The Tarantinian Ethics

Introduction

“… Ed Gallafent’s 2006 and Aaron Barlow’s 2010 books dealt respectively with the first four and the first six films by Tarantino. In addition, it interesting to mention here Fred Botting and Scott Wilson’s The Tarantinian Ethics ( 2001 ), which offers an unusual and in-depth analysis of Tarantino’s early screenplays through a rather sophisticate Lacanian framework, as well as Simona Brancati’s ( 2014 ), which, however, mostly relied on (Italian) critical literature that do not always sustain its discourse with a solid theoretical background. Tarantino’s much-discussed experience as a clerk for a video-store in Los Angeles has always been linked to the—crucial—issue of his cinephilia and, specifically, his supposedly unconditional love for any kinds of films, which would neglect to elaborate any historical, cultural or aesthetic discrimination among them.…”

“…Ed Gallafent’s 2006 and Aaron Barlow’s 2010 books dealt respectively with the first four and the first six films by Tarantino. In addition, it interesting to mention here Fred Botting and Scott Wilson’s The Tarantinian Ethics ( 2001 ), which offers an unusual and in-depth analysis of Tarantino’s early screenplays through a rather sophisticate Lacanian framework, as well as Simona Brancati’s ( 2014 ), which, however, mostly relied on (Italian) critical literature that do not always sustain its discourse with a solid theoretical background.…”

Ambivalent Violence in Contemporary Game Design

“…In his retrospective of the once notorious and now widely lauded A Clockwork Orange , French (1990, p. 87) points to this as the defining logic of Kubrick’s “ultra-violence,” “The fights in the movie are both balletic and frightening. We are involved and repelled because the camera presents us with Alex’s point of view, while the stylization distances us from events.” Of the more recent and similarly acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road , Ehrlich (2015) suggests that director, George Miller, operates along similar lines of grace and savagery: “But the key to this symphony of twisted metal is how the film never forgets that violence is a form of madness.” Botting and Wilson’s (1998, p. 111) study of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs interprets the film’s infamous torture scene as a “seduction and thwarting of the audience” which “appears to have been designed precisely to produce … disturbance between desire, morality and the law.” Finally, Wood (1986, p. 54) sees the conclusion to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver as a deadening statement of uncertainty about the hero’s bloody exploits: “The effect is a kind of paralysis. Being unable to achieve any clear, definitive statement about the hero … the film retreats into enigma.”…”

Reading the Sotah Text (Numbers 5:11-31): Holiness and a Hermeneutic Fit for Suspicion

“…It is ironic in the extreme that it is the abrasive and violent moral world depicted in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (2004) which offers a plot line startlingly congruent with the social world depicted in the sotah ritual: suspicion, ordeal, discovery of innocence, and the dramatic inadequacy of the justification: 'I overreacted'. Indeed Tarantino's own particular moral vision is heavily reliant on just the sort of assertion and counter-assertion which allows him to depict strong ethical codes in the midst of frightening moral disarray (see Botting and Wilson 2001).…”