Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards

Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Bastards entails a Jewish revenge fantasy that is told through a counterfactual history of events in World War II. However, this story follows a completely different plot than what we are currently familiar with. Within these circumstances, audiences now question the very ideas and arguments that are often associated with World War II. We believe that Inglourious Basterds is a Jewish revenge fantasy that forces us to rethink our previous understandings by disrupting the viewers sense of content and nature in the history of World War II. Within this thesis, this paper will cover the Jewish lens vs. American lens, counter-plots with-in the film, ignored social undercurrents, and the idea that nobody wins in war. These ideas all correlate with how we view World War II history and how Inglourious Basterds muddles our previous thoughts on how these events occurred.

Many Americans have watered down the Depiction of Jewish oppression during Nazi reign to swift easy round up into concentration camps. What Quentin Tarantino and the Jewish film community wanted to illustrate through this film is how this is an incorrect overgeneralization. Inglourious Basterds illustrates more realistic Jewish life during Nazi reign and the constant terror they faced. This oppression was far more personal, intimate, and cordial yet brutal altercations invoked through self-defense and hatred. This film illustrates this internal oppression and revolt through schemes, interrogations, threats, and abrupt violence.

This is depicted throughout Inglourious Bastards and is illustrated beautifully in the opening scene and chapter one of the film set in 1941 Nazi occupied France. There is a peaceful French home own...

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...ns that when these characters die in the film we feel a heavier and more personal sense of loss when they perish. This is a direct attempt to make the viewer understand the personal nature of the violent manner through which Shoshanna lost her parents early in the film. This is an attempt to get viewers see through the Jewish lens of violence in World War II instead of the glorified violence of major battles that composes the American lens.

Works Cited

Inglourious Bastards. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz. The Weinstein Company, 2009. DVD.

Lebow, Richard Ned. "The Future of Memory." American Academy of Political and Social 617 (2008): 25-41. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.

Siegel, Jason. "The Plot Against America: Philip Roth’s Counter-Plot to American History." Oxford University Press (2012): 130-51. Project MUSE. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.