타란티노의 <바스터즈>

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: Meta-cinematic Representation of War Films

This paper analyzes Quentin Tarantino s film Inglourious Basterds as metacinema. The film originated from the director s idea of revenge against Hitler on behalf of his Jewish friends. The plot essentially depicts ridiculous special forces assassinating Hitler and Nazi leaders. Tarantino draws attention not to the history of WW2 but to the making of war films and their discourse in the Hollywood film industry. Inglourious Basterds as metacinema not only arms the film with genre consciousness, but also partakes of and critiques old Hollywood’s genre conventions. Tarantino questions the old war film formulas of cinematic narratives that are subjugated to the illusion of history and representation of reality. Instead, in this film, he breaks the fixed framework of the genre, planting playful cinematic imagination into the representation of history, where political power and ideology have traditionally been used. For instance, the film deliberately employs languages that have long been excluded from realistic representation in Hollywood war movies as a suspenseful device. Moreover, the “film within a film” Nation’s Pride, which uses a similar visual style to Hollywood war films, reveals the genre’s close relationship with Nazi propaganda aesthetics. Thus, the iconic Operation Kino scene in Inglourious Basterds, the explosion in the theater, could be seen, by extension, as signaling an end to Hollywood s conventional war films and blazing a new trail.