the 20th century), when living witnesses (war participants) were more numerous and moral values were somewhat different. This prism of artistic vision of the Second World War is justified by the nature of postmodern thinking and the demand for this kind of film production among Western viewers.

<p>Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho (1991) and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996) demonstrate a strong basis in existential thought. Both novels reference the philosophical and literary works of Sartre and Camus—two French intellectuals associated with the midtwentieth- century movement existentialism—as well as existentialism’s nineteenth-century antecedents Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. More importantly, American Psycho and Fight Club also modify the philosophy and its expression, incorporating postmodern satire, graphically violent content, and the Gothic conventions of "the double" and "the unspeakable", in order to update existential thought to suit the contemporary milieu in which these texts were produced. This new expression of existential thought is interlaced with the social critique American Psycho and Fight Club advance, particularly their satirical accounts of the vacuous banality of modern consumer culture and their disturbing representations of the repression and violent excesses ensuing from the crisis of masculinity. The engagement with existentialism in these novels also serves a playful function, as Ellis and Palahniuk frequently subvert the philosophy, keeping its idealism secondary to their experiments with its implications within the realm of fiction, emphasising the symptoms of existential crisis, rather than the resolution of the ontological quest for meaning. While these two novels can be considered existential in relation to the tradition of classic existentialist texts, they also represent a distinctive development of existential fiction—one that explores the existential condition of the postmodern subject at the end of the twentieth century.</p>

<p>Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho (1991) and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996) demonstrate a strong basis in existential thought. Both novels reference the philosophical and literary works of Sartre and Camus—two French intellectuals associated with the midtwentieth- century movement existentialism—as well as existentialism’s nineteenth-century antecedents Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. More importantly, American Psycho and Fight Club also modify the philosophy and its expression, incorporating postmodern satire, graphically violent content, and the Gothic conventions of "the double" and "the unspeakable", in order to update existential thought to suit the contemporary milieu in which these texts were produced. This new expression of existential thought is interlaced with the social critique American Psycho and Fight Club advance, particularly their satirical accounts of the vacuous banality of modern consumer culture and their disturbing representations of the repression and violent excesses ensuing from the crisis of masculinity. The engagement with existentialism in these novels also serves a playful function, as Ellis and Palahniuk frequently subvert the philosophy, keeping its idealism secondary to their experiments with its implications within the realm of fiction, emphasising the symptoms of existential crisis, rather than the resolution of the ontological quest for meaning. While these two novels can be considered existential in relation to the tradition of classic existentialist texts, they also represent a distinctive development of existential fiction—one that explores the existential condition of the postmodern subject at the end of the twentieth century.</p>

Andrew Schopp argues that the representation of morality and history in Inglorious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015) is a particularly complicated and distinctly post-modern one, inherently connected to the American vision of the world after 9/11. His analysis of Tarantino's texts from the perspective of justice, civilisation and revenge make an invaluable contribution to existing commentaries on Tarantino's work. He also considers their status as allohistorical narratives (commonly referred to as alternative history) which encompasses an awareness of the fact that Tarantino’s films are seemingly divided into a unified diegetic world in which a significant number of his characters reside (see Reservoir Dogs [1992], Pulp Fiction [1994], Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight) and the films that these characters might go to see in this alternate universe (Death Proof [2007], Kill Bill: Volume One [2003], Kill Bill: Volume Two [2004]). On the surface a range of interrelated strands connect his films like the branding of Red Apple cigarettes, characters being related to each other i.e. the Vega brothers in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, Sergeant Donny Donowitz in Inglourious Basterds being the father of filmmaker Lee Donowitz in True Romance (1993), and recently ‘English’ Pete Hickox in The Hateful Eight being an ancestor of Archie Hickox in Inglorious Basterds, but this fluidity is complicated even further both by Tarantino’s liberal appropriation of material from other sources as inspiration and they way the films seem to both reflect, engage and even comment on each others' narratives.

It starts by considering Tarantino’s turn to historical material from Inglourious Basterds on. Like many historical films, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight have been criticized for misrepresenting historical facts and experiences or, worse, disrespecting them, but I argue that this turn, in effect, makes explicit the mode by which metafiction investigates the relationship between fiction and reality. Engaging with film history through allegory does not preclude an engagement with history; on the contrary, it constitutes the means by which the films inscribe themselves within cultural history.

Austrian actor Christoph Waltz was looking back at three largely frustrating decades of German TV when he was contacted by Quentin Tarantino for a role in Inglourious Basterds. That role brought him the Oscar for best supporting actor. Waltz and Tarantino repeated that feat with Django Unchained.

Quentin Tarantino’s films, renowned for their stylized violence has long provoked debates over their aesthetic innovation and accusations of gratuitous brutality. This article analyses how Tarantino transforms violence into a postmodern aesthetic strategy in Kill Bill: Volume 1 & 2 (2003–2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012). Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreality, Fredric Jameson’s pastiche and Slavoj Zizek’s typology of violence, the study situates Tarantino’s work within discourses of postmodernism and cinema. Through close textual analysis, the article argues how imagery of violence in Tarantino’s films is used as spectacle and the aesthetics of the violence prioritises irony and performance over realism. At the same time, the analysis interrogates tensions surrounding historical revisionism and ethical spectatorship in Tarantino’s approach. The article argues that Tarantino’s cinema navigates the paradox of postmodern violence where it challenges moral panics about media effects while deploying violence as a hyper-stylized, symbolic language that reframes cultural narratives.

Acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino is renowned for his masterful depictions of violence. Through his influential filmography, he has meticulously crafted a unique, stylized aesthetic for on-screen brutality, transforming bloodshed into a distinctive and highly recognizable cinematic signature. "Violent aesthetics" in movies often emphasize how to present violent scenes in a suitable and non-repulsive way. Tarantino makes use of this principle and moreover, gives violence a new perspective and presentation through his distinctive cinematic language. This research aims to demonstrate and analyze how Tarantino conducts violence via the usage of diverse cinematic language. More precisely, this essay will employ Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012) as case studies for an in-depth analysis of the connection between cinematic language and violent aesthetics. Furthermore, the paper is built upon a concept of three-stages, referring to the pre-violence, violence scene, and post-violence within a single scene. Besides, these three films shares the plot of revenge, accompanied a similar three-stages rhythm when violence is going to occur, which is comparable to digging into cinematic language. Therefore, it will be concrete and legible for us to understand reconstruction and beautification of violence.

Quentin Tarantino, a renowned filmmaker known for his distinctive style and thought-provoking themes, has captivated audiences and critics with his groundbreaking films. This study aims to analyze the ontological psychological features present in Tarantino's filmography, focusing on the complex interplay between narrative structure, character development, and the human psyche. By employing a qualitative methodology, the research conducts a thematic analysis of Tarantino's key films, such as "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill," "Inglourious Basterds," "Django Unchained," and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." The study identifies several central themes, including existentialism, vengeance, memory and temporality, language and communication, and metafiction. Through an in-depth exploration of these themes, the research reveals how Tarantino's work challenges conventional perceptions of reality and the human experience, ultimately probing the depths of human emotion, motivation, and identity. Furthermore, the study investigates the broader cultural and historical context of Tarantino's films and their psychological impact on audiences. By examining the various thematic and stylistic elements, the study seeks to shed light on the ways in which Tarantino's films transcend traditional cinematic boundaries, stimulating deeper reflections on the nature of reality, morality, and the human condition. This comprehensive analysis contributes to a greater understanding of the intricacies of the human experience and the transformative power of cinema.

Consumerism and literature have a complex relationship. Literature often critiques and reflects on consumer culture, revealing its impact on individuals and society. Works like "Fight Club" and "American Psycho" satirize excessive materialism, while "The Great Gatsby" and "The Catcher in the Rye" portray the emptiness of wealth and status. Other authors, like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, explore the effects of consumerism on human relationships and identity. Literature also explores the commodification of art and culture, as seen in "The Secret Life of Things" and "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao". Additionally, authors like Dave Eggers and George Saunders examine the consequences of consumerism on individuals and society, highlighting issues like inequality and environmental degradation. Through these works, literature provides a platform for critique and reflection, encouraging readers to reevaluate their relationship with consumer culture and its values. By exploring the complexities of consumerism, literature inspires critical thinking and sparks important conversations about the role of material goods in our lives.

We tested the effects of 3 mood inductions (neutral, positive, and negative) on food intake in 91 women of varying degrees of dietary restraint. Mood induction was accomplished by exposure to 1 of 3 film segments: a travelogue (neutral affect), a comedy film (positive affect), and a horror film (negative affect). In subjects exposed to the neutral film, food intake decreased with increasing levels of dietary restraint. Among subjects who viewed either the comedy film or the horror film, however, food intake increased with increasing restraint. Although the horror film appeared to be more disinhibiting than the comedy film, this effect may have resulted from a difference in the intensity of the emotions induced rather than from their valence. These results suggest that emotional arousal, regardless of valence, may trigger overeating among restrained eaters.

Why do so many horror films feature the young, pretty and prosperous at the business end of a carving knife? A few examples include Scream 2 (1998), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Scream (1997), and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (1992). In fact, the propensity for Hollywood to portray the narcissistic bourgeoisie being deprived of their pretensions has been around since Murnau sent a real estate agent to a vampire's house in 1922. But there are fundamental differences between horror films like Nosferatu (1922) or Psycho (1961) and the films mentioned above. The purpose of this essay is to suggest that in recent years Hollywood horror narratives have moved away from the tradition of legitimising violence for the viewer who wishes to participate in a world of aggression without feelings of remorse or guilt (Tudor), in favour of attending to the fears associated with a struggling middle class and dwindling American Puritanism. This feature of the modern horror narrative involves identical characterisation of both the victims and the stalkers: they are young, affluent, attractive, and completely desensitised to trauma though hyper-sensitive to materialism and mass media flippancy. In a modern sub-genre of the horror film, defined by Barry Keith Grant as 'yuppie horror' (288), we are seeing narrative representations of economic success and physical beauty involved in the time honoured murderous passage from Order->Disorder->Order. Exaggerated portrayals of economic and physical superiority is a staple of the horror genre -- it helps to establish a veneer of safety which exists only to be shattered. The distinguishing feature of films such as Wes Craven's Scream is that the killers are not hideous misfits, they are in fact equal in beauty and social stature to their victims. The other quality which defines the yuppie horror is a visual and narrative attention to material wealth and contrived suburban perfection and the ineffectuality of this world at preventing the cathartic violent acts from occurring. In both Scream and Pacific Heights typical symbols of post-modern affluence such as cars, wide screen televisions and plush interior design get destroyed during the bloody process of re-establishing a tenuous order. Prior to the unfolding of this crucial aspect of the plot, important relations and similarities in lifestyle are established between the victims' way of life and that of the killer(s). This is a dramatic shift away from the old school tactic of gradually revealing a dark past which emphatically distances the heroes from the stalkers in a way that preserves the sanctity of the American suburban dream defined by films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street. The modern horror relies on the audience's understanding that the killers occupy the same exaggeratedly cosy space that the victims do. In most cases the means through which films such as Scream 'address the anxieties of an affluent culture in a period of prolonged recession' (Grant 280) involves the young and beautiful being stripped of their material shelter not by blue collar hicks or monsters but by other yuppies turned playfully psychotic. This revamping of the horror genre plays on strong, new concerns about capitalist ideology and media culture, and informs the audience about what effect this ideology is having on contemporary Western emotional life. The 'playfulness' mentioned above operates on various levels in most films of the genre; typically the yuppie-killers simply make it obvious they are enjoying a kind of selfish revelry in a rare immaterial act. Scream, on the other hand, is the best example of a new movement in the yuppie horror sub-genre which maintains a discreet distance from traditional horror via an unnerving joviality which pervades the script, performances and look of the film. The film is simultaneously satirical and diegetically faithful to the genre it debunks. Scream involves well off high school students treating the advent of mass murder in their leafy town as an opportunity to playfully act out clichéd roles which they also fulfil as legitimate victims. One perky cynic remarks: 'I see myself as sort of a young Meg Ryan, but with my luck I'll get Tori Spelling'. The film makes continual references to other films of the genre including those made by Craven himself. Scream has a narrative quality akin to the grim pleasures pursued by Patrick Bateman in the notorious novel by Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho (1991). In the same manner as Ellis's psycho fetishises his possessions to disavow (justify?) the horrifying brutality of his favourite pastime of indiscriminate slaying, so too do both the victims and the killers of Scream fetishise horror films and media representations of thrill killing. Make no mistake, Scream is a horror film and extremely gory. Its appeal depends on its self-referential and dichotomous relationship with the viewer who is encouraged to reject the conventions of horror via the playfulness of its tone, as well as be horrified by the frequent disembowelling of innocents. In this way, the film cheats us: there is something transcendental about the graphic violence which makes it impossible for Scream to detach itself from the conventions of the horror genre. The playful behaviour of both the protagonists and the director is a very dark message that illustrates the vanishing potential of film to resolve tensions between conscious and unconscious attitudes towards media saturation and trash culture. Extremely violent representations of affluent American society during a period of both economic and moral recession in Scream promote the notion that the sanctimonious, puritanical institutions of the middle class are at risk of being exposed due to the desensitising nature of television media, personified in the film by the aggressive and bloodthirsty reporter Courtney Cox. It is partially her jocular disavowal of the threat that makes Scream such an interesting film, much more so than similar representations of media in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1996) due to Cox's clever intertextual link to yuppie heaven in the huge television sit com, Friends. This idea of symbolising or disguising threats to the American Way has always been a driving force in Hollywood production. The Western is perhaps the most conspicuous, where staunchly defended pastoral values serve to undermine a perceived social threat posed by the industrial revolution (Wark 10). Other examples include the textualisation of a 'red menace' from Mars in SF films to reinforce Cold War paranoia, and the use of the musical during the thirties distracted audiences from the harsh realities of the Depression. Horror films have traditionally drawn on trauma from the stalker's childhood which is commemorated in the act of killing, and according to revisionist Freudian criticism this representation acts on the predominantly adolescent viewers' voyeuristic desires for psychosexual empowerment over childhood (Tudor 130). The advent of the yuppie horror has corrupted this crucial distinction between the killer and the victim, due to the killer's participation in the same affluent and material world which dominates their lives. This materialism includes the media and their dangerously superficial retelling of tragic events. The anxieties encoded in Scream and its spin-offs activate, through the violence adopted by psychologically identical characters, a new regression similar to the Freudian one mentioned above. The crucial difference is that the trauma stems from a desensitisation to media representation of real events, ultimately realised in the apparent emotional stability of the affluent and beautiful who playfully slaughter the inhabitants of their own, false world. References Grant, B. K. "Rich and Strange: The Yuppie Horror Film." Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Eds. Steve Neale and Murray Smith. New York: Routledge, 1988. Tudor, A. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Monster Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Wark, M. "Technofear 2." 21·C 8 (1992): 10. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ben King. "It's a Scream: Playful Murder and the Ideology of Yuppie Horror." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/scream.php>. Chicago style: Ben King, "It's a Scream: Playful Murder and the Ideology of Yuppie Horror," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 5 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/scream.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ben King. (1998) It's a scream: playful murder and the ideology of yuppie horror. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/scream.php> ([your date of access]).

Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present, by Theodore Martin; Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace, by Jeremy Rosen