'Inglourious Basterds': Is Quentin Tarantino trivializing the Holocaust?

Andrew Klavan is a gifted thriller novelist who happens to be a political conservative. And because he's a right-winger, he happens to think that Hollywood is chock-full of leftist dilettantes who disrespect all sorts of important cultural icons, from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the Holocaust. This attitude has led Klavan to take aim and fire at will on Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," which won the top prize over the weekend from the Screen Actors Guild. Here's what Klavan had to say about the film, which he finally got around to watching on pay per view:

"I found it an appalling movie--really, appalling. I can't remember the last time I used the word offensive about a piece of art. Art never offends me, well, hardly ever. But this film isn't offensive in any petty 'Piss Christ' way.... This is offensive in the moral, 'Let them eat cake.' sense: that is, it exhibits an understanding of human suffering so shallow it falls outside the bounds of civil discussion. Look, you don't need me to tell you this: there was this thing called the Holocaust, right?.... For Tarantino, no matter how talented, to address the issues inherent in the event as pure fodder for storytelling, to think his squirrelly man-on-man torture fantasies or his video geek understanding of life provide an adequate moral response to that level of history--I don't know, man--it just felt to me like he was molding toy soldiers out of the ashes of the dead."

Of course, it's not enough for Klavan to bash Tarantino alone. Like most conservatives, he sees Tarantino--who as far as I can tell doesn't have a political bone in his body and probably couldn't name two members of Barack Obama's cabinet--as part of the Hollywood lefty uber-class who is guilty, as Klavan puts it, of responding "so shabbily to 9/11" and of making movies "that gave aid and comfort to our enemies while our soldiers were in the field." Exactly which movies gave aid and comfort to our enemies remain unnamed, since it's always easier to issue a broad and sweeping slander than be specific.

But Klavan does make one very specific point. He says that either because of celebrity, money or crazed leftist politics, "too many of our artists seem to have been sapped of their understanding of suffering and history." Hence the stylized savagery of "Inglourious Basterds." For me, this is simply the latest example of why so few conservatives ever distinguish themselves in creative fields like music or filmmaking the way they have in investment banking or talk radio. They either detest pop culture or have such inflexible rules about how it is supposed to be created that they end up stuck on the outside, looking at the filmmaking process with either scorn or derision.

It's why so many conservative commentators ended up loathing Jim Cameron's "Avatar." Unlike millions upon millions of moviegoers who found themselves enthralled by the film's visual imagination, conservative pundits could see only the movie as a political statement about things they abhorred. It didn't fit their rigid definition of what kind of cultural experience people should enjoy. I can only imagine what Klavan would've thought of Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be," which gleefully mocked Hitler and Nazism in 1942, even as the horrors of the Reich were in full sway, casting Jack Benny as a vain Polish actor who finally gets to play his biggest part impersonating Hitler.

The film's spoof of the Führer came too close to the actual events for the film to be a hit. But it's now considered a comedy classic because of the same kind of artistic daring that makes Tarantino's "Basterds" a mini-classic of its kind today. To try to wall off the saga of Hitler's evil persecution of the Jews with all sorts of elitist rules about how that story can be told only diminishes its power instead of elevating it.

"Inglourious Basterds" photo by Francois Duhamel / The Weinstein Co.

PREVIOUSLY: "AVATAR:" WHY DO CONSERVATIVES HATE THE MOST POPULAR MOVIE IN YEARS

Comments

[Jay]

Inglourious Basterds was garbage. To contrive a scenario which Tarantino wishes had actually happened to the Nazis failed to work because the Nazis never had to pay as they should have for the annihilation of millions of people. To try and make light of this only exposes the creator as an inglorious ignoramus. If Hollywood is willing to celebrate Tarantino's movie as art, then it needs to take a long hard look at itself. Not every idea is a good one. But, then, I don't suppose Tarantino lost dozens of relatives to the Nazis. And I am not a conservative.

[madsircool]

"...since it's always easier to issue a broad and sweeping slander than be specific."

Right back at ya, Goldstein. What part of his specific argument against IB do you have a problem with? And why?

Also, Tarantino manages to blur the lines between the Nazis and his audience; his characters, and his fans, share the same love of senseless violence as did the Nazi murderers. Murder and torture ares no longer wrong...if the victim is from a despised group. It pretty much sums up the thinking of those Germans and other Euros who physically eliminated millions in the death camps.

[Martha Sigwart]

While hardly a conservative, I must agree with the negative review of INGLORIOUS. It was glib, unpleasant, irritatingly missing any understanding of history...in short, just the kind of thing we expect from Tarantino. Quentin, by the way, is no braintrust and certainly not a filmmaker to be idolized. Let's leave accolades for folks like Scorsese, please, and not keep oozingly, reverently pretending that QT is an godlike independent film icon. In this particular instance, he qualifies as an uber-smartass only. What a waste of time for all concerned and all who watched it.

[rhl]

He must really hate the Producers too.

[m wyeth]

It's doubtful that "To be or not to be" was made with the full knowledge of the Holocaust having been fully exposed to the world. After all, the New York Times was very reticent to do many front page stories on the issue. Klavan doesn't need to list "rendition", "valley of elah", and the rest of the antiwar dreck that h-wood has produced. He's trying to relate his experience with watching the horrible comic book that "basterds" ended up being. Re-writing WWII is dangerous in a time where most kids couldnt tell you who Churchill was. Avatar is a piece of candy,wrapped in a message.Most people throw the wrapper in the can without reading, those who bothered to read it probably concluded as many of us, "Dances with Smurfs". Then threw the glasses in the bin.

[Glen Fleetwood]

Yes. Period. There are studies that show people confuse what they see in movies with reality. So they see "Red Dawn" and think Cuba and Nicaragua invaded the US at one time. Which of course is not true. But the opposite is true. This "Well, in WWII both sides, the Germans and Jews, did bad stuff to the other" nonsense is despicable. The film stock for IBasterds should have been used for millions of guitar picks. See "Shoah", or the BBC's "Auschwitz: The Final Solution," instead.

[Rick Mitchell]

Tom Dugan, not Jack Benny, did the Hitler impersonation in the original TO BE OR NOT TO BE, and later that year Leo McCarey made a film called ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers which also took a slightly humorous approach to current events in Europe though I don't know how it did commercially. I believe those were the only two such films made at the time, though Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett got some satiric jabs into FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO. Beyond that, the article is right on.

Rick Mitchell
Film Editor/Film Historian

[mactonight]

You know who else hated pop culture? Hate impressionists and "modern music" as decadent and liberal? Hilter.

[Big Sam]

What movies slander our boys on the front? "Lions for Lambs" and "Rendition" come to mind. Complete propaganda. Trivialized 9/11...Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center". It really p.m.o. to see no commemoration of the tragedy of 9/11, whereas we still have a "remember Pearl Harbor" slot on the evening news.

I guess the dingbats in California will organize a "Forget 9/11" holiday. I just wish the good people of California would out shout these left wing fanatics.

[waldosholiday]

Um, you know he's not the first person to make this argument, right? It holds a bit more water than your lazy dismissal suggests (and I say this as a defender of the film)

Leftist film writer par excellence Jonathan Rosenbaum has a good take on why IB is harmful to history:

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=16514