“Taking This from This and That from That”: Examining RZA and Quentin Tarantino’s Use of Pastiche

Данное исследование рассматривает роль аллюзий как художественного приема в фильмах Квентина Тарантино и проблемы их передачи при переводе на русский язык. Актуальность темы обусловлена возрастающим интересом к кинематографу как инструменту образования и необходимостью развития переводческих стратегий для адекватной передачи культурно-специфических элементов. На материале трех фильмов Тарантино – «Криминальное чтиво» (1994), «Убить Билла» (2003-2004), «Джанго освобожденный» (2012) – проводится комплексный анализ аллюзий с применением методов контекстуального, сравнительно-сопоставительного и лингвокультурологического анализа. Выявлены основные типы аллюзий (библейские, мифологические, исторические, кинематографические), определена их роль в реализации авторского замысла. Проанализированы переводческие трансформации, используемые для передачи аллюзий (калькирование, генерализация, конкретизация, описательный перевод). Установлено, что в 68% случаев аллюзии сохраняются в переводе, в 24% – опускаются, в 8% – заменяются на более понятные русскоязычной аудитории. Сделан вывод о важности сохранения аллюзивной образности и культурного подтекста для полноценного восприятия авторского замысла и необходимости разработки методических рекомендаций по переводу аллюзий в кинотекстах для использования в преподавании теории и практики перевода. Полученные результаты имеют значение для повышения качества перевода фильмов и могут найти применение в реализации культурологического подхода к обучению иностранным языкам. This study examines the role of allusions as an artistic device in Quentin Tarantino's films and the problems of their transmission when translated into Russian. The relevance of the topic is due to the growing interest in cinema as an educational tool and the need to develop translation strategies for the adequate transmission of culturally specific elements. Based on the material of three Tarantino films – "Pulp Fiction" (1994), "Kill Bill" (2003-2004), "Django Unchained" (2012) – a comprehensive analysis of allusions is carried out using methods of contextual, comparative and linguistic cultural analysis. The main types of allusions (biblical, mythological, historical, cinematic) are identified, and their role in the realization of the author's idea is determined. The translation transformations used to convey allusions (calculus, generalization, concretization, descriptive translation) are analyzed. It was found that in 68% of cases, allusions are preserved in translation, in 24% they are omitted, and in 8% they are replaced by more understandable ones for the Russian–speaking audience. The conclusion is made about the importance of preserving allusive imagery and cultural overtones for the full perception of the author's idea and the need to develop methodological recommendations on the translation of allusions in film texts for use in teaching theory and practice of translation. The results obtained are important for improving the quality of film translation and can be used in the implementation of a cultural approach to teaching foreign languages.

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.

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.

In 1970, mainly on the strength of Mandarin-language kung fu films, the Hong Kong cinema was poised to make a spectacular entry into the international cinema marketplace. By 1979, Mandarin-language cinema was dead, replaced not only by a new form of kung fu cinema, but by a veritable new wave of filmmaking. How did the Hong Kong cinema of the 1970s change so drastically over the course of the decade? How did a cinema so seemingly preoccupied with the production of genre films give rise to the critically acclaimed Hong Kong New Wave? The links between the New Wave and the rest of Hong Kong cinema are not very obvious. The domination of kung fu films and the superstar status of Bruce Lee seem a far cry from the socially meaningful pictures that reflected contemporary society and were the hallmarks of the New Wave. The almost total critical disparagement of kung fu films, save for the work of King Hu, whose Touch of Zen (actually made in Taiwan for a Taiwanese production company) won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975, made the New Wave seem a unique and far different sort of film than the West had yet seen from Hong Kong. Yet, as we will see, the kung fu genre could not entirely be quarantined from the developments taking place all around it within the film industry.

This article argues that Bruce Lee revolutionized kung fu cinema not only by increasing its authenticity and combativity but also by revealing its inherent connection to wuyi (武意), or martial ideation. Martial ideation refers to a specific negotiation of action and stasis in martial arts performance which contains a powerful overflow of emotion in tranquility. Since the early 1970s, Bruce Lee’s kung fu films have been labeled “chop-socky,” offering only fleeting visual and visceral pleasures. Subsequently, several studies explored the cultural significance and political implications of Lee’s films. However, not much attention has been paid to their aesthetic composition—in particular, how cinematic kung fu manifests Chinese aesthetics and philosophy on choreographic, cinematographic, and narrative levels. In Lee’s films, the concept of martial ideation is embodied in the Daoist notion of wu (nothingness), a metaphysical void that is invisible, nameless, and formless. Through a close reading of Laozi’s Daodejing (道德經), it is possible to discover two traits of nothingness—namely, reversal and return—which are characteristics of Lee’s representation of martial ideation. The former refers to a paradigmatic shift from concreteness to emptiness, while the latter makes such a shift reversible and perennial via the motif of circularity. The discussion focuses on films in which Lee’s creative influence is clearly discernible, such as Fist of Fury (1972), The Way of the Dragon (1972), and the surviving footage intended for The Game of Death featured in Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (2000). These films shed light on the complicated relationship between the cinematic (action and stasis), the martial (Jeet Kune Do), the aesthetic (ideation), and the philosophical (Daoism). The goal is to stimulate a more balanced discussion of Lee’s films both from the perspective of global action cinema and Chinese culture.

Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill 1 and 2 (2003 and 2004) stands out as extreme exercise in genre pastiche, even considered within filmography of a director commonly described as pop auteur par excellence. The future of once named by Noel Carroll as a signpost of postclassical American cinema-with its penchant for homage, citation, and cannibalizations of past-comes to a head in Tarantino's manic referentiality, his self-conscious forging of a directorial style from intertextual network that extends downwards into trash bin of film history, as well as outwards beyond territorial borders of Hollywood.1 A grand collage of director's particular movie obsessions, Kill Bill exposes those cult affinities that inform Umberto Eco's definition of postmodern movie, quotation of topos is recognized as only way to cope with burden of our encyclopedical filmic competence.2 What makes this work hyperbolic even by standards of audience well habituated to production of meaning by allusion is idiosyncratic contour of its topos, running to Chinese martial arts films, historical swordplay and gangster films from Japan, Italian and American westerns, and horror. Kill Bill's cult affinities are of a global order. We are confronted here with not only burden of a collective cultural memory, but a challenge of translation, of navigating across multiple lexica and regional traditions, of treading uneven textual surface that spans disparate geographies.The film's sprawling field of reference is held together by a simple story line: a woman, introduced simply as the Bride, awakens from a coma after a vicious assault on her life on her wedding day and, one by one, hunts down and kills her five attackers. A shocking act of violence sets plot in motion and initiates a series of violent counteractions. The stacked odds of initial confrontation, where we see lone victim outnumbered by her assailants, become seed of amplification and escalation of narrative actions. Underlying spectacular death scenes that many critics denounce in film is hyper literal algorithm of vengeance wherein injury requites injury in kind. In revenge stories like Kill Bill, not only does violence beget more violence, as saying goes, but does so according to a strictly predetermined logic as a reaction to and reinscription of initial cause, every turn of events a return to a founding event of violence. The vendetta in its formal contours thus entails, in words of John Kerrigan, an eye-for-eye attentiveness to lucid causal relations.3 To view narrative operations of revenge in such terms-as what Kerrigan calls impulse towards structure-is not to deny excess bred of its compulsion towards reprisal. Kill Bill aptly demonstrates tension between linear drive to rectify order and cyclical endlessness both imbedded in concept of vengeance, its protagonist's single-minded purposefulness finding expression in a mind-blowing frenzy of killing.4If revenge is red thread linking film's disjointed episodes and stylistic vagaries, it also weaves throughout generic tapestry into which film inserts itself. Tales of vengeance are backbone of western, and several of that genre's most memorable treatments of theme- The Searchers (dir. John Ford, 1956), Death Rides a Horse (dir. Giulio Petroni, 1967), Once Upon a Time in West (dir. Sergio Leone, 1968)- leave visible and audible traces in Kill Bill. Revenge also features prominently in Japanese historical costume drama, or jidaigeki, particularly in samurai swordplay pictures from which film borrows both its main object signifier, sword, and mode of that object's animation, swordfight spectacle. A standard story template of thejidaigefy, in which a swordsman or swordswoman must set their skills to test of avenging wrongful death of a master or family member, appears with equal frequency in Chinese martial arts swordplay genre, or wuxia pian. …

As an integral part of Chinese culture, Chinese martial arts embody an organic universe composed of tactics, outlooks, values, and practices. Due to this, the martial arts are foreign to Westerners at large. To share the arts with the international world, translation is obviously very useful. However, since Chinese martial arts have been most readily known by others through real performance and fighting competition, text alone cannot adequately express the embodied cultural universe. For this reason, this chapter attempts a multimodal approach to the translation of Chinese martial arts for a global audience. It holds that the audiovisual translation of kung fu films has shaped Chinese martial arts as a series of powerful fighting tactics, and the notion of “justice” attached to the arts has also been conveyed. The translation of wuxia novels, also featuring multimodality, has brought out traditional philosophies exemplified by Chinese martial arts. In addition, Chinese overseas, as cultural translators over the past century, have also facilitated the cross-cultural communication regarding Chinese martial arts. It is through the reciprocity of kung fu films and wuxia novels, as well as the mediating role-play by Chinese overseas, that Chinese martial arts have been effectively shared with the world.

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.

This study focused on the popular genre cinema, the Hong Kong’s erotic cinema, also called ‘Category III’ in the 90’s. The analysis of texts concerning about sexuality, gender myths in this alternative genre. First of all, the“ancient costume”means the story came from China’s historical past or the Chinese literature and utilize the generic iconography of a period or costume film. Second, the term of‘erotic’means th genre cinema full of nude and classified at Category III by Hong Kong’s TELA. And find out the generic formula and the ideology of these formulas. This study, based on the linkage between movies and contemporary culture and society, presented the different points of view about the ideology of this genre, and the genre evolution in the 2000. The genre has several formulas, first of all is the punishments to The libidinous, make them end tragics. Second, parody martial art genre and kungfu film into spectacular sexual behavior. Third, the masculinity myth and independent women to lust of a pair of sex people, but these freedom women will have ‘bed happened’. Finally, the evolution of these genre in the Millennium, the style become more thriller to emphasize moralistic messages.

This chapter suggests that kung fu films should be examined as a “body genre.” Positioning kung fu films as a body genre promoting visceral responses starts to explain how these films had such a dramatic impact on audiences, and subsequently led to the genre’s memorable fandom in b-boy culture. The chapter shows that kung fu films should be added to the cinematic aesthetics of breaking battles and choreographed routines in New York City. By foregrounding how the films were distributed and exhibited, the chapter demonstrates how a film’s context shapes its reception. It also offers insights into how these films informed the lives and dance practices of some New York City b-boys, and situates a meeting between a legend of Hip Hop culture and a kung fu film star in Hong Kong.

Kung fu is a cinematic genre investing on the discourse of the “real”.\n\nFrom Kwan Tak Hing, Bruce Lee, Jacky Chan, Jet Li to Donnie Yen, cinematic\n\nrepresentations of kung fu are inextricably intertwined with realism – real\n\ntechniques, real fighting and real body.\n\nThis paper is a theoretical reflection of “real kung fu” as a cultural\n\nimaginary and its transfiguration since the 1950s. The discussion will focus on\n\nrecent developments of the genre in two major industries – digitalization of kung\n\nfu in Hollywood and recent return of kung fu masters in Hong Kong through coproduction.\n\nThrough a parallel analysis of kung fu productions in a global context,\n\nthis project outlines and predicts possible reinventions of the genre in the first\n\ndecade of the 21st century.\n\nOn the one hand, the notion of “real kung fu” is reinvented by digital\n\ntechnology. By applying Jean Baudrillard’s idea of “simulacra and simulation” to\n\nthe context of kung fu cinema, Leon Hunt’s tripartite scheme of authenticity and\n\nEdward Said’s Orientalist discourse are (de/re)constructed in an age of digital\n\nproduction. Through a scrutiny of The Matrix (1999) and Kung Fu Panda (2008),\n\nI will demonstrate that the convergence of digital cinema and digital gaming\n\ncreates a new spectatorship that redefines kung fu with an alternative\n\nunderstanding of body, time and space.\n\nOn the other hand, the Ip Man trilogy (2008-2010) and Legend of the Fist:\n\nThe Return of Chen Zhen (2010) show that there is a possible return of kung fu\n\nmasters in local martial arts co-productions. Instead of a nostalgic return to the\n\nestablished genre in the 1970s, these realist kung fu films reinvent the genre by\n\nsynthesizing different paradigms of realist styles and renegotiating the longstanding\n\ndifficult relationship between nationalism and modernity.

The article studiesthe work of film actress Michelle Yeoh, in particular, the evolution of the images of female warriors created by her. It is shown that the various stages of the actress' creativity reflect the global processes of reinterpretation of female characters in adventure, fantasy, spy movies, wuxia and kungfu movies. It has been proven that the dramatic talent of Michelle Yeoh is fully revealed in adulthood and complements the images of female warriors with Taoist-Buddhist values.The subject of the article is the images of female warriors in the works of film actress Michelle Yeoh.The research methodology is based on search, system-historical, analytical and comparative methods, which allowed to carry out a comprehensive artistic analysis of Michelle Yeoh's creativity at various stages of her film career.It was concluded that several types of warriors can be distinguished in Michelle Yeoh's work: "a girl with a gun"; master of martial arts; protector - sorceress - mentor; superheroine from science fiction films; a multifaceted dramatic character focused on universal existential questions. It is emphasized that the creative path of M. Yeoh is consistent with the general process of feminization of world cinema, the transfer of emphasis from the patriarchal understanding of the role of women in society to the issue of gender equality and the study of the deep nature of femininity.Key words: Chinese cinema, Michelle Yeoh, wuxia action films, kung fu films, feature film.

The increase in the use of online and on-demand digital streaming platforms has provided the field of cinema and film studies with opportunities to access and disseminate film examples from across numerous cinematic canons. This chapter examines, through a comparative case study analysis of two highly controversial films about ‘race’: The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915) and Django Unchained (Tarantino, 2012), some of the pedagogic challenges of teaching ‘race’ and film in Higher Education. Drawing on both Critical Race Theory and Critical Pedagogy, this piece explores the issues and strategies involved in the teaching of these texts, focusing on the role of cultural contexts of the film and the cultural context of the student’s learning. It considers the role of positionality in the construction of a rich and invigorating teaching and learning environment in which to explore questions around ‘race’ and culture identity.

Dubbese fu recuperates the dismissal of the ‘poorly dubbed’ English-language voice tracks in the Hong Kong kung fu films that became globally popular and profitable starting in 1973 as a position that improperly valorizes only the perfect lip synchronization version of the audiovisual contract. Instead of one, there is a total of three possibilities with Italy representing a looser version and the films of Hong Kong’s kung fu wave representing the imperfect version. The internationalization strategy adopted by Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest identified the necessity of voice dubbings into the target market’s language, which in the case of the United States, required English dubbings since the goal was to become appealing to mainstream rather than art cinema audiences. The history of English dubbing studios in Hong Kong, the key individuals who made it happen, and the working conditions of the dubbing process are recreated to uncover how imperfect lip synchronization became a new aesthetic norm.

With the continuous improvement of environmental protection awareness, the concept of low-carbon art is gradually integrated into the creation of films. As an important carrier of Chinese culture, Chinese kung fu films are widely loved by global audiences for their unique martial arts skills, profound cultural connotations and philosophical thoughts. This paper aims to explore the specific presentation and construction mechanism of low-carbon art in Chinese kung fu films. Through literature research, case analysis and multidisciplinary synthesis, this paper analyzes the embodiment of low-carbon art in classic kung fu films (such as IP Man, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Jingwu Hero), focusing on the role shaping, action design, scene and props use, and low-carbon application of sound and vibration. The research shows that low-carbon art not only saves resources, but also enhances the cultural depth and artistic expression of the films through simple and authentic creation strategies. The article further discusses the application of ecological aesthetics, media ecology, semiotics and sensory culture theory in low-carbon art, and reveals its unique value in the creation of kung fu films. In the future, kung fu film makers should continue to combine low-carbon art with audience interaction to promote the sustainable development of the film industry.