Inglorious Basterds, Vengeance and Redemption
Inglorious Basterds is a powerful, entertaining cinematic experience, but this is not what you want to hear from me, an eighth-generation rabbi whose father escaped the Nazis and immigrated to America from Poland in 1938 with his parents and brother, leaving most of his family behind to be murdered by the Nazis "y'mach shemam" - may their names be erased - the traditional Jewish appellation, added every time one refers to Nazis, to which Mr. Tarantino has given new meaning.
We now have a new genre of Holocaust films, a fun, action-packed Jewish revenge fantasy! After nearly 600 films to date on the Holocaust, the vast majority of which focused on Nazi evil, the persecution, and suffering of Jews, the paradigm has shifted. We now have the first primary process Holocaust film. There may be six million stories in the Holocaust but Inglorious Basterds tells the one we have been afraid to tell about ourselves: the story of what we would really like to do to those Nazis.
The film unambiguously begins, "Once upon a time...," reminding us that we are about to watch a fable, a tale, a dream, a fantasy that alas did not happen or our world would be so different. Inglorious Basterds is a flight of the imagination, a meditation on vengeance, and the cost of not owning and recognizing the feeling that lies deep beneath the surface of many of us: Kill every last one of them. Or as Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt), leader of the Basterds, says: "We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us."
Oh how we wish we could! Removing the Talmudic moral complexity and parsing, the Woody Allen angst, the liberal genteelness and conservative embarrassment from the equation, what we really want is to scalp Nazis, burn Nazis, torture Nazis, murder Nazis, brand Nazis like cattlemen brand cows (or God brands Cain) with their very own swastikas, and brutally bash their heads in with baseball bats. Actually, the last act brings together two Jewish male fantasies - bashing Nazis and being Hank Greenberg. I digress. As Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and most important witness of the Kingdom of Night, teaches: "Some stories are true that never happened."
Lawrence Bender and Harvey and Bob Weinstein deserve great credit for having the courage to back this extraordinary film. Yet, it takes a gentile to go where no Holocaust story has gone before. Personally, I would give Tarantino an honorary membership in the Jewish people (no circumcision required, as he's been hacking, slicing and ruminating about this Jewish vengeance orgy for over a decade) for bringing consciousness of feelings and desires that many Jews could never bring up in mixed company to the screen.
Ahhh, to simply terrorize Nazis and after killing them, to scalp them! I have no idea what gentiles will experience while seeing this movie (and I really am sorry to cluster all gentiles together, especially since Aldo Raine, part Apache Tennessee hillbilly with twang, is not a Jew), but if I'm really honest, this Jew felt twinges of excitement, thrills, chills he's never felt before seeing violence. I don't even go to action films, yet alone violent movies, as they've always turned my stomach. But this one turned me on (though when I awoke the morning after, I had this strange sense of embarrassment over having gotten so into it). Unfortunately, I really enjoyed it!
As similar as Inglorious Basterds is to other Tarantino films, the determinative difference is Inglorious Basterds makes reference to real historical events. People already either love or hate Tarantino films, so this added level of complexity will surely cause great debate. The movie surfaces a fantasy locked in the inner recesses of every Jew's consciousness: getting to riddle Hitler's body with bullets. No more passive Jews, no more persecution, no more victims led to slaughter, no need for righteous gentiles like Schindler to save us, no more overdeveloped superego and pretense of moral superiority. Finally Jews can be just as brutal as the Nazis!
If the reactions I heard the night I saw the film are any indication, most Jews will love this fantasy with great gusto or as a guilty great pleasure, which will make the difference between seeing this film as kosher porn or as a necessary stage in healing an unbearable trauma. Of course a vocal minority will offer some culturally sophisticated politically correct critique that the movie is sacrilege and minimizes and trivializes the Holocaust. And those critics may be right for those who need to see this film ten times or whose only reaction is whooping in up for scalped Nazis but seeing this film once is a must.
Simply loving or hating Inglorious Basterds misses the realization that has gnawed at me since the morning after. Is it possible that all the necessary (and noble) civilizing attempts to respond/make sense/set things right regarding the Holocaust - museums and memorials, theologies and books, curricula, conferences and anti-racist laws and have also been deflections from giving voice to and even feeling the most primal and honest response to the beating, and shooting, and hanging, and burning, and gassing of six million Jews and millions of others? Does the very fact that Tarantino gives us license to enjoy and even relish the violence against Nazis reveal a mustard seed of repression? Inglorious Basterds gives us the most satisfying and gratifying response of all: brutal, unmitigated by any civilizing norms or ideals, cold-blooded, pleasure inducing, murderous rage and vengeance.
Given that the Holocaust, understandably and justifiably, has been central in Jewish and American identity -the U.S. Holocaust Museum visited by millions each year does stand on the Washington Mall - what happens when the most primal response of all is repressed out of a mixture of shame, fear, humiliation, and taboo. What happens when this response is repressed into the third generation - the aftermath of the aftermath - who still hear the clarion call of their elders to Never Forget? Can the repressed desire of wanting to murder those basterds - morph into seeing every enemy as a marked Nazi and into paroxysms of power that indeed turn us into basterds if not bastards?
Twice in the film, Aldo Raine asks Nazis if post-war they intended to burn their uniforms and return to normal life. After each Nazi tells him yes, Aldo viciously (but with great Tarantino artistry) carves out deep bloody swastika in the Nazi's forehead and offers one of the most haunting lines in the film: "I cannot abide that (Nazis are forgotten)." Can we not abide a world in which there are no more Nazis? Do we need a Nazi mark forever etched into our consciousness to know who we are? What will it take to stop seeing the world through the prism of the Holocaust? A band of Inglorious Basterds?
If the film proves anything, it is that we have barely begun to clean up the toxic waste of the Holocaust. There is still plenty of rage and anger that has not risen to the surface. Presently, liberals and conservatives, hawks and doves have a nice happy arrangement. One side makes believe they feel no anger or fear and see evil simply as a social construction to be dealt with by understanding and diplomacy. The other side makes believe it is not nightmares from the past that have made it appropriate to see the Nazi specter in every enemy, to confuse real politic with metaphysical evil. So we become each other's containers for all our repressed and disassociated rage and humiliation and fear - with everyone seeing each other as Nazis - a cornucopia of Nazis.
Jews see Palestinians, Palestinians see Jews, Americans see Arabs, Arabs see Americans, even opponents of health care reform see Barack Obama, and supporters of health care reform see noisy town-hall opponents as Nazis. That which seems so unique has become common. No wonder Inglorious Basterds feels so good to watch. Tarantino, as he always does, has given voice to our unacceptable and dangerous urges - kill those mf's - thereby defusing much tension and anxiety. It sure feels good to finally burn them alive, but when the lights come up, we have to wake up.
Perhaps the insight of waking up the morning after experiencing this film and having to admit, "Unfortunately, I really really enjoyed it," is that we are entitled and need to admit the furious desire for pure vengeance. If we do so, we may even begin to see that healthy people do not want their grandchildren and great grandchildren to Remember the trauma they suffered rather they hope the trauma will be Remembered to be Forgotten. Invited to stare into the Face of Vengeance and admit and own we even enjoyed the killing, maybe we can begin to heal and realize the innocence of suffering can never be redeemed by the exercise of power. For if we could do anything we wanted to anyone to make things right what would we do that could make things right? The suffering of the Nazis' millions of victims can never be fully set right - that is the difference between reality and fantasy - and to think anything to the contrary leaves a world in which the only people standing are a branded Nazi and a couple of Basterds.
Thank you, Quentin Tarantino. You have reminded us, whether you intended to or not, that we are never as powerful as our greatest fantasies and never as powerless as our worst nightmares.
Follow Rabbi Irwin Kula on Twitter: www.twitter.com/irwinkula
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Tarantino’s “Cheery Bomb”
In his latest “Inglorious basterds” Tarantino provides exellent value for money by managing to show three movies for the price of one .
The first is a farce seemingly turning Jews into Nazis.
The second is a tragedy predicting another Holocaust , this time of Israel . And the nuclear one to boot.
And the third one looks at how the makers of IB will survive its aftermath and what will happen to them.
If it all looks far fetched blame Tarantino and Co for dropping hints for hapless viewers all over the place .
And now all together in Italian: “Lomir singen lomir singen lomir singen cheery bomb cheery bomb …”
Rabbi Kula,
I just read your insightful piece about the recent movie, "Inglorious Basterds," which I saw Monday night and about which I have been having many discussions with others who have seen it. As I always do, I loved what you had to say.
However the thought that kept crossing my mind during and since seeing the movie was not something that you mentioned. I kept thinking how as a Jew I have always been taught that we hold ourselves to a higher morality, we don't treat other humans as animals, we don't deliberately take lives, we don't lower ourselves to become the sub-humans that the Nazis appeared to be.
With that thought in mind, I was excited and thrilled to see a film presenting a scenario where the Jews were able to fight back and to stop Nazis, even though it was sadly only a dream. However, in the scenes when there was baseball bat bashing, scalping and other ruthless, animalistic, no regard for human life behavior, even though they were Nazi lives, I had a feeling of embarrassment that these were Jews being portrayed exhibiting that conduct and behavior.
Having lost family and friends in that horror, and knowing how they still wept and shivered at memories too terrible for me to contemplate in depth, all I can say is..thank you, Rabbi Kula, thank you, for saying so many things I've felt guilty about feeling. Once more..thank you.
Tarantino has supported a niche in the concept of Jews fighting back against Nazis. I did the same in my Holocaust book Jacob's Courage. Jews did fight back and the public should be aware of it. Whenever we stand up to those who deny or minimize the Holocaust, or to those who support genocide we send a critical message to the world. But, Inglorious Basterds goes farther in demonstrating the willpower and courage demonstrated by Jews who fought back.
A world that continues to allow genocide requires such ethical reminders and remediation. And, a world that believes that all Jews walked obediently into Nazi gas chambers must be re-educated. These books and films attempt to show the world that religious, racial, ethnic and gender persecution is wrong; and that tolerance is our progeny's only hope.
Books like Jacob's Courage and screenplays like Inglorious Basterds carry the reader deep into ground zero of the Holocaust, encompassing the reader or viewer with constantly churning emotions. Despite the abject terror of these books and films, they also reveal the triumphant spirit of Jews and demonstrates how ordinary people can perform extraordinary acts of courage when the lives of loved ones are on the line.
Charles Weinblatt
Author, "Jacob's Courage"
http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/.
Thank you for a wonderful column. My father and his family escaped Nazi-controlled Vienna in 1939, when he was 15. He later went back to Europe, serving in the U.S. Army in France and Germany, where in the line of duty he personally killed a number of Nazi soldiers. He was always my greatest hero, as he defied the stereotype of the passive holocaust victim, and put his own life on the line to help defeat the Nazi war machine - AFTER he had successfully escaped! He voluntarily went back, with his primary goal being to kill Nazis. This is not to denigrate or take anything away from those who perished. I can't wait to see this film, and kudos to Tarantino for creating it!
Spoiler: One of my best friends called me on Saturday night to say to me, "Dude! I just saw Hitler get shot in the face!" The delight in his voice was unmistable. While I also enjoyed the movie earlier in the day, his heritage obviously made the experience all the more significant. "I usually get tight-as.sed about WWII movies, especially if they don't give the Holocaust the reverential treatment it deserves, but this was awesome!"
Everyone has their own ties to WWII. My uncle was in the Normandy invasion, and rarely spoke of his experience except to say The Longest Day didn't get it right (he died long before Private Ryan got saved, which is a shame because I would have liked to know how he felt about that). But not everyone has kept those ties locked into any emotional baring.
Okay.... the problem I have is that movies are not released in a moral or political vacuum. Just as M.A.S.H. was "really" about Vietnam and not Korea (or at least some claimed), I cannot help but see parallels with the two current wars the U.S. is involved in. As a gentile, all I see is a well-made, slick brief for the idea that tortue is not only fun, it is righteous.To me, it's a very slippery slope from "they're only Nazis" to "they're only Viet Cong" to "they're only Iraqis/Afghans..."
When one of the Town Hall lunatics was asked why she cared so much about health care, but never became politically involved when we went into two wars during the Bush Adminstration, her response was, "America is always at war. I didn't care much about that. This is important." Somehow, I doubt she'll take much from the experience of Inglorious Basterds.
Something to consider...the Basterds infiltrated the enemy territory, much like fighters went into Iraq from Syria after the U.S. invasion, they used guerilla tactics that one might even define as terrorism, and were prepared to die themselves if it meant making a big enough dent in the Nazi population (a'la suicide bombers). So, who was being satirized really? "The shoe is on the other foot, it seems."
Some call it porno, some call it tasteless, others call it grossly irreverant to history. I wonder what they really saw that they didn't like.
"When one of the Town Hall lunatics was asked why she cared so much about health care, but never became politically involved when we went into two wars during the Bush Adminstration, her response was, "America is always at war. I didn't care much about that. This is important." Somehow, I doubt she'll take much from the experience of Inglorious Basterds."
Maybe she won't, but I think it's irresponsible to put this out when people are being compared to the Nazis for supporting health care.
"Something to consider...the Basterds infiltrated the enemy territory, much like fighters went into Iraq from Syria after the U.S. invasion, they used guerilla tactics that one might even define as terrorism, and were prepared to die themselves if it meant making a big enough dent in the Nazi population (a'la suicide bombers). So, who was being satirized really? "The shoe is on the other foot, it seems.""
I can definitely see that interpretation, although I don't know if I'd give Tarantino credit for that. Mostly what I saw is yet another version of American exceptionalism.
Thanks for writing this. I was wrestling with whether to see the film--violence avoidance vs Jewish/Holocaust/Brad Pitt intrigue. It's interesting that this came out right before the Jewish High Holidays, a time when we are likely to wrestle with these forces withing ourselves. It seems that, in addition to the danger of pushing the violence/revenge impulse back inside as opposed to finding a constructive communal outlet, there is also the aspect of turning those very real and complex feelings into cartoon constructions that may or may not represent the turmoil inside. I've read reviews that say the Brad Pitt character is somewhat one-dimensional in this regard, but I think you've intrigued me enough to actually go and see the movie. I wonder how you'd compare the treatment of similar issues in Defiance to Tarentino's film.
Irwin:
Don't we all have a collection of responses to any given event? Act? Loss?
So too the Holocaust. Vengeance is surely one of the appropriate responses, and I wouldn't run from feeling good about wanting to kill our killers, it's a normal human response. And maybe it's too bad the Israeli Defense Forces couldn't do just that...
Of course the mark of a civilized person is to know which responses to act on, and which to let go drift softly away...
The good news, perhaps, is that I don't see vengeance as occupying first place in the Jewish book of "Holocaust Responses."
The proof of this is---Purim, which is also about vengeance, has been relegated to becoming (merely) a children's holiday, as if to say, let it be, we'll laugh at our enemies, move on and try to create a better world.
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My point is that it is actually a problem that we our appropriate civilized responses have kept us from also feeling and owning the intense anger and rage and what is a "normal' desire for unrestrained violence.
The fact that Purim (a celebration of the fantasy of violence has been turned into a children's holiday at a cost. If you repress stuff like this - which clearly Tarantino is tapping into and one of the reasons there is such gusto for the film- then it winds up expressing itself in pathological ways down the line.
I so enjoyed the movie. Shoshanna was the real heroine in this film. Kudos to Melanie Laurent who steals the show.
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I agree...and Shoshana means lily or rose which adds a nice little thorny edge...
What it boils down to, finally, is pornography. If IB gives you a Jones, it's the biochemical reaction to violence, no more about reality than staring at a filmed vagina is. Pornography degrades. Maybe that sums up the article; it certainly sums up my opinion of Tarantino. And Brad Pitt's enthusiasm about this film has put a hole in my respect for him.
What I enjoyed most was the irony of the movie theater scene. It is Tarantino, the filmmaker, getting his own particular kind of revenge. I think he is great..
“After nearly 600 films to date on the Holocaust, the vast majority of which focused on Nazi evil, the persecution, and suffering of Jews, the paradigm has shifted.”
Only 600? It feels like six thousand. When do you suppose Hollywood is going to get around to making a movie about the Palestinian Holocaust? Or how about one on that traitorous “American” spy, Jonathon Pollard and his Israeli handlers? How about a movie about the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty? Thirty-four murdered American servicemen is not something to be ignored or covered up, is it? Yet Hollywood does ignore. Maybe they’re taking their cue from the mainstream American “news” media that has spent the past sixty years doing its best in avoiding stories that negatively reflect on Israel. So much for an informed public.
it can't ever just be about us and our suffering right? never
I think that, based on their own suffering, so very many Jews have worked to alleviate suffering of others. Some people do learn and gain understanding from their own history, and I think that is true of many in the Jewish population. I agree though that there is tremendous fear of ever disagreeing or going against Israel because one might be called anti-semitic, but here are many Jews who do not agree with Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
"...what we really want is to scalp Nazis, burn Nazis, torture Nazis, murder Nazis, brand Nazis like cattlemen brand cows (or God brands Cain) with their very own swastikas, and brutally bash their heads in with baseball bats."
Speak for yourself, rabbi. I don't have feelings like that about anyone.
For me, violence is not entertaining or redeeming, no matter how it is dressed or twisted.
Your point of view is honorable,and you are lucky not to have revenge feelings. I do, however, understand why people might feel some satisfaction in the revenge scenes in the movie.
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i really do appreciate your comment and in fact my wife will not go to see the film and said precisely what you did...and I really am only speaking for myself. But aside from simply saying that I and the many other serious people who, really out of character, felt a certain gusto for the violence are twisted and less evolved (which we may be) what do you think is going on?
I didn't say anything about you or other serious people being twisted and less evolved, but you may be on to something. Of course I'm just kidding, Rabbi, as a serious person. Since you asked what I think is going on, I will tell you.
Quentin Tarantino explores, and you (and the media machine) are celebrating the sort of violence that can injure the mind. It is pornography, as gulopartisan says. If you and many other serious people felt a certain gusto for it, well, pornography will do that to you. To argue that "brutal, unmitigated by any civilizing norms or ideals, cold-blooded, pleasure inducing, murderous rage and vengeance" is what civilized people need to reedem themselves from the Holocaust is, um...
I was brought up to think of vengeance as wrong, and I take that seriously. The law does not allow it. Do you believe in forgiveness?
Life is violent enough and painful enough already. But if more is your pleasure, knock yourself out. I'm not buying.
What kind of art is it that can't move you without brutalizing someone in front of you?
Thank you Rabbi,
"Guilty great pleasure" indeed. This gentile's wife turned to me as the credits were rolling and said she almost felt guilty for liking the film so much. To which I agreed, yeah, almost...
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Great! the ah.....almost is the most important comment of all...thanks
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