Before the Tarantino Backlash Begins

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir had some trouble understanding the lede to my piece this month on Inglourious Basterds -- it's a "dream sequence," Andrew -- but he makes an interesting point about Tarantino and his intentions, which is worth considering before the blogosphere explodes when the movie comes out next week.

Quentin Tarantino has no serious opinions or convictions whatever regarding Nazis or Jews or the Holocaust. Beneath all his B-movie genre-worship, Tarantino remains a pomo disciple of Jean-Luc Godard, playing an elaborate game of bait-and-switch with his audience and seeking to disarrange the conventional stories -- or stories about stories -- we've got in our heads. More simply, he's just fucking with us.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/08/before-the-tarantino-backlash-begins/23257/