Quentin Tarantino’s newest film, Inglorious Bastards, stars Brad Pitt and begins filming this week in Germany. Telling the story of Jews taking violent revenge on their Nazi tormentors, the movie includes the exploits of a unit of Jewish members of the US Army, led by Pitt and known as “The Bastards”, who torture, scalp, and disembowel their Nazi victims. It shapes up, according to the script, as a real Tarantino blood fest. It’s also a total fabrication — one that has deeply troubling implications about Nazi guilt and the hatred of Jews.
The fact that this story is made up should be enough to upset us, but not because it uses the Holocaust as a back drop for entertainment. The truth is Steven Spielberg did it with Schindler’s list, for which he received an academy award. And the list of well received holocaust situated entertainment projects is too long to list here. Let’s just all admit that the adage that “there is no business like Shoah business” was true long before Quentin Tarantino set out to make Inglorious Bastards. Perhaps it should not be so, but it is. Why that is, is another conversation.
But in fabricating this tale of Jewish vengeance, Tarantino asks us to consider some pretty ugly things as we munch our popcorn, some of which are quite dangerous and potentially anti-Semitic as well. The least problematic issue being the sympathy that will be evoked for the Nazi victims (how’s that for a twisted concept?) of the Jewish vengeance brigade whose story is the focus of the film. And who could not feel some sympathy for people, no matter their crime, who are subjected to such horrible deaths?
Of course, we may find ourselves feeling no sympathy at all, which is even more troubling. For if we find ourselves feeling no sympathy for the victims of this story, are we meant to think ourselves no different from the Nazis who felt nothing as they went about their own evil pursuits? They too pursued their mission as one of fixing the world by ridding it of what they considered a real problem. So does Tarantino invite us to a kind of moral equivalence between the two groups?
If this is not his point, and I pray it is not, perhaps he needs to invent horrible acts of vengeance because he can not imagine that Jews did not do this. And why is that so hard for him to imagine? Simply suggesting that no “reasonable” audience member could possibly fail to appreciate that this is all made up, is not a good enough answer. First, movie audiences are not limited to reasonable people. And second, in a world filled with people who have been convinced that the real holocaust never happened, how hard is it to imagine that others will accept that this fictional event actually did?
More importantly why does Tarantino even want to suggest to the world that it did? What is attractive to him in telling this story of blood thirsty Jews roving Europe taking revenge on their neighbors? It’s not much of a stretch from this story line to older stories of equally blood thirsty Jews using the blood of their Christian neighbors for rituals including the making of Passover matzah. Those stories were as false as that of “The Bastards”, yet they inspired generations of hate and violence against innocent Jews.
I do not think that will necessarily happen because of this film, nor do I think that Quentin Tarantino purposefully stepped into the deep waters of historical anti-Semitism. In fact, I think there is great value in raising some of the admittedly painful questions evoked by our revulsion and/or satisfaction at seeing the horrible punishments received by horrible people. But I also wonder if these were the issues in Mr. Tarantino’s mind when he set out to make his movie. I wonder if he appreciated the potential ugliness of his story and the hatred it could inspire? I wonder.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
posted October 10, 2008 at 1:27 pm
They raped my gret grandmother and bayoneted her in front of her children. If I could do to them when Tarantino suggests, it would be a good day. They lost their humanity when they put the swastika on their uniforms.
posted October 10, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I was born in 1953, five years after my parents and brother arrived in Canada from the hell of Europe in WW2. I grew up with my family’s stories of deprivation, pain, anti-semitism, and the murders of their families in Europe. As a child, I always had the belief that Jews were incapable of fighting and were victims in this life. The fantasy of a ‘superman’ type hero to protect us were the most I could think.
Move forward to the creation of the state of Israel, the war of independence, the six-day war and we now had a vision of Jews not only capable of fighting, but winning. Not the victim anymore. In reality.
The Tarantino vision of Jews getting even with (as if that would ever have been possible) the Nazis by inflicting on them the pain they inflicted on us, is a fiction but in ways, oh so satisfying.
We have the story of the Golem in our past. Was that real? Why not this too? It is emotional. It is visceral. It is lower than we as a society should ever wish to be. But sometimes revenge, even fictional revenge, feels good.
posted October 13, 2008 at 12:03 am
It is beyond me how a film icon such as Brad Pitt could be drawn into accepting this role in “Bastards”. Perhaps after seeing this motion picture I will decide to never see another of his pictures. STAN
posted October 13, 2008 at 4:27 am
Tarantino will definitely show the Nazis to be the brutal, vicious scum-bags they were. He won’t portray Nazis as sympathetic at all. When I watch movies like “The Pianist”, I always want to reach through the screen and skin those Nazi pigs. They were bullies who hurt and murdered so many innocent people! I hope this is the most gruesome Tarantino film ever when he shows the Nazis being killed. Tarantino won’t show Jews taking revenge on their “neighbors”. Tarantino will show Jews taking revenge on some Nazi trash.
posted October 13, 2008 at 11:09 am
I do like Tarantino movies which are in most cases fictional. Yet the question at hand is the blurred line between entertainment and history.
Is the Holocaust a valid topic for a fictional movie about revenge? Is it in good taste and tactful enough? Looks like commercially Trantino is wise since the ADL will run for him a marketing campaign he could have never run by himself. I must admit I’d like to see the movie.
Professional Jews, please watch the movie before commenting about it.
posted October 13, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Back in the 50s and 60s people cheered when (I can not recall the actors name) they made movies with people who would not take it any more and when family members died went after the bad guys and killed them himself.
The people cheering knew that if this occured they would never do something as illegal as that. Cheeered anyway. Nobody felt sorry or the bad guys.
Anyone seeing this film will feel the same way. Relax-next subject!
hugs
Laura
posted October 13, 2008 at 1:00 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/26/second.world.war from The Guardian talks about post WW2 Avengers in Bucharest. I believe that there were others as well. Given the lack of significant war crimes trials, given the absolute horror of the proceeding 12 years I would certainly not judge beyond “oh well” anyone who felt compelled to act in such a manner.
As for the film, violence is certainly Q.T.’s middle name. Leave your under 12 year old’s @ home but I will be in line to see it.
posted October 15, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I personally think all of Mr. Tarantino’s work is absolute trash, but
Hollywood is a place where people like him can flourish. It is ob-
vious to me that their interpretation of ‘art’ is very different from
mainstream America. From what I see in advertisements for movies
these days, any kind of crazy idea just might get to the screen and
influence young people, as well as others, in very negative ways.
Sometimes I think that our right to free expression does not always
serve us well.
posted October 22, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I always wonder how the shoe fits on another foot. If he had picked another topic same story – the civil war or Vietnam. Would it make it to the theater? I think he is banking on the liberal and tolerant reputation Jewish people tend to have.
posted October 26, 2008 at 11:52 am
I don’t know of any Jews in the American Army who did such things, but I did read an account of a Jew with the British Army who wrote of breaking orders and popping over the Italian border to torment Nazis. He wrote that he didn’t do it for long, because he found the experience profoundly unsatisfying.
Nevertheless, I don’t doubt that this account will be wildly popular among Arabs, Muslims, and anti-Semites worldwide. So much of Israel seeks peace, so many Jews perform so many good deeds in support of Arabs everywhere, there is a deep and pressing need to keep the image of the “evil Jew” alive and in the forefront of anti-Jewish minds, lest their self-identity be threatened. Hollywood is betting that it can profit greatly by appealing to the psychological needs of this market.
It is a return to the days of Birth of a Nation, the 1915 film glorifying the creation of the Ku Klux Klan, thus assuaging the Southern feelings of defeat and encouraging violent, prejudicial racism as an expression of southern manliness and lasting rebellion. BON was wildly popular and is taught to all movie students as a landmark technical masterpiece of the period, which is why I doubt that Tarentino isn’t aware that he’s appealing to traditional anti-semitism, even if we don’t see the results – remember that different cuts of the movie may be made available for different markets, just like that Jesus movie from a few years back: the lines blaming the Jews were deleted for the American market, but retained for everyone else.
posted June 6, 2010 at 8:54 am
Just finished watching the Movie.Like Bill,( Oct 15th, 2008 ), I think all of Tarantino’s work is trash, but am hopeing one day to be proven wrong.Unfortunately Today was not it !
Another load of self indulgent tripe. It’s good to see an intellegent discourse on this blog in regards to the “shallow” emotion of revenge.
For those wanting to see a much more “real” movie involving Jewish Soldiers, may i recommend the French Movie, Les femmes de l’ombre, ( eng. Female Agents ).Stylish,Classy and Real. Everything Tarantino can only dream about !!