Why Quentin Tarantino’s take on Roman Polanski’s ‘rape charges’ is hardly surprising

In Tarantino's case, a lot of the violence comes from a hollow 'I saw it in a movie and I think it will look good' line of thought.

By: Tatsam Mukherjee |
February 7, 2018 7:20 pm

Blood never drips in a Tarantino movie, it gushes out like a fountain. That’s something, many members of the audience take as a sign for how much the director enjoys violence and celebrates it. While many in his defence say that it’s a ‘movie’ and it’s intentionally ‘over-the-top’ because Tarantino’s films pay homage to those grainy, pulp movies of the 80s.

However, when you see a a tight close-up of a person’s scalp being sliced off, you really have to wonder if he finds serenity in gratuitous violence. And if that’s the case, then it’s really not surprising when Tarantino defends Roman Polanski’s alleged rape of a minor as something that the 13-year-old victim was ‘down with’.

In Inglourious Basterds, a scene shows Adolf Hitler clapping like a mad man inside a theatre, each time a Nazi sniper blows the brains of an enemy soldier. I don’t think I would be letting my imagination wander too far, by drawing comparisons between that scene and Tarantino’s own affliction for scattered brains.

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Many of the director’s fans have embraced his filmmaking that takes place somewhere between a Hollywood movie and a slasher graphic novel, but does he himself understand the moral responsibility that comes with it? He might absolve himself by saying that his movies don’t advocate violence, but does the gore stem from a painful, repressed memory? In Tarantino’s case a lot of it comes from a hollow ‘I saw it in a movie and I think it will look good’ line of thought. It’s his unabashed hedonistic, masochistic pleasure of making movies.

It’s no wonder that Tarantino is *unable* to see why Polanski was guilty of partying with a 13-year-old girl involving ‘booze and pills’. A 2003 radio interview between the director Howard Stern and Robin Quivers is doing the rounds on Twitter, where Tarantino is heard defending the Chinatown director for an alleged rape of a minor.

He says, “rape is a word that is thrown around lightly like racist, these days. Polanski was guilty of having sex with a minor. She wanted to have it, she dated the guy. She was down for it” in spite of repeated interjections from the hosts. Not for once, stopping to think about the ‘adult’ in the situation – Roman Polanski, and how he should have gone about his own ‘hedonistic pleasures’. See the connection?

Here’s audio of Quentin Tarantino defending Roman Polanski: 13-year-old girl “wanted to have it” https://t.co/4qkNpbnAVM

— Jezebel (@Jezebel) February 6, 2018

Tarantino understands it because even he doesn’t know where to pull the stops for his sadomasochist art. Even if it means putting his actor in a rudderless car, and then going on to call it the ‘biggest regret of his life’. Both Uma Thurman and Diane Kruger have gone on record to say that it was director Tarantino during the shoots of Kill Bill & Inglourious Basterds respectively, who insisted on ‘choking’ his actresses.

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He even insisted on spitting on Uma Thurman’s face ‘for art’, and one has to wonder if that degree of authenticity is all that necessary in the larger scheme of things? Is he an ‘uncompromising artist’ or someone who just gets off on these things?

i post this clip to memorialize it’s full exposure in the nyt by Maureen Dowd. the circumstances of this event were negligent to the point of criminality. i do not believe though with malicious intent. Quentin Tarantino, was deeply regretful and remains remorseful about this sorry event, and gave me the footage years later so i could expose it and let it see the light of day, regardless of it most likely being an event for which justice will never be possible. he also did so with full knowledge it could cause him personal harm, and i am proud of him for doing the right thing and for his courage. THE COVER UP after the fact is UNFORGIVABLE. for this i hold Lawrence Bender, E. Bennett Walsh, and the notorious Harvey Weinstein solely responsible. they lied, destroyed evidence, and continue to lie about the permanent harm they caused and then chose to suppress. the cover up did have malicious intent, and shame on these three for all eternity. CAA never sent anyone to Mexico. i hope they look after other clients more respectfully if they in fact want to do the job for which they take money with any decency.

A post shared by Uma Thurman (@ithurman) on Feb 5, 2018 at 10:15am PST

He’s also someone who went on record to say ‘9/11 didn’t affect me’ in a Rolling Stones interview because he had already seen something similar in a Hong Kong movie called Purple Storm. How does one have such an apathetic response to an event where thousands of people lost their lives? Maybe Tarantino’s mind and heart is genuinely locked up in his expansive DVD library, otherwise how can a man claim to not be moved by a tragedy because he had ‘already seen it in a movie’?

I’m all for using every inch of the space that your creative license affords you, but does that mean we use it to numb ourselves towards violence? That’s what a Tarantino’s film does to many (in spite of how much he would like to deny the correlation) is that it trivialises blood lust. In his head he might be being true to himself, but what he’s essentially doing is using the gore as a spectacle instead of as a means to it.

Quentin Tarantino will continue to be hailed as one of the most original storytellers in the history of cinema. But his actions behind the camera and his irresponsible comments, might raise questions on the human being. And in the near future, where a group refers to him as a cinematic God, there will also be another group that calls him an out-of-touch human being who made others see the sex appeal in violence – depending on how closely you examine his work.