Inglourious Basterds is a critically acclaimed historical revenge fantasy movie that uses 1944 Nazi Germany to shed light on the biased American view of World War II, following the works of Friedlander and Rosenfield. The movie uses Nazi Germany as a setting, but unlike the mainstream and kitschy Nazi Germany movies, it rewrites the history of the end of World War II, therefore posing the question of “what if?” to the audience. The movie carefully causes the audience to question themselves and leads to a hypercritical reflection of both the audience and their view of the end of World War II. All of the serious and critical reflection is glazed over, however, with slapstick humor and parody the director, Tarantino is known for in movies like
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In this interpretation, there are three different plots intertwining throughout the movie. These plots are: the Soshanna plot, the Inglourious Basterds plot and the altered Goebbels film. In Thorne’s interpretation, he claims that the audience watching the Goebbels movie represents the audience watching the movie, drawing parallels with the audience’s reaction to violence. Thorne claims that Tarantino parallels the Nazis in the film watching an anti-American movie with the audience watching an anti-Nazi movie. By doing this, Tarantino kills the audience watching his movie. Thorne extrapolates on this idea with explanations that Tarantino hates how we as American people have a biased against the Nazi empire, and therefore exploit it. We have exploited Hitler to the point where we forget the tragedies associated with him and replace him with an identity of “power, pornography and mania,” as Rosenburg would claim in his Imagining Hitler. Hitler is shown in this light in Inglorious Basterds when he is introduced. Hitler is shown wearing a cape, with a giant portrait of himself, along with a picture of Europe being conquered by the Third Reich. Rosenburg claims that fictionalizing important figures in history cause us to be desensitized to the tragedy associated with them, along with losing the historical significance of that figure. In this sense, the movie makes it so that we are desensitized to Hitler’s responsibility of the Holocaust. The movie never mentions concentration camps, although it does include “Jew hunting,” courtesy of the character Hans Landa, thus making the idea of concentration camps unassociated with Hitler. Hans Landa, also, proves to be an interesting character in Inglourious Basterds. He starts off in the introduction scene of the movie, seeming to be the antagonist of the movie by killing Soshanna’s family. He seemed to have been the “typical Nazi” as depicted in
In this interpretation, there are three different plots intertwining throughout the movie. These plots are: the Soshanna plot, the Inglourious Basterds plot and the altered Goebbels film. In Thorne’s interpretation, he claims that the audience watching the Goebbels movie represents the audience watching the movie, drawing parallels with the audience’s reaction to violence. Thorne claims that Tarantino parallels the Nazis in the film watching an anti-American movie with the audience watching an anti-Nazi movie. By doing this, Tarantino kills the audience watching his movie. Thorne extrapolates on this idea with explanations that Tarantino hates how we as American people have a biased against the Nazi empire, and therefore exploit it. We have exploited Hitler to the point where we forget the tragedies associated with him and replace him with an identity of “power, pornography and mania,” as Rosenburg would claim in his Imagining Hitler. Hitler is shown in this light in Inglorious Basterds when he is introduced. Hitler is shown wearing a cape, with a giant portrait of himself, along with a picture of Europe being conquered by the Third Reich. Rosenburg claims that fictionalizing important figures in history cause us to be desensitized to the tragedy associated with them, along with losing the historical significance of that figure. In this sense, the movie makes it so that we are desensitized to Hitler’s responsibility of the Holocaust. The movie never mentions concentration camps, although it does include “Jew hunting,” courtesy of the character Hans Landa, thus making the idea of concentration camps unassociated with Hitler. Hans Landa, also, proves to be an interesting character in Inglourious Basterds. He starts off in the introduction scene of the movie, seeming to be the antagonist of the movie by killing Soshanna’s family. He seemed to have been the “typical Nazi” as depicted in