“What Shall the History Books Read?”

Abstract

“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.