DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/3VE2-Y577
Defense Date
2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Richard Fine
Abstract
This thesis examines the critical response to Quentin Tarantino’s representations of screen violence, primarily the violent content in his three revenge thrillers: Kill Bill (2003-4), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and Django Unchained (2012). Throughout Tarantino’s career, critics have attacked him for aestheticizing bloodshed to such a degree that it becomes a glib, pop culture affectation, and the empirically larger amounts of violent content in the revenge thrillers has only encouraged this claim. This paper argues for a recontextualization of how Tarantino wields brutality throughout these three pictures, that the rise in graphic content reflects a greater engagement with social-moral concerns in a manner that is both socially responsible – to echo Susan Sontag’s views on visual representations of violence in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) – and creatively consistent among those artists looking to retain their cultural significance as they age.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
May 2014