Presentation

Speaker: Quentin Tarantino is arguably one of the most violent and bloodiest directors of all time. In his film Inglorious Bastards there is a death count of 396, the highest of all of his films, the majority of these deaths are by fire but there is a wide variety of types of violence. For example at one stage in the film there is a bar shoot out with a majority of deaths coming from dramatic gun shots, at another point in the film a German Nazi general is beaten to death with a baseball bat by a Jewish man. Race is a issue that Tarantino deals with a lot within his films. Django unchained also deals with race and has the second highest death count of Tarantino's films with 64 deaths in the whole film. Most of the deaths come as a result of gunshots due to the Western genre of the film. (Item 15) Tarantino has many moments of humour within many of his films many coming as a result of the witty dialogue that he writes within his scripts. One critic said that Django unchained is insanely violent yet had "some of the funniest moments" he had ever seen (Item 8). Violence is a key concept within Tarantino's films and he has a distinctive way of portraying this violence on screen. This distinction between Tarantino and other directors is what makes him an auteur as his style is consistent across all of his films (Item 7).

Projector: Scene from Reservoir Dogs (Item 2) Torture scene (4mins 33 secs long)

Speaker: The iconic torture scene from Reservoir dogs is a perfect example of Tarantino's use of violence. Tarantino's debut film "establishes a lot of what audiences would come to think of as trademark directional elements" (Item 6). For example the way in which humour is used along with the shockingly violent torture of the cop which Mr Blonde had taken hostage. The cutting of the ear is shocking to the audience even though they never see the actual removing of the ear which "in a way makes it more powerful" (Item 4), Tarantino chooses rather to show an empty shot of the warehouse including a sign which says "Mind your head". The audience experiences the scene through the sound of the cops muffled screams which makes the violence feel more real. Mr Blonde then enters the shot holding the bloody ear and the straight razor. Tarantino uses humour by having Mr Blonde say "was that as good for you as it was for me?" along with speaking into the severed ear and saying "Hey... Can you hear that?". The humor along with the violence makes the scene all that more hard to watch, the scene has been called psychotic as the humor shows such a lack of empathy from Mr Blonde. Tarantino regards this scene as the most cinematic of the whole film and he has spoken about his love for this scene both emotionally and cinematically (Item 5). 

Tarantino defends his constant use of over the top violence by saying it has always been a purely aesthetic tool to him (Item 4) and he that finds violence in films "fun" (Item 11). He makes it clear that there is a difference between the violence in which he portrays on screen and the violence that occurs in real life. In many interviews he has spoken about his love for violence within films and saying that to him it is merely a tool to create his art (Item 9).

Projector: Scene from Django Unchained (Item 1) Shootout scene (2:12:00 - 2:14:00)

This scene is entirely western in genre, the sound that the bullets make and the setting in the big house in the south especially makes this scene reminiscent of old day westerns.  However the violence within this scene is much more explicit and at a much faster pace than the films that Tarantino used as inspiration. The start of the shoot out begins slowly with a slow motion shot of Dr Schultz flying through the room after having been shot. There is then a close up of Django's reaction followed by a zoom accompanied by a sound of the zoom this is then punctuated by the loud sound of a gun shot as Django shots the man who shot Dr Schultz. The scene then rapidly speeds up. The contrast of the very slow to the very fast forces the audience to catch up quickly to the pace at which the scene is now going. The rest of the violence within this scene is very much like a first person shooter video game in the way in which it is shot. There is a lot of POV's from Django's perspective especially when his adversaries line up in front of a wall and he shots every one of them while going across the room. This makes the audience feel involved with the violence. There is no way for them to escape the immersion that they feel if they are seeing what the person committing the violence. in a interview Tarantino described his particular style of violence as "closer to realism", that we are "laughing one minute and then there is blood all over the walls the next" (Item 12). This is what happens in this scene. The violence erupts out of no where and soon there is bright red blood sprayed up the walls.

Projector: Scene from Django Unchained (Item 1) Killing of the Brittle brothers (35:02 - 38:19)

In this scene Tarantino uses high pitched music that gets increasingly higher to create suspense whilst Django walks toward the Brittle brothers. The use of parallel editing also creates suspense, showing the two scene occurring at the same time and making the audience question whether or not Django will get to the Brittle brothers in time to stop them from whipping a girl for breaking eggs. When Django gets there John Brittle is reciting passages from the bible whilst wearing various pages of the Bible on himself. When Django shoots the elder of the Brittle brothers, the blood runs down the white  pages of the Bible. There is also red blood spraying against a white surface in earlier on in the film where the blood is sprayed across the white of the cotton. This is a symbol of the whole slave trade and its association with cotton picking. By choosing to show this spraying of blood onto the stark white of the cotton, Tarantino is showing the audience the blood that has been spilt by the whole of the slave trade. Django Unchained deals with a lot of the issues surrounding slavery just before the civil war. However Tarantino deals with these serious topics with the humour and wit of his dialogue.