The TV Addict 

After recently listing some of the films I found offensive, I realized afterwards that I can’t really say any of them offended me on a personal level. By that I mean I was offended for others. After all, most of my complaints were about misogyny and racism in films, and I am white and not a woman. It left me wondering, what would happen if somebody made an “offensive” film that hit closer to home for me? Would I react like the disabilities groups responding to TROPIC THUNDER, or would I be able to maintain a degree of objectivity?

Thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s INGLORIOUS BASTARDS I now have the perfect scenario to help me answer that very question. You see, though I’m a born Canadian, both my parents were born and raised Germans, and I myself have lived there for three years. I speak the language, I have close family there, and consider myself a very proud German who is sometimes sensitive to how we are perceived in regards to WWII.

That puts me in an interesting situation now that some Germans are up in arms about how in Tarantino’s script for INGLORIOUS BASTARDS there is no end of violence inflicted upon my fellow countrymen.

Apparently in the film Germans are shot in the testicles, have their heads bashed in by baseball bats, have their scalps removed, and swastikas vengefully engraved into their foreheads. This is all in accordance with the mandate of the leader of this American Jewish brigade, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt): “I’m putting me together a special team … and I need me … eight - Jewish - American - soldiers … as a bushwackin’, guerrilla army, we’re gonna be doing one thing and one thing only, killin’ Nazis…We will be cruel to the Germans and through our cruelty, they will know who we are.” He also orders his troops to “git me 100 Nazi scalps”. What’s of concern to German critics in that area too is the fact that in the script no real difference is made between who is a Nazi (i.e. S.S. soldiers) and who is an average German fighting in the army. In other words, any German is a Nazi and therefore must be brutally killed.

So faced with something potentially offensive to me on a very personal level the question is am I offended by what I’ve heard so far about INGLORIOUS BASTARDS?

No, not really.

Sure, maybe I’m not entirely comfortable with the notion of equating all Germans with being Nazis, but that’s mostly because you’d be surprised how many people ignorantly believe that was the case during World War II (many of whom I’ve had the misfortune of encountering). But by the sounds of it though, this film is going to be so over-the-top silly and violent (it is Tarantino after all) that anyone who believes this film is saying anything authentic about what Germans during World War II were really like is an idiot. Further, anyone who thinks INGLORIOUS BASTARDS will make people think that, are even bigger idiots. By that account Germans should be offended by how the Nazis are portrayed in the INDIANA JONES, or how they usually end up suffering horribly in those films.

Which brings me to my next point. The fact of the matter is that in cinema (or any form of entertainment) Nazis make for good villains. For better or worse they do in their own way embody the closest thing we have to “true evil,” and therefore they are a quick an easy way of conveying evil in narratives without any development (you see a Swastika, you immediately think “Uh oh”). In turn - especially in action films - that means they are turned into cartoon like villains that stop short of twirling moustaches and wringing their hands.

So, yes, they may be German, but when they are such extreme caricatures I find it hard to really relate myself to them, let alone be offended by them. So am I offended by the violence that will be inflicted on my fellow countrymen in INGLORIOUS BASTARDS? No, because it’s not real Germans the film is dealing with it, it’s typical action-film cartoony villains, and those kinds of bad guys usually end up earning whatever filmic come-up-ins - regardless of nationality. That’s something Tarantino - perhaps more than anyone else - will know, appreciate, and appropriate for this film.

In other words, my advice to those Germans already upset about INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, is to just keep things in perspective, turn off your sensitive bone, and place the film in its tonal context. Most of all, wait to see the final product before you judge.